This guy nails it on the head with respect to modern day journalism

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Conservatives, Patriots & Huskies return to glory
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[h=1]Journalism 101: Ask Questions, But Let Answers Speak for Themselves[/h]
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...let_answers_speak_for_themselves__139493.html

I was struck by the confluence of two stories last week that reflected either directly or indirectly on how people in my profession -- journalism -- do their jobs.

One piece was an op-ed by David Harsanyi at The Federalist titled "Political Journalists Are Trying To Gaslight America." The second was an interview at Spiegel Online with President Obama’s former adviser Ben Rhodes (pictured).


The premise of Harsanyi's piece is that "In the past week, I’ve noticed a number of Democrats and liberal journalists refusing to concede inconvenient facts." Don't let the rhetorical device bother you. I'm pretty sure that Harsanyi didn't really just discover that liberal journalists refuse to concede "inconvenient facts." But he did find a plethora of examples in the news right now that showed stunning duplicity by journalists in covering up for left-wing politicians.

Gaslighting, in case you don't know, is the name given to the process of convincing an innocent person to disbelieve the truth (and doubt their own sanity) by promoting a lie through deception, manipulation and false claims of authority. It comes from the name of a 1944 movie about a woman being manipulated by her husband into thinking she is going insane, but it has seen a resurgence in use since the mass media have become such obvious tools of propaganda and social manipulation.



Harsanyi cites several examples of journalists covering up the truth in the current topics of late-term abortion and the Green New Deal, showing in both cases how the president’s blunt but accurate words in his El Paso speech were turned into apparent falsehoods by reporters misstating the facts (and they don’t even have the benefit of Charles Boyer’s soothing voice).

“No matter how many times ... you quote the plain language of the Virginia or New York abortion bills, they [Democrats and liberal journalists] won’t acknowledge that both legalize the procedure until the moment of birth for virtually any reason,” Harsanyi writes, and then gives examples.
Regarding the Green New Deal, Harsanyi again provides plain evidence that reporters were bending over backwards to cover up for the disastrous rollout of the revolutionary legislation on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s website. The contention that the FAQ document published by Ocasio-Cortez was simply an errant draft that was mistakenly posted online is met with appropriate ridicule by Harsanyi:
“Supposedly, her chief of staff accidentally create[d] a PDF of a draft and then accidentally posted it and then accidentally left it up for hours and hours while critics were dissecting it and forgot to mention it was only a draft. Why someone would want to eliminate cars, planes, and beef in any draft of a policy proposal is still a mystery. In any event, Ocasio-Cortez also accidentally sent the very same FAQ to NPR, and then accidentally her staff interviewed for a piece that was built around the accidentally posted FAQ. No adult, much less a skeptical journalist, would believe such a ridiculous story.”


 

Conservatives, Patriots & Huskies return to glory
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The examples of gaslighting that Harsanyi provides are partly from social media, but many examples exist of mainstream media using sleight of hand to mislead readers that contentions by President Trump are to be disbelieved on their face. A common practice, for instance, is to quote an opinion uttered by the president in a speech or press conference, and then to describe the utterance as being offered “without evidence.” Hot Tip for Mainstream Media: Opinions don’t need to be accompanied by evidence. If you don’t want to know what the president thinks, don’t ask him questions.

Which brings me to my thesis about good journalism: “Ask the right questions and let the answers speak for themselves.” The American people don’t need to have reality filtered through the cannabis-enriched brain cells of our celebrity media elites, and most people have figured that out. President Trump certainly did, which is why he uses Twitter as his primary communication platform. While reporters and pundits (is there a difference anymore?) insist on translating and interpreting Trump’s tweets, their participation in getting the story out is at best superfluous. With Twitter, the president doesn’t even need to wait for reporters to ask questions, let alone translate his words for the poor befuddled common folk.
Yet we can’t just leave elected officials and others in positions of power completely unaccountable. The free press is essential to eliciting information and distributing it to the electorate and to the citizenry in general. So, if we increasingly can’t trust the mainstream media to report the facts without “gaslighting” the public, what are our best options?
The answer for me came in that story from Der Spiegel. The interview with Ben Rhodes took the form of a Q&A. It’s not the most elegant form of reporting, but it has the distinct advantage of transparency. What exactly did the reporter ask, and what level of responsiveness did the subject of the interview exhibit? With a Q&A, we don’t have to guess, whereas with any typical five-person-bylined story in the Washington Post or the New York Times, we have no idea what questions were asked, nor can we ascertain whether the reporters’ characterization of the answers is trustworthy. How much more enlightening it is to read the interview in whole.
What was most remarkable about the Spiegel interview was that the questions proved to be more interesting than the answers, and most interesting of all is how Rhodes spun every challenge to his left-wing orthodoxy into, well, another attack on Trump. Here’s how it started:
DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Rhodes, would you agree that Donald Trump's foreign policy is much better than its reputation?
Rhodes: No. Trump's approach is rapidly accelerating the diminution of American influence, the spread of antidemocratic values and the increased difficulty in solving complex political problems, like climate change.
In truth the interview could have ended after the first declarative NO that Rhodes uttered after that first surprising question since he refuses to budge an inch toward giving Trump any credit for his many successes, but it is so much more entertaining to watch Rhodes come up with simplistic answers to Spiegel’s thoughtful questions. When exactly did Spiegel become a conservative Trump-loving newspaper, Rhodes must have been asking himself. The questions were indeed surprising, considering Der Spiegel’s reputation for leaning left. Listen:

  • [H]asn't [Trump] been rather effective on some issues? He has forced NATO member states to increase their defense budgets. He's tough on China, which could be beneficial not only for the U.S., but for Europe as well. And he is standing up to Iran's military ambitions.
  • NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is full of praise for Trump. He says that NATO member states will spend an additional $100 billion on defense by the end of next year.
  • Like Obama, he [Trump] has demanded that Europe -- Germany in particular -- do more in the Middle East.
  • Around two months after taking office, Trump ordered a limited strike against the Syrian air force after Assad's troops yet again used a nerve agent against civilians. Why did Obama never do something similar?
You get the idea. How refreshing to see a left-wing politico grilled instead of fed softball questions. Unlike their cousins in the American media, German reporters apparently prefer not to massage the egos of their interview subjects.
Interestingly, if Der Spiegel had written the story with a typical New York Times approach, it would have come across as Ben Rhodes lambasting President Trump as a buffoon and celebrating his ex-boss, but with the skeptical questions interspersed amid Rhodes’ rhetoric, you get the sense of a man out of touch with reality — and all without a single interpretation by a know-it-all reporter. Hear, hear!
“Ask the right questions and let the answers speak for themselves.”





 

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Stated differently, our media spins every minutia of every story. They omit facts, they don't tell the truth, they sell outright lies under the guise of "if it's true", they don't retract

They have an agenda, it's a liberal democratic agenda, it's really hard to miss

Democrats get to control the narrative because of the cover given to them by 90% + of our media. Their lies and inconsistencies are never pointed out, and they're HUUUUUUUGE
 

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social media was the death of journalism. journalism is now a popularity contest and honestly you're giving them too much credit for attempted spin. they aren't there to spin they are there to be the first and loudest with the craziest opinion and nastiest disposition to create a buzz and generate social media stats that they take to their boss to cement their reputation as a popular journalist.

they get bonuses for "followers", "likes" and "retweets" of their work so rushing to judgement is now a money-making enterprise which means true journalism MUST take a back seat. With folks getting fired left and right the only way you can 1) keep your job, 2) make money above your salary, 3) get promotions is to get as many social media backers as possible and throw out BIG RUMORS....errrr, NEWS, anytime you get a sniff of it.

media members that are spending their time fact-checking stories and getting the real info are left behind because that stuff doesn't play on social media. it's a click bait world and journalism died the day these big media companies started equating generating interest on social media with success of their journalists.
 

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It is worse than that...
The media/press is controlled, somehow, there is no way 95% of reporting is far left, even radical left, when the USA population is 50-50.
The same message, the same phrases, the same buzz words come out all the time simultaneously.
They are not addressing the market, they are spewing an ideology.
It is NOT a coincidence...
 

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LA Times, MSNBC, Huffington, CNN... talked about the Jussie "Lynching" over and over again and beat it like a dead horse...... Yet, where is the same exact coverage from them the last 3 days? Why did the reporting change so quick to SCREAMING about it, to now almost dead silence?

You must watch alot of MSNBC and CNN to know how much they played it over and over. LOL I don't even have cable, but caught it a couple times on WGN. Glad the truth is coming out though.

Honestly, didn't follow it very closely -- were the reporters too quick to the story? In their defense you've got a fucking idiot making up a rather dramatic criminal accusation. Can't speak for the others, but I wonder if my local media jumped the gun on the story or if they were just reporting what CPD was giving them.

This most recent event and the whole MAGA kid event has shown a nasty underbelly of overthetop sensationalist reporting for sure. I haven't got a solution for it and I'd be all ears of what you think fixes the situation.

That doesn't mean that ALL news is fake.
 

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Breitbart defended a pedophile.

And you voted for Hillary, who defended and had a pedophile exonerated by burying evidence, and accusing the 12 year old girl as "asking for it".

Now go fuck yourself you nit wit liberal piece of shit.
 

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And you voted for Hillary, who defended and had a pedophile exonerated by burying evidence, and accusing the 12 year old girl as "asking for it".

Now go fuck yourself you nit wit liberal piece of shit.

I sure didn't.
 

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