All the news that’s fit to drive you crazy
I don’t know about you, but lately the MSM has been getting far more annoying than usual. And that’s really saying something.
I’ve been blogging for a little over twelve years, and although I’ve always been eager to take a look at the day’s news, and always found it interesting, I’ve never felt this degree of dislocation and frustration at the descent of the media into almost pure propaganda.
Someone asked me recently “If you had only one source to recommend to people for their news, which one would you direct them towards?” I answered “never just one.” But if it were really a forced choice and I had to pick one, I reluctantly decided on the Wall Street Journal.
And I stick with that choice; it comes the closest to being fair than any other single periodical I can think of.
But there’s a pervasive sense of unease within me about what’s happening now in the media that’s different from what I’ve felt before. Rather than go on and on about it, I thought I’d just put up this thread for discussion. I bet some of you are feeling much the same way.
This is the feeling that Trump has capitalized on, but that doesn’t mean that Trump himself is some sort of truth-teller either. Anyone who closely followed the 2016 campaign knows that.
I’ve long felt that I needed to try to cobble together the truth from many sources, and that what I came up with would only be my best (almost certainly flawed) approximation of the truth. But lately that task has become even more daunting. I feel like I’m in a forest at night, trying to hack through the too-dense undergrowth with a dull blade and no beacon, only the glow of starlight and a quarter-moon.
I’ve had the same feeling recently. It is profoundly disturbing to be unable to trust any source of information. Even more so to note that many, many people whom I have long known and respected seem to be freaking out over the Trump presidency. What are they seeing and hearing that I don’t? I’ve never felt so out of touch.
2008 will go down as the beginning of the end for the MSM. Going all out for Obama (over Clinton and McCain) forced them to become almost a praetorian guard for the entire Obama presidency and then along came Trump who was a direct repudiation of everything Obama and the media stood for.
IMO the msm is completely transparent now. Neighbors we have known for decades and are usually all too eager to discuss the ‘news’ have stopped listening to the msm. They tend to vote for the Ds (they voted for RR in 1984 and GWB in 2004) and dislike Trump, but they have decided the media has gone bonkers in its attacks on POTUS and Republicans in general.
I doubt they are the only people who feel this way. The msm is going to drive others away.
The “descent of the media into almost pure propaganda” is entirely in keeping with their assigned role in the Democrat Party’s core agenda; “The erasure of the American Republic is the core agenda of the Democrat Party” David Horowitz
Not just the MSM but individuals from the Left that show up on places like FOX. This morning in just 15 minutes I yelled at the TV 4 times. My wife ask me what I was yelling at and I told her the TV. She just nodded. Not good for my health.
As I watch with increasing frustration and perplexity the irrational actions on college campuses, I hold less and less hope for the future of our nation. When rational thought, logic, and consideration for others is lost, what chance does a reasonable and free (relatively) civilization have to survive? I too feel a deep sense of unease and confusion. It’s hard to know what to believe when it seems like our leaders are just muddling along, with members of the GOP working at cross purposes, the Democrats actively and openly working against the new administration, and the MSM feeding us what is obviously propaganda and untruthfulness.
Some of the time, I read news from any source and compare it to what I know first and second hand.The Florida election was my jumping off point. I’d been an election official and I knew that what they said was not quite right. Since then, my military contacts, few enough but for real, legal eagles, etc, told me what was the likely explanation for the latest breathless rumor. Neo does not practice law, but she can see when someone is flat-out lying about a legal issue. I have never workd in the poild fields, but had plenty of relatives who did. I know what real estate foreclosure is like, even though the process varies from state to state. Keeping my eyes open for these sixty six years, I have learned a thing or two.
A tiny example, when Flashbang and Speed Bump set off a pressure cooker bomb in Boston, the airheads on some network were telling us that, knowing the make and model of the pot, police could go into shops and ask who had bought that model in the past few days/weeks. Whaaat? I know, although the airheads did not, that I could walk into a WalMart and buy one off the shelf, in its box, and go through checkout without the cashier noticing my face or my purchase. The wizards of smart, as Limbaugh like to call them, don’t know half opf what ordinary Americans know.
So, I believe less than half, turn forty percent of the rest of it around to look at the back side, and that’s how I know things. Also, I remember what the propaganda media said last week/month, and measure what they say today against that. All of this is why we rubes don’t need “Fake news” or talk shows or other mind controllers to form pretty informed opinions, and so we voted for a boor, but a sometimes truthful one. If I were a betting man, this would bet that’s how more than half your readers do something similar.
poild fields =oil fields, apparently.
Reuters story on EPA chief and he was flat out called a “denier.”
CNN is in full advocacy mode. As bad as MSNBC. Unwatchable.
But they will keep at it until the polls turn. Obama and crew working 24/7 and hand-in-hand with MSM.
Trump needs legislative wins to offset the propaganda.
And neo’s post only highlights why the term “fake news” has caught on like it has.
Michael F Adams,
What you describe is the Murray Gell-Man Amnesia Effect.
And the liberal spin has leached into some sports programming at ESPN. The response of the NCAA to the NC bathroom bill is another example. No NCAA BB tournament games in NC. Libs blackmailed Omaha on the same issue for the College World Series.
The worst of it is that the local TV and newspapers are just as bad as national. Here in Omaha the “day without (legal) immigrants (aliens)” was covered with love. The Omaha paper has two feature writers who are raging libs.
Liberalism is just woven and entrenched into the media.
And every Trump rally I went to referenced the media and the jeers of the crowd were very loud.
Correction: “day without (illegal) immigrants (aliens)”
Yes, OMG Yes!
While I have often been annoyed by what is clearly bias in the News Media; never have I been as annoyed as I have been since Trump’s win that I just turn the TV off or stop reading a news article because it is so blatant in their propaganda.
It isn’t even entertaining!
I’ve never really followed incident-based news (plane crashes, etc.). There are no news stories that I’m interested in right now. But I feel a reluctance to get hooked on a story. I remember how much time it took to research the last round of health care reform, and this early on, I just don’t want to wade through the rumors and distortions. None of the current political stories have caught my eye, and no, there aren’t that many outlets I’d trust to cover them. So I’m a bit detached. God willing, there won’t be any international stories that demand my attention for a while.
That “day without immigrants” was a classic case of how the Libs and MSM work together. Dems cook up a slogan that is false. MSM runs with the story without question or critique. Another example of the omission fallacy. But it works great on the masses.
Trump and Bannon push back. So happy Trump won.
Look at it this way. The lack of newspaper support for Donald Trump was unprecedented. Wikipedia: Newspaper endorsements in the United States presidential election, 2016.
When we add up the newspaper circulation for each candidate, we get the following:
Endorsement Total Circulation
Hillary Clinton 22,775,638
No endorsement 5,299,551
Not Donald Trump 4,639,248
Gary Johnson 1,239,677
Donald Trump 711,112
Split endorsement 128,357
Evan McMullin 26,757
Not Hillary Clinton 9,200
Newspapers representing about 2% of total circulation endorsed Trump. That is unprecedented for a major party candidate. That informs me that approximately half the country ignored what the newspapers had to say about the election. Which is ALSO unprecedented.
The media is quite aware that half the country has tuned it out, and is doubling down-which can definitely become annoying to those who still pay attention to the media.
Judging by the overwhelming lead Hillary had in newspaper endorsements, it is easier to understand why Hillary said that she should be 50 points ahead. 🙂
I live in an Ag University town, and some 30 years ago the first wave of visiting scholars started arriving from China. I lived next door to a cheapie apartment complex where a lot of them lived on their meager stipends, and got to know a lot of them. Mainly because I’m a ping pong player, but I ended up helping a lot of them with their cars as they didn’t know the first thing about them.
Anyways, one of them boarded at my house for about 5 years, which began a fascination with China. I’ve read probably 75 books on China and also had live subjects to talk and interact with.
This experience taught me something quite valuable.
I had gained a quite in-depth understanding of China, its history, and its people in a personal way (and I’m married to one now, and have been to China maybe 10 times). I have had many conversations with Americans about China and I realized that, while everyone has an opinion and even may think they know a lot about China, none really did. I have long since called it the ‘New York Times’ version. It gives one just enough info to sound intelligent while really only knowing the surface of things. But they only sound intelligent to others with the equivalent New York Times knowledge level. To me they sounded like posers.
The world is full of these kind of people who are too full of themselves. And as our post WWII culture grew more consequent-less, I think we simply have a lot more bullshitters than before who have come to believe their own bullshit.
The media are certainly no exception, and by their very nature, are probably amongst the worst infected.
The internet changed things- it allows people to double check so many aspects of the stories they read, plus they are no longer limited in where they can get the news. Also, with the declining revenues to the papers, I suspect their reporters are the bottom of the barrel types who are pretty much inept at writing about anything without making up half or more of it.
“I’ve never felt this degree of dislocation and frustration at the descent of the media into almost pure propaganda …
there’s a pervasive sense of unease within me about what’s happening now in the media that’s different from what I’ve felt before” – Neo
Felt this way increasingly acutely starting in late 2015.
.
Part of this is because I’ve seen this before…
There is an uncanny, and unsettling resemblance in all this with the interplay between media (factions – as they are split between dissenters and supporters) and the government (which is much less clearly left or right ideologically, and a little more clearly about power itself) in several SAm countries (I’ve spent a bit of time on special assignments working down there).
No expertise here, but am taking an admittedly broad brush assessment from observing, as an outsider (and perhaps more objectively than the locals), the politics of the Kirchner(s) era and Lula da Silva, Rousseff era – to take two sizable examples.
.
We are not there… yet, but the nature of the tone and approach of the parties involved are just too similar.
There is plenty of “fight” going on all sides, and plenty of partial truths, omissions, dissembling, and bold outright lies to go around in those countries.
From where they came, this could be argued an “improvement”.
On the flipside, we’ve come from a better place and seem to be devolving / have devolved to the level where the “fight” is of premiere importance for its own sake than in the service of getting the right things done.
.
To “fight” requires two parties.
Yes, the msm have proven to be biased, and some of them unabashedly so. Yes, that’s a HUGE issue.
BUT, it is not as if trump has no means whatsoever to deal with it.
If there is ONE person in this country who has the ability to get their message out, it is the POTUS.
How about, folks stop cheering him on and tell him to STFUp until he has something focused and positive to say that will move the ball forward. And, if he cannot, he needs to get others who will.
Accolades would soon follow from those beyond his core of support, despite what the msm might muster.
.
Not sure what we are expecting from the msm, who we have long acknowledged are biased (or worse) for the left.
For instance, how can the msm NOT respond when trump claims, with little to back it up, that obama actually tapped trump’s offices (implying for political purposes)?
It is eminently newsworthy, controversial, and, at best, virtually fact free (publicly provided, upon announcement).
Knowing the msm for what they are, should we expect them not pounce on this? Not make an emphatic, overblown, leftist case that there is something wrong here?
The more we deny that this kind of thing is feeding this frenzy, then the more it will continue to escalate – on both sides.
If there is legitimacy to a serious issue, he needs to validate and work it with the resources he has as POTUS – BEFORE going public.
.
People so wanted obama to just admit that it was “islamic terrorists” and were apoplectic with how he bobed and weaved on that point.
Yet, here we are talking about the “unusually bad” msm, feeling frustrated with them, and not really bridging their “new” or “more intense” behavior to trump and his approach.
It’s not just admitting that trump lies. While true, that under-weights the magnitude of the impact.
It is that his entire behavior is integral to what we are seeing play out. Period.
.
Some would like to wrap (excuse?) his behavior under the guise of “saving the republic”.
It is increasingly looking like that is a questionable position, unless we are to assume colossal naivety and incompetence.
Susanamanth,
I agree the actions on campuses are disturbing. So is the unhinged wacko ‘ideas’ on the left from everything to imaginary transgendered cats and dogs to Russia hacked the election. But it has not progressed to the extreme violence of the 1960s and 70s. I hope it does not, but hope is paper thin at best considering the mental illiness that inflicts the hard left.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
March 10th, 2017 at 4:27 pm
The “descent of the media into almost pure propaganda” is entirely in keeping with their assigned role in the Democrat Party’s core agenda; “The erasure of the American Republic is the core agenda of the Democrat Party” David Horowitz
* * *
Since the entire MSM and a lot of the Dems have been going Full Godwin for ages now, this article presents a good perspective; however, I want to highlight this particular point – because Lyin’ Journalists are not new, although they may now be news.
https://www.city-journal.org/html/tale-three-cities-15041.html
To explain what occurred, Finkel offers a tale of three cities: Minsk, Bialystok, and Krakow. Minsk had been occupied by German authorities after the Russian Revolution. These administrators expelled Communists and provided a surprisingly stable and benevolent rule. After the Great War, the Kaiser’s forces retreated. The Soviets quickly filled the vacuum, brutally oppressing the Jewish population. Yiddish schools were shut down and highly placed Jews were expunged during Josef Stalin’s Great Terror. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact in 1939; immediately afterward, the media silenced all reports of Nazi roundups and concentration camps. Little wonder, then, that the Jews of Minsk naively viewed Deutschland as a place of restoration rather than devastation. By the time they learned the truth from a handful of escapees and eyewitnesses, it was too late.
* * *
He doesn’t say it here, but we now know that this included US media and politicians — and not just the Soviet moles in FDR’s government (sad to say, McCarthy was unsavory in method but generally correct in principle).
538 spoke on this just today:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-really-was-a-liberal-media-bubble/
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/03/the-ap-debates-trump-on-jobs.php
he Associated Press is bidding to overtake the New York Times as the most biased news source in America. To perhaps a greater degree even than the Times and the Washington Post, the AP has set itself up as the opposition to the Trump administration. Often, its bias has to be seen to be believed. As with this story: “Jobs report no longer phony, Trump says, now that it’s his.”
* * *
Just for the record – the problem with Associated Press reports is that they are a feeder for most of the newspapers and broadcasters in America.
“The Associated Press (AP) is an American multinational nonprofit news agency headquartered in New York City that operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association.” – Wikipedia
You note that they don’t claim it is unbiased or non-partisan.
Wonder why.
Given neo’s mentions of Memeorandum as a source-aggregator, this from 538’s post is interesting:
There was once a notion that whatever challenges the internet created for journalism’s business model, it might at least lead readers to a more geographically and philosophically diverse array of perspectives. But it’s not clear that’s happening, either. Instead, based on data from the news aggregation site Memeorandum, the top news sources (such as the Times, The Washington Post and Politico) have earned progressively more influence over the past decade: (graph)
The share of total exposure8 for the top five news sources9 climbed from roughly 25 percent a decade ago to around 35 percent last year, and has spiked to above 40 percent so far in 2017. While not a perfect measure10, this is one sign the digital age hasn’t necessarily democratized the news media. Instead, the most notable difference in Memeorandum sources between 2007 and 2017 is the decline of independent blogs; many of the most popular ones from the late ’aughts either folded or (like FiveThirtyEight) were bought by larger news organizations. Thus, blogs and local newspapers – two of the better checks on Northeast Corridor conventional wisdom run amok – have both had less of a say in the conversation.
* * *
That is, they are creating less diversity and fewer independent perspectives.
And this will ring true to all of you who know the difference between 10 years of experience, and 1 year repeated 10 times.
* * *
In some ways the best hope for a short-term fix might come from an attitudinal adjustment: Journalists should recalibrate themselves to be more skeptical of the consensus of their peers. That’s because a position that seems to have deep backing from the evidence may really just be a reflection from the echo chamber. You should be looking toward how much evidence there is for a particular position as opposed to how many people hold that position: Having 20 independent pieces of evidence that mostly point in the same direction might indeed reflect a powerful consensus, while having 20 like-minded people citing the same warmed-over evidence is much less powerful.
A must-watch from Remy:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/03/remy-on-fake-news.php
I want to re-purpose this PowerLine post to point out that the media are the ultimate Marcusians.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/03/free-speech-is-not-enough.php
The right response to demands for censorship of speech is to challenge the leftist narrative, and its underlying theory, directly. The left believes that the idea of free speech itself is a tool of “oppression,” which is why the left has no respect for the idea of free inquiry. This is not new at all; it is merely a revival of Herbert Marcuse’s doctrines from the 1960s. As Marcuse wrote back then, “[T]he restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions. . . .”
One person who gets this clearly is Stephen Carter of Yale Law School. He has a very good column up at Bloomberg News this week on “The Ideology Behind Intolerant College Students.”
RTWT at the inner link.
I thought it was fascinating to read the NY Times public editor struggle to address their readers’ concerns with the paper’s confusing and conflicting reporting on the Trump wiretap claims. The Wall Street Journal had a great take on it:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wiretapping-and-the-new-york-times-1489082222?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb
I don’t read the Christian Science Monitor with any regularity, but within its restricted scope it seems rather sane compared to the biggies. It was first brought to my attention many years ago by a Coptic Egyptian emigrant who thought its coverage of the Near East was more balanced than that of the major papers.
Twelve years!! Time flies!!! I’ve been following you since about the beginning. It doesn’t seem like that long…
It has affected other websites as well. The AV Club website used to be one of the daily sites I visited, but ever since Trump won the site has been filled with anti-Trump stuff. It’s an ENTERTAINMENT website and now it’s full of politics! I counted 14 anti-Trump articles on its front page. I’ve removed it from my bookmarks and it’s just so sad.
What was it I saw on Ace’s page… “they’ve gone insane and they’re not getting better”
+1 and its not just news media. Seems like Media in general. Totally propaganda. I was laughing at the NYTimes touting Truth as a advertising slogan just yesterday. Re: they’re American Pravda at this point…. the sad part is it is not a put down.. its a fair comparison…
Sports Illustrated’s website also has been infected with frequent and gratuitous anti-Trump headlines, sometimes several at once. The stories advertised look to have nothing whatsoever to do with sports.
I can’t help but think all this propaganda generates a significant rebound effect. For one thing, the exaggerations and bias of the headlines are so obvious the insult the reader; a secondary effect is that they turn Trump into an underdog.
…I’ve never felt this degree of dislocation and frustration at the descent of the media into almost pure propaganda.
neo: Likewise. It’s exceeded my already pessimistic expectations.
I don’t see a happy ending here.
@M Williams
Very very interesting. I’m serious.
Could you recommend some good readings about China? It’s something that I’m interested.
Perhaps I could recommend RT. Biased but in a different way.
We’ve had nominations for
1. The Wall Street Journal
2. The Christian Science Monitor
3. RT (without straining my brain, I can’t figure out what that is)
Anybody else want to propose a single source for news?
Anybody want to nominate a short list? Long list? How do you read the news (broadly defined)? Do you use an rss reader? Do you just use bookmarks? I use a page that I made at start.io. I don’t read paper newspapers. I don’t have a TV. On the radio, I only listen to music, and that’s usually via the internet.
If I had to nominate a single source, I’d cheat and say “Real Clear Politics.” I might even add all of the other “Real Clear” sites.
Anyway, I’m curious. Thanks.
I’ve noticed the decline/bias on display in the major media, just as everyone else in this thread has. My daughter sees it even more clearly, since she is staying temporarily in California to help out family members. The California members are dedicated followers of media fashion, and the Trump-bashing is a constant.
The national media gradually pissed away any assumption of impartiality starting — IIRC with going so all-out for Kerry-Edwards. That was the first election where I was really tuned into internet-based news aggregate sites like Instapundit, and it was pretty obvious that the establishment national media was all ready to go down on their knees. Even more obvious throughout the the Obama regime – but with going hysterically all-out against Trump, it seems to me that a lot of news consumers have quietly decided that yes, the national news media HAS no clothes.
How interesting – i just came upon your site from a reference elsewhere (moral compass/blanchett – how intelligent a read!!) and find myself in surprised but absolute agreement with this post!
Yes, “cobble together the truth” is exactly where I have found myself after the past several years and especially this last one. It’s sorting thru the psychobabble to find something substantive and true. And I agree w/ the WSJ conclusion but even there, cross-check, cross-check, etc etc (not to mention, they seem to have their own internal ‘disagreements’ going on!). Look forward to more of you, beginning with reading your past posts!
I feel that we have been living through a couple of fairy tales.
First, the emperor’s new clothes describes the the Obama years and the boy who cried wolf is describing the current times. For some reason, I start humming Peter and the wolf, which is a different fairy tale – I am now listening to it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfM7Y9Pcdzw .
For news, I am starting to rely more on the original document such as reading the Executive Actions instead of reading a summary, watching a press conference and not the except. And it’s good to read multiple sites even though it is tiring to get the whole story.
Part of the problem is that everyone is trying to be first with the story, so fact checking goes out the door. I am seeing more people commenting that they are using a 24-48 hour rule to see what really is the story.
AMEN, Neo.
MSM crap is in hysterio-steroid apes*** mode.
And, Thank God for the WSJ.
Big Maq
An overriding point of the media is to generate controversy. But now it has reached the point where the MSM is staging the rassling match such that Trump is always the heel. Since Trump knows the pro rassling game from his WWE days, this fight will be interesting.
An example from Instapundit:
“In January Michael S. Schmidt perpetuated the rumor that team Trump had Russian connections, and to support his point he said that Trump’s people were wiretapped. However when President Trump claimed his people were wiretapped, the same guy, Michael S. Schmidt said there was no evidence. Either the Times editors and Mr. Schmidt are trying to skew the story, or they are all suffering from a form of dementia and have no memory.
”For the NYT, it seems to work this way:
Press: Leaked transcripts of Trump wiretaps show Trump was being investigated by the Obama administration.
Trump: Obama wiretapped me!
Press: Transcripts? What transcripts?
As others have mentioned one of the more tiresome trends has been the creep of politically tinged commentary on non political sites in the sports and entertainment fields. I saw people complaining about Trump’s primetime speech last week preempting normal programming and people being outraged as if every president for the last 40-50 years hasn’t done the same. ESPN and the other major sports sites have been over run with it also.
It really is bad for a culture when everything is political.
Last Saturday’s NYTimes article by Michael Shear carried the headline “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.”
Within 24 hours, on conservative blogs and in comments on those blogs, photographs appeared of the front page of the paper edition of the NYTimes from January 20, with a lead story headline “Wiretapped Data Used In Inquiry Of Trump Aides,” by — Michael Shear.
So, Trump’s evidence was the NYTimes itself! The truth might escape the MsM, but it doesn’t escape the ordinary folks.
The days of the lying media are numbered, because ordinary people are learning to get their news from each other. We need to stay in touch with those on the other side, send email and articles to them showing how they’re being led astray by the MsM. Sooner or later, they’ll believe their lying eyes.
amr: It’s a tag-team! You posted whilst I was composing.
Diminishing declines in respect and $$$$ since the advent of political blogging=desperate measures. “If it bleeds it leads,” now means “make it bleed or become irrelevant.”
Dear Neo,
Talk about ‘synchronicity’ or as I prefer, great minds think alike, I agree 100%. We subscribe to WSJ and are pleased with their fairminded approach to the craziness of the world. But lately, all I want to do is read books, watch British series videos and paint. I feel like the guy in “Network’ who screams out his window….”I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it anymore”! I love your blog and will be sure to contribute the next time you “pass the hat”. Thanks for being there!
The latest theory by various online students of conspiracy, is that Trum is the bone given to Republicans, to buy time for the NWO to get all their black ops projects in order. It lets the Leftist alliance get ginned up even more into a frenzy, which can be useful as the entire Left are useful idiots to those that control the game from behind the scenes.
And then there’s an even higher group controlling that group, an onion ring of oligarchies.
Instead of 51% of a population controlling things in a democracy, this so called American Republic is controlled by less than 1%. And some of them aren’t necessarily human either. Depends on if Lucifer can be defined as ‘human’.
Also, it would be great if all those people here who called me crazy concerning the nature of the Leftist alliance, would do so again. I need to keep a List for Later, thanks.
Yann 3/11 5:20 am:
One of the first and most riveting books I read was “Life and Death in Shanghai” which is a first- person account of one woman’s life through the Cultural Revolution.
For the grand introduction, though it is drier, is John King Fairbank’s “China: A New History”.
The approach I would take is to read some first-person accounts first, and then the history books will be more meaningful, I think.
Another great memoir is “Wild Swans”.
And a good westerner’s POV is “The River at the Center of the World”.
These are just a few. Good luck, and I hope it opens wider a new interest for you.
Liz Says:
March 11th, 2017 at 11:03 am
I feel that we have been living through a couple of fairy tales.
* * *
When I first started commenting on blogs, I would cite the appropriate fable from Aesop’s collection — every story had some hook, and a great many fables had exemplars.
Now the inanity/insanity is so constant and redundant that I don’t bother.
I also tend toward the “wait three days for the hysteria to pass” before deeming any news report credible.
In the last year I cancelled my subscriptions to the NY Times and the New Yorker. I started reading the Times in the late sixties as a college student in NYC, and I can remember reading it to see at what point it would stop calling the war in Vietnam a “conflict” and admit that it was a war. Think of the transformation the paper has gone through since it held that political stance.
In the last few years I described my subscribing to the paper as paying to be insulted. It just gave up all pretense to objectivity, and in my mind, to honesty.
I started reading the New Yorker in the early seventies, first for the cartoons, then for the movie reviews, and finally for the fiction. They still publish some astonishingly good fiction and nonfiction–and it still is a good place to discover great new writers, but almost everything in the magazine is now infected with the promotion of leftist politics. Even the one-page economics articles now implicitly argue over and over that that all economic principles and evidence support political liberalism.
So now I too search for a good source of news. Both Fox and the Wall Street Journal, to which I have long subscribed, have their faults. Fox is sometimes simple minded and ultra partisan. The Journal had plenty of writers sneering at Trump through the election. But the weekend Review section of the Journal has excellent book reviews and is worth the cost by itself. You’ll get an education just from reading the reviews.
@Cornhead – trump doesn’t have to play into their hands and provide them with material to make their case.
He is no victim in all this. HE is the one who kicked up the intensity, going back to early in his campaign.
He seems to behave like he thinks he is smarter than they are and can outsmart them … at their own game!
When we are saying the msm are setting the stage for trump to look the heel, it seem to me that is the result of playing their game.
There is far too much whining about the msm. Really.
trump is the leader. Time for him to lead.
@M Williams
Thank you very much.
The four books are in the queue. I’ve been always interested by China, it’s a kind of strange fascination, though I never found the time to deep into it. Now I’m needing to slow down and get some rest, some it’s probably a good time to fix that.
Hi Yann !
I am currently taking a MOOC course at Harvard (free!) called ChinaX. HEre is the URL:https://www.edx.org/
There are a number of courses, just search for ChinaX. It starts with history/archeology and I am now on the Hundred Schools of Thought during the Spring and Autumn periods. It is very well done and entirely at your own pace. I especially appreciate the maps!
Here’s another way the DSM (Democrat State Media) runs its scams on the public:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/03/fake-entertainment-news-from-the-ny-times-and-associated-press.php
“So why is a bad Democratic Party comedy show, which has attacked Republicans in the same boring way for 40 years, taken seriously as news? That isn’t hard to figure out. The Times and the AP would like to engage in the same vicious smears that the “comedians” of Saturday Night Live do, but they have to maintain some pretense of being news outlets rather than propaganda machines. The solution? Enthusiastic coverage of the left-wing “comedy” show with blow-by-blow repetition of its pro-Democratic Party smears.
It may or may not be effective—I can hardly believe that it is—but it certainly isn’t news, except of the fake variety.”
They aren’t even pretending to maintain the pretense anymore.
Big Maq
There is far too much whining about the msm. Really.
You say this after Journolist from years ago, after the WikiLeaks showing the MSM acted as lapdog for the Democrats……
@Gringo – you missed my post some time ago where I was witness to a big lie by an msm outlet that I was witness to (but not party of). It was incredulous.
Don’t mistake my position as not recognizing the problems with our media.
I see similar problems on BOTH sides nowadays.
The difference with the msm is their “reach” vs conservative media (or rather, the size of their “audience”). BUT, they don’t have the “oligopoly” they once had a generation or two ago (choice is abundant nowadays – people are CHOOSING who they listen to, btw).
Their audience is no longer “captive”, so I don’t buy that the problem is even largely in the hands of the msm.
Our focus on blaming and complaining about the msm is now a distraction from getting our message out and making the case.
We ought to question why it is trump focuses on the msm over moving the ball forward, as he is ceding more power to them than they actually have.
Bottom line: trump is blowing the opportunity to effectively use the megaphone he has.
THAT is a failure of leadership.
@fiona
Thank you, and sorry for the delay in thanking.