Media Rediscovers its Purpose After Eight Year Vacation
“start thinking of covering Trump’s Washington like a war zone”
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Our completely unbiased media has awoken from hibernation. For the first time in a long time, they’re preparing to hold the government accountable, particularly the White House.
Jack Shafer of Politico sounds quite excited about this new era of hard hitting journalism:
Trump Is Making Journalism Great Again
Donald Trump and his forthcoming presidency may be the greatest gift to Washington journalism since the invention of the expense account. His unorthodox approach to politics and governance has vaporized the standard, useful, yet boring script for reporting on a new administration’s doings.
At his news conference last week, Trump began the process of washing the press completely out of his fake hair as he castigated CNN and BuzzFeed for reporting on the oppo-research dossier compiled on him. “Fake news,” said the man who has appeared on InfoWars and commended the outlet’s efforts…
Now, before the Committee to Protect Journalists throws up the batsign and the rest of us bemoan Trump’s actions as anti-press—which they are—let’s thank the incoming president for simplifying our mission. If Trump’s idea of a news conference is to spank the press, if his lieutenants believe the press needs shutting down, if his chief of staff wants to speculate about moving the White House press scrum off the premises, perhaps reporters ought to take the hint and prepare to cover his administration on their own terms.
Instead of relying exclusively on the traditional skills of political reporting, the carriers of press cards ought to start thinking of covering Trump’s Washington like a war zone, where conflict follows conflict, where the fog prevents the collection of reliable information directly from the combatants, where the assignment is a matter of life or death.
“A matter of life or death.”
That’s quite a departure from journalism in the age of Obama. Does everyone recall Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times asking newly sworn in President Obama what he found “enchanting” about his new job?
Shafer’s column stirred strong reactions on Twitter:
“We can practice journalism again now that Obama’s leaving and a Republican is coming in”–reporters who should stop thinking out loud.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) January 16, 2017
What better way to signal to 86% of the public who don’t trust news media anymore than to readily admit you took last 8 years off. https://t.co/rdd3eCi352
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) January 16, 2017
Let’s fix this headline: Trump Is Making Journalists … Do Their Job Again? https://t.co/xUdAPMUFld
— Rachel Stoltzfoos (@RachelStoltz) January 16, 2017
The point of this article seems to be “we fucked up so badly we now have to do what should have done. So please forget we really fucked up” pic.twitter.com/z2ORxKd48n
— Chris Arnade (@Chris_arnade) January 16, 2017
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Comments
Shades of 2000. The media takes off work during any Democrat administration, returns for any Republican administration. This is cyclical and nothing new.
I was going to write something witty and incisive but thought why do that when just a simple face palm slap will do!!
Mailman delivers!
So much truth is made public in just a few words. Admissions about the past. You don’t like us and are critical of our work? Then it’s war.
Dems, progressives, the entertainment world, the media, etc., are all so desperate to find ways to delegitimize and erode the public opinion of Trump. So far it is only doing the same to them.
Newsbusters compiled a putrid procession of the media boot licking and butt kissing Barack Obama during the previous decade. I threw up a little in my mouth…
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2017/01/09/farewell-decade-media-drooling-over-barack-obama
I chose the easy path and stopped listening a long time ago!
I clicked on your link, the cat came over and tried to bury it like he does when he’s in his litter box.
And he’s not the brightest on the block.
Yeah well, Words are cheap and everyone has a back pocket full of them!
Let’s just wait and see what their ‘journalistic freedom’ produces. Fair & balanced reporting – the good and the bad,OR another slam dunk of the 8 Bush years, when President Bush couldn’t do anything right. It was that constant negativity that prepared the American people to accept the Chicago Wonder, may he never rest in peace.
Since they just pass along what their Democrat party overlords dictate to them, it’s really the Democrat party that is changing it’s narrative, not the JournoLists.
So, among other things, we can expect conscientious coverage of Obama’s axis of terror from Benghazi to Aleppo to Kiev and beyond. We can expect conscientious coverage of the refugee crises including the victims of immigration “reform”. What other acts of soul searching can we expect from JournoLists of the Fourth Estate? Perhaps conscientious coverage to track progress of the current “Fanny and Freddie”, Obamacare.
The yarns of one JournoList spinning.
I hope they kick the press corps out of the white house, and add bloggers to the pool! It looks like they will – I would love that just for how pissed off that will make all of those “personalities” who think they are so much better than everyone else out here.
Things became so bad—no, not just bad, totally absurd—in the era of President Thoroughly J. Ridiculous that even Trump’s enemies are hoping and expecting the “new guy” to perform miracles.
Turn the press into real reporters? Might as well expect him to feed a multitude from a single basket of fish and loaves. A miracle, indeed.
The public failure, even humiliation, of our political class seems just about complete, when even our oblivious press realized that something vital has been AWOL for eight years.
The media doesn’t think that anything was missing from their performance in the last 8 years. This is all smoke and mirrors. This a bogus apology in order to gain the trust of the American people so that nothing that they print during the Trump administration will be dismissed out of hand, or even questioned. This the same as a person “admitting” that t
he embezzled thousands of dollars then saying he realizes he made a mistake so trust him with more money.
This mea culpa is simply a strategic move designed to place the media into a position where their reports are trusted without being closely scrutinized, so they continue to wage war against the Trump administration for their corporate masters. There is a social war going on and the Media is aligned with, if not part of, the enemy of the masses. Once you embrace this idea, a lot makes sense.
As predictable as the tides- which by the way, will be at least 10 feet higher starting January 20th, because obongo won’t be there to turn them back.
As the Wizard said, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
This is just the media attempting to give itself credibility so that any charges it makes against Trump will seem legitimate. This has nothing to do with journalistic “integrity” and everything to do with strategy to destroy the Trump administration. For the current Trump administration, with its mass of unwashed supporters, is the biggest threat to the Liberal/Progressive Establishment in the last 100 years.
The mainstream media is simply the propaganda arm of the Liberal/Progressive Establishment, nothing more. Even your local newspaper manages to spin a “dog bites man” story into some kind of social commentary advancing Liberal/Progressive ideals. And, it is not going to change with Trump in the WH.
It will be weird seeing late-nite comics make fun of the President again.
The press had not gone to sleep over the past eight years. Indeed, they never have. Can you recall the GOP ever doing anything that wasn’t reported as despicable or heinous? Can you remember when Democrats were ever truly held to task?
The press has frequently had to be goaded into reporting Democrat political malfeasance, and when doing so they were very careful to not mention the party: aka the “name that party” game. So many times the question has been raised (rhetorically, it turns out) about what the reporting would look like if the party affiliations were reversed; or if the races of the persons in the news item were reversed.
No, no – the press never went to sleep. They have made sure to spin everything GOP as negatively as they could, and to spin everything Democrat as positively as they could. The press somnolence has only been at the Presidential level.
From 2004 through 2008, the mainstream media deified candidate Obama, fawned over him, exaggerated and hyped his meager professional accomplishments and his alleged intellectual prowess, avoided giving any substantive scrutiny or critique of his odious radical beliefs, his vile personal associations and his obvious and numerous character flaws, and then, for eight years during his God-awful and incompetent tenure, proceeded to carry water for him and his Administration, propagandizing on his behalf at every opportunity, running interference with respect to legitimate criticism, and generally acting as compliant lackeys and lapdogs.
Now, of course, that a GOP candidate will soon be in power, that same media believes that it is called to a self-perceived righteous crusade against Trump.