Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
Spare me the outrage from the press, when the press is the entity that helped create this mess.
All this could have been avoided some 6 years ago if these clowns in the press did their goddamn jobs. Trump had a history of corruption going back decades. Between sexual assault cases, crooked business dealings,connections to the Russians as well as connections to the mafia, and everything in between. Rarely any of that came to light or was taken as seriously as it should have been. It was one free pass after another. They gave him endless air time because they loved those sweet, sweet ad-dollars. They considered him a joke candidate and never dove deep into his past finances or connections.
…And then it happened. He was actually elected. And that’s when it became serious.
Fuck every last one of these journalists who just sat back, let him slide, and just let it happened. Now they have the gall to talk about authoritarian-this, and fascism-that.
The press isn’t monolithic. This is one journalist stating their opinion and analysis of what the rest of the industry needs to focus on.
Came here to say this. There is some excellent, probing journalism out there. The problem is, it’s not very profitable
It is far more monolithic than people realize. Folks think that only the Fox News if the world were being overly generous to Trump when he was just a candidate. The reality is that all mass market news outlets were.
I was a loooong time listener of NPR, a news outlets that most would probably consider as neutral or even left of center as you’ll get from US mass media. And I totally lost respect for them hearing them cover Trump as a candidate. Even now, I can just about hear Steve Inskeep chuckling after a Trump speech and simply never taking him as a serious candidate. This was someone who was running for the highest office in the land. He would have access to our nuclear codes. And these fucken reporters, who I had previously held in high regard, were just laughing at some of the insane antics that Donald was pulling. They were letting this shit slide while they would have roasted any other candidate if they had said the same thing.
And it’s not just NPR but any mass media news outlets acted the same way. That’s where the majority of Americans get their news and they were all doing the same things.
NPR = “Nice Polite Republicans”.
Among the left, it’s always been a running joke that outlets like PBS (Petroleum Broadcast System) and NPR are somehow agents of liberalism.
I seem to recall NPR’s own ombudsman said they rely too much on corporate/conservative sources. They are not nearly as “liberal” as the unhinged right wing declares they are.
NPR isn’t perfect but damn if it isn’t one of the best we’ve got. NPR, Reuters, Al Jezeera sometimes, that’s all I got for being dependable. Washington Post can be surprisingly neutral considering who they’re owned by. Who do you pay attention to?
Conversely, I had to stop listening to NPR during donny’s tenure, they got so one sided it was disgusting. I’m a Democrat but I don’t need my news to hold my hand and tell me stories. Maybe it was extra bad becuase it’s the Seattle NPR station, but regardless I’ve not returned since.
It’s one thing to be Fox News and everybody knows what kind of bullshit you’re up to, it’s another to be a well of respected news station and try and pull the same kind of bs.
It isn’t, I totally agree, but there are far fewer independently owned news outlets and far fewer owners than ever. And that is part of the reason we are here.
But, yeah, this is one of a few journalists reporting on what is actually happening with regard to Republican authoritarianism.
If you can control who gets a job based on their background, (example: “no socialists, gays, or jews. off the record policy”) you dont even need to use invasive mind control techniques. Just have your writing teams sniff their own farts.
People like murdock control huge swaths of news outlets. The corprate office issues propaganda scripts that individuals are forced to put their name on (example, by reading it aloud).
Yep. They did next to nothing to really vet him in any way. And so many had a vendetta against the Clintons that they just could not help but try to get their digs in on Hillary and Bill as much as possible, too.
Yup. Republicans had been building a case against Hillary for some 2 decades. So much so, in fact, that even seasoned Democrats were falling for those attacks against her were ingrained into our pop culture.
Such a shame because she would have made a perfect president. She was a pitbull that was willing to call Republicans on their shit.
The same seasoned Democrats that stacked the primaries in her favor? The 2016 election was the first time I had a real voice in an election and it felt like it was just vacuumed away. The candidate who seemed the most appropriate and the most qualified got swept under the rug in favor of the shit-throwers. She wasn’t perfect, she was a better terrible than Trump.
In 2020 the Democrats scrambled for a viable candidate and somehow Joe Biden was the best they could give us, and it was an absolute gamble. His victory in the 2020 election was dangerously overstated and the danger of a repeat of 2016 in 2024 was ignored.
I was convinced she’d be a neoliberal and would make grand bargains with the GOP like Bill did. Those grand bargains included “welfare reforms” like kicking grandmas out of public housing when their grandkids would deal drugs in their project (like grandmas have the power to control their grown-ass grandchildren). The impacts of Clinton’s actions reached FAR beyond his presidency - I was fighting such evictions at Legal Aid during the second term of Bush Jr., evictions that were the result of Clinton’s bargain with the devil.
Though you’re right, most of the right’s anti-Bill Clinton bumper stickers during his 2 terms were actually shots at Hillary Clinton.
It was Hillary Clinton that elevated trump as a pied piper, the media discovered an advertising and viewer gold mine. Had her hubris not gotten involved he may have never become president
It takes a special brand of caustic to lose an election to Donald Trump but fuck if the Dems didn’t find someone with just that.
Her televised discussion with those millennials was an exercise in tone deafness (and cringe). Of course she was the better candidate but like it or not: politics is a popularity contest and although he is deplorable to any sane person Trump is loved by inbred Nazis. Hillary is just not likeable. By anyone.
Pray for the day when these circumstances change and the most qualified candidate is always the clear winner but that day is not today.
Folks got to pay for news to get good news. If it’s all just ad supported you’re going to get click bait that just generates clicks for ad views. Google destroyed good print news. The combination of consumer attitudes changing in the digital age to being less willing or expecting print journalism to be free, and Google monopolizing of display ad space really messed things up. Also, the shift from nightly news being mostly an operational cost or non revenue generating program to 24/7 cable news didn’t help the tv side of things.
Folks got to pay for news to get good news.
On the contrary: “If it bleeds, it leads.” All too often, news presents the world as much scarier than it actually is, and in ways that you can’t do anything about.
Today I almost clicked on the article posted on Lemmy about a gang-rape and murder in India. What the fuck would I benefit from reading that? I don’t have any control over what people do in India! I live in California. I can’t punish those criminals; I can’t protect the next person they would have targeted. I can’t vote the Modi-fascists out of office.
The only thing that me reading about that could have done is fuck up my day, and send ad revenue to the site hosting the article. It would be me rewarding someone for making my life worse, at no benefit to anyone.
People regularly pay for “news” whose only possible effect on them is to make them into worse people: more scared, more angry, more hateful.
You’re missing the forest for the trees, mate. Ad supported doesn’t necessarily mean bad journalism. There might always be a conflict of interest there, but that model worked decently fine for many,any decades.
You need to learn about the Fairness Doctrine.
This was a broadcast rule that essentially forced news outlets in the US to air both sides of a story in as unbiased as a way as reasonably possible. If you know your history, you won’t be surprised that the Fairness Doctrine was thrown out in the 80s under the Reagan administration.
People complain about Citizens United being an awful decision that was greatly impacted the way government works, and I agree, but the end of the Fairness Doctrine was also a huge step in the fascist future that Republicans have been pushing toward for decades now.
Folks got to pay for news to get good news.
Unfortunately, partisan propaganda and outright disinformation is free, while factual and informative news tends to be behind paywalls
This has a way of segregating people that don’t have discretionary money to subscribe to news services into epistemic bubbles, and the bubble dwellers’ votes count for just as much as everybody else’s. In a democracy, you really do need voters in general to be informed and unfortunately, not everybody in the media/politics sphere wants everybody to be informed and some folks in there just want people indoctrinated into their way of thinking.
. Trump had a history of corruption going back decades
The press shit on trump like no tomorrow. It didn’t stick because they’d spent years and years eroding their own legitimacy, not because they didn’t air bad things about Trump.
Not a chance did they ever report on him in the seriousness that they should have. He was running for the highest office in the land. He would have access to our nuclear codes and the amount of investigative reportering they did was on par to someone running for city counsel.
He was on trial for sexual assault, and they gave that the same seriousness as the BS accusation against Biden who was wrongly accused to being touchy-feely. Somehow when you are the Republican candidate, multiple rape accusations are somehow the same as false touching accusations. And that’s just the free-passes they gave him on his sexual assault problems, let alone countless other things they could have dug into.
The media absolutely has lots a ton of legitimacy over the years and them giving him one free pass after another only made it worse.
During 2016 election The New York Times published thousands of stories about Clinton email/Benghazi, not one on Trumps lifelong ties to NY/Russian mob. As if The New York Times wasn’t in a particularly knowledgeable position to report on 70 years of NYC construction & mob history
I mean - you’re just wrong https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/trump-russia
We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election, but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst-covered election in U.S. history, it might also be the last.
Incredibly captivating article, but when you reach this final paragraph, you know with absolute and agonizing certainty that none of this will come to fruition. The mainstream media isn’t going to fix itself and this election will be covered, same as all the rest, as a horserace.
The mainstream media are corporations first and press/media second. They will only do the things that make them more money and 99.9% of the time that’s in direct opposition of what is good for any given situation.
I 110% do not expect the behavior to change. It’s money we’re discussing and shitty gossip trash talking/ political sports casting is what makes media money so it’s what they’ll keep doing. :(
The issue is there is a belief that the problems we are facing are because we can’t accept each other’s opinions and we all need to buckle down and compromise with one another.
Which is deliciously naive in a world where Nazism has gone from “So universally reviled that they are a punchline at best” to “Just an opinion from a guy asking questions.”
Do not serve Bar Nazis
I think there is a large amount of this that’s the result of social media. When I was a kid, there were still flat-earthers and other people who believe extremely stupid things. The thing was, however, that if you said that out loud, all of the people around you would with varying degrees of politeness tell you you’re a fucking idiot and you’d usually change your mind quickly. In today’s environment, not only can you go online and not get called a fucking idiot for your dumb opinions, you can find all of the other fucking idiots and form a circle-jerk Facebook group for bad opinions and feel validated in believing them. Oh, and even if you don’t go looking for your own little community of morons, Facebook and the rest will happily help surface those morons for you.
The reality of social media is that not only do they serve bar nazis, they might as well be tinder for bar nazis.
Hell you tell someone “Bro you’re a dumbass” these days
You’re the one getting the door for being “toxic”
If you try and engage many of those types they won’t accept reason and logic either, it’s a no win situation. Of course you’re still the toxic one for not wanting to do that dance again.
The problem of the “Punch a Nazi” line of thought is not particularly that Nazis are subject to violence : most people (centrists included) couldn’t care less about what happens to them specifically.
No, the real issue here is that people don’t trust the perception of others. You don’t attack a fascist, you attack someone who you think is a fascist. And polarization of the political discourse mean that you can be easily accused of crypto-fascism for pretty much anything (see Hexbear for example). And some people will take it at face value, and hence feel justified to attack you.
That’s… actually a good point. I consider myself being pretty against Cancel Culture despite being pretty far to the left.
Too often people get canceled based on gossip or false rumors, like somehow “He’s 30, she’s 24” gets morphed into “Dude’s a full blown pedo” or… “This forum post from 9001 years ago uses a form of slang that is offensive now, but was acceptable at the time, clearly he’s a white supremacist” becomes “This guy eats babies in the glorious name of Satan, and by Satan I mean Trump!”
It’s just something I hope the internet grows beyond. Society and general.
Mmmm, I have had a long line of arguments about this just now. Yes, neo Nazi’s are beyond contempt and to be reviled, but please do not “punch a Nazi”, ice seen that making a comeback. There is a long list of reasons why assaulting somebody for shit reasons is a bad idea, just don’t.
Yeah, like the time when we talked Hitler down politely and appeased him and everything was totally fine after
Don’t you remember? He was herding crippled jewish homosexuals into the camps like a cowboy herds cattle, when suddenly Kylie Jenner showed up and was like “Chill out Hitler, have a Pepsi!”
It was a Diet Pepsi, that’s why they called it D-Day
(I am being insanely sarcastic)
Yeah, and like that time that one of those armchair internet heroes actually faced a neo nazi without pissing their pants.
Oh wait, that never happened.
You know what has happened, loads of times, though? Judges and juries sending people to jail for assault and battery after they punched somebody for no reason.
That none of you here understand that simple principle tells me that you still have a lot to learn about the real world.
“Look Nazis are bad, but if you do anything about it, even if it’s to protect yourself or some one else! Then you’re the bad guy!”
I really hope you’re just naive and not a concern troll.
even if it’s to protect yourself or some one else!
That bit, right there, is what totally changes the scenario from the person you were replying to. Presuming by “protect” you mean protecting from physical violence, and not only from words.
So I’m free to declare you a Nazi and assault you, right? After all, nazis are bad, and I’m just protecting myself from what I perceived as your ideology
I never said any of the such and you either know it and are lying or you’re too dumb to understand.
If a neo nazi, or just anyone attacks you and you punch him, it’s self defense.
If you walk up to a neo Nazi and punch him for no reason whatsoever beyond “I don’t like his opinions” then you’ll get arrested and you’ll be convicted of assault and battery. It. Is. That. Simple.
You can armchair hero all you want about how big bad you would punch those evil Nazis but that is all bullshit and you know it. I’ve had too many discussions now with too many people like you who are so brave on the internet but in front of an actual neo nazi your piss your pants.
Yes, ooh, Nazis are bad, I had no idea. However, we live in a civil society where EVERYONE has rights, even those with thoughts and opinions that we don’t like, even neo Nazis. If you don’t like that then guess what? That means you have racist opinions and you’re the same as what you hate so badly.
So grow up, stip bragging on the internet how brave you are and get with the real world where you can’t just punch a person.
I guess the 20th-century author and socialist Upton Sinclair really nailed it when he wrote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Bring back fairness doctrine and break up large media
Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast media, so it would need to be be expanded to include Cable/Satellite TV as well as somehow the Internet/streaming.
Well considering that the biggest news channels on youtube are legacy media channel even just the broadcast version would help, but yes it would need to be expanded
They’re only big on YouTube because YouTube pushes “authoritative” sources, even if you avoid them for your news. Remember when status coup’s footage of Jan 6th was taken down but CNN, which was replaying status coup’s footage of Jan 6th, was left up without issue?
I wouldn’t say the fairness doctrine is a good idea, but oh damn do we need to break up the media. Sinclair is a threat to our democracy.
I agree with half your comment, because Sinclair is a threat to democracy. But the change in our political culture began with right wing talk radio after the end of the fairness doctrine.
Of course there were other factors, like neoliberal attacks on our living standards. But perhaps there could have been another narrative to explain those neoliberal attacks in a more diverse media environment.
