Media Tracker (3 Viewers)

[SaintForLife]

I figured we needed a thread specifically about the media.

There was a very big correction recently by the Washington Post.


That story was supposedly "independently confirmed" by CNN, NBC News, USA Today, ABC News, & PBS News Hour. How could they all have gotten the quote wrong if they actually independently confirmed the story?






Why do all the errors always go in one political direction and not closer to 50/50?

 

[Optimus Prime]

I learned the hard way to be skeptical about the predictive power of public opinion polls.

I remember election night 2016 all too well, as I hit delete on my partially pre-written Washington Post column and instead tried to look into the future of a Trump presidency. It was a future that wasn’t supposed to happen.

An entire nation of journalists was doing much the same. Not everyone, but a whole lot of us.

Given that searing memory, I reacted to the recent much-trumpeted Wall Street Journal poll about the 2024 presidential race with, well, not exactly a shrug, but not a primal scream either.

That was the poll that said Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in six of seven crucial battleground states, the very ones most likely to determine who gets elected in November.

The former president is ahead, according to the Journal’s poll, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina; the two candidates are tied in Wisconsin.

That doesn’t mean anything definitive seven months away from the election. Yet – as someone who thinks another four years of Trump would be a disaster – I believe there’s something to be learned here.

Rather than dismiss these findings, think about what they tell us, even if they do so imperfectly and even if they lack any real predictive power.

One of the things these numbers suggest is that the journalists are not getting the truth across to citizens on some key points (or if they are, that truth is being ignored).

The poll respondents claim that one of their big concerns is the economy. If that’s the case, they should be happy with Biden.

Among the factors: low inflation, significant growth and low unemployment.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist, wrote recently: “The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good.” (Even the cost of a classic Thanksgiving dinner, he notes, was down 4.5% last year.)

If the economy is that strong and that important to voters – and if Biden can take at least some of the credit – why isn’t it coming across?

That’s something for the Biden campaign, primarily; but it’s also something for media people since journalists are supposed to be communicating information so that citizens can vote with knowledge.

That should be a higher priority than generating profits, ratings and clicks, but one eventually despairs that it ever will be…….

Polls show Trump winning key swing states. That’s partly a failure of the press | Margaret Sullivan

Polls can’t predict – but they can warn. And I’m not sure our horserace-obsessed media are heeding the warning

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

Not partly, Margaret. Largely a failure of the press. Right wing outrage porn has taken over several major media outlets, and the reaction of the main stream press has been silence and/or a decision to “both sides” everything in hopes of not alienating people who are no longer reality-based. I also blame established churches. They should be preaching about truth versus lies from the pulpit, instead they have largely supported the lies, leading their congregations into a world where truth doesn’t matter.

 

[CoolBrees]

There are plenty of people that are making the mistakes the Catholic Church and the press made in Germany in the 1930's

Silence is tacit approval

 

[SaintForLife]

I learned the hard way to be skeptical about the predictive power of public opinion polls.

I remember election night 2016 all too well, as I hit delete on my partially pre-written Washington Post column and instead tried to look into the future of a Trump presidency. It was a future that wasn’t supposed to happen.

An entire nation of journalists was doing much the same. Not everyone, but a whole lot of us.

Given that searing memory, I reacted to the recent much-trumpeted Wall Street Journal poll about the 2024 presidential race with, well, not exactly a shrug, but not a primal scream either.

That was the poll that said Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in six of seven crucial battleground states, the very ones most likely to determine who gets elected in November.

The former president is ahead, according to the Journal’s poll, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina; the two candidates are tied in Wisconsin.

That doesn’t mean anything definitive seven months away from the election. Yet – as someone who thinks another four years of Trump would be a disaster – I believe there’s something to be learned here.

Rather than dismiss these findings, think about what they tell us, even if they do so imperfectly and even if they lack any real predictive power.

One of the things these numbers suggest is that the journalists are not getting the truth across to citizens on some key points (or if they are, that truth is being ignored).

The poll respondents claim that one of their big concerns is the economy. If that’s the case, they should be happy with Biden.

Among the factors: low inflation, significant growth and low unemployment.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist, wrote recently: “The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good.” (Even the cost of a classic Thanksgiving dinner, he notes, was down 4.5% last year.)

If the economy is that strong and that important to voters – and if Biden can take at least some of the credit – why isn’t it coming across?

That’s something for the Biden campaign, primarily; but it’s also something for media people since journalists are supposed to be communicating information so that citizens can vote with knowledge.

That should be a higher priority than generating profits, ratings and clicks, but one eventually despairs that it ever will be…….

Polls show Trump winning key swing states. That’s partly a failure of the press | Margaret Sullivan

Polls can’t predict – but they can warn. And I’m not sure our horserace-obsessed media are heeding the warning

www.theguardian.com

Democrats always blame their unpopularity on messaging rather than ever considering they or their policies are unpopular lol.

 

[bird]

Democrats always blame their unpopularity on messaging rather than ever considering they or their policies are unpopular lol.

Polls show otherwise.

 

[CoolBrees]

Polls show Trump is a rapist

 

[SaintForLife]

 

[SaintForLife]

 

[SaintForLife]

In 2018, Starbird begged her Facebook followers to vote Democrat to hold Trump responsible for "corruption and collusion" and his "racist, anti-LGBT agenda."

During the 2020 election, Starbird utilized AI to censor millions of social media posts, mapping out entire networks of Trump supporters and flagging entire narratives she deemed as "misinformation."

She worked with the Election Integrity Partnership, a CISA-backed censorship consortium, to systematically monitor, track, and censor entire belief systems at scale in the months before, during, and after the election.

What did they censor?

They silenced the discussions that the First Amendment was created to protect, including the debate on the integrity of mass mail-in voting, early voting, ballot dropboxes, and voting machines.

Since 2013, U.S. taxpayers have funded Starbird's work on censoring American citizens.

She held positions as the director of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, a board member of CISA’s “disinformation” subcommittee, and a founding partner of the EIP.

In her 2018 Facebook post, Starbird claimed Trump's “nationalism” and "patriotism" actually stood for “white supremacy," as she encouraged her followers to vote Democrat.

During the 2020 election, Starbird and the EIP claimed every "repeat spreader of election misinformation" happened to be a Trump supporter.

This undoubtedly influenced America's public consciousness as millions of social media posts were flagged by a highly partisan CISA-backed censorship operation intended to remove Trump from power.

When 60 Minutes featured Starbird this week, they portrayed her as an objective, non-partisan "leader of a misinformation research group."

They must have missed her Facebook post where she urged her followers to vote Democrat to stop the "rise of fascism and white nationalism."

"If we can't stop it here, it won't be stopped," she emphasized. "Your children's lives depend upon it."

"We are facing a wholly different kind of threat."

 

[SaintForLife]

 

[SaintForLife]

 

[MT15]

This is a laughable. You are spamming the board with propaganda and no proof of anything. You seem to be getting more and more desperate.

 

[LA - L.A.]

During the 2020 election,...

Since 2013,...

In her 2018 Facebook post,...

During the 2020 election,...

See if you can spot the problem with the years that the government was allegedly working with media groups to stop Trump.

 

[SaintForLife]

Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.

...It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.

In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.

But it hasn’t.

For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.

That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.



Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.

Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.

It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.

What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.

Russiagate was not NPR’s only miscue.

In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.

The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.

When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.

I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.

Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.

www.thefp.com

Excellent article that also talks about a similar approach to how they wrongly covered Covid and the ridiculous DEI requirements at NPR. He also said they have 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions and Zero Republicans. What a surprise. NPR's coverage compares to how the rest of the Corporate media covered Trump/Russia, Hunter's laptop and Covid.

 

[MT15]

Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.

...It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.

In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.

If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.

But it hasn’t.

For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.

Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.

An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.

That wouldn’t be a problem for an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience. But for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model.



Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.

Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.

Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.

It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.

What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.

Russiagate was not NPR’s only miscue.

In October 2020, the New York Post published the explosive report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer shop containing emails about his sordid business dealings. With the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye. Here’s how NPR’s managing editor for news at the time explained the thinking: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.

The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.

When the essential facts of the Post’s reporting were confirmed and the emails verified independently about a year and a half later, we could have fessed up to our misjudgment. But, like Russia collusion, we didn’t make the hard choice of transparency.

I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.

Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think.

www.thefp.com

Excellent article that also talks about a similar approach to how they wrongly covered Covid and the ridiculous DEI requirements at NPR. He also said they have 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions and Zero Republicans. What a surprise. NPR's coverage compares to how the rest of the Corporate media covered Trump/Russia, Hunter's laptop and Covid.

Define corporate media.

 

[SaintForLife]

Define corporate media.

A media under control of a corporation. It's the same answer no matter how many times you ask.

This is the same media that you always point to as credible when you claim anything I post isn't credible.

Look at how NPR covered Trump/Russia, Hunter's laptop and Covid. It was virtually identical in the rest of the Corporate media. It's seems like that's how you want them to continue covering stories if they involve Trump.

This is a reporter that still works at NPR that's making this criticism. It will be hard for one to try to discredit him, but I'm sure some will still attempt to do so.

Between this article and The Press vs The President, your sacred media has been shown to be ,in most cases, Democrat/establishment mouthpieces who act more like activists than journalists.

The press versus the president, part one

<p>INTRODUCTION: ‘I realized early on I had two jobs’ The end of the long inquiry into whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russia came in July 2019, when Robert Mueller III, the special counsel, took seven, sometimes painful, hours to essentially say no. “Holy shirt, Bob Mueller is not going...

www.cjr.org

 

[coldseat]

A media under control of a corporation. It's the same answer no matter how many times you ask.

This is the same media that you always point to as credible when you claim anything I post isn't credible.

Look at how NPR covered Trump/Russia, Hunter's laptop and Covid. It was virtually identical in the rest of the Corporate media. It's seems like that's how you want them to continue covering stories if they involve Trump.

This is a reporter that still works at NPR that's making this criticism. It will be hard for one to try to discredit him, but I'm sure some will still attempt to do so.

Between this article and The Press vs The President, your sacred media has been shown to be ,in most cases, Democrat/establishment mouthpieces who act more like activists than journalists.

The press versus the president, part one

<p>INTRODUCTION: ‘I realized early on I had two jobs’ The end of the long inquiry into whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russia came in July 2019, when Robert Mueller III, the special counsel, took seven, sometimes painful, hours to essentially say no. “Holy shirt, Bob Mueller is not going...

www.cjr.org

I hate to be the one to inform you that one of your favorite unreliable media sources, The New York Post, is owned by a company called "News Corporation". I don't think you can get any more corporate than that, lol.

 

[MT15]

I hate to be the one to inform you that one of your favorite unreliable media sources, The New York Post, is owned by a company called "News Corporation". I don't think you can get any more corporate than that, lol.

It doesn’t matter how many times it is pointed out to him, he never gets it.

Not to mention, his sources are actual activists, for the most part. They are unencumbered by editors, researchers, ethics departments and, well, the facts of a case. They don’t have anyone challenging their story, double checking all sources. They just spew it out and hope it has the desired effect.

Corporations have no fealty other than to shareholders. There isn’t any sort of vast conspiracy to sway the news by them, all they care about is clicks and eyeballs on websites. When they get things wrong, it’s tends to be sort of randomly distributed. Although, like most large corporations, they tend to be run by people more on the conservative side than liberal flamethrowers.

Oh, and when several competing news sources cover a story in a similar fashion, it is likely that the way they are covering it is factual. They are competitors. They don’t get together and decide these things. That’s just ludicrous.