Here
and
Now

opinions

Media struggle for balance in covering hostile Trump

11 Comments

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

© 2017 AFP

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

11 Comments
Login to comment

“The war for freedom of the press in the Trump era must be fought on many fronts,” Dawes wrote.

Hear, hear! It's worrying that so many people are attacking the press and even asking to see press freedoms limited.

I can understand the paid Russian keyboard brigade members who've been employed to try to drag the US media down to Russian level (ranked 148th on the World Press Freedom Index); that's their job.

But I can't understand why any American would want to have restrictions placed on a free press. Today with the Internet a wider range of sources and opinions can be found than at any time in history. People can choose from any or all of them to form opinions. It's worrying that fake news is becoming so common, but people need to find ways to sort truths for themselves. Laws against liable and slander must be upheld to protect those wrongfully accused.

Kim, King Salman, the Ayatollah, Putin and like-minded despots stifle a free press (or own their own media empires and profit from them ala Putin) to maintain control over a public that's force fed information. Americans should resist any efforts by Trump, Bannon etal to do the same.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

I disagree that the media is struggling to find a balanced approach to reporting on Trump. MSM is obviously just trying to bring him down. Criticism is healthy, criticism is always needed - but 97% criticism ( or so ) is not balanced.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

The White House may have some justification for claiming the press is unfair: an NBC survey last month found 53 percent of Americans believed the media was exaggerating problems in the Trump administration.

This is why American press is utterly powerless to fight the Trump Republican administration's propaganda machine: profits come before all else, and in the era of social networking profits can only come from engagement with your audience. Your audience says something is true, even if they don't have a shred of evidence or believe it for partisan, conspiracy theory-driven purposes, and you have to give them benefit of the doubt.

It wasn't always like this: In past decades before social media took off what brought the press money was drama. Hence the creation of Crossfire-type shows that trained the viewing public to believe the most interesting part of news was conflict between two intractable forces. It didn't matter if you were right or wrong, what mattered was that you opposed someone else vehemently. And definitely there was no interest in resolving conflicts - that would kill profit's golden goose. No, resolution is for very smart, very boring people who don't make good TV.

Fast-forward to today, you have a public trained to be less interested in evidence than in getting in good zingers at people who disagree with you. You have a public trained to be less interested in resolving disagreements than in trolling people who disagree with them. You have a public practically begging for Big Brother's Ministry of Truth to spew out all the propaganda they can handle.

The news can't fight this unless they radically re-orient how they do business. And American news organizations just aren't that nimble.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

I disagree that the media is struggling to find a balanced approach to reporting on Trump. MSM is obviously just trying to bring him down. Criticism is healthy, criticism is always needed - but 97% criticism ( or so ) is not balanced.

The amount of criticism as an absolute number is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the amount of criticism is proportionate to the amount of things he does worthy of criticism compares to those worthy of praise.

Right now, 97% seems pretty accurate on the criticism side.

Reporting more good stuff than he's actually doing would be unbalanced.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

Trump needs to start answering questions put to him regardless of where they come from. As the president it is his duty to put Americans first, but brushing questions he doesn't like or can't answer aside and constantly calling news he doesn't like fake news is not serving anybody but himself. Deny and retaliate... I don't think we'll see that strategy change.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

karlrbMAR. 06, 2017 - 10:07AM JST I disagree that the media is struggling to find a balanced approach to reporting on Trump. MSM is obviously just trying to bring him down. Criticism is healthy, criticism is always needed - but 97% criticism ( or so ) is not balanced.

"Balance" is why American media is so garbage at the moment. Instead of believing in objective, knowable facts, the public has been raised to believe that the truth is some kind of nebulous middle point between two points of view. Balance is fine when you have differences of opinion like what policies the government should follow, but when it comes to facts like the fact that humans have seriously contributed to global climate change or that a Presidential appointee lied about his contacts with Russia under oath to Congress, "balance" is just a short way for saying "one of the people we're listening to in this conversation may be correct, and one of them definitely isn't, but we're going to let them pretend to have equal merit for the sake of balance.

If the media is reporting on people who have criticized Trump, that's fact. There is no need for balance, especially when the President's own defenses against that criticism are nearly always objectively-speaking, falsehoods.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

How does one give a balanced report about a man who lies two thirds of the time, and acts unhinged?

"Today, the Idiot-in-Chief threatened to invade Mexico."

"Today, the Idiot-in-Chief, without a single shred of evidence, accused Pres. Obama of illegally trying to derail his presidential campaign, in an effort to deflect attention from the mounting evidence that Trump cooperated with Putin to destroy the validity of the American presidential election."

"Today, claiming he did it for national security, the Idiot-in-Chief signed an executive order effectively banning Muslim immigrants to America from seven countries that have a record of zero terrorist attacks against Americans."

"Tomorrow, it is almost 100% guaranteed that the American Idiot-in-Chief will tell more monstrous lies, while calling for more irrational and counter-productive actions by America."

1 ( +2 / -1 )

from the mounting evidence that Trump cooperated with Putin to destroy the validity of the American presidential election.>

Uh, where would this mounting evidence be? James Clapper:

Clapper was also asked on "Meet the Press" if he had any evidence that the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russian government while the Kremlin was working to influence the election. "Not to my knowledge," Clapper said, based on the information he had before his time in the position ended. "We did not include anything in our report … that had any reflect of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report," he said. "We had no evidence of such collusion."

Yet, all the media still talking about Russia like it has been proven somehow. Basically the wiretapping allegations and the Russian collusion are the same. Both have no evidence yet and only anonymous sources. So why is the Russia stuff presented as true when the wiretapping is not?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

from the mounting evidence that Trump cooperated with Putin to destroy the validity of the American presidential election.

I don't see that any evidence of cooperation has been presented publicly as of yet. There are plenty of things that arouse suspicion - so many of Trump's campaign having met with the Russians being one, and his unwillingness to release his tax returns another. But those could very well just be circumstantial. We don't know what was discussed in the mettings, nor what is in his tax returns.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Stranger stop hiding behind the Internet.

Moderator: You can have 24 hours off from posting. During this time, please refamiliarize yourself with the rules of the discussion board.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

More Left Wing garbage and denial. The media in America is stuffed with bias and cheap hatreds, The general attack on Trump has been disgraceful and demeaning to America's masses.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites