Way back in 2001, Rolling Stone magazine published an article by Eric Boehlert called The Press v. Al Gore. I first read the piece when it was published, and I've read it at least a few times again over the years to remind myself what happened back during the 2000 campaign. In fact, at one point I decided to create a personal archive of the story in case it disappeared from the Rolling Stone website, which it eventually did. Prompted by Paul Krugman's "Hillary Clinton Gets Gored" piece, I decided to post it here as well because it speaks so eerily to the press treatment of Hillary Clinton today. Since it is no longer online, I'm going to give the mods a choice about how to handle things -- copyright concerns and all. First, I posted a copy of the entire article over at Pagebin.com. That's here: http://pagebin.com/qirGPcyk Second, I'm reposting the entire article in the next post. If the mods don't want the article posted here in that way, I ask them to delete the next post.
This goes beyond Hillary ... this is basically the new reality. With Hillary it's just amplified because she's been in the crosshairs longer than most. I wish I could find it but I listened to an interview on NPR with an author that wrote a book on this issue of the scandal manufacturing industry. They played a recording of a GOP foot soldier contacting the Soros Foundation impersonating a potentially unscrupulous donor basically trying to frame the foundation. A good recent example of this is the Planned Parenthood 'investigative reporters'. These are basically partisan soldiers who manufacture a scandal and throw it out into the general media. 90% of the impact happens in the first 24-48 hours as it goes viral across the country. By day 4 or 5 you start hearing a trickle of suggestions that maybe the information was manufactured. A couple of months later you might get a story on the back page that mentions the original investigative reporter is now in legal trouble and gets shamed in court. But by then hardly anyone is paying attention and the damage is already done. To be fair it's not like this doesn't happen on the left. The DNC leaks are an example of operatives trying to push manufactured narratives in the media. The reason everyone does it is because it works. Look back at 2012 and the 47% comment. How did that happen? Jimmy Carter's grandson is being a good Democrat foot soldier and he's mining the internet for useful information and stumbles across this video. One thing leads to another and before you know it it's headline news for several days. It was effective with me. It motivated me to dislike Romney even more. But now in retrospect I can be honest with myself and admit that maybe I was slightly manipulated by the whole thing. Not sure why our culture is headed in this direction. Maybe our politics has become so overly competitive that the ends always justify the means. We probably also spend too much time on politics in this country. Do we really need 3 major 24 hour news networks? The more we allow ourselves to get sucked in by the horse race the more emotionally tormenting it is and the more we learn to hate the opposition. Maybe our founding fathers had it right ... Their political season was just a few weeks before an election and then everyone went home back to their lives.
As I wrote elsewhere, it's daily coverage of Hillary & her foundation, while Trump's mob connections were a one-day story. I know why Hillary's foundation is covered daily -- because a host of right-wing political groups are filing for information, spreading the news, pushing the story, keeping the issue alive. It doesn't seem that the left has the same sort of operation set up to spread dirt on Trump. I guess that Hillary is focusing her energy instead on the ground game.
That's only half the story. The media don't HAVE to treat those tips as credible. When they follow up on a story and find nothing, they don't HAVE to talk about shadows and clouds and imply corruption. But they do.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/any-progress-on-trump-bondi " For instance, it comes up in passing in a campaign wrap story in the Times. But it's raised. Trump says nothing's wrong. And then he goes on to insist that he never spoke to her about the contribution. And that's it. Of course, Trump's claim never to have spoken to Bondi about the contribution is flatly contradicted Bondi's own representatives who told the AP last month that she personally reached out to Trump solicit the campaign contribution. In other words, Trump's apparently flatly contradicted claim is allowed to stand un-contradicted and basically left at that. " It's interesting how the media have compared this Trump Foundation story, compared to the Clinton Foundation story where Bill wanted a couple of his aides to get diplo passports when he was going to NoKo to rescue a couple of American hostages, and he couldn't even get that out of state. #bothsidesdoit
It's not a story when Donald Trump lies. It is not a negative for him. It is a story when Hillary Clinton does. It is a negative for her. Some of that owes to branding, some to sexism, some to Clinton Fatigue, some to media bias. I don't know how to separate those strands.
Here's part of the problem that Boloni mentioned: the headline refers to the campaign going into it's "final sprint" stage. We are still over TWO ********ING MONTHS away from Election Day, and we're calling it a sprint? If anything proves the election cycle is too long, this can do it. But (and this pertains to the OP as well as Boloni's post), that's how money is made off the 24 hour news cycle: Make it a horse race, make it a form of entertainment/drama, and you'll make more money. The fact that a reality TV clown is polling in double digits in a presidential race pretty much proves that civic concerns mean nothing any more, which again is probably why the system is so damn broken: there's more money to be made that way.
Interesting read. It reminded me of something I read this weekend. It compares how the media treats both candidates. While they are waiting for a scandal to break for one, the other....nothing. https://medium.com/@wilw/that-clint...F_655e7bb0736911e690605f8c08864990#.6sz1nqpjr I guess Laura Ingalls Wilder was right. * *This is coming from someone who hated Bill Clinton growing up....now I can't even remember why.
The Media has been massively helpful for Trump. He's back within close striking distance, and I put that down to the media. Trump stopped saying disqualifying things (he should have been disqualified about 10 months ago), and thus the media portrays him as serious and qualified - and pretends his bigoted and crazy policy statements never happened. And oh hey! Bill Clinton made money as an honorary president of a for-profit University!! Let's make that our bold-face headline and ignore Trump literally paying off an Attorney general who was supposed to be suiing him!
the articke puts it better than I do.. That’s a problem for cable news, because cable news needs a horserace. It’s the only way cable news knows how to fill all the time in the 24 hour cycle, and keep its advertisers happy.
The thing is you can't call Trump a liar. He doesn't care. He just turns the table and says 'the media is the most dishonest people'. If he's really caught lying he just shrugs it off and says he was being sarcastic. Hillary on the other hand is affected by media bullying. They cower, evade, placate etc ... This is the age old code of bullying. You do it to the person that is affected by it, not to the person that doesn't care. Most normal people want to be liked. Trump doesn't mind being hated.
Yep. If he were Hillary, he would attack the media. He would say that he's very proud of his foundation, that it's the very best foundation, and then tell the reporters how terrible they are. Whereas Hillary tries to play it straight. That's a hard thing to do, it's so much easier to dismiss.
He doesn't like the last two Star Trek movies. That makes him a more reliable commentator than most of the rabble.
One is running for President, one is running for his own future tv network. The requirements for both are different.
That...any because Newt Gingrich and Co. said I should. In retrospect, the economy was better than the GOP advertised. It was drilled into the right wing that the economy was going in the crapper because of Slick Willie
They were right, though: it's just that it took longer than expected. Clinton's policies didn't achieve their full impact unti the last year of the second Bush term.
I'd put it this way. The media, in general cover Trump by Trump's standards. In general, they cover Hillary by their standards.
OK, so we all know just how stupid and vapid Matt Lauer is. But it's still shocking that Trump said an interview in 2004 proved he was against a war that started in 2003. I sincerely wonder if Matt knows that.