The state of American journalism

[Xzi]

Who said I supported Trump? Just because I don't like liberals, it doesn't make me a conservative.

Why would you be an apologist for him otherwise? Maybe don't discredit sources you haven't even looked into.

It's a circlejerk of confirmation bias when not only is cable news attacked in blanket statements, but now also print/internet articles are questioned in mass. Anybody perhaps stop to think that Putin might enjoy us questioning every American institution?

Notice that he name dropped me

I purposefully didn't @ you to try and avoid your whining, but I guess it was inevitable.

 

[Kioku]

Why would you be an apologist for him otherwise? Maybe don't discredit sources you haven't even looked into.

Ironic that YOU of all people would say that?

 

[Xzi]

Ironic that YOU of all people would say that?

How so? I'll accept anyone citing reasonable sources that aren't extremely tilted in either direction. Pls no clickbait or ad-filled garbage, either.

FFS, I've cited Murdoch-owned WSJ and a Fox affiliate in this thread alone. There's nobody who is qualified to cover Trump "the right way" according to some people.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

I'll add this to the discussion:
News is heavily influenced by politics. Politicians can greatly benefit or be greatly harmed by press releases about them, their activities, or otherwise. At a certain level, it becomes a big game of PR. Your enemies might leak incriminating details to the press, or a press member might blackmail a reporter into pursuing a certain slant. Establishment politics is greatly tied to the large players in the press and entertainment world. Observe Trump's relationship with Murdoch or Ailes (while he was alive), or even Bannon (before their current rift), and see that the media organizations those men own staunchly support Trump's actions, and are used as a political front for him, or a kind of alternate PR group. If we back up to Obama's days, observe his relationship with Soros and Media Matters, among other groups. If you wanna know what's up with the media in this country, look to the political world. One of the reasons the press seems so whacko nowadays is because the presidency is whacko, too. Trump made a big splash in politics that rocked all of Washington, and thus, rocked the media.

As with everything, the answer to a large question like, "What's up with the media?" is often, "There's a confluence of factors." Here I'm showing just one of the factors at play that I don't see talked about as much in this thread.

 

[Xzi]

I'll add this to the discussion:
News is heavily influenced by politics. Politicians can greatly benefit or be greatly harmed by press releases about them, their activities, or otherwise. At a certain level, it becomes a big game of PR. Your enemies might leak incriminating details to the press, or a press member might blackmail a reporter into pursuing a certain slant. Establishment politics is greatly tied to the large players in the press and entertainment world. Observe Trump's relationship with Murdoch or Ailes (while he was alive), or even Bannon (before their current rift), and see that the media organizations those men own staunchly support Trump's actions, and are used as a political front for him, or a kind of alternate PR group. If we back up to Obama's days, observe his relationship with Soros and Media Matters, among other groups. If you wanna know what's up with the media in this country, look to the political world. One of the reasons the press seems so whacko nowadays is because the presidency is whacko, too. Trump made a big splash in politics that rocked all of Washington, and thus, rocked the media.

As with everything, the answer to a large question like, "What's up with the media?" is often, "There's a confluence of factors." Here I'm showing just one of the factors at play that I don't see talked about as much in this thread.

Indeed, we see a lot of our society reflected back to us in our media, with social networking platforms like twitter and bookface amplifying that to an all-time high. Fox News and CNN viewers are in their own bubbles for the most part, with maybe two respectable journalists on each. The rest is just feeding them their own opinions on a 24-hour cycle.

 

[RustInPeace]

The Trump thing comes off as TMZ reporting since he's a celebrity, and every word he says is like fuel for the fire, and the people reporting on that traded in paparazzi cameras for keyboards (I was going to say pen and paper but that's old news). That's honestly not surprising, and has been going on for a while. The "shithole" thing risks being personally affecting to me. I'm not Haitian, but my birth country, Dominican Republic are neighbors to Haiti, so I'm in a really weird state whether I should be more angry at Trump because he's hitting somewhat close to home.

I was expecting more of a discussion on the exposes to celebrities and Hollywood power men over sexual assault. That's been a more recent trend, as said already, Trump bait has been going on for almost 2 years. I don't know, some shred of journalistic integrity still exists when those kind of bombshells are dropped, and it features people investigating and doing their job, not focused on Trump and potential celebrity Presidential candidates. More of this happens and pretty soon the only male actors in Hollywood will be Tom Hanks, Kurt Russell, and Keanu Reeves.

I never expected to post in this section, I was part of a forum that used to have a politics section and I read horror stories about how that happened. It bled over to the General Discussion and threads would get locked down as they bled into politics. Hell, I was a mod there and had to lock down one some time in 2013. A certain person protested this hard core, and it hurt me emotionally and spun the wheels to get out of that Hell and end up here. I won't repeat that here, so I'll just comment and run. I never got to respond to the shithole thing anywhere else and I felt like doing it.

 

[Xzi]

The "shithole" thing risks being personally affecting to me.

Unfortunately it takes being personally affected for many people to stand up and take notice. Though I do work at a dispensary and Jeff Sessions is a continuous threat to my well-being, I'm concerned more for my country and other Americans than I am for myself. My state has taken pretty good care of me thankfully.

 

[Noctosphere]

all what I can say is that "FAKE NEWS" has become a popular meme

 

[Whole lotta love]

Not surprised that the left has brought up the presidency of Donald Trump. Your opinion of the current president is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Both American media outlets on the left and right have issues that need to be resolved.

OP brought up Trump in the very first post in this thread...

"hey bro would you be agreeable to a clean version of this bill?"
"yeah sure"
"GUYS TRUMP IS CONFIRMED DEMENTIA IT'S HAPPENING GUYS I SEE IT"
lmao holy fuck

Who is saying this?

all what I can say is that "FAKE NEWS" has become a popular meme

Truest thing to be said in this entire thread

 

[Deleted User]

he's convinced I'm some alt-right neo nazi

Mate if he really thought you were a nazi he would be worshipping you like the lord almighty

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Mate if he really thought you were a nazi he would be worshipping you like the lord almighty

Why do you say that

 

[MaverickWellington]

Mate if he really thought you were a nazi he would be worshipping you like the lord almighty

Given his praise of Hitler in comparison to Trump I think you may just be right.

 

[Futurdreamz]

pfft. Everyone knows a Hitler is needed for an Anarchistic Utopia to function. Otherwise there's too many different opinions and moral standards in conflict.

 

[MaverickWellington]

OP brought up Trump in the very first post in this thread...

Not necessarily, OP brought up news about trump but the topic was about how sensationalist and lacking in journalistic integrity it was. Instead of reporting it as news, it reads more like a heavily opinionated blog. Naturally, the manchildren had to turn this into their screech zone to bitch about Trump for the umpteenth time.

 

[Futurdreamz]

Not necessarily, OP brought up news about trump but the topic was about how sensationalist and lacking in journalistic integrity it was. Instead of reporting it as news, it reads more like a heavily opinionated blog. Naturally, the manchildren had to turn this into their screech zone to bitch about Trump for the umpteenth time.

Which is ironic, since one of the things we were originally discussing what how American Journalism is getting everyone all riled up to the point that a rational debate is pretty much impossible.

 

[Whole lotta love]

Not necessarily, OP brought up news about trump but the topic was about how sensationalist and lacking in journalistic integrity it was. Instead of reporting it as news, it reads more like a heavily opinionated blog. Naturally, the manchildren had to turn this into their screech zone to bitch about Trump for the umpteenth time.

But using Trump as an example makes him a part of the conversation as the reporting on him is the evidence given to show that journalism is in the shitter.

Like if we're on some gamergate shit and Person A says: "gaming journalism is in the trash; Bungie makes all these great games that get terrible reviews"

And Person B responds with: "I don't agree with your claim about gaming journalism. Bungie deserves the reviews they got: Halo 5 had terrible graphics compared to its peers, it had buggy multiplayer, and didn't innovate from it's predecessors. Halo Wars 3 had terrible controls and the soundtrack was trash, etc."

Or if Person B said: "I agree with you that gaming journalism is the shitter but those Halo games got the scores they deserved because of X,Y, and Z"

How can you say that Person B is the one who brought up Bungie? If you don't agree with Person A's conclusion or if you just don't agree with their example, you need to discuss the example to explain your position.

(I haven't played a Bungie game since Halo 3, I just made those examples up. Sorry halo friends.)

 

[MaverickWellington]

But using Trump as an example makes him a part of the conversation as the reporting on him is the evidence given to show that journalism is in the shitter.

Like if we're on some gamergate shit and Person A says: "gaming journalism is in the trash; Bungie makes all these great games that get terrible reviews"

And Person B responds with: "I don't agree with your claim about gaming journalism. Bungie deserves the reviews they got: Halo 5 had terrible graphics compared to its peers, it had buggy multiplayer, and didn't innovate from it's predecessors. Halo Wars 3 had terrible controls and the soundtrack was trash, etc."

Or if Person B said: "I agree with you that gaming journalism is the shitter but those Halo games got the scores they deserved because of X,Y, and Z"

How can you say that Person B is the one who brought up Bungie? If you don't agree with Person A's conclusion or if you just don't agree with their example, you need to discuss the example to explain your position.

(I haven't played a Bungie game since Halo 3, I just made those examples up. Sorry halo friends.)

Entirely wrong. First and foremost, the discussion was never about Trump, it was about a method of reporting. Not per se about political journalism as a whole, but sensationalist reporting that's full of "Chicken Little Syndrome" as someone nicely put it in this thread. Forgot who, but props to ya for that term man.

So if the discussion were, say, about journalism sites that were letting the PR company write their articles for them, and the article in question were about Halo, if someone ran in the thread and started flinging shit about Halo instead of the problem at hand, which is poor journalism, they're being an idiot. You're using mental gymnastics to justify someone derailing a thread about sensationalist journalism and how it's a problem or people's opinions on it into their 45,128th thread where they bitch and moan about Trump like he gave him the world's largest anal hemorrhage.

 

[Whole lotta love]

Entirely wrong. First and foremost, the discussion was never about Trump, it was about a method of reporting. Not per se about political journalism as a whole, but sensationalist reporting that's full of "Chicken Little Syndrome" as someone nicely put it in this thread. Forgot who, but props to ya for that term man.

So if the discussion were, say, about journalism sites that were letting the PR company write their articles for them, and the article in question were about Halo, if someone ran in the thread and started flinging shit about Halo instead of the problem at hand, which is poor journalism, they're being an idiot. You're using mental gymnastics to justify someone derailing a thread about sensationalist journalism and how it's a problem or people's opinions on it into their 45,128th thread where they bitch and moan about Trump like he gave him the world's largest anal hemorrhage.

You're assuming that everyone in the thread agrees that journalism is in the shitter which is obviously not the case. I presume you are referring the Xzi as being the person who brought up Trump, but they are doing so to try justify their disagreement to OP's conclusion.

If you don't agree with OP's conclusion, the next logical step is to refute the evidence given to support that conclusion.

In other words, if you don't agree that journalism is poor, you need to refute the example used to justify the claim of journalism being poor.

 

[MaverickWellington]

You're assuming that everyone in the thread agrees that journalism is in the shitter which is obviously not the case. I presume you are referring the Xzi as being the person who brought up Trump, but they are doing so to try justify their disagreement to OP's conclusion.

If you don't agree with OP's conclusion, the next logical step is to refute the evidence given to support that conclusion.

In other words, if you don't agree that journalism is poor, you need to refute the example used to justify the claim of journalism being poor.

I'm not assuming anything of the sort. You're making assumptions yourself in such a regard. OP literally opens with the line, "Regardless of your thoughts on the current US president, what the hell is going on with journalism?"

This isn't the place to cry about Trump and praise Bernie like every other mindless bernout. It's a place to discuss the status of journalism. The thread didn't open about trump, only about a piece that was about him, but Trump was not the focus in the OP. If people want to make their dedicated crying station for Trump, they should make a thread about it rather than hijacking threads into it.

The first post in the thread that focuses on Trump and not journalism itself does not even attempt to refute the statement about sensationalism and how it's started to plague journalism. It's literally just him whining about the US's current state and Trump. So, I'm gonna chalk this up to more "wahh let me cry about trump!!!" than "it's connecting it to politics, don't you see!?"

 

[Whole lotta love]

I'm not assuming anything of the sort. You're making assumptions yourself in such a regard.

How so? How can you say that when I'm one of the people who criticized OP's footing? I posted early in the thread that one of the examples they gave did not support their conclusion.

The first post in the thread that focuses on Trump and not journalism itself does not even attempt to refute the statement about sensationalism and how it's started to plague journalism. It's literally just him whining about the US's current state and Trump. So, I'm gonna chalk this up to more "wahh let me cry about trump!!!" than "it's connecting it topolitics, don't you see!?"

What are you talking about dawg? Xzi's post is about Trump's media coverage. They don't agree with OP's conclusion that the coverage is sensationalist. If you want to be in an echo chamber you can go to the /r/the_donald where they censor any dissenting opinions.

The first post in the thread that focuses on Trump and not journalism itself [...]

"Journalism did not bring us to these new lows, they're only following the lows of Trump's daily life"

How can you say that this is not about journalism???

Further, "journalism itself" doesn't exist. Journalists report on subjects. You cannot separate these two things.

And again, OP brought up Trump as a subject of reporting we can use to draw the conclusion that the reporting is bad. If you don't agree that the reporting is bad, what would be a better way refute OP's conclusion?

This isn't the place to cry about Trump and praise Bernie like every other mindless bernout.

please cut it out with the ad hominem attacks. You're smarter than that. Bernie was mentioned once and was never responded to. Chill out.