politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
The media also spent a lot of time letting Trump just say whatever he wanted without any criticism. Which I think was their point. Maybe if you're going to report on this stuff, also push back on it.
In the Before Times, they didn't have to criticize. Just reporting obvious fuckery would have been enough.
Like when? When we went into Iraq because WMDs?
When you say that, what do you have in mind?
Off the top of my head:
Which one of those people were not criticized?
To take one example that I was very closely following, Blagojevich:
Reporting at the time was not overly critical; all that was needed was to report the facts of the matter, because the general public was in agreement on the nature of reality, something which is horribly lacking today.
What do you think Blagojevich said that he was rightly not criticized for saying?
You don't even remember that whole thing, do you?
Selling Obama's seat in congress?
The imaginary fifth one.
Lol
There's plenty of media pushing back on him. It's basically a huge maga-cultist complaint that they aren't very nice to Trump, because they point out and dissect what he has said and criticize it. They see the lopsided amount of times his BS is being called out as evidence that the media is biased against him, not that he spews a lopsided amount of BS.
That depends on what you are reading. However, good journalism should be impartial. It should not criticize or provide opinion, it should report facts (including fact checking when a person says bullshit). But to give opinion is arguably bad journalism, or better to say, not journalism. It is political analysis/opinion column/political show. Which is part of the media too, of course, but it is often confused with the good journalism.
Walter Cronkite did it. He almost singlehandedly changed the nation's general opinion on the Vietnam War. And most people would consider Walter Cronkite to have been an excellent journalist.
Also, 'criticism' is not the same as 'opinion.' If Trump says something false, he should be rightly criticized for saying that false thing. That is not an opinion-based issue.
Excellent journalist can do non-journalist analysis too. It is just not journalistic reporting.
Interesting that you ignored the more important part of my post.
Because what you called criticism, I called fact checking, and I mention it in my original statement. You don’t criticize when you report. You simply state that it is false.
Showing that something someone said isn't true is a form of criticism.
OK. I think you can say that. But using this terminology, I would say that there is difference to criticize something as (factually) incorrect and (morally) wrong. The former is the job of good journalism, the later is not.
Hard disagree. A good journalist is partial to objectivity and speaks truth to power.
When Trump is spreading baseless conspiracy theories, most of which literally endanger the lives of his intended target, you don't just fucking let him do it without any pushback and let people without any background in relevant fields try to figure out whether he's lying.
That's journalistic malpractice and also how the world got to the point where one of the two main parties is a literal fascist movement rather than a legitimate political party.
You can only fact check so much in real time, especially when you're talking to someone who swings wildly between rambling nonsense and turning dog whistles into fog horns and you're apparently not allowed to criticize or have opinions 🙄
In the same way that Donald Trump Jr arguably has a chin. You could make that argument, but you'd be wrong.
That is what the textbooks say. It is not reality in any way. Actual “facts only” would be boring and dry - and news should be that way but it isn’t and I think we all know why.
Besides, word choice alone is an opinion. There’s almost no such thing as reporting without an opinion. The actual method is to recognize that opinion exists, not to pretend there isn’t one. The latter is what corporate news sewers do.
Selecting what stories to report is also an opinion. Just saw a headline from WaPo today of "Trump makes fun of Biden's stutter" like this is a newsworthy thing to cover for a potential presidential candidate. Look at Trump breaking norms and being uncouth! Surely this important and objective recounting of his every utterance will inform the public and make people think he's not fit to be president rather than make him look like a alpha troll cutting down an old dude who can't talk good.
Good journalism provides context, draws attention to cause and effect, and doesn't pretend that events occur in a vacuum.
That’s true. But it is still can be done in impartial way.
Neutrality in situations of oppression amounts to aligning with the oppressor.
Neutrality in situations of straight-up violating norms and standards and telling lies... aligns with the liar.
Neutrality to a fault... is a fault.
At some point, if you're neutral to the point that you're unwilling to take a critical stance of anything, you could save yourself the effort as a journalist and just forward along everyone's press releases and quit pretending that the role of the journalist in the 1st Amendment is to hold the powerful accountable and to tell truths they might not want told- and get on with that business of licking those delicious boots
One doesn’t have to be neutral, but one can separate one’s opinion from facts.
Impartial is one thing, but being impartial while one side relies on outright lies is another thing.
To give an example, back when I was in college (the mid-90s), my college newspaper ran an article from a Holocaust denier. At the time, he was going across the country trying to get college newspapers to run his "the Holocaust never happened" piece and my college's newspaper agreed to it. I confronted the editor-in-chief and he replied "we have to tell both sides of the story."
Except there aren't two sides of this story. There's one. The Holocaust happened. That's a historical fact. Trying to "be impartial" with this is to elevate wild conspiracy theories to the same position as historical facts.
Impartial reporting of FACTS is not given equal time to facts and falsities.
This. If one person says it's raining and another says it isn't, a journalist's job isn't to report that "expert opinions vary on the state of the weather", a journalist's job is to go the fuck outside and figure out if it's raining.