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[RedKing]

There's something highly farcical about border patrol agents suddenly having their birth certificates questioned.

Farcical, and yet also terrifying. We're now talking about retroactively removing someone's citizenship based on nothing more than very loose circumstantial evidence , and putting the onus of proof on the accused. Actual libertarians should be screaming from the rooftops about this. But I doubt that'll happen because this doesn't impact guns, weed or overweight white neckbeards.

[Shazbot]

I don't think Trump intends there to be any meaning behind most of the things he says, other than to manipulate his base critics.

Fixed that one for you. His twitter account exists to manipulate the news media cycle.

[Frumple]

It's caused sodding twitter to be recognized as an official platform of presidential communication. Not just blame, but a sin as unforgivable as it is petty.

[smjjames]

It would have sooner or later anyway. Obama did use it as a platform for official communication, but twitter had only been around for less than two years when he was inaugurated. So, twitter just needed some time to mature as a platform If it wasn't Trump, it'd have been someone else.

It's a means of communication and some politician is going to come along who masters the medium in a way it hadn't before. There was FDR with radio, and JFK for television*.

*Maybe JFK? This was before 24/7 news though.

[Trekkin]

I don't think Trump intends there to be any meaning behind most of the things he says, other than to manipulate his base critics.

Fixed that one for you. His twitter account exists to manipulate the news media cycle.

You know, I'm not sure they ever really did that -- at least, not in the way he wanted. Even during the heyday of the can-you-believe-he-tweeted-this stories, most people not on the Trump train just determined he was still an unusually blunt Republican and moved on; the only thing they really did in and of themselves was give Fox a way to laugh at the silly liberals and thus signal boost his tweets to the less technical portions of their audience. Now that the shock value has worn off because he's hammered on it too often, they're mostly read as indicators of his declining mental state and mounting panic; they may come up in stories, but the news without them would look like the news with them.

The media likes to mention how sorry they are for their role in the present catastrophe largely because "we're sorry our mistakes threw the election" still lets them say "we chose the president" and journalists like to feel important, but it is I think wrong to read much control into the process. Trump did what he always did and slapped his brand on someone else's work; his base was disbelieving everything they didn't like long before he found a monosyllabic name for it.

[wierd]

The news media is just reaping the natural consequences for preferentially reporting only controversial subjects, rather than actual informative reporting.

The latter is how they should have addressed the situation with Trump;  A short 5 second bit where they report about an orange man shouting absurdities, stoically report about how he is wrong, then move on.

But no.  No. They were "OH GAWD! CONTROVERSY! COVER IT EXCLUSIVELY!! THINK OF THE RATINGS!"

Buyers remorse for their bullshit policies concerning their own profit margins over the actual reason they exist (If not to help inform the public about current events, what purpose does the news serve?) by these crocodile tears apologetics only makes me yearn for them to die in fires.

The news industry is addicted to the crack cocaine that is sensationalism to the point where the news they report is so skewed from reality that you need Snopes.com on a hot tab just to keep things straight.  They are so addicted to that shit, that right now, you could liken them to a strung-out meth-head waking up on the bathroom floor.

No, they are NOT sorry.  They will go right back to the sensationalism, which is what caused this mess, and why they gave the orange twit so much free coverage.  They will do it without a moment's hesitation.

Rather than shouting "fake news", we need to use the more accurate slur-- Yellow Journalism.

As long as the MSM clings to that filth, they are not actually sorry, and I have no sympathy for them.

[Trekkin]

And as soon as you find a way to make your approval more profitable than advertising revenue, I'm sure you'll find a newspaper that cares about your sympathy.

For the record, I'd be all in favor of more informative reporting too, but it's hard to incentivize without implicitly enabling censorship by someone.

[wierd]

Oh, they CARE--- in as much as I am a part of a growing demographic that wishes they would die in a fire, and does not watch their yellow filth report, because it is yellow filth.

They care, because they want those precious ratings.  Again-- a strung out drug user waking up on the bathroom floor, covered in track marks, wondering why nobody wants to hang out or be with them any more, and why all the people in their life use them--- then turning around and going right back to the damn needle.


As more and more people decide that the MSM is not reporting accurate information, and treat it as an attention hungry crack whore that is missing teeth and covered in pick marks and scabs, they will care more and more about the loss of their audience.  But not enough to kick their fucking sensationalism habit.

[Trekkin]

At some point in that process I'm assuming you expect their continued operation to become financially untenable. Very well; suppose they all cease. In what way do their inevitable successors' incentives differ?

[wierd]

It won't.  Yellow Journalism is as old as the mass-press is. Possibly older.

It (Mass press) has had various moments in its history where it has had to face up to the fact that it has a problem with addiction (to sensationalism), but it always falls back into the patterns of systemic self-harm eventually.

It just needs to wise up to the fact that, like a recovering alcoholic, the only choice it really has is to accept, stoically, that it just cannot handle the temptation and that it needs to act on a policy of stringent refusal to indulge-- for its own health and safety.

Right now, our press has a lot in common with 1900s Victorian era rag press.  The fallout of that infamous period saw a rise in journalism standards and practices, because nobody took the news seriously anymore, and the orgs that actually did do proper journalism rose in prominence.  I expect something similar will happen. Much like the yellow rags of that era, I will not be sorry to see their modern counterparts die on the vine.

[Kagus]

When something becomes untenable, go to eleven.

[wierd]

^^  That's what I see when I see Fox News.

[To clarify, Fox News has transformed from a "News source", to a damn-near 100% opinion mouthpiece and "entertainment" venue.  In short, it has decided that "Bringing real news is not financially feasible, sensationalism is where the money is, why even bother with actual news any more?" and has, as stated, "gone to 11."]

[Bumber]

Well, Fox does talk about stuff like Bruce Ohr having meetings with and delivering payments to Christopher Steele, after Steele was removed from the FBI's list of trusted sources. Steele himself admitted the dossier was "maybe 50% true", yet somehow it got included in a FISA warrant. Fox has been talking about the Ohr - Fusion GPS connection for over a year.

Say what you will about their claims that it was used to spy on the Trump Campaign, Fox is one of the few media outlets actually talking about it. It's worrying that the other stations are so obsessed with their own agendas, they don't really talk about some of the corruption in the government. Or "The Swamp", as the Commander in Cheetos puts it. Bay12 is the only news source we can really trust.

[Frumple]

They talk about the corruption in the government regularly, though, if perhaps largely due to this administration injecting a metric fuckton more of it.

Not playing up a specific bit of barely pertinent shite in an attempt to discredit federal investigations doesn't somehow make that go away.

[Bumber]

They talk about it when it suits their purpose, but never when it could possibly help Trump. They don't really want to talk about it when it's the Obama era hold-overs.