@revelette1,
Around the time of the election there was a lot of discussion about whether or not journalists should accuse people of flat out lying.
Reasonable voices expressed that lying clearly implied the intent to deceive and that as journalists were unable to read people's minds it was sufficient, not to mention far more civil, to point out that what the person said was not supported by any factual evidence or it was not true based on all available evidence and then leave it to their viewers and readers to decide if the person was intentionally trying to deceive.
The Rubicon has been crossed as far as that issue goes and now journalists not only feel free to call anyone and everyone liars, they've created their own convenient definition of the sin.
Quote:The White House communications staff (including Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders) routinely lies in service of the president. They say things that they either know to be untrue or have no knowledge of whatsoever and present as truth anyway (only to be proven wrong).
Putting aside whether or not the above is itself true, if I present something which I don't know to be true as the truth, I am talking out of my ass, but not lying, and if what I presented turns out to untrue it doesn't make me a liar, just as if it turns out to be true it doesn't mean I wasn't talking out of my ass. Talking out of one's ass is not a good thing to have going on in the White House briefing room, but it's not lying.
Well if it's bad then what difference does it make?
The
difference made flows directly from the subject which journalists are now so fast and loose with, the truth.
If you're not yourself telling the truth when you accuse someone of lying you are talking out of your ass, and you prove you don't really care about truth telling, but simply want to inflict wounds.
The Democrats do and say nasty and unethical things and take far too much advantage of their power when they have it, but so do the Republicans. If Republicans turn up sleaze and sink to new lows, the Democrats with follow suit, and the reverse is true. It is a sleazy balance but it is a balance of some kind.
There is no balance with present day journalism though and there hasn't been for some time.
The balance that needs to be struck in journalism is not between journalists and Republican officials. It is between the way they treat Republicans and the way they treat Democrats.
Unless you believe that there was no lying going on at the White House during the Obama years (which I'm sure no few of you do believe) it's perfectly clear that journalists have adjusted their approach to what they believe are falsehoods coming from the White House, and they didn't do it because they thought
"Well for eight years we were fed and accepted lies from the White House and this was wrong so we are not going to make that mistake again!"
The change isn't a correction, it is a response to a president they detest or think they should detest and everyone associated with him. Suddenly lying and talking out of one's ass are unpardonable sins and it's the sacred duty of journalists to unveil falsehoods and call a spade a spade, even if it's actually a club.
The MSM is at war with the White House.
While it is certainly the case that Trump more than helped light the fuse and he and many of his aides are just as happy as journalists to be at war with one another, the reality (which of course will be roundly denied) is that Trump was destined to be at war with the MSM even if he had never said a single bad word about journalists, and the only way he could have avoided the conflict was to be a clone of Obama.
Far too many journalists are the sort of petty shitheads that write you up with 15 silly violations because you were rude when they pulled you over for speeding, or
lose your application because you complained about the length of a line or how slow the clerks are. Just like the shithead TSA agent who orders a strip search because you criticize her or her colleagues professionalism. People who abuse their power to satisfy petty personal grudges.
Trump has been unlike so many Republican fools in the past. He knows a double standard will always be applied, he knows that he will be treated far differently than Democrat presidents because he is a Republican one, but he refuses to try, like John McCain and Jeb Bush, to get the MSM to like him. McCain was and is very successful with his efforts. He's funny, candid, open to reporters and most importantly, quite willing to criticize his fellow Republicans, and most especially the Republican president because the the guy had the audacity to not ignore McCain's opposition to his candidacy and the nasty things he was saying about him, and attacked him about his service. An insult that was guaranteed to win the everlasting enmity of the Arizona Senator and failed presidential candidate.
Trump's insult was offensive and beyond the pale, but it wasn't gratuitous. Trump the infamous counter-puncher who can't let even a minor insult pass without responding with a worse one would not have said anything about McCain if he didn't know what McCain was saying about him. You can look at all of his foolish and intemperate blow ups and virtually all of them have been in response to a perceived attack. (And Trump may have skin that is ridiculously thin, but he's not truly paranoid. What he perceives as insults and slights may not be worth his time and effort to respond to, but he is not misreading them).
Overreacting with counter-punches has, obviously, served him well over the years, or at least hasn't hurt him enough to teach him any lesson other than some version of
"Don't start a fight, but if someone starts one with you, crush them!"
I don't find this admirable and I wish he would scale it way, way back, but he's not a fool when it comes to the MSM. They are not the enemy of America (although they are not it's defenders either) but they are [
b]his[/b] enemy. I would bet my house that there are no journalists standing around the bar at a DC party bemoaning the fact they are compelled to do battle with the White House. Considering the way he has spoken about them and treated some of them, I guess the reaction is part of the nature of humans but it's not professional. I would then bet my business that most of the journalists attacking Trump (never say 100%) love it. Their Irish is up and they all tell one another they are defending American democracy, but it's personal and petty.
However just as the MSM turned on Maverick McCain their favorite neo-con when he had the audacity to run against the anointed one in 2008 (The NYT went so far as to publish "fake news" about an alleged extra-marital affair) they would do the same to Trump had he attempted to curry favor with him. Arguably that's just what happened. Prior to entering the race for the GOP nomination, Trump had a great relationship with the MSM. He was colorful, outspoken, a sweet-talker when he wanted to be...always good for a story. It wasn't incongruous that Billy Bush of Access Hollywod followed Trump around like a lapdog with a **** eating grin on his face.
It's all secondary though to the severe imbalance at work here.
The Democrats feel they are justified in going for Trumps throat because of the way Republicans treated Obama and if there is a Democrat in the White House in 2021 you can expect the same level of vitriol from the GOP. They are locked into an escalating and self-perpetuating battle that is hardly good for the country, but, again, there is a rough balance.
We can expect folks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to savage the next Democrat president, but they are not part of the MSM. The notion that the MSM is even split between liberals and conservative is absurd. Even if I stipulated that Fox News might as well be owned by the GOP, it is
one network imbalanced with MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS.
There are roughly the same number of listeners to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered as there are to the top three right-wing talk radio show, and if you listen to any of the latter you know that they all preach to the choir, they're not influencing anyone. Every once in a while you'll hear someone tell Limbaugh that they were a flaming Lefty until they start listening to his show. While we're at it, let's stipulate as well that Limbaugh is Satan's spawn who has the power to alter the minds of the unwary. How many victims do you think he has each year?
(But I get it, if he wasn't out there lying and destroying some of the people whose horrible notions he reinforces might find their way to A2K and be enlightened and saved by blatham's blog)
If Warren wins the presidency in 2020, lying and malfeasance will continue to share White House residency with the president and her family. The atmosphere may be less charged and chaotic, but the same patterns of governing that some of us hoped a Trump Administration might mount a significant response to will continue too.
What will not continue is the MSM's war with the president.
