Tag Archives: mainstream media

media news, national news, political news

Parties suffer/enjoy results of presidential election

Is it me or are the media missing one of the critical backstories of the 2016 presidential election?

It goes like this … I believe.

Right up until Election Day, the media were reporting theĀ pending demise of the once-great Republican Party. The GOP, media types reported, was in need of an extreme makeover. Their presidential candidate was about to get creamed by Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Batten down the hatches! A storm was a brewin’ within the Republican Party ranks, they said.

Then a funny thing happened on Nov. 8. The GOP presidential nominee won. Donald J. Trump collected enough Electoral College votes to be elected president of the United States of America.

What the … ?

Now it’s the Democratic Party that’s in need of that makeover.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/07/what-went-wrong-dem-party-contestants-face-tough-questions/96284286/

The candidates for Democratic National Committee chair are facing searing, probing questions about how they intend to lead a party in near-panic.

Clinton lost the election. Democrats failed to win the U.S. Senate majority they anticipated getting; nor did they make any substantial gains in trimming the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

This remarkable turnaround occurred within a span of, oh, about seven or eight hours the night they were counting the ballots for president.

Polling now suggests that the next Democratic Party presidential nominee should be someone few of us have heard about … another candidate as unknown as, say, Jimmy Carter needs to take the stage.

It well might turn out that Republicans might regret lining up behind a candidate such as Trump, who seems to lack any fundamental core principles that guide him. He once was pro-choice on abortion; now he’s pro-life. He believes gay marriage is now the law of the land; many within the GOP believe quite differently. He thinks free trade is a scam; RepublicansĀ embrace free-trade policies. And, oh yes, we have some conflict-of-interest matters to slog through.

I’ll stop there. You get the point.

But, hey. The guy won! Elections have consequences, eh? Oh, brother, do they ever!

media news

Media getting it from both sides

imrs

The media can’t buy a break, they can’t get any love these days.

Republicans hate ’em. Now the nation’s top Democrat, the president of the United States, has gone after the media.

Barack Obama held his final press conference of the year this past week and became animated precisely one time, as he was chiding the media for their coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s losing presidential campaign.

He didn’t like the way the media obsessed over the e-mail story, how they kept reporting over and over the controversy that just wouldn’t go away.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/16/president-obama-isnt-a-big-fan-of-the-medias-coverage-of-the-2016-campaign/?postshare=6221481923285992&tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.be51a74a5fb5

Democrats appear to be stealing some of the signals offered by Republicans. When things go badly for you, blame the messenger.

Donald J. Trump, I believe, actually loves the media. He is what we used to call politicians a “media whore.” He would use the media to his advantage whenever and wherever possible. He did so brilliantly during his winning campaign for president — even as he trashed the media for what he said was their failure to “tell the truth.” He called them “the most dishonest people.” Still, the media followed him around, giving him ample air time and print space.

Now he’s the president-elect and he’s still trashing the media.

At one level, I understand the president’s frustration with the media. Reporters did all the things he said they did with regard to covering Hillary Clinton’s campaign. However, the media didn’t make these circumstances up. They didn’t just fabricate them and then try to peddle made-up stories to the public. They were real.

The media were doing their job, just as they did when they finally began calling out Trump for lying continually about his foes, about what he allegedly witnessed.

The media are facing a changing environment. To be sure, they are full these days of opinion, commentary and punditry that is overtaking the straight reporting of just the facts.

There remain straightforward media organizations that do a good job of reporting the news fairly. The problem, though, develops when they become drowned out by the noise created among other outlets. Online “news” sites are putting “fake news” stories that the public is buying as real. The purveyors of fake news, moreover, are making money off the clicks they get from suckers whoĀ consume that crap.

If only the actual reporters who continue to do their jobs honestly, fairly and with integrity could be heard above the din.

I fear they’re being drowned out forever.

media news

Trump stiffs the media; good luck with your message

aakamyn

I guess I’m just an old-fashioned guy.

The president of the United States needs to talk to the media to deliver a message to the people he governs. Not so, apparently, with the man who’s set to become the next president.

No, siree. Donald J. Trump today asked several network news anchors to meet with him at his New York City office. Then he blasted them to smithereens, to their face. He told them they’re dishonest; they got the election outcome wrong; he doesn’t need them; he’s going to talk “directly” to the people.

This tirade really got the Trumpkins out here all fired up. You go, Donald!

I, though, wish the president-elect would rethink this attitude he has toward the media.

The media in truth were quite good toward this guy as his campaign launched in the summer of 2015. Pundits and pols thought his presidential campaign couldn’t be taken seriously. The media, though, provided Trump with thousands of minutes of free air time and thousands of inches of newsprint space reporting on his comings and goings, his boasts and threats.

The media didn’t challenge hisĀ endless string of false assertions. They didn’t call them what they were: lies.

The cable and broadcast news networks got caught up in the GOP-fed hysteria over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s e-mail controversy, the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation.

All of it benefited Trump. He should thank the media, not condemn them.

Today the meeting with the TV news anchors became what one observer called a “f****** firing squad.” The guy with all the bullets, quite interestingly, was the president-elect.

So, perhaps Trump gored my own ox when declaring he has no desire to “work with” the media. I do believe he is making a mistake.

We haven’t heard him speak to the country via a time-honored tradition called a “press conference.” The media do their job, perhaps not to the president-elect’s liking. Too bad.

He ought to suck it up, face the media’s tough questions that every one of his predecessors have faced.

national news, political news

CNN crosses ethical line

corey

Right-wing critics of the so-called “liberal mainstream media” like to pound on CNN for its alleged bias against conservative politicians.

That’s their opinion, I suppose.

Then we have this bit of news: Former Donald J. Trump Republican campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — who is being paid by CNN to provide political commentary — also is being paid by Trump’s presidential campaign. Lewandowski is set to receive another half-million bucks by the end of the year.

Trump fired Lewandowski and then offered a handsome severance package on his way out.

This is so very wrong on so many levels.

There is supposed to be a line that separates media organizations from partisan political activity. Many cable and broadcast news networks have hired former political hands to provide commentary. They come from both political parties and they represent all manner of philosophy, principle and partisan bias.

The Lewandowski matter, though, is markedly different.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/corey-lewandowski-set-to-collect-nearly-dollar500000-from-trump-campaign/ar-BBwyRL0?li=BBnb7Kz

CNN often is criticized by right-wing pols and operatives. They refer to the network derisively as the “Clinton News Network.” Lewandowski’s compensation from an active Republican presidential candidate would seem to silence that criticism. It’s not likely.

Meanwhile, Lewandowski is going to offer his political analysis on the air while being paid by one of the candidates about who he is commenting.

Talk about not passing the “smell test.” This dubious coziness stinks to high heaven.

media news, national news, political news

Media, Trump need to end their love affair

bbwhsff

Donald J. Trump’s newfound friends in the conservative political movement need to cease declaring that the “mainstream liberal media” are out to “get” their guy.

That they despise Trump, and that the GOP presidential nominee hates them in return.

They love each other. The media love Trump, who in turn loves the media. He plays the media for the suckers they are.

He called a press conference in which he said he would make a major policy announcement. Instead, he used the event to tout some business deal, a hotel, in which he boasted about how great it is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-time-for-tv-news-to-stop-playing-the-stooge-for-donald-trump/2016/09/16/bc66812e-7c28-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

The press conference was supposed to center on Trump ending his racist rants about President Obama’s birth. It wasn’t about that. Sure, he said Obama “was born in the United States. Period.” But the bulk of the event was to shower praise on himself his business success.

This is where Trump is crossing a very troubling line: mixing personal business with a campaign for the nation’s highest political office.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump%E2%80%99s-anything-goes-campaign-sets-an-alarming-political-precedent/ar-BBwi7sm?li=BBmkt5R

Indeed, this latest stunt is part of a pattern.

The media are playing a major role in it.

Trump will continue to rant and rail about the “dishonest political press.” His supporters will cheer him on. He’ll give them more of the same. They’ll cheer him even more loudly.

Meantime, the rest of us are left scratching our heads and wondering: When will this charade stop?

media news, national news, political news

Cruz channels Newt by blaming the media

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz speaks during the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum at the National Rifle Association's 142 Annual Meetings and Exhibits in the George R. Brown Convention Center Friday, May 3, 2013, in Houston. The 2013 NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits runs from Friday, May 3, through Sunday, May 5. More than 70,000 are expected to attend the event with more than 500 exhibitors represented. The convention will features training and education demos, the Antiques Guns and Gold Showcase, book signings, speakers including Glenn Beck, Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin as well as NRA Youth Day on Sunday ( Johnny Hanson / Houston Chronicle )

Ted Cruz isĀ likely to get beat Tuesday in Indiana.

With a probable win in the Hoosier State’s Republican presidential primary, Donald J. TrumpĀ Ā will be standingĀ as the presumptive GOP nominee.

So, who’s Ted Cruz blaming for the flameout his campaign suddenly is experiencing? The media.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/05/01/chuck_todd_to_ted_cruz_republican_voters_are_the_ones_rejecting_you_this_is_not_a_media_conspiracy.html

It’s not going to work for the junior U.S. senator from Texas any more than it worked for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich four years ago when he sought to blame the messenger for reporting negative things about his campaign.

“Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd tried in vain Sunday to get Cruz to answer a simple declarative question: Will you support Trump if he’s the nominee?

Cruz didn’t answer. He then sought to blame the media, which he said are controlled by liberal Democrats.

“That’s what people hate about politics and the media,” Todd answered. “The broad brush.”

Yes, Cruz was painting the media with the broadest of brushes. Gingrich sought to do the same thing in 2012 with his broadsides against the “mainstream media.”

I just feel compelled to remind all of those who keep insisting the media speak with one voice that the “mainstream media” also comprise a large number of conservative voices. Fox News Channel? The bevy of radio talk-show hosts? All the right-leaning publications around the country — The Weekly Standard, The National Review? They, too, are part of the mainstream.

And let’s not ignore the torrent of online outlets that give the conservatives — even the “true conservatives,” such as Sen. Cruz — plenty of opportunities to air their views.

As Todd told Cruz on Sunday, Republican voters — not the media — are rejecting his message.

national news, political news

Can the Carson/West Point matter get muddier?

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MainstreamMediaLogo1000x400

My head is spinning over the past day or two regarding revelations about Dr. Ben Carson’s alleged, purported, supposed misstatements about whether he got a scholarship offer to West Point.

It’s turning into a game of semantics.

Moreover, the arguments have turned the discussion into a mud bath, meaning it’s becoming “clear as mud” about what Carson — a leading Republican presidential candidate — wrote about himself and whether it comports to the truth about what actually happened and when it supposedly occurred.

Steve Kornacki is a smart young political analyst who’s a regular on MSBNC’s talk-show circuit. He hosts a weekend talk show on MSNBC called “Up with Steve Kornacki.”

I’m beginning to believe that Kornacki might have the right take on how this Carson imbroglio is going end up. He said the other night on “Hardball,” another MSNBC show, that Carson and his allies have managed to turn the tables on the so-called “liberal mainstream media,” and have turned the argument into a game of “gotcha” in which the “liberal press” is “out to get” the good doctor.

Thus, if I read Kornacki’s analysis correctly, they’ve built enough reasonable doubt over the original story published by Politico that they’ve managed to deflect the argument back to the messenger … the aforementioned “liberal mainstream media.”

To be plainly honest, the story has taken so many turns I’m having trouble keeping up with it all. I need to stay focused entirely on the saga — chapter by chapter — to make sense of it all.

I guess I’ve boiled it down to simply this point: Dr. Carson could have written any reference to West Point with much more clarity than he apparently has done so far.

Or … he could have just not mentioned West Point at all.

I suppose another presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — who’s seeking the Democratic nomination — had the best take on it all: Maybe we ought turn our focus more on Dr. Carson’s peculiar current public policy views and less on what he has said about his past.

 

media news, national news, political news

New polarization: pols vs. media

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mainstream-media

I hear it from time to time. People I meet during a given week occasionally engage me in a conversation that begins: Do you think the nation is more polarized than everĀ  before?

My short answer generally goes like this: Well, maybe not since the Vietnam War. But we got through it. I believe we’ll be OK.

The polarization today, though, seem to be taking on another dimension.

Politicians, chiefly those on the right, now are taking dead aim at the media. Oh, I forgot: the mainstream media, thoseĀ folks with the liberal bias.

Ted Cruz is the junior U.S. senator from Texas. He’s running for the Republican presidential nomination. He took some reporters pheasant hunting with him in Iowa this weekend.

Cruz scored plenty of points at the latest GOP presidential debate by taking aim not just at CNBC, which moderated the event, but at “all media.” The crowd in the Boulder, Colo., hall roared its approval — as did conservatives all across the nation.

The media now are seen as the enemy of the right. The left-wing, liberal media are out to “get” those who hold different views, say Cruz and other politicians on the right.

Cruz then took his beef an interesting step further. He suggested — with a straight face at that — that GOP debates should include “moderators” more friendly to their cause. He mentioned Fox New commentator Sean Hannity as one who he’d prefer to “moderate” a debate among GOP presidential candidates.

I agree with my pals on the right on this score: The establishment media — and I include conservative-leaning journalists in that group — have become legends in their own minds. They at times interject themselves into the stories they are covering. They become confrontational and snarky when neither is warranted. I believe we saw some of that from the CNBC moderators.

Then again, have our Republican friends forgotten — already! — what happened at the first GOP debate that Fox News sponsored. Fox’s Megyn Kelly got things started with a question to Donald Trump about the candidate’s history of anti-female statements. It went downhill rapidly from there.

The Republican presidential field of candidates has done a good job of demonizing the mainstream media as a tool of the left. It has cast the MSM as an institution to be loathed and mistrusted.

Are we polarized? Yes, we are. I’ll stand by my short answer: We’ll get past this … eventually.

 

media news, national news, political news

Let’s allow Dems to face media grilling

media

All this talk over the past few days about the alleged mistreatment of the Republican Party presidential candidates by the “mainstream liberal media” brings something to mind.

Let’s suppose as we travel down the primary campaign road that the Democratic field — or what’s left of it — decides to debate among themselves in a nationally televised event.

What might happen if the moderators allĀ  turned out to conservative-leaning journalists? Believe me, there are plenty of them to go around.

Imagine a panel comprising, say, Britt Hume, Jennifer Rubin and Byron York grilling the likes of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders.

Hume is a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday; Rubin is a conservative columnist for the Washington Post; Byron York is a long-time conservative columnist whose work is syndicated in papers across the country.

They’re all smart and savvy political hands.

I’m trying to imagine how the Democratic National Committee might react to the tough line of questioning that such a panel would bring to a Democratic candidates debate.

I’m not sure the DNC would allow such a panel to present questions to their candidates. Yet the Republican National Committee signed off on the recent CNBC-sponsored debate and the moderators chosen by the network to quiz the candidates on the debate stage.

Still, there’s a part of me that wishes the DNC would agree to such an event, with that party’s candidates facing sure-fire relentless questioning on a whole array of issues facing the nation.

I know it won’t happen. But I can dream … can’t I?

 

national news, political news

Political ‘debates’ become show biz

CNBC panel

I might have a solution to returning some decorum and dignity to these presidential joint appearances.

I’ve said it before: Get rid of the audience.

CNBC’s moderators became the targetĀ of many of the Republicans running for president at tonight’s so-called debate.

First of all, I concur that the moderators were terrible. They lost control of the event. They let the proverbial tail wag the dog — to borrow a political phrase.

Indeed, the candidates fed off the crowd that gathered at the University of Colorado in Boulder. They cheered ’em on. They provoked the zingers. They roared every time a candidate took a shot at the “mainstream media.”

Tonight’s GOP joint appearance lacked almost any semblance of dignity. It became a circus and the moderators — Becky Quick, John Harwood and Carl Quintanilla — became the ringmasters.

It’s not as though the questioners didn’t ask good questions. They sought to probe the candidates’ backgrounds, prod them to explain previous statements and provoke them to make memorable statements.

It seemed, though, that CNBC debate troika set themselves up to become as much a part of the story as the candidates.

Why is that? The moderators were fueled as much by the audience as the candidates.

I have an intense dislike for what these events haveĀ  become.

Both parties have become enamored of the entertainment value that the audiences bring to these confrontations.

I’m old enough to remember the very first televised presidential debates, involving Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy. They had three of them. Each one got a little more vigorous than the preceding encounter.

Audiences? None. Just the two men … and Americans learned a lot from them both, without the distraction created by the cheers and catcalls.