Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

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_Icarus
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _Icarus »

Exiled wrote:It's dangerous to deem those who disagree with one side's narrative as a national security threat.


That's not what he did. He didn't call FOX a danger to national security simply because he had "disagreements" with FOX news. He explained in detail the various ways in which FOX presents itself as a legit danger to national security.

I'm sure Fox News lovers think the same thing about Rachel Maddow and CNN viewers.


They would be idiots then. Please list all the ways in which Rachel Maddow has encouraged millions of citizens, via massive disinformation campaigns, to discredit and attack our own national security mechanisms that are in place, while taking the side of a tyrannical dictator simply because that would personally benefit the guy they voted for. I'm guessing you wouldn't be able to name even one.

So, where does this end? Should Fox News be banned when CNN viewers are in power or should CNN be banned when Fox News viewers are in power? Also, what if both sides are corrupt liars, ginning up false narratives to benefit one side's billionaire class over the other side's billionaires, what then?


But they're not. CNN isn't even in the same ballpark as FOX when it comes to "ginning up false narratives to benefit" their "billionaire class."
"One of the hardest things for me to accept is the fact that Kevin Graham has blonde hair, blue eyes and an English last name. This ugly truth blows any arguments one might have for actual white supremacism out of the water. He's truly a disgrace." - Ajax
_mikwut
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _mikwut »

Hi Honor,

Hmmmmm. So let me try to understand. Fox News is just blatantly dishonest when wrong, they have an intent and follow through with it, right? CNN, MSNBC they certainly have an ideology so when wrong it was just ideological misgivings at play not blatant dishonesty? And you place that distinction into the comparative high sky of Hannah Arendt, Orwell and tyranny? Jesus Christ man. it is just BS on both sides. If one reads for example Horowitz's report and then watches the news coverage from CNN and MSNBC trying to cover that Bul-shi-t with ideology is just more BS. And I gotta admit trying to persuade anyone different is with high fluenting literature as the backdrop for support is bull-shit of an even high order. I spent 8 hours, well into the night reading the report for myself and then watching the nonsense reporting. Michael Tracey is not a Fox News loving MAGA hat wearer, he is far from it and he has reported clearly how dishonest the reporting has been on that report. That is just one example.

Calling the entire mainstream media to the carpet and not indulging either side of the nonsense is how we should respond to it. Not by tolerating blatant lies in the name of Arendt.

mikwut
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
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_honorentheos
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _honorentheos »

Hi mikwut -

The linked article from Garrett Graff in Wired is an example of a report where I found the initial dichotomy using the findings from Horowitz to be embarrassing to his overall argument. Had you mentioned that in your post as a specific point I would likely have agreed. But it's in Wired and where I expect that slant.

I can't map out where I came to my understanding of the content of the Horowitz report, what I read on CNN compared to NPR, Reason, or any other source. I can say my understanding of it without spending time reading it into the middle of the night was that it disputed the claim by Barr and others that the initial investigation was motivated out of politics and was based on valid investigative grounds, but the execution was so flawed and sloppy it likely led to FISA courts making decisions they might not have had the evidence been presented fully or correctly. Maybe the deep dive into the Horowitz report reveals more and perhaps that accounts for your focus before on the Steele Dossier in your general comment about the collaboration between CNN and the CIA/FBI. But my takeaway from the reporting overall was that no one was getting what they wanted, it looked pretty bad for the FBI, but there was no evidence for the claims being put out by Fox News and AG Barr that the FBI under Obama pursued an investigation of Trump due to partisan political motivations.

Your overall comment in the previous post was a bit bananas, and conspiratorial. CNN and MSNBC being outlets for pushing the agenda of the FBI and CIA in an Orwellian manner to control the narrative is conspiratorial nonsense.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
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_honorentheos
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _honorentheos »

The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_mikwut
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _mikwut »

Hi honor,

I can't map out where I came to my understanding of the content of the Horowitz report, what I read on CNN compared to NPR, Reason, or any other source. I can say my understanding of it without spending time reading it into the middle of the night was that it disputed the claim by Barr and others that the initial investigation was motivated out of politics and was based on valid investigative grounds, but the execution was so flawed and sloppy it likely led to FISA courts making decisions they might not have had the evidence been presented fully or correctly.


My position is both sides of the mainstream media are incorrigibly dishonest. For the mainstream media to present the IG report in the benign way as you understand it (just human errors) is inexplicable in trying to understand that as anything other than dishonest. There is a kernel of truth in the reporting that Horowitz did not make a final conclusion of political bias but that conclusion also did not fall within the methods, the narrow scope, burden and the ability of his sort of "audit" to conclude. And that doesn't get pointed out which is dishonest. The abuses found in his report should shock any thinking American, left or right. It is the media framing narratives on these things that is the greatest abuse. To leave actual exculpatory evidence from the Court, to alter 180 degrees documents and then present that to the Court, to continue to use unverified and even proven untrustworthy evidence with the Court, just lying to the Court are abuses transcendent of ones politics. That 51 "human errors" ALL go against the President when exculpatory evidence existed and not presented is not just sloppiness.

The report also clearly demonstrates the mainstream media's continual lie that the Steele dossier was not the central, in fact THE source, for obtaining continued FISA warrants. That has nothing to do with ideological bent. That information was known for the past couple of years yet it was continually pressed by the press in a deceitful manner. The initial investigation is such a low bar it is nearly irrelevant, we are talking about jokes and drinks at a bar for heaven's sake. But to fail to report that the basis past that opening of an investigation were anything but unwarranted is just not factual in the least.

None of that is defending Donald Trump or putting on a MAGA hat. It demonstrates what I am saying. A failure of the mainstream media to properly hold intelligence agencies to the fire, which is what we would expect our press to do, to speak truth to all power not just Donald Trump, allows for the FoxNews' of the world to gain credibility because the balanced narrative was lost and the WWE hero and villian narrative is all that is left.

mikwut
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
-Michael Polanyi

"Why are you afraid, have you still no faith?" Mark 4:40
_EAllusion
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _EAllusion »

Mikwut's summary is somewhat inaccurate, probably owing to the dubious sources he occasionally namechecks as following, but it is true that the continuing FISA renewals were riddled with systematic errors to advantage getting further approvals. I'd eat my hat if you couldn't find similar errors thoughout the the entire system if you took a similar microscope to it. That the FISA courts act as a virtual rubber stamp and federal law enforcement works them over with little scrutiny is been both in the open and something beltway media has largely been uninterested in going back years and years. That should be a bigger story, though the reason that it isn't probably isn't due to anti-Trump bias. It's probably due to the fact that neither party is interested in reforming the current process to make federal law enforcement have a harder time obtaining these type of warrants, so the media respects the bipartisan consensus and follows suit in viewing it as a niche issue. You could make IG report a bigger story, but the debate is largely focused on right-wing lies about it that try to validate false conspiratorial claims and counter responses to those lies. That serious problems were uncovered that make a case for significant reform is something neither party, and therefore neither party's media surrogates, seems interested in taking on. It's reported about, but not focused on.

The bias in this case is more towards power. One sign that this is the case is that it's a matter of public knowledge that the FBI intervened into the 2016 election in a way that almost certainly threw the election to Trump. Further, we also know James Comey made the decision to do so to quell and preempt anti-Clinton elements within the organization, in particular the New York office that probably was the source of anti-Clinton leaks. There hasn't even been an IG investigation into this despite that there obviously should be one because the Trump admin has chilled it out of existence. The media isn't in a rage about this though. Certain reporters are, of course, but "the media" meaning the major news sources with lots of eyeballs, treats it as a nonstory for roughly the same reason. There's a bipartisan consensus to move past it, so they do.
_EAllusion
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _EAllusion »

Here's two recent articles I think are worth reading. The first is from the Columbia journalism review:

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/bot ... -trump.php

And this one is from pressthink:

http://pressthink.org/2019/12/the-chris ... huck-todd/

Both briefly address bothsideism, which is the companion to and enabler of right-wing media marching us into oblivion.
_mikwut
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _mikwut »

OK E. I read them both. How does either article dissuade me that the mainstream press, not just a corner of it, i.e. Fox News, peddles in constant dishonesty?
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
-Michael Polanyi

"Why are you afraid, have you still no faith?" Mark 4:40
_mikwut
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _mikwut »

Mikwut's summary is somewhat inaccurate, probably owing to the dubious sources he occasionally namechecks as following


What are these dubious sources? So I can up my game. (I don't remember naming any except Matt Taibbi.)

mikwut
All communication relies, to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell, all our knowledge of mental processes, like feelings or conscious intellectual activities, is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.
-Michael Polanyi

"Why are you afraid, have you still no faith?" Mark 4:40
_EAllusion
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Re: Damage Done by the Right-Wing Media in 2016

Post by _EAllusion »

mikwut wrote:OK E. I read them both. How does either article dissuade me that the mainstream press, not just a corner of it, i.e. Fox News, peddles in constant dishonesty?


It doesn't because those articles aren't about that thing? They're about bothsideism, as I said.

Trying to create a false equivalence between the constant, raging, propagandistic dishonesty on Fox News and allied sources to what goes on in other popular media is so la-la land that I didn't think it was worth my time to try to engage it.
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