The Truth About Trump’s Press Conference August 9, 2024 at Tom Nichols: “Donald Trump’s public events are a challenge for anyone who writes about him. His rallies and press conferences are rich sources of material, fountains of molten weirdness that blurp up stuff that would sink the career of any other politician. By the time they’re over, all of the attendees are covered in gloppy nonsense.” “And then, once everyone cleans up and shakes the debris off their phones and laptops, so much of what Trump said seems too bonkers to have come from a former president and the nominee of a major party, so journalists are left trying to piece together a story as if Trump were a normal person. This is what The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, has described as the ‘bias toward coherence,’ and it leads to careful circumlocutions instead of stunned headlines.”
Attempts at accountability? too little too late.. The nation is addicted to punditry and we are too dizzy from all the spins
Now is the perfect time to show what the MSM has learned!!! “We made Trump president by publishing Hillary’s emails and now we’re going to protect him by not publishing his. I’m a very serious journalist”.— Tzippy Shmilovitz 🎗️ (@Tzipshmil) August 10, 2024
I hate the state of our media…but am I misremembering the order of events? I thought Wikileaks released all that into the public domain….then the press had a feeding frenzy. This is a bit different no? And I do find it interesting that the only details that have been leaked in this instance is that the info contained damaging info about Trump’s final two VP choices…but nothing about trump himself. And by interesting….i mean totally not suspicious. At all.
The Politico part is really weird. If Iran hacked to harm Trump, why would they then sell that info to an org that is owned by an ardent Trump supporter? My only guess that the transaction was double blind, but I have a hard time thinking there wouldn’t be any buyers out there willing to pay the price for the leaks? Also, shouldn’t whomever purchased the info be looking at a US sanctions violations?
My take? Someone in the trump campaign who hated the Vance pick leaked the Vance/rubio stuff. Now the campaign is trying to use the actual hack as cover for that.
Media’s Double Standard Favors Donald Trump August 13, 2024 Jonathan Chait: “The main indictment of the mainstream media (conservatives always pretend ‘the media’ excludes the large share of Republican-controlled outlets like Fox News) is that Harris has been allowed to skate by without specifying her policy platform. That is true, so far. Reporters are probably extending the fair assumption that any new candidate will take a bit of time to settle on a platform. If Harris avoids any substantive commitments by September and the media aren’t making a big issue out of it, I’d be surprised.” “Meanwhile, Donald Trump very much is skating by without serious policy commitments. He floated the idea of repealing Obamacare, then backed away, and is continuing to vaguely promise to make health care better for everybody without anybody paying for it. He has made positive noises about cutting retirement programs without specifying how. He is secretly promising huge tax cuts to wealthy donors, while saying he would ‘be okay’ with setting the corporate tax rate just one point lower…” “The media are reporting on some of these questions, especially about Project 2025. But most of Trump’s issue evasions have disappeared from the news, and the press has had almost no ability to force him to take a stand on any issue he prefers not to talk about. Harris, at least, is supposed to be working on an agenda. Trump won’t get more specific until he wins.”
It's amazing how the punditocracy simultaneously doesn't care about policy yet will make a point of attacking some politicians over their policy stances (but not talk about the policies specifically).
I'll see if I can find the article. . . but there's a guy who argues that much political reporting is pretty unhealthy (for society, and for us) because it treats its readers/listeners like fans, and not like citizens. That's largely why policy is rarely a topic: if a governing body actually gets things done... it's hard to tell who won. But notice how it's always treated like a victory for one side or the other, and not a benefit for, you know, citizens.
Would love to see that. I would also argue that much political reporter treats the audience as consumers rather than citizens. And this in a country where "the customer is always right" to boot.
Josh Marshall thoughts on the current state of the media. Some good points. Some Thoughts About Bad Reportage Member Newsletter August 20, 2024 12:47 p.m. REMINDER! TPM members can share an unlimited number of members-only articles with non-members. GOT IT! SHARE I’ve been having a series of discussions about press coverage over the last couple weeks and they’ve drawn some seemingly not entirely related issues together in my mind. So this post won’t have a fully linear structure or focused point. It’s more collecting together notes I’ve been keeping in my head. In a staff discussion several days ago we got to talking about how recently a lot of political press reporting just seems … well, bad. Everyone’s a critic of course. And TPM has always been critical of many things about mainstream media. But it seems worse. So we were discussing, is that really the case? Is it different? And if so, why would that be? We didn’t come up with any answers but we discussed some structural factors that I think play at least some significant role. As is the case in most professions, you’re shaped by your experiences, mentors and the zeitgeist of your early years in the field. For the bulk of working political reporters these days, those experiences don’t go back much further than the early Politico era, which began in 2007. I don’t mean to beat up on the Politico of 2024 — it isn’t the Politico of 2007. Often, today, Politico’s coverage is better than that of the Times or the Post or other legacy publications. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-thoughts-about-bad-reportage
Since we seem to spend a lot of time here ripping on the press…I think it’s only fair that we recognize instances of deep and thorough investigative reporting by our beleaguered and maligned media NEW: Kamala Harris’s missing “summer job” at McDonald’s job. Her resume and job application a year after graduating college — @FreeBeacon obtained through FOIA — don’t mention it. Neither do either of her books, or either of the biographies on her. @SaysSimonson @ChuckRossDC and… pic.twitter.com/so0fNA6rNG— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) August 29, 2024 I am now going to HR to fully disclose my complete experience of mowing lawns, baby sitting…working at various summer sports camps, rec soccer refereeing etc. the weight of my professional dishonesty has been difficult to bear.
I spent a summer while in college driving a delivery small truck. I will need to add this to my resume as well.
I worked in a quarry breaking large rocks into smaller rocks and packing them on pallets. Somehow, I tend to leave that off the resume 36 years later.
A Quick Look at that guy’s twitter feed shows this from 2018 If you cheat on your wife with a porn star and then break campaign finance laws to keep her from telling people about it, you have nobody but yourself to blame— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) August 22, 2018 I guess he spent some time in a reeducation camp. I wonder if that’s on HIS resume.
So the guy is an obvious plant and we know he is but we let him on the panel anyways.. “Undecided panels” are stupid so stop doing them