FAKE NEWS EXPOSED: A Service of PoliticalChat.com

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Then show at least a slight hint of skepticism about your Trumpenfuhrer, a guy with the squirreliest ethical arrangements ever to sit in the White House and a guy who recorded lies nearly 3x faster than any other candidate in the last election (and this was going against Hillary, someone not exactly known for her veracity).

In that clusterf*ck of his first press conference in months, fact-checkers caught him lying or shading the truth ~15 times in the short time he was actually on stage. That's world-class lying in my book.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...ss-conference/

I'm puzzled why you, a self-proclaimed skeptic of all politicians, is against having such a profoundly dishonest person releasing his tax returns, particularly considering his financial dealings all over the world. That's the furthest thing imaginable from being skeptical. You're about as skeptical of Trump as Kellyanne Conway is. Honestly, sometimes I think you are Kellyanne Conway.

I assure you that Ms Conway looks way better in a dress than I ever could.

This entire thread, to me, has not been about Trump. Oh, certainly he weighed heavily in the subject matter. This thread was far more about observations regarding the reporting in the mainstream media. There's no question that there was a certain level of hysteria in the media and on the left about a the prospect of a Trump presidency. I think that hysteria has ramped up a bit since the election.

Say what you want about the Wikileaks dumps, but they certainly painted a picture of a rather cozy relationship between the DNC and the press. That, and the rather thinly veiled effort by the press to cheer-lead for Hillary, and you're left with a media whose credibility has been battered and bruised. The most recent evidence was CNN's willingness to jettison their last vestiges of journalistic integrity to talk about documents that they've know for months had no credibility. It did give CNN several broadcast hours to advance all manner of speculation about "what this could mean for a Trump presidency if it was true".

Given all this, is it any wonder why the mainstream media's credibility is in the tank. Given recent behavior, one has to wonder if they even care. It also should be no surprise that as the mainstream media's credibility has eroded, the so called "5th estate" media sources have become more popular. If the media was interested in taking measures to address their credibility issues, I doubt we'd be talking about so called "fake news".

The media has a role to play. Whether or not one "trusts Trump", it should be the role of the media to report factually on the activities of government and elected officials. That role was specifically protected by the 1st Amendment. However, when the media picks sides as they so clearly did recently, they've abandoned that role. They should be taken to task for that. At least the NY Times has admitted that they lost touch. At least one small-market newspaper admitted that their coverage of the election lacked objectivity, and was influenced by stories / opinion sourced from major media outlets. Its a start, but I think we're a long way from a fix.