Why Everyone Hates The Press

Mary Katherine Ham explains:

The article ends as if to purposely reiterate how little the industry is interested in learning: “In a recent exchange with the White House press corps, then deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made hay over the retraction of a Trump-related story by CNN—an example of a news organization owning up to a mistake, as it should—and urged reporters to focus instead on a video by James O’Keefe, a right-wing provocateur whose work has been widely discredited.”

This paragraph embodies the problem. How is it that the media doesn’t realize it, too, has credibility to lose? It, too, has been repeatedly discredited—not just for one story, and not just in the eyes of angry Trump supporters. It should want to rectify that. But Warren ignores these mistakes just as the press itself often does. He gives them a giant pass on the job of understanding America in 2016 and a glancing mention of fabulist Jayson Blair. He congratulates them for doing the basics to correct a mistake, and then expects all Americans to laud the Redfords and Hoffmans while condemning the O’Keefes of the world.

The press is constantly saying this president is losing credibility without recognizing it is in the exact same predicament. New York Times editor Dean Baquet sits in his office adorned with “mock front pages…parting gifts from colleagues at the many papers where he has worked” while Trump roams his golf course properties admiring his mock Time magazine covers. These guys, and the institutions they head, have much more in common than they’d like to think. Stop admiring yourselves and deal with your problems.

I would also note that Donald Trump and Barack Obama also have a lot more in common than their admirers (and particularly the admirers of the latter) would like to admit.

4 thoughts on “Why Everyone Hates The Press”

  1. When I was in high school, a fellow student said she wanted to go into journalism because she wanted to help people. I really think most journalists think they are doing God’s work, and by ‘God’ I mean the State, and by ‘journalists’ I mean Bilwick’s “tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State-fellator”

  2. Re O’Keefe, when a “liberal” says someone or something has been “discredited,” my sure-fire built-in BS detector automatically translates “discredited” as “true.”

  3. All people have more in common than not. To see oneself clearly just look at the worst of humanity and realize you are looking at a mirror.

    When does truth become a lie? When it’s repeated often enough to simply be bashing. When the big picture is totally lost in the obscure.

    When cutting off your own nose is more important than moving your own agenda forward. The only way to get the ‘perfect’ president is to be that president… then realize you ain’t it.

    Rumor has it we have one president right now. What’s the best way to get what we want? It isn’t by fantisizing a different outcome from an election or hoping for an impeachment that will never happen. Especially when such an impeachment just gives us another fool that can’t fix the problems.

    What would fix some problems? Giving real support to a president when he does the right thing (even if a blind squirrel.) Trump is the luckiest blind squirrel ever. …or just continue to spite your face.

    Bashing is not being true.

  4. Journalists have been viewed as close to scum historically. It was only recently the pedestal was erected for this unelected priestly caste.

    I’ve long thought that Trump is like Obama. Is there a behavior exhibited in the campaign that Obama didn’t do first? Trump also targeted similar groups as Obama. It looks like a lot of this is intentional. The main difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump isn’t an ideologue who hates the USA. When Obama broke laws or acted unethically, it was to damage the country or persecute people who would point it out. I suspect that if/when Trump skirts those lines, it will be in the service of the country.

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