Shep Smith: Journalists are not the enemy of the people

As an example,



this is, excuse me, pure drivel. It is estimated that there are 6 million US ex-pats. They live and work and start businesses and thrive in other nations to a greater or lesser degree. Other countries nationals also live and work abroad.

You seem to be combining some kind of weird patriotism with an even weirder "economic" theory.

Do you think that those 'expats' are disconnected from the US economy? They are bringing capital, financial and otherwise, which locals see as an opportunity to milk benefits from the US economy. How many of them do you think derive all their operating capital from local investors? How many people abroad do you think want to invest their money in these US expat businesses instead of local businesses and local people? Do you understand that they are looking to use US investments to produce jobs for 'their' people and if a US expat is in competition with 'their' people, they will favor citizens over US and non-US migrants over US migrants generally? Check out European hiring laws. They will hire an EU citizen with another nationality only if someone of the local nationality isn't available. Then, they will hire a US applicant only if there's no special program to aide migrants who qualify for special placement. Generally there is unemployment everywhere that prevents people from wanting to 'share' jobs with foreigners. That is a sad form of ethnic/national territorialism over the economy, but it happens. If US people or other 'foreigners' are getting jobs it is because they are seen as a tool for bringing more US dollars into those local economies, not because people are investing local money in their productivity, at least not if there is someone else local whom they can invest in instead.

Why are you denying that there is national-social territorialism going on in economies everywhere? Are you really pretending that national favoritism and discrimination begins and ends in the US? It is a global phenomenon. I wish the US or any other government was strong enough to stop it but it's something that happens at the most fundamental level of discriminatory preference, like racial discrimination, so people can always discriminate and then lie about their reasons. I'm against it, but I am not going to deny that it happens. Why are you?

You mean that if Trump would post on a2k rather than on twitter, we all should stop calling him a traitor and a bigot?

I wouldn't.

If I told people what I really think of them, well, it would be ugly.

Keep in mind, Setanta is the nicer of the two of us.

Don't be shy, bring it on...

Why don't you tell us what China did and why it is better. Thanks.

AP

They have you gullible USians right where they want you, rev - petrified little children.

President Trump's Description of What's 'Fake' Is Expanding
September 2, 20187:02 AM ET
TAMARA KEITH

President Trump was bombarded with negative news cycles last month, so he turned to Twitter, venting frustrations and dismissing an increasingly wide variety of things he doesn't like as "fake" or "phony." Presidential tweets about "fake news" aren't new, but August was unique in the sheer frequency of such presidential declarations on Twitter. There were more tweets in August about things Trump labels fake and phony than in any other month of his presidency.

This is part of a trend: as Trump's presidency has gone on, these kinds of tweets have increased over time, with peaks coming in months with particularly bad headlines for the president.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
I just cannot state strongly enough how totally dishonest much of the Media is. Truth doesn’t matter to them, they only have their hatred & agenda. This includes fake books, which come out about me all the time, always anonymous sources, and are pure fiction. Enemy of the People!

The range of things Trump is declaring fake is growing too. Last month he tweeted about "fake books," "the fake dossier," "fake CNN," and he added a new claim – that Google search results are "RIGGED" to mostly show only negative stories about him. He also accused NBC News' Lester Holt of "fudging" the tape of his May 2017 interview conducted shortly after Trump fired FBI director James Comey.

An NPR analysis found that in the month of August, Trump sent out 46 tweets containing the words "fake" or "phony," far surpassing his previous record. (Two of the tweets were later deleted to fix typos).

August was also a month in which former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman turned on the president with a tell-all book, Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted on eight felony counts and Trump's long-time personal attorney Michael Cohen implicated the president in campaign finance violations when he entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

In October 2017, Trump tweeted about things being "fake" or "phony" 30 times. It was a record for the year, with two events dominating Trump's tweets.

Trump visited hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico and declared the response a success all while fighting with local officials who begged for more assistance.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
A great day in Puerto Rico yesterday. While some of the news coverage is Fake, most showed great warmth and friendship.

As that month closed out, Trump's attention turned to the Russia investigation, especially after Manafort was indicted and George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was "no collusion" and events mentioned took place long before he...

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
....came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!

In June 2018, a month with 31 "fake" or "phony" tweets, Trump took issue with coverage of the Singapore summit with North Korea, family separation along the U.S.-Mexico border and, as usual, the Russia investigation.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The Fake News Media is desperate to distract from the economy and record setting economic numbers and so they keep talking about the phony Russian Witch Hunt.

"Donald Trump more and more is calling into question every other source of information besides himself," said Brendan Nyhan, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies misinformation and trust in the media.

While some of Trump's core supporters believe him unflinchingly, for others the tweets and similar statements raise doubts and sow confusion about what the truth really is, said Nyhan.

"I think Americans are often very concerned when they see leaders with authoritarian tendencies telling their supporters things that are false over and over again and attacking other sources of information," said Nyhan. "And if that worries you when you see it abroad, it should worry you when you see it here too."

Trump is far from the first president to grouse about the way the press covers him, presidential historian Michael Beschloss said. What's different, Beschloss argued, is that Trump doesn't seem to share his predecessors' appreciation of the necessity of a free press as contemplated by the country's founders.

Trump also has a unique ability to deliver his complaints directly to the public via friendly hosts on Fox News and through his social media streams. "He's got social media that reaches perhaps 100 million people," said Beschloss. "We've never seen a president before with that kind of weapon."

Often when Trump says something is fake, it isn't false. Rather, he just doesn't like it. On May 9th, he posted a tweet that pulled back the curtain on this idea; "91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake)," he wrote.

Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The Fake News is working overtime. Just reported that, despite the tremendous success we are having with the economy & all things else, 91% of the Network News about me is negative (Fake). Why do we work so hard in working with the media when it is corrupt? Take away credentials?

"They don't cover stories the way they're supposed to be. They don't even report them in many cases, if they're positive," Trump said at a press conference in June. "I came up with a term. Fake news. It's a lot of Fake News."

Trump used to say the monthly unemployment figures were fake too. "Because the number is a phony number, five percent," then-candidate Trump said in August 2016 during a speech in Florida. "It's not down to five percent. It's probably 20 or 21 percent. Some people think it's higher."

But that was before the election. Now that Trump is president, he no longer calls the unemployment rate phony. In fact, he touts low unemployment as one of his great achievements and complains the "fake news" media doesn't cover it enough.

Nowhere near the rate the Mueller investigation expanded to 12year old tax fraud and porn stars. Not to mention persecuting Trumps associates for the explicit reason to find an impeachable crime. You have no room to talk.

It's not fake when it's true.

And especially when the world's only known serial pants on fire liar says it's fake news.

Trump Has Changed How Teens View the News
Young people can see the president’s tweets as jokes, but they still often share his negative feelings about the press.

TAYLOR LORENZ
AUG 29, 2018

Since President Trump took office, he has relentlessly attacked the media. He’s shunned individual reporters, referred to the press as “the enemy of the American people,” and popularized the term “fake news” to denigrate credible articles. Meanwhile, public trust in the press is at an all-time low. According to a recent Knight-Gallup report, only a third of Americans view the press positively.

There is increasing evidence that this skepticism, exacerbated by the president’s relentless attacks, is trickling down to the next generation of voters. A 2017 report on a series of focus groups with 52 people between the ages of 14 and 24, conducted by Data & Society and the Knight Foundation, found that many young Americans believe the news is biased and are skeptical of its accuracy. “There was no assumption that the news would convey the truth or would be worthy of their trust,” the study reported.

Teenagers, in particular, appear to be increasingly questioning the credibility and value of traditional media organizations. In interviews with The Atlantic, teens expressed great skepticism about the accuracy of the mainstream media, reiterated Trump’s biased characterization of many news sources, and said the president’s outrageous tweets have become so much a part of everyday life that they’ve morphed into catchphrases.

The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
“I don’t believe there [are] any neutral news organizations,” said Emma Neely, a 19-year-old in Tennessee. “Each writer and editor has their own personal bias. What they write, even if it’s a little biased, it’s still biased.”

Angie, a 16-year-old in New York, agreed. She contends that Trump’s comments have revealed to people that the news media cannot be trusted. “I think this whole phenomenon has given teens awareness that bias exists and things are not what they seem,” she said.

Sally, a 17-year-old in Puerto Rico, said she’s learned not to trust the media and was disappointed with the biases she found in how some outlets handled coverage of Hurricane Maria’s destruction. “They say what they want to say,” she said. “I don’t feel they say the truth as it is.”

Social media has given young people unprecedented access to real-time news. Many teens I spoke with follow the president, other politicians, journalists, and news outlets on Twitter. The ones who don’t follow Trump directly all said they were aware of almost everything he tweets thanks to screenshots posted to Snapchat or Instagram, where his comments are warped into punch lines and memes.

“I see a huge change from six years ago,” said Kathleen Carver, an AP government teacher at Wylie East High School in Texas. “When I started working, students weren’t really interested or even knowledgeable about basic current issues. Today, though, students are talking about current events ... Kids talk about current events and issues like it’s high-school gossip. It’s become a lot more relevant to them.”

That doesn’t mean they take the president seriously. Even teenagers who said they identified as conservative-leaning said they joke about the outrageousness of Trump’s comments. Carver said that she has been amazed at how quickly Trump’s tweets are adapted into punch lines in her classroom. “When I say a crazy fact or something that shocks the students, I always have a student yell out ‘fake news,’ which causes a lot of laughter,” she said.

“The younger internet, we all understand it’s irresponsible of [Trump to tweet], but at the same time we laugh at it and make it into a meme,” said Colin, a 16-year-old in Pennsylvania. “Like how often does a person tweet ‘Thank you Kanye, very cool’? ... People see something crazy now and say ‘thank you Kanye very cool,’ or they edit random stuff over [Trump’s] tweets.”

“I can’t take him seriously if he’s tweeting more than I do,” said Samara, a 16-year-old in Texas. “A lot of people have him blocked, it’s like whatever.”

Trolling the president on his own social channels by replying to his tweets or commenting on his Instagram is entertaining, said several teens, but the amount of backlash you get from conservative-leaning accounts when doing so gets old. Bennet, a 15-year-old in Massachusetts who asked to be referred to by gender-neutral pronouns, said they often go on Instagram or Twitter to “comment something snarky. I get the usual, ‘oh you’re some dumb liberal blah blah. You’re stupid antifa.’”

Student journalism in the age of media distrust

CJ Pearson, a 16-year-old conservative commentator, said the reason why Trump’s messages permeate so deeply into teen culture is because “President Trump understands the meme culture better than so many people. Every tweet he makes doesn’t just live on Twitter. It goes across every platform and stirs discussion among people who aren’t even political.”

Pearson, an avid Trump supporter, said he has lots of friends with political beliefs different from his own, but even they are hyperaware of everything the president does and says, and enjoy debating it. “Trump has been able to connect with teens in a way no president has before,” he said. “When Obama wanted to connect with young people, he sat down with [the 46-year-old YouTube star] Glozell, someone his own age. If Trump wants to reach young people, he’ll just tweet.”

Even Pearson doesn’t take what the president says on Twitter seriously. “I will literally reply to a tweet, quote tweet it like, ‘LMAO,’ because that’s what I’m doing when I read the tweet. I’m laughing so hard,” he said.

As much as they laugh, though, Trump’s negative views on the media have undoubtedly affected teens’ views of certain outlets. The teens I spoke with often had strong opinions about CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fox News. Colin said he tries to avoid CNN and most mainstream news sites, instead following independent journalists he likes on YouTube. “In 2016, I became a little more skeptical of the mainstream media, just because I know how corporate donors and commercials work,” he said. “Why wouldn’t CNN endorse Clinton or talk about her in a better way than Trump when Time Warner was donating so much money to her campaign?” (CNN did not officially endorse any candidate in the last election, but Trump supporters have frequently attacked the network for what they have seen as a pro-Clinton bias.)

Laura Medici Fleming, a history teacher at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey for 35 years, said she’s seen a huge shift in the way her students perceive mainstream news organizations. “When I first started teaching, the word of The New York Times was practically gospel, but that has changed in the past few years,” she said. “The current climate has had an impact. Some of the students make disparaging comments about CNN and ‘fake news.’ And some roll their eyes at Fox.”

Carver said she’s had to alter which news sources she uses to teach her students, since if she presents an article from the wrong “side,” students will write the information off. “If I present CNN or Fox, that may automatically cause some limitations,” she said.

Travis Grandt, a history teacher in Colorado, said that he was once admonished by kids in his classroom for pulling up an article from CNN on the classroom’s smart board before class started. Grandt said a student told him it was obvious CNN was picking on Trump, based on the headlines. “I asked him if it seemed ridiculous that there are lots of stories about the most powerful person in the world on an international news site,” Grandt said. “He said no, but all of the stories on CNN were super negative.”

For “non-biased news,” the teens I spoke to said they turn directly to journalists themselves or news-related pages on social media vetted by people they trust. “I follow a few political Instagram accounts,” Colin said. “They’ll post memes and headlines and stuff and people discuss them. Political Instagram is a thing. It’s sort of like a weird mesh between a meme page and a news page.”

Pearson said that he thinks it’s much more valuable to follow individual journalists online than faceless media networks. “I put the same weight on tweets from reporters as a story they actually have a byline on,” he said. “If you have a checkmark there’s a lot of credibility that comes with that.”

Neely said she also mostly gets her news on Twitter and follows several journalists, though she doesn’t trust most of what she sees. “On Twitter, there’s always all kinds of different news stories coming up. You never know if they’re real or not, of course,” she said. “Sometimes if I see a news story on Twitter, I’ll go on Instagram and look up the person they’re talking about to get more information on who the person is.”

One thing teens did feel positively about was their ability to impact the broader media and political landscape. They all felt empowered by social media to make their voices heard, despite the fact that most still can’t vote. “Teenagers and young people in general have taken the world by storm,” said Isabel, a 13-year-old in New York. “We are human beings with real minds. Whether you want to listen to us is your choice but we are going to talk and be heard out in the long run.”

That Trump has made more people aware of the biases of News, is a good thing. We should question what we read and hear as news. And that it could result in news corporations questioning the sensationalist ways they report news, is certainly a benefit (if it occurs)

That he continues to attack the media so strongly, is a bad thing. The institution is still necessary to democracy.

I don't believe that you know the meaning of hypocrisy, hypocritical, hypocrite, vikorr. How can you advance these ideas when you don't follow them yourself?

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about. - Wayne Dyer

And I'll add to Mr Dyer's quote, "and totally refuse to learn anything about that 'something'.

Journalists like Shep Smith, and he is hardly the only one, are not journalists at all. If 3000 plus architects and engineers, thousands of scientists, ... were discussing and urging governments to open new investigations into anything else besides "you know what", journalists, real journalists would be all over it.

When there are so many absolute impossibilities about you know what and journalists do nothing but help cover up, these people are no better than the rankest propagandists that the Nazis had, or any other rank propagandists/journalists in countries like the USA, Australia, Canada, UK, ... .

Do you have any issue with the concept you quoted?

Or are you just on a personal vendetta?

And you could always link what you consider to be 'my hypocrisy'. I am happy for anyone to read for themselves, and make up their own mind. I'm rather certain they'll see through your delusions.

The truth is necessary to democracy. The MSM hardly tells the truth because it refuses to say one thing positive about Trump's policies. Any sort of bias distorts the truth and that is not the job of a free press.

I agree that truth is necessary to democracy. Just as I have said (among other things) previously in this thread , that media are often terrible at conveying it, to such an extent they often, purposely, mislead people with selected facts (the omissions doing the misleading).

Can you give us some examples?

Yes, and I have stated it. You mouth all the "right" things but you don't seem to be able to put them into practice.

Granted, journalists are as bad as you have been. You, at least, took a peek, but it was too much for your brain.



This is dishonest. You seem to like dishonesty too. Not at all. It's simply that your hypocrisy is so stunning. The ease with which you can say/do diametrically opposed things, with no awareness of just how hypocritical you are being is breath taking.



Yeah, right. Who is brave enough to venture to those threads. People here are so frightened by what they know is there that even the "scientists" like farmerman is afraid to venture there.

BillRM [??] wandered in and scattered to the four winds as soon as he met reality/the science.