Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Trump and Fake News Part II

Earlier I speculated that the golden shower jokes would not stop - so far that's true. I also speculated that Trump might retaliate by kicking the White House Press Corps out of the White House and reopen the White House Pool. Looks like the former might happen still waiting on news about the pool.

So how did we get to this point? In my youth the two most well-known (non-sports) reporters may have been Sam Donaldson (who got famous for literally yelling questions at the President so much that he got parodied on SNL) and Geraldo Rivera whose main motivation in journalism seemed to be a narcissistic need to be famous (when you start with a fake name can fake news be far behind?). You had Dan Rather (CBS) and Brian Williams (NBC) making shit up and Wolf Blitzer (CNN) exposing himself as a moron on Jeopardy! And these are the people the public is supposed to trust for "real news"?

Let's not forget that CNN (whose tagline at the time was "the most trusted name in news") made a deal with Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War about what they could and could not report in exchange for "access".

Now President Trump can just shout "Fake News!" any time he doesn't like the line of questioning and who can blame him? If the media complains the public impression would be the media is whining because the President doesn't like to answer "gotcha" questions from people who don't know anyone who owns a pickup truck.

The media made this bed. Years of "Your child's life is in danger - we'll tell you why after these words from our sponsor" and click-bait journalism have withered away whatever trust the public had. Now most of the public just trusts the media that agrees with their own point of view. So what's the point of a President answering any questions from outlets that may disagree with him or who may be blatantly acting for the opposition party?

It used to be the public turned to the media to find out the who, what, where and sometimes why of a story. Now it's a perverted version of Cui Buono - how does this journalist or media outlet stand to benefit from this story?

The media has a long way to go to regain the public trust. I'm afraid they're not up to the job.

2 comments:

  1. It's to the point where not only is the 'news' shaded entirely blue, but anything they do report can be construed as the exact opposite of the truth - "Story of the Century - not a flake of snow" "Hillary innocent - Hillary guilty" "He wasn't a terrorist - he's definitely a terrorist" "Random white attacked me because X - you makin' shit up"

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