John Thompson, retired teacher and historian, has pondered how the media should cover Trump. He lies with such frequency that his lies are barely worth mentioning, whereas any error or overstatement by Harris or Walz is a news story. For instance, CNN’s Dana Bash questioned Governor Tim Walz about a 1995 drunk driving arrest and how he characterized it in his campaign for Congress in 2006. The media doesn’t have to ransack through Trump’s statements to find a lie from nearly two decades ago. Just listen to whatever he said today. He still claims that he won the 2020 election, without any evidence.
Thompson writes:
This post began as a nuanced response to the USA Today’s fact-checking conclusion that “Project 2025 is a political playbook created by the Heritage Foundation and dozens of other conservative groups, not Trump, who said he disagrees with elements of the effort.” Although the USA Today acknowledged the role of “numerous people involved in Project 2025 who worked in Trump’s first administration,” it failed in fact-checking Trump’s statement that, “I know nothing about Project 2025.”
Neither did it challenge the Heritage Foundation’s claim that this was just a plan for the next conservative President, as opposed to Trump!?!?
When I read Diane Ravitch’s reposting of Dan Rather’s Don’t Believe Donald Trump, I knew that now there is no need for the nuance I planned. Rather cited the CNN video of Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, and a key author of Project 2025, who was recorded on a hidden camera.
Rather linked to the video, posted on CNN, when “Vought described the project as the ‘tip of the America First spear.’ He said that after meeting with Trump in recent months, the former president ‘is very supportive of what we do.’”
Vought also said that Trump’s current attempts to disassociate himself from Project 2025 are “just politics,” and “distancing himself from a brand.” He said Trump is “very supportive” of their efforts and has raised money for “us.”
In other words, it is clear that Rather is correct in saying, “I cannot state it strongly enough: Project 2025, with Donald Trump at the helm, is the greatest existential threat to American democracy in recent history.”
But, but as Trump and his allies continue to double-down on lies, the need to converse with journalists about how they fact-check and report on MAGA-ism will continue and, perhaps, become more complicated. And that gets me back to discussing USA Today’s fact-check as a case study in journalism’s norms during this crisis. As Slate wrote:
Of all Trump’s recent lies, his attempted dissociation with Project 2025 may be the most important—because he’s trying to convince the American people that the choice between dictatorship and democracy that they face is not before them at all.
Being a former academic historian, I believe journalists should consider how a historian would fact-check this issue, covering the recent history of Trump and the Heritage Foundation, as well decades of rightwing propaganda seeking to reduce government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” and the history of Edward R. Murrow standing up for democracy in 1954.
At a minimum, the history of Trumpism and of “astro-turf” think tanks over the last half-century, should have reversed the burden of proof for fact-checking; given that history, fact-checkers would have had to first show evidence substantiating Trump’s and his allies’ claims.
I would then recommend a 2016 Columbia Journalism Review analysis by David Mindich, For Journalists Covering Trump, a Murrow Moment. Mindich starts in 1954 with Murrow’s “now-famous special report condemning Joseph McCarthy.” Murrow said that McCarthy”:
Didn’t create this situation of fear–he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. … This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, … “We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Mindich then explains that “American journalistic goals of detachment and objectivity are long held.” They made a good trade-off, “Journalists would avoid taking sides, and they would be given access to newsmakers–and news consumers–from both parties.” He then praised journalists who moved beyond “the usual practice of studied balance” to reveal the threatening nature of Trump. Moreover, it is time for “mainstream journalists to abandon their detachment … when a politician’s words go way beyond the pale.”
In the last eight years, Trump has gone farther and farther beyond the lines of democracy. And in the next few months, his rhetoric (and that of his supporters) is likely to go more dangerously beyond the pale. And as Mindich wrote, “journalists have been more likely to become advocates when they see others, like politicians and protesters, speaking loudly in dissent.”
So, we must join together and commit to Murrow’s principles in our fight for democracy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Slavery Is The Original Form of Capitalism
And It Always Everywhere Reverts To Type
When you understand this, you understand everything going on in the country today, including the bizarre behavior of the corporate media.
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Does Fernand Braudel’s three volume history of Capitalism suggest this? I will return to the matter when I have time, but I do not think that is the main theme of his work. Sorry, but I tend to consult the Annales Historians first.
I think slavery is the result of a power imbalance in the political system that creates the opportunity for a small group to dominate a larger group. The purveyors of slavery have either been unapologetic like the Romans, who enslaved anyone for any reason and shrugged, or have created logical apologetic justifications like the ones common to the Southeastern Planter oligarchy in the Ante-Bellum US. Slavery teaches us that we must ban together politically to control greed. Otherwise, society becomes dominated by a few political interests, and the collapse of one of those interests creates widespread pain for society. Repeated collapse of the commodities that drove the economy in the 19th century made us sing “Hard Times Come Again No More.” We were re-taught this lesson when banks were too big to fail in 2008.
It is my feeling that slavery results from political imbalance created by unregulated Capitalism.
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Slavery has existed far longer than capitalism. So no, it’s not the “original form of capitalism,” unless one is just trying to make a clever analogy.
Of course slavery changed a lot under Western colonialism and, later, capitalism.
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Actually, you can look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls …
We get our word “capital” from the Latin “caput” for head and it refers to brands of wealth reckoned up by counting heads, cognate with cattle and chattel.
Slaves taken captive by the victors in little raids and bigger battles are how it all got started accounting some people as the property of others.
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Flerp, reading carefully, one sees that Jon’s post said that it was the “original” form of capitalism. So, the statement says that it existed before Capitalism per se, which one might define as control of the means of production (of capital) by the few.
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That’s fair. Your reading, that is. Not the point. Capitalism is the original form of capitalism.
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HAAA!!! Well put, Flerp.
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This really requires a knowledge of Latin, the long history of economics, and Middle English, but here is a good short overview of the term “capital” from a Professor of History from Fordham University. Text follows:
Capital is money in motion. It’s not a bag of seed or a college education or an idea for a new business or your terrific potential as an artist or the car you drive to work. It’s not even the same thing as wealth. If capital is any of these things, then it’s existed for as long as Homo sapiens and has no historical specificity. It is surplus value in the act of generating surplus value–profit that creates profit. Marx expressed it as M→C (LP + MP)→P→C’→M+∆M, in which Money is advanced to buy Commodities, consisting of Labor Power, the Means of Production (which would include land or factories and raw material). Labor is the most important purchase because it is the only factor that creates more value than it costs. If a capitalist pays someone $10 for a day’s work he can use their labor-power to manufacture $100 in widgets. Labor combined with the means of production results in second-order Commodities. These must be sold for the original Money advanced, plus an increment (the surplus-value). Money does not become capital until or unless it is advanced. To paraphrase Forest Gump, capital is as capital does.[i]
The word first appeared between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries for the top or head of something (from caput, or head), like the Corinthian capital of a marble column. It referred to the greatest height or degree, like a capital crime, a capital enemy, capital wounds, and a seat of government (all between 1400 and 1600). At the same time capital developed toward an important sum of money. Fernand Braudel found this sense of the word in Italian as far back as 1211. St. Bernardino of Siena wrote in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century of “that prolific cause of wealth we commonly call capital.” But sums of money had not yet become perpetuating funds.
Other English words carried similar meanings. Cattle and chattel came into English between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, not as words for barnyard creatures but for property, goods, and even money itself. Horses, oxen, and bovines became cattle (around 1400) because they were significant property. The word did not refer to animals as animals in the fifteenth century and did not refer specifically to bovines until the sixteenth century. Stock, another word for accumulated value, stood for something that sprouted and spawned endlessly like a stem or tree trunk until about 1380 when it shows up as a word for domesticated animals. It did not describe a growing herd of livestock until the sixteenth century. But once it did, around that time, stock took a turn. It began to take on meanings similar to capital. It 1526 it referred to money that could be invested, and by 1714 the word was in common use as the subscribed capital of a merchant house.
Capital pulled away from these other words. By the time Smith published The Wealth of Nations political economists in Britain and France had already given capital the meaning it carries today. Smith used the term “capital stock,” suggesting money that reproduced a percentage of itself in a given time. According to Braudel a Russian consul made the essential distinction, reporting that France under Napoleon Bonaparte fought “with her capital,” while the countries that France invaded fought “with their income.” For centuries few institutional pathways existed for employing income in order to earn income. Capital appeared along with these pathways, as people needed a word to differentiate this new entity from merchant wealth and the dividends represented by lambs and calves.[ii]
Historians ask all sorts of questions about capital. One of them is who is inside and who outside its creation. If the owner of one of a sandwich shop on 9th Avenue in New York City reinvests some of her profit by buying bread and tomatoes or by making improvements to the kitchen does that make her a capitalist? What if she has a retirement account with a brokerage firm? Is she a capitalist for making a living in a society organized by capital? To think so blurs categories. It equates the owner of a bodega to the owners of Standard Oil. Firms that generate vast capital have certain characteristics. They tend to operate across national boundaries. They diversify their investments, so that they do not commit themselves to any one commodity. They have deep ties to governments and the global political economy that includes international banking. And they are always looking for new places to get hold of resources and hire labor. There are certainly small capitalist firms, and a business like Wal-Mart began as a country store in an Arkansas town. Capitalism comes from the larger social order, but it then seeks to dominate it. That does not describe the owner of the sandwich shop.
On second thought, maybe we are all capitalists in certain sense. Whether we generate capital or not, command it or not, manage it or not, capital has brought almost all of our occupations into existence. Occupations shape identities, situating people within institutions that lend internal coherence to the social system, regardless of its contradictions. And that social system is tightly bound up with the United States, so much so that many patriotic Americans make little or any distinction between the freedoms detailed in the Bill of Rights and “free enterprise,” even though entrepreneurship has existed for as long as people bought and sold things and even though capitalism in the eighteenth century is nothing like what it is today. “The worst error of all,” Braudel reminds us, “is to suppose that capitalism is simply an ‘economic system’, whereas in fact it lives off the social order, standing almost on a footing with the state, whether as adversary or accomplice.”
So complete has capital become throughout the social order that it appears to have emerged from the natural order, and the behavior it instills seems to many people to be an expression of universal human motives and aspirations. As three historians observe, “One of the distinguishing features of a free-enterprise economy is that its coercion is veiled … Far from being natural, the cues for market participation are given through complicated social codes. Indeed, the illusion that compliance in the dominant economic system is voluntary is itself an amazing cultural artifact.”[iii] It might be true that the gentry did the same thing in 1650 that they did in 1250. They extracted value from people and environments. But they did it differently than anyone had before, through a discipline imposed by rents and wages, through social codes and cues that appeared to be independent of people. They aren’t. Perhaps the most radical idea we can have about capital, the single most subversive thing we can think about it, is that it begins as nothing more than a relationship between people. Like the meanings of words, relationships change.
[i] “I should say that this is the circuit of capital. It is not a formula for capitalism, which is an entire social system that is based on the recreation or reproduction of capital. Once people began to produce capital they became committed to it, created institutions to further it, connected their identities to it, or could no longer what life was like before it. Capital found its way into so many facets of life and became the basis of giant amalgams of people and production, not to mention nation-states, that any substantial change now seems like it would amount to the end of the world.” – Marx, Capital, Volume 1, 247.
[ii] Fernand Braudel, Wheels of Commerce, tr. Sian Reynolds (New York, 1982), 232-234; Oxford English Dictionary; Smith, Wealth of Nations, 353-355.
[iii] Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York, 1994), 120-1.
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https://history.blog.fordham.edu/?p=883
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Surplus value: the new value of a product created by workers via their labor in excess of their own labor-cost, which is appropriated by the capitalist as profit when products are sold. The amount stolen from workers.
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I don’t consider that “theft” because owners enable workers to create value that workers could not create without owners. The factory owner uses his wealth to acquire extremely expensive machinery and facilities, uses his knowledge to plan how the business will operate, hires knowledgeable people to manage the day to day operation of the factory, and hires workers to run the machines and produce the product. The workers are paid an hourly wage and management is paid a salary. Those wages and salaries are expenses to the owner, along with a host of other costs. Everything on top of those expenses goes to the owner as profit. If things go poorly, the owner takes the loss. If the business goes under, it is the owner, not the workers, that must pay the business’s creditors and investors. Is that really “stealing” from the workers?
A person goes to law school and graduates top of his class. He can go hang out a shingle and see how that goes. Few do, because it’s an immense amount of work for not a ton of money and the risk of complete failure is high. Or he could go work for a law firm and work as an associate and get paid $225,000 right out of law school. Of course, the law firm’s partners bill the associate out at $600 per hour and collect about $1.2 million from the attorney’s labor. Is that “stealing” from the associate?
One can have a debate about what a fair wage should be, but I don’t think the answer is that everyone involved in every aspect of a business should share in the profits and losses equally, nor do I think “theft” is the correct way to frame the debate.
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There are alternatives whereby workers own the means of production and sit on boards and hire their own management. You know. Socialism, as in Employee stock ownership plans.
And yeah, Elon is a multibillionaire because he contributes so much in terms of knowledge (ROFL) to production at PayPal and Tesla; can’t wait to get this genius in charge in the Don the Con administration!!!
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You are perfectly free not to consider theft theft, but it’s a rather odd take.
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It’s not theft though!
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As in, since the early 1970s, productivity in the United States has just about doubled, while wages have remained almost flat. Where did all that surplus value go? Into the pockets of the fat cat class. So, now, millions and millions of workers are furious, but they are too ignorant to know what they should be furious about, and so they go to Trump rallies, which is breathtakingly ironic, since he is the one can who is certain to do nothing for them and everything for the oligarchs. The rubes actually CHEER when he talks about putting these oligarchical thieves in positions in his administration.
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“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” –John Ball, during “the Peasants’ Revolt” of 1381.
delved: plowed with a spade
span: archaic past tense of spin
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Thanks for this discussion. The decision of fairness of wages and benefits enjoyed by the process of production is the place where government should referee lest we spiral into conflict.
Regulated capitalism preserves incentive while deciding true cost over immediate cost. This is a government sphere. Government by the people should involve them in that decision.
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should involve them
As in,
Requiring employee stock ownership plans
Requiring significant employee representation on boards
Requiring the option to vote no confidence in C-level managers
Setting a cap on multiple of median employee salary that top C-level execs can earn
Much, much more progressive taxation to fund social programs
In other words, Social Democracy or Democratic Socialism, whichever you prefer to call it.
I call it–have a look at the nations of Europe–a system that works for everyone, proven to do so by these existence proofs.
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exactly, Jon!
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On the phone, a friend of mine who lives in North Carolina asked me if I’d seen the news about Kamala Harris being a communist.
My reply, She’s not a communist. And even if she was, we are a democracy with power divided between the three branches of government. There’s no way anyone is going to turn the United States in to Soviet Russia.
Unless it’s Trump, I went on. If Trump wins, he says he’ll be a dictator on day one and we won’t have to vote again.
This friend served in the Marines 4 years and Special Forces 9.
I reminded him of the time we needed help from Senator McCain. And how McCain delivered it. He remembered. Then I went after Trump attacking and insulting McCain’s service, going after Gold Star families, calling those who served in the military, us, suckers and losers, how Trump praises dictators like Putin and the monster in North Korea. Calling Putin a genius for attacking Ukraine who is killing anyone, any age, any sex without hesitation, Trump saying he was having a letter writing love affair with the brutal 3rd generation dictator of North Korea who Trump visited in North Korea when he was president. The only president to visit North Korea, whose brutal dictator wants to nuke the United States and our allies.
The media should have a lead news piece, everyday, running between 150 and 200 words reminding us who Traitor Trump is. Front page. Prime time.
The media could do this daily for an entire year and would never have repeat the same toxic insanity flowing out of Traitor Trump’s mouth.
Like Traitor Trump pushing several drugs for COVID. I looked the four main ones Trump wanted people to take to learn what would happen if taken together and none of them should be taken together. And none of them treat COVID. Some of the symptoms from mixing these four drugs together that do nothing for COVID. Rash on face and skin falling off in sheets. Eyes turning yellow. Gums bleeding. Rash and HUGE swelling of men’s private parts. That’s just the short list.
Drop an H-bomb on a hurricane.
And this:
Capitol riots: Did Trump’s words at rally incite violence? In a 70-minute address, Mr Trump exhorted them to march on Congress where politicians had met to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s win. The attack began moments after he took the applause.
‘We won this election, and we won it by a landslide’
This was three minutes into his speech.
‘We will stop the steal’
Here Trump was echoing the slogan of the movement to fight Mr Biden’s election victory, which was started a day after the result was declared.
‘We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen’
This was Mr Trump saying in the clearest terms yet that he will never accept Mr Biden’s win.
‘If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore’
This is the longest quote from Mr Trump’s speech that appears in the article of impeachment. It could also be the one that his lawyers will find hardest to defend in the trial.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55640437
WATCH: Trump used ‘fight’ or “fighting” 20 times at January 6, 2021 rally.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-use-rally-footage-to-argue-incitement
Trump only said to be peaceful once.
“The president did say that the crowd was going to march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol. After the attack, Trump said he does not condone violence.
“However, it does not necessarily mean the president did not incite violence with the rest of his speech or in his rhetoric prior to January 6.”
SOURCE: Newsweek January 14, 2021.
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On the other hand, Harris does get the benefit of a lot of coverage like this, from the AP yesterday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the biggest challenges for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the final stretch of the campaign is introducing herself to voters before her Republican rival, Donald Trump, has a chance to define her.
Until her sudden election to the top of the Democratic ticket this summer, Harris was still a somewhat unknown figure in national politics, driven in part by her aversion to opening up and embracing the spotlight. And since she’s become the nominee, Republicans have criticized Harris for not doing many interviews or giving enough specifics on her policy plans.
But the vice president is sharing personal details about her childhood, cooking and food to show her more private side.
It is known that Harris is a foodie and likes to cook. In fact, she had just made a pancakes-and-bacon breakfast for her niece’s 6- and 8-year-old daughters on the July morning when Biden called with the news that he was dropping out of the race.
From talking about nacho cheese Doritos as her snack of choice to washing collard greens in the bathtub, Harris is aiming to connect with voters on a more personal level. While learning that she likes to munch tortilla chips at snack time likely isn’t enough on its own to sway anyone to vote for her, the small — and sometimes amusing — details could help Harris show she can relate to people and their concerns.
“She is trying to show that she is a full person beyond just her policy proposals,” Dana Brown, executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University, said in an email.
Caramel is a favorite
Stopping at Dottie’s Market in Savannah during a campaign bus tour of southeastern Georgia last week, Harris became excited by what she saw on the counter.
“What is that cake?” she said. Chocolate caramel, an employee answered.
“I want a slice of that. Caramel is like my favorite,” Harris said. “Oh, chocolate and caramel?” she added, after appearing to digest the description. The cake was covered in a white frosting with caramel on top and drizzling down the sides.
“Fantastic,” Harris said.
Beautiful music
“I was in band when I was your age,” she said while visiting marching band practice at Liberty County High School in Hinesville, Georgia. She gave a pep talk about leadership.
“All that you all are doing, it requires a whole lot of rehearsal, a whole lot of practice, long hours. Right?” she said. “Sometimes you hit the note; sometimes you don’t. Right? But all that practice makes for beautiful music.”
Harris did not say which instrument she played. An aide later told a reporter that Harris played French horn, xylophone and kettle drums; the vice president had confided that she “couldn’t stick with one” instrument.
Collard greens in the tub
Harris shared her collard greens recipe — and unusual preparation method — with Mashama Bailey, chef at The Grey restaurant in downtown Savannah. A friend used to ask Harris to make the greens for a yearly Christmas Eve party.
“And I am not lying to you that I would make so many greens that I’d need to wash them in the bathtub,” the vice president told Bailey. “I’m telling you the truth.”
Harris starts by rendering the fat from bacon before stirring in sliced garlic, chili peppers, a lot of water and some chicken stock. “And I let it go for a while, before I put the greens in,” she said. After a couple of hours, she finishes with vinegar and Tabasco sauce.
Golden Arches
According to McDonald’s, 1 in 8 Americans have worked at its fast-food restaurants at some point in their lives. Harris is among them.
“I had a summer job at McDonald’s,” she said at an August campaign rally in Las Vegas, trying to show an understanding of middle-class struggles.
During a policy speech in North Carolina to discuss her price gouging proposal, also last month, Harris said she was in college when “I worked at McDonald’s to earn spending money.”
Her duties were making french fries and working the cash register, she said on “The Drew Barrymore Show” earlier this year.
Harris and her sister, Maya, were raised by a single mother, Shyamala, an immigrant from India. Harris has said she was 13 when her mother bought her first home after saving for a decade.
Doritos as a go-to snack
At snack time, Harris reaches for Doritos.
“This is my go-to, the original, nacho cheese,” Harris said while holding a red bag of Doritos when she and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and their spouses stopped at a Sheetz convenience store in Moon Township during their campaign bus tour of southwestern Pennsylvania in August.
Her soda of choice?
“I like root beer. He likes Diet Coke,” she said, referring to her husband, Doug Emhoff.
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Meanwhile Trump is treated as a deity in the rightwing press. I can’t say that I remember reading charming stories about his personal life, akin to this AP story about Kamala. Maybe there aren’t any?
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It’s time, I guess, for me to equal things out by creating my puff piece about his love for consuming Diet Coke and cheeseburgers and snorting Adderall and fantasizing about his daughter and reading from Two Corinthians.
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So relatable to 40 percent of Americans!
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I guess that that 40 percent of Americans had already been primed for Trump’s fantasizing about “dating” his own daughter by their reading of the myth, uh, scripture of Lot.
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Having such fantasies is evidently, for half of Americans, no bar to seeking the office of President.
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“During a policy speech in North Carolina to discuss her price gouging proposal, also last month, Harris said she was in college when “I worked at McDonald’s to earn spending money.”
haha, perfect example of the media whining that Kamala won’t talk about her policies while they ignore when she talks about her policies!
They did this with “she who must not be named”, too.
They talk too much about policies! They don’t talk enough about policies! We in the media accept as FACT that Republicans define what Democrats are, and we are reporting the shocking news that Kamala “is introducing herself to voters before her Republican rival, Donald Trump, has a chance to define her” so readers understand why we in the media don’t yet know how to define her! For now, we in the media are stuck leaning in to write stories to amplify the Republican narrative that she has no policies or substance by writing an article about how Kamala is sharing personal details — mainly about FOOD (but once about musical instruments!)
I realize that folks who buy into “the media is totally pro-Kamala and anti-Trump” narrative consider this to be a strongly pro-Kamala article because it doesn’t directly attack her.
But the overall point of the article is to CONFIRM the Republican narrative that Kamala won’t talk about her policies, but hey, isn’t it so nice that at least she is connecting with voters by talking about food.
Trump doesn’t talk about policies — he just has a word salad of nonsense. So the media has decided that it is Kamala that doesn’t talk about policies. And this is yet ANOTHER story that starts with the “true” premise that Kamala (and only Kamala) doesn’t talk about policies, but how nice that she’s connecting with voters about coooking.
This is considered a wildly positive pro-Kamala story because it uses the Republican framing that Kamala doesn’t talk about her policies but instead of directly attacking her for it, the story says she does talk about cooking to connect with voters.
Talk about condescending. As if these voters in the background – mainly women – are saying “I have no clue what Kamala will do, but she cooks! And that’s good enough for me.”
I promise you that had the reporter not been so focused on writing a story that took as fact that Kamala has no policies and bothered to ask any of the women Kamala was “connecting with” what policies Kamala had, they would have said they knew what Kamala stood for, especially on abortion.
And these voters would be correct. While voters who love Trump seem utterly confused about what Trump stands for, which one only knows from COMEDY shows, because the news presents the story as “Trump has policies, Kamala has none but can talk about food.”
And this is supposedly wildly pro-Kamala news coverage?
Tomorrow’s debate is going to be a nightmare of reporters who believe that forcing Kamala to respond to right wing talking points, and letting Trump blather on about how his tariff policy will be great will prove that they – liberal media reporters – are very fair and balanced. Just like this article!
VP Harris, prove to use you have policies. Nope, that wasn’t good enough,prove it. Nope, we asked you a question, prove you have policies. Sorry your answer didn’t succeed in proving you have any policies.
President Trump, why do you think your tariff policies will work? Okay, thank you, President Trump! Now tell us why your Build a Wall policies will work? Thank you, again!
To sum up, we in the media have found that Kamala still did NOT satisfy “voters doubts” that she has no policies. Trump was meandering but once again Trump confirmed he is a moderate on abortion and on every other issue that suburban women voters might care about. Trump has policies, but Kamala is trying to connect with voters on a personal level, and when we say that Kamala is trying to connect with voters on a personal level, we know we are being very anti-Trump and pro-Kamala, so please forgive us and we promise to write 100 stories this week about the distrust voters have about Kamala’s lack of policies in the name of being “fair and balanced”.
Please forgive our one article in which we told you that the Republican narrative that Kamala has no policies is absolutely true, but Kamala is trying to connect with voters instead, and some women like her. That was NOT acceptable to be so “positive.”
Trump is going to win, with this kind of “positive” Kamala coverage.
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It’s a puff piece.
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Imagine this same article about Trump. It begins by explaining that there are serious concerns that Trump has no policies and is a total lightweight who voters believe they need to know more about.
Puff piece?
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the biggest challenges for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the final stretch of the campaign is introducing himself to voters before his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, has a chance to define him.
Even after his nomination to the top of the Republican ticket this spring, Trump was still a somewhat unknown figure in national politics, driven in part by his inability to coherently express a policy, his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and his incitement of a riot. And since Trump’s become the nominee, Democrats have criticized Trump for not doing many interviews or giving enough specifics on his policy plans.
But the former president is sharing personal details about his childhood, cooking and food to show his more private side.
“While learning that Trump likes to munch tortilla chips at snack time likely isn’t enough on its own to sway anyone to vote for him, the small — and sometimes amusing — details could help Trump show he can relate to people and their concerns.”
——
If that’s a “puff piece” about Trump that has to be “balanced” by writing many extremely negative articles about Trump, that’s fine with me.
I know you will applaud Peter Baker’s piece on Trump and defend it from anyone who dares to characterize it as anti-Trump. I know the NYT reporters can write 500 MORE pieces saying exactly the same thing as today’s Peter Baker piece did and you will defend those 500 articles as absolutely necessary and very fair to Trump.
Does that mean if there is only one article about Trump’s mental unfitness instead of 500, the NYT is not doing their job? Since you did think that 500 “Biden is cognitively unfit” articles in a couple weeks were perfectly reasonable, I assume you believe the NYT should use that framing in every news article about Trump from now on? Because that only by treating Trump like Biden can we defend the NYT’s reporting as unbiased!
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Calm down.
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On the condition of anonymity, an unnamed source in the community said, the candidate chortles on about those that act like he’s on the ballot because of what people DON’T “know” about him. If they don’t know by now, you’re not teaching them…
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So what brought all this to mind was the question of why the corporate media is doing what it by and large keeps doing in our times.
Why do we find ourselves in 2024 fighting the Civil War all over again, if not indeed the Revolutionary War in large part fought against that beta test of Capitalism known as Merchantilism? And how did the Press become the Presstitutes of the side it now takes?
Those are the questions!
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Wouldn’t have anything to do with the oligarchical ownership of new media, of course.
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Well, more like the New Oligarches owning the Old Media, but yeah.
Enough for now, as I think some commentators have missed the point of Murrow Moment vs. Nerdy Nuances, and I’ve already heard way too many lectures on Pink Unicorns like Regulated Capitalism.
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Regulated capitalism. HAAAAAAAAAA! OMG. That was a good one, Jon!!!! It’s up there with Congressional Ethics Rules.
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Ha, thanks, Jon. Well said.
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h/t to a poster on bsky.social:
“Trump: I’m going to have a trail, it’s gonna have tears folks, it’s gonna be a trail of tears, and blood, a bloody trail of tears, it’s gonna be atrocious, lots of atrocities, lots of deaths, all the right people are gonna die …
Media: Trump Unveils New Transportation Plan”
(I would add, there are democrat defenders of this kind of reporting who would be critical and say how can you say the media is biased, that was a negative story about Trump because it said that Trump’s transportation plan was muddled.)
These satirical posts would be funny if they weren’t often so close to how the media covers Trump and Dems. As we saw with the comparisons of Harris and Trump’s “housing” plans (Trump’s being mass deportation).
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How the Media Should Cover Trump
by Robert Shepherd
Like anyone else, they should come to the prison on visitors’ days and speak to him through the plexiglass window on the telephones provided.
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FYI, calling out the truly abhorrent job the media has done covering Trump WORKS. It only by public criticism that they will change – actually public RIDICULE of the so-called liberal media works even better.
Today, the NYT published a story by Peter Baker — a “news analysis” where Trump was treated the way Biden was treated.
That’s it. It was a single story that could have almost been lifted word for word from the 500+ “Biden is cognitively unfit” stories the NYT ran, except for substituting Trump for Biden and using some of the endless examples of Trump’s cognitive issues instead of Biden’s.
The timing is NOT a coincidence — this analysis was reporting on things Trump has been saying for a long while now (including at the debate!) It came out because even Columbia Journalism Review – the apologist for the news media supposedly being too mean to Trump for reporting on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and Trump firing the FBI director who didn’t listen to Trump’s direct order to stop the investigation, stat) – actually did a cover story criticizing the media going on bended knee to Trump.
It’s clear to me that Peter Baker and the NYT were shamed.
Let’s see if this changes the narrative, and the NYT treats Trump as it treated Biden, or if the NYT goes back to pretending that reporting correctly about that the elephant in the room is “too biased” and excluding the elephant in the room from its reporting.
“As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity: With President Biden no longer in the race, former President Donald J. Trump would be the oldest person ever to serve in the Oval Office. But his rambling, sometimes incoherent public statements have stirred concern among voters.”
CONCERN AMONG VOTERS! The NYT actually said that about a REPUBLICAN! I am shocked because since 2016, voters were “only” concerned about Democrat. At least, the voters who mattered to NYT reporters, that they talked to at the diner. Voters concerned about Trump did not exist.
Thank, NYT reporters, for FINALLY locating some voters concerned about Trump! I know they have been invisible and silent for 8 years, so it’s understandable you did not think they existed until the CJR and other respected media critics finally showed how ridiculous your coverage was.
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Really great to hear this, NYC.
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The last paragraph is priceless, although clearly should have been reported months ago, and more prominent in this article:
“Last Friday, without being asked, he raised allegations that he once molested a woman on an airplane in the 1970s. “I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say,” he said, “but it couldn’t have happened, it didn’t happen, and she would not have been the chosen one.”
“She would not have been the chosen one!!!”
Scary this guy could be president again. How, just how?
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well said. indeed.
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^^^my error — obviously if Trump said it last Friday it could not have been reported months ago
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You did it, NYCPSP!
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I don’t suffer from Trump’s dementia. As you know, I link to OTHER people’s careful documentation of the media’s complicit journalism. I’d like to say “they” did it, but it is more likely that the Columbia Journalism Review just came out with a big article critical of the NYT coverage. CJR is far from liberal — they spent enormous effort to document how unfair to Trump the media’s coverage of the supposedly evidence-free (in the eyes of the CJR) unsupported allegations that Putin interfered in the 2016 election and that anyone associated with Trump helped. Because Mueller totally exonerated Trump, dontcha know! Implying anything other than that should have been banned, according the CJR, so the extremely mild coverage the Trump/Russia investigation got in the NYT (when compared to “her emails!”) was far too much according to CJR.
So the fact that EVEN THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW was critical of the NYT for NOT reporting the truth about Trump must have caused a sh**storm at the NYT office. Here they have been spending all their time trying to bend over backward to never suggest anything negative about Trump, just like CJR likes, and even CJR knew the NYT had gone too far. I imagine that was the last straw.
But I expect this to be a one and done, to allow them to profess that they really are hard on Trump.
I’m guessing CJR wanted a little deniability also, and will pull back their criticism of the NYT, since one negative article about Trump apparently equals 200 negative articles about Biden.
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Your hard work is paying off!
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I see you didn’t direct your obnoxious snark at Diane Ravitch today because she made two different posts about the problematic coverage.
You are a bully, flerp! You feel free to insult me because Bob has made it acceptable here to be nasty and insult me. So you are so “brave”. You don’t reply to insult Diane Ravitch if she makes the exact same points in a post. You can disagree without condescension and insults in your replies. “MY” hard work? And you couldn’t stop – directing your derision toward me once wasn’t enough – you had to do it twice. Maybe you’ll reply to this by a snarky insult to make it 3 times.
Please stop. Please.
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Don’t be so modest!
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“You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.”
–Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Chapter 24, “My Incognito Is Exploded”
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Bob: And you take the sxxt out of him, and you won’t need a casket. CBK
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but where you gonna dump all that?
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Bob: Put his name on it: “Complements of Donald Trump,” and dump it on the walkup to the closest voting center. CBK
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MEDIA SELF-INTEREST:
The corporate-owned-and-operated media are enjoying the huge tax cuts that Trump gave them during his presidency, and they want more tax cuts from him — so they ignore his rambling word salad speech that reflects the physical deterioration in his brain.
We should all be incessantly, unrelentingly bombarding the media with demands that they report Trump’s mental frailty, just as they did regarding Biden.
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