Tag: news media
Biden, Trump Secret Document Scenarios Are Not Equivalent
The Biden classified documents story has been submerged in whataboutism and bothsidesism by the lamestream media deeper than Santa Barbara County in an atmospheric flood.
Dan Pfeiffer has a suggestion on Message Box on language Democrats should use to push back:
Instead of trying to lower prices and raise wages, Congressional Republicans are focused on sham investigations and taxpayer-funded, partisan fishing expeditions. President Biden, unlike Trump, immediately turned over the documents to the archives. The MAGA Republicans in Congress are trying to distract from the fact that their first votes in the new majority aim to cut Social Security and Medicare, make it easier for billionaires to cheat on their taxes, and ban abortion.
Study Finds Media Abet, Don’t Rebut, Trump’s Lies
65%
Media Matters: “Major media outlets failed to rebut President Donald Trump’s misinformation 65% of the time in their tweets about his false or misleading comments… That means the outlets amplified Trump’s misinformation more than 400 times over the three-week period of the study — a rate of 19 per day.”
Most Say Media Treats Trump Fairly
54%
A new Harvard CAPS-Harris survey finds that 54% believe that the mainstream media treats President Trump fairly. However, there is a big split based on political identification. Nearly 80% of Republicans say the media is unfair to Trump, while 84% of Democrats and 55% of independents believe the president gets a fair shake from the press. On the flip side, 59% say Trump treats the mainstream media unfairly.
Americans’ Confidence in News Media Growing
48%
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds Americans are increasingly confident in the news media and less so in President Trump’s administration after a tumultuous year in U.S. politics that tested the public’s trust in both institutions. The poll found that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48% in September from 39% last November. Earlier this year, Trump branded the entire industry as the “enemy of the American people.”
42 Percent of Americans get Their News from Facebook Several Times a Day
42%
Forty-two percent of U.S. adults say they access Facebook several times a day, compared with 20 percent for traditional news outlets, according to a recent Morning Consult poll. Facebook’s share includes 47 percent of adults under the age of 30 and 52 percent of Americans between the ages of 30 and 44.
What Really Goes on at White House Press Briefings
Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Slate’s Seth Stevenson offers a great insider’s view of the ongoing trainwreck that is Press Secretary Sean Spicer in his article, “The Daily Show.”
The real problem in the briefing room isn’t the kind of questions getting asked, who’s being allowed to ask them, or how they’re phrased. It’s the posturing of the press secretary and the brazenness of his lies. Consider that, during contentious moments in past administrations, press secretaries managed to remain collegial from the podium. Even deferential.
It’s long, but well worth reading to get, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” Because all we citizens ever see of it is the snippets on TV or the theater of the absurd quotation outtakes.
Stevenson gives a more well-rounded view of the proceedings — but Sean Spicer is still a “keg-shaped bully” and a liar.
McCain: A Free Press Protects Against Dictators
If you want to preserve — I’m very serious now — if you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), slamming President Trump’s attacks on the media this week, CNN reports.
Priebus Rails Against Anonymous Sources
I think that the media should stop with this unnamed source stuff. Put names on a piece of paper and print it. If people aren’t willing to put their name next to a quote, then the quote shouldn’t be listed.
— Reince Priebus, in an interview with CBS News.
A 20-Question Quiz for the Media
We live in an era where the very foundations of journalism are increasingly under attack, where “fake news” is ascendent and the intellect and attention span of the public is on the decline.
In response, the editors of Pensito Review, in consultation with researchers at the Moscow Center for Media Studies, have crafted this 20-question quiz to help journalists clarify their mission and find their place in the cosmos during the current Trump administration.
1. Are you feeling depressed, demoralized, disgusted, disenfranchised or simply dissed by the state of the news media and its public perception today? (select one)
- One of them
- Two of them
- Three of them
- All of them
- None of them
