The So-Called Leftist Lamestream Media

[bobabode]

"In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, there was a lot of attention focused on the role of "fake news," but a year later, a study published in the Columbia Journalism Review told a very different story, with the blunt title, "Don't blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media." Instead of fake news — which was a real but relatively small problem in 2016 (all fake Russian ads amounted to 0.1 percent of Facebook's daily advertising revenue) — it centered on an analysis of the New York Times' agenda-setting campaign coverage: America's paper of record ran as many front-page stories about Hillary Clinton's emails (10) in the last six days before the election as it did about all policy details combined in the two months before the election.

"If Clinton had a hard time getting her message out, she certainly didn't get much help from the newspaper of record," I wrote here at the time. "Even though Trump got slightly more front-page scandal coverage than Clinton did, he faced nothing remotely like the six-day avalanche she endured."

"If Clinton had a hard time getting her message out, she certainly didn't get much help from the newspaper of record," I wrote here at the time. "Even though Trump got slightly more front-page scandal coverage than Clinton did, he faced nothing remotely like the six-day avalanche she endured."

So I heard a sharp echo of the 2016 election on Nov 27, when the New York Times tweeted out a story this way:

New York and its suburbs are among the safest large communities in the U.S. But amid a torrent of doomsday-style ads and headlines about rising crime, suburban swing voters helped drive a Republican rout that played a decisive role in capturing the House.

Once again, the Times was seeking to make sense of an unexpected election result — the GOP's flipping of four suburban New York House districts — with zero apparent awareness of the crucial role its coverage had played.

Sure, Fox News played a role in driving national hysteria on crime, as Philip Bump showed shortly before the election. But in these particular districts, with majorities of Joe Biden 2020 voters, Fox could not have done it alone. The Times was implicated as well, and civil rights attorney Scott Hechinger, who heads Zealous, a criminal justice reform initiative, called it out in a withering Twitter thread. He called it "mindblowing" to see the Times, "one of the chief purveyors of false/misleading 'doomsday headlines' about crime in NY & around country — now reporting on the electoral impact of their own deeply harmful journalism practices. And yet mentioning only other papers & 'media.'" Salon

cont. here - https://www.salon.com/2022/12/10/how...elped-win-the/

Look, I get it. Both parties have their moments but the ever present "Democrats In DISARRAY!!!! crap from the biggest newspapers is beyond blatant.

Yeah, looking at you too Washington POSt.

Sure would be nice if our elected reps would get off their asses and restore the Fairness Doctrine or somesuch. The citizenry own the goddamn airwaves and we elected you assholes to look after our interests. What the actual fuck?

>rant over<