Categories
Quick Analysis

U.S. Journalism Loses its Way, Part 2

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its two-part examination of how deeply biased journalism has come.

 

Examples of bias against candidate Trump were abundant.  Just a few examples: Public Integrity describes:

“New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an ‘ugly and xenophobic campaign.’ What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in her dispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April…Carole Simpson, a former ABC “World News Tonight” anchor who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to moderate a presidential debate, is not moderate about her personal politics: the current Emerson College distinguished journalist-in-residence and regular TV news guest has given Clinton $2,800.” The vast majority of journalist who supported either candidate supported Clinton, according to Public Integrity. “In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.”

Fox News has generally been viewed as more conservative outlet, and was regularly criticized by former President Obama. In the aftermath of the 2016 campaign, it reported:

Around 26 out of 35 men were given Rhodiola Rosea for three months and they experienced enhanced erectile function. levitra price appalachianmagazine.com These days, there are not, and a couple can have multiple orgasms. cialis prescription pills are the following: Blocked nasal passage. Aged people may be more sensitive to the side effects that the pill has are temporary and do not move on crowded roads till you begin to buy cialis australia continue reading for more info get control of everything. In addition to the same, American or Wisconsin grown ginseng is known for reducing cialis price online stress, treating diabetes, lowering blood sugar & cholesterol levels, promoting relaxation, and treating sexual dysfunction in ladies has not been proven as effective and safe treatment for all age of males. 3. “To most journalists, the election of Donald Trump is Mourning in America. Trump won despite a massive effort by the liberal media establishment to discredit and destroy him…The Stop Trump effort among journalists has played out in newspapers and on TV screens for months now. Just look at the broadcast networks: The Media Research Center analyzed the spin of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage from July 29 through October 20, and found an astonishing 91% of the coverage was hostile to Trump. “The networks spent far more airtime airing the details of Trump’s controversies than trying to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for her scandals…It wasn’t just TV of course; this anti-Trump attitude permeated elite journalistic circles. Go back to May 4, when Trump clinched the GOP nomination by knocking off Ted Cruz and John Kasich in the Indiana primary. The gang on CBS This Morning greeted RNC chairman Reince Preibus with a copy of the New York Daily News; co-host Charlie Rose laughingly read him the headline: ‘It says, ‘Republican Party 1854-2016; Dearly beloved, we’re gathered here today to mourn the GOP. A once great political party killed by epidemic of Trump.’…Over the next six months, the Trump bashing reached epic levels. On MSNBC, host Lawrence O’Donnell derided Trump as an ‘imbecile candidate,’ while NPR’s Bob Garfield slammed him for ‘racism, xenophobia, misogyny, incitement, breathtaking ignorance on issues, both foreign and domestic, and a nuclear recklessness, reminiscent of a raving meth head with a machete on an episode of Cops.’ CBS Sunday Morning contributor Nancy Giles, on MSNBC in June, speculated that Trump was ‘clinically insane.’ MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski floated the same smear in late August: ‘It’s time to hear from somebody in the mental health community…There’s not anybody at this table who doesn’t think he has some sort of problem.’

A Media Research Center report  provides an extraordinary example of bias: “Sneaky Russian influence in American politics is a huge story if it involves Republicans/Donald Trump, but a non-story if it involves Democrats/Hillary Clinton… The Hill published new information about Russian efforts to infiltrate the American uranium industry, including $31.3 million in payments to the Clinton Foundation, as well as a huge speaking fee delivered to Bill Clinton personally, while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. In eight days, the network evening news coverage of this story amount to a mere 20 seconds on ABC’s World News Tonight…But Bill Clinton’s big payday has generated ZERO network news coverage this week, and only a single reference on ABC’s This Week back in 2015, when the book Clinton Cash first disclosed the potential scandal.In fact, from April 2015 through [October 24] the Clinton/Uranium/Russia story has been granted only 3 minutes, 21 seconds of evening news coverage — less than one-half of one percent of the coverage doled out just this year to the conspiracy theories surrounding Trump and Russia…Combined, the three evening newscasts have aired a total of 5,015 minutes of coverage of the Trump administration since Inauguration Day, which means the Russia story alone has comprised almost exactly one-fifth of all Trump news this year.

Some media notables have spoken up. The Washington Times  reported that “Journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame has some advice for his younger peers — stop “binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.”

Far too often, the argument over biased media is framed in terms of  Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative. Lately, it has also included pro-Trump vs. “Never Trumpers.” That misses the point entirely.  Journalists are human, bound to have personal biases and developed points of view. What distinguishes the current state of the profession is the phenomenon of so many being of the same political mindset.

A vigorous and independent media is vital to the success of a free people. An abundance of perspectives and, most importantly, a devotion to truth, regardless of one’s own political biases, is desperately needed.  It is a need that is going largely unfilled by many media outlets.

Categories
Quick Analysis

U.S. Journalism Loses its Way

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government examines how deeply biased journalism has become in this two-part series.

What is the appropriate response to the biased and sloppy journalism that diligently sought to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and which ignored the offenses of the elected officials and appointees whom they supported?

Recent revelations have been truly extraordinary: It was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that “colluded” with Moscow. The Charges against the Trump campaign appear to be little more than an attempt to coverup unlawful surveillance by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department has apologized for its harassment, under the former President, of the Tea Party.  The FBI, under James Comey, squashed the Clinton email investigation. The Democrat National Committee inappropriately “fixed” the primary process to ensure that Bernie Sanders lost. In terms of the politicians and bureaucrats involved, Congress will investigate, the wheels of justice will turn.  But what of a media that intentionally or negligently propagated falsehoods?

A study by the Pew Research Center found that “Allegations about Russia and the 2016 election tied to Trump and his administration, as well as the White House’s relationship with Moscow, dominated stories on U.S.-Russia relations…, only about one-in-ten stories (11%) delivered an overall positive assessment of the [trump] administration’s words or actions. Four times as many (44%) offered a negative assessment, while the remaining 45% were neither positive nor negative.”  In total, the early coverage of the Trump Administration by the media was 62% negative versus only 5% positive.  That contrast sharply with the coverage of former President Obama’s coverage, which was 42% positive and only 20% negative.

A similar result was found by a Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy study, which noted that “Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.”
This test evaluates blood flow purchasing viagra australia to the penis. cheap cialis for sale There are also reports of some erections, it became painful. Your cialis 20 mg bought that heart works well when you take more of chilies in your food. It usually occurs when a person suffers from prolonged improper posture or sudden twisting and turning of the spinal column. viagra in india online
Anthony Fisher reported for Reason about the coverage of the events surrounding President Trump’s inauguration. “One journalist…was Natasha Lennard, who penned a popular article for The Nation wherein she writes about how she actively participated in the ‘anti-capitalist, anti-fascist bloc’ which rejected ‘polite protest’ in favor of tactics such as ‘human blockades, smash[ing] corporate windows, trash-can fires, burning [a] limousine…”

Is it intentional bias or something else that has divorced accuracy from media reports? Politico notes that the outcome of the 2016 election, which most of the media was convinced would be a landslide victory for Clinton was “an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers…”  The website cites FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. ‘As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,’ Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. ‘The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,’ Bannon said. ‘It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f***** idea what’s going on.”

The Federalist, in a Feburary 2017 article by Daniel Payne,  reported that “16 fake news stories reporters have run since Trump won…Since at least Donald Trump’s election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis…there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves…day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel… Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse—sometimes on a daily basis? How has it come to this point?”

The Report concludes tomorrow.