PDA

View Full Version : The Exaggerated Claims of Media Bias Against Donald Trump




CPUd
08-17-2016, 02:13 PM
The Exaggerated Claims of Media Bias Against Donald Trump

Is the news media biased against Donald Trump?

That charge has been aired in recent days not only by the billionaire candidate, who negs CNN, The New York Times, and the press generally at almost every opportunity, but by several thoughtful political commentators who don’t much like him.

These media critics all cited the same example: coverage of the Republican nominee’s controversial statement that President Obama was “the founder of ISIS.”

That coverage was hardly uniform.

Overgeneralizing in a way that obscured the diversity of approaches different journalists took to the story, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist wrote, “The media immediately decided Trump was claiming that Obama had literally incorporated ISIS a few years back. And they treated this literal claim as a fact that needed to be debunked.”

She accused the media of “hyper-literalism.”

At The Week, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry concurred.

“With all the lies, all the exaggerations, all the ridiculousness that spews forth from his mouth, the media still finds ways to twist and misrepresent what he says,” Gobry wrote. “Take last week's stupid Trump controversy. The GOP nominee, we're informed, believes Barack Obama founded ISIS. Those are words Trump said. It's also true that Trump has trafficked in insane conspiracy theories, so, who knows. But does he actually mean it literally, in the way that when he links Ted Cruz's father to the JFK assassination that's literally what he means to imply? Actually, no. Trump means it figuratively—he means that Obama's policies caused the rise of ISIS.”

...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/claims-of-media-bias-against-donald-trump-are-exaggerated/495977/

Petar
08-17-2016, 02:30 PM
You're just saying that because you're biased against Donald Trump.

CPUd
08-17-2016, 02:31 PM
I'm not saying anything. The article does make a few good points though. Have you read it?

Petar
08-17-2016, 02:35 PM
I'm not saying anything. The article does make a few good points though. Have you read it?

You're just saying that promoting that idea because you're biased against Donald Trump.

CPUd
08-17-2016, 02:36 PM
What idea?

Mordan
08-17-2016, 02:47 PM
CPUd is a paid troll. Look at his open questions. That's all he does in response.

Antischism
08-17-2016, 03:33 PM
The funniest thing is the people who lambaste the "mainstream media" are the first to parrot bullsh!t from no-name right-wing sites and Facebook memes — things that are easily debunked. The same people that think Breitbart has any sort of journalistic integrity.

69360
08-17-2016, 05:20 PM
You're just saying that because you're biased against Donald Trump.

I hate Trump. The media is very obviously biased against Trump though.

hells_unicorn
08-17-2016, 07:21 PM
The author of this article suggests that there is "diversity in journalism", which immediately tripped my B.S. meter. There is actually diversity in journalism, but that is what is referred to as the Alternative Media, which still doesn't have a majority or even an equal share of the audience, though that will hopefully change in the coming years. As far as the MSM goes, it's incest of the likes that would even make the most backward hicks in Appalachia blush.

Antischism
08-17-2016, 08:42 PM
You need not conflate "bias" with a mere reflection of Trump's propensity for fibbing, speaking ambiguously, and self-contradiction.


If they merely report what Trump literally says, they’re accused of hyper-literalism. If they report what he really means, judgment and interpretation are required.

But if they render judgment, “Trump is using misleading language to appeal to the portion of his supporters that regard Obama as a foreign enemy,” a proposition for which there is evidence, or “Trump is willfully obscuring the truth in order to attract media attention,” an interpretation justified by Trump’s own words, then they will be accused of bias for reporting subjective interpretations as fact.

Because Trump’s statements are so various and self-contradictory, there will always be some phrase he has spoken that reflects better on him than his other words. Surely the media critics don’t expect the press to ignore all the indefensible nonsense, pluck out the least indefensible hedge across multiple appearances, and present that to the American people as what Trump really and truly meant?

That would be hugely misleading! (The media critics are themselves misled. Note that Gobry, who accuses the media of twisting Trump’s words, purports to agree with Hemingway, though her complaint is that the media presents Trump’s words too literally.)


To conflate confused press coverage of a sort that a candidate deliberately induces and could avoid by speaking more clearly with “media bias” does a disservice to actual victims of media bias. Actual victims of media bias do not contrive to be misunderstood or deliberately induce outraged coverage.

And they quickly clarify their meaning, rather than giving self-contradictory followups. Any fool could avoid much of the bad press Trump gets … if that’s what they wanted.

Had Bernie Sanders declared that Ted Cruz’s father helped kill JFK, had Jill Stein posited that Barack Obama was a founder of ISIS, had Hillary Clinton claimed to have opposed the Iraq War from the start, they would all have been criticized and fact-checked for their obviously false statements, just like Donald Trump.

The man gets unusually bad press because he does an unusual number of things that are dishonest, calculated to provoke, and upsetting to sources on the right and left.

He isn’t a victim of bias, but of his own behavior.

twomp
08-17-2016, 10:20 PM
CPUd is a paid troll. Look at his open questions. That's all he does in response.

This is a liberty oriented forum. You authoritarian worshipers that are openly shilling for an authoritarian for president are the trolls. I would say you were paid trolls but you aren't bright enough so I doubt you all are being paid for it.

jmdrake
08-17-2016, 10:34 PM
*Sig* Here's the truth and anyone with half a brain can figure it out. The media is no more biased than when Trump was winning by and landslide in the GOP primaries. What has changed is the audience. In the GOP primaries once Trump staked out his position as the "immigration savior" nothing else mattered. Trump's campaign should have been over when he insulted ever prisoner of war ever by saying "I prefer the soldiers that don't get captured." The phony conservative media that took down Ron Paul didn't take down Trump for that and other idiotic statements. Sure the liberal media took on Trump back then, but that only helped him in the GOP primaries. Now the audience has changed. And the majority of this new audience thinks that attacking a Gold Star family, even if they are Muslim and the wife wears a hijab, is stupid and asinine. Trump tried to fix this on Hannity by saying "I wasn't talking about the Khans" with regards to the "Don't let the Muslims in" policy. But his supporters dug such a hole for it that it's hard for him to get out of it.

Here's what Trump needs to do to win. He has to change the narrative. Right now Hillary is being sued for libel by two of the Benghazi families. But how many people know that? Hell, I can't even think of the name of the Benghazi mother who spoke at the RNC. Trump should bring her up everytime he is asked about the Khans.