Archives for category: Media
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Orlando Sentinel Will No Longer Endorse Candidates for President, Governor, or U.S. Senate

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
26

On October 7, The Orlando Sentinel published the following editorial. Note that the newspaper is owned by Alden Global Capital, which has bought up many other newspapers and gutted their newsrooms.

The Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel will no longer endorse candidates in races for governor, Senate or president, including this year’s races.

This is a company-wide decision and very limited in scope. It applies only to endorsements in these two races. All other endorsements remain entirely within each newspaper’s discretion, and we are working hard on our endorsements for U.S. House, the Legislature, city and county commissioners and mayors and school board races.

Any public officials who are popping champagne at this announcement might want to re-cork their celebrations. Tribune Publishing’s two Florida papers, the Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel, will continue our tradition of robust, well-researched editorials that hold Florida’s leaders responsible for their actions. When those decisions are not in the state’s best interests or driven by partisan ulterior motives, we will continue to say so.

This restriction is in line with corporate-level dictates in other media companies, some of which have eliminated endorsements entirely. It’s well within the long-standing tradition of American editorial pages, which leaves the final say on endorsements to each paper’s publisher.

Since Alden Global Capital took over Tribune Publishing in May 2021, its leaders have made it clear that they support robust, local editorial pages. This is the first time they have asserted their traditional role, but this discussion of which races to endorse in occurs at newspapers every day in the run-up to an election. Company leaders acted out of concern that contests for president, U.S. Senate and governor are becoming more national in character, and that our editorial advocacy is strongest locally.

Corporate leaders also worry that common ground is being lost to culture wars. We’ve all seen society become more polarized. Look at what’s happened since Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. Could we have imagined that we would be so deeply divided over how to handle the pandemic that we would see shrieking parents dragged out of school board meetings? Or that partisan voices on both sides of the divide would take turns decrying law enforcement and medical professionals as villains or heroes?

But we aren’t going to cede that common ground on the eve of a high profile, surprisingly competitive Senate race and a contest for governor widely seen as a prelude to the 2024 presidential election (with another likely player in his Palm Beach mansion).

Florida’s tradition of spirited journalistic debate is often shaped by editorials, but also informed by readers’ letters to the editor and columns by us, readers and public officials. They are the heartbeat of our opinion pages, and in the great Florida tradition, our readers are not shy about telling us when they think we’ve gotten it wrong.

We’ll continue our work of endorsing many candidates for local, regional and state office, judgeships, Congress, ballot questions and constitutional amendments. We’ll celebrate fact and expose fiction. And to quote Tom Petty, we won’t back down. Nor are we expected to.

Our corporate leadership has made that crystal clear. We know our readers will have plenty to say about this decision. You’ll find our letter guidelines at the bottom of this editorial.

At the end of the day, we suspect even our toughest critics will agree: We all love Florida at the top of our lungs, con mucho gusto. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Margaret Sullivan: Are the Media Fair? Should They Be?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
35

Margaret Sullivan was the ombudsman for The New York Times. She now writes a blog called American Crisis.

She writes:

With less than two weeks until the most consequential presidential election of the modern era, this is my evaluation of how the media has done — along with an 11th hour plea. 

There are, after all, still a lot of undecided or at least uncommitted voters, hard as that may be to believe. And the media, while it won’t determine the outcome, can make a difference.

I’ll grant, up front, that the national news media — Big Journalism — has done some good work. The reporting on Project 2025, while not pervasive enough, has been excellent, and some of the best of that has been in the New York Times. Daniel Dale at CNN has done great, helpful fact-checking. ABC News did a good job with the single presidential debate. The Guardian has been publishing a fine series and a newsletter called The Stakes. (I contributed a piece about what would happen to press rights.) The New York Times just launched a link to its extensive coverage of what a Trump presidency would mean, tagged “What’s At Stake.”

Some columnists have made sense of the nightmare for us, like Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer, who consistently nails what’s happening, providing reporting and big-picture context; and Jill Lawrence at the Los Angeles Times, whose most recent column was terrifyingly headlined: “Get Ready for President Vance.” And I see improvement from the Washington Post, as Parker Molloy noted in a New Republic piece about Trump’s town-hall dance party titled “The Washington Post Covered that Bizarro Trump Rally the Right Way.” 

But fundamentally, the media coverage writ large has fallen far short of what was needed to get the true stakes across to an entire nation of voters. And that’s been true not just recently, but for more than nine years, since Trump declared his candidacy in 2015. Too often, the coverage of Trump has been an embarrassing failure — sanewashing his lunacy, falsely equating him to his traditional rivals, or treating him as some sort of amusing sideshow. 

The economist Dean Baker, posting on X the other day, expressed it perfectly: “It says everything you need to know about the U.S. media that Trump’s clown show at the McDonald’s gets more attention than his former defense secretary and chair of the Joint Chief of Staff warning that Trump is a dangerous fascist with no respect for democracy.”

Exactly. And that is true of the mainstream, supposedly independent media! Now add in Fox News, the beating heart of the right-wing propaganda monster. 

Donald Trump talks to reporters after handing out food at a McDonald’s in a campaign stunt in Pennsylvania on Oct. 20 / Getty Images

New research from Media Matters notes that “Fox News gave nearly 500 times more coverage to McDonald’s stunt than Trump’s threats to Social Security.” (That’s two hours and four minutes for the stunt; 15 seconds for a report from a nonpartisan group showing that Trump’s policies would make the Social Security Trust Fund insolvent years before expected; Kamala Harris’s policy would not change the expected trajectory.) Bret Baier’s showily combative interview with Kamala Harris was one more example.

There are some — including prominent commentators — who are in dreamland, handing out helpings of false equivalency like Milky Way bars on Halloween. Here was the top piece in the New York Times opinion newsletter from Tuesday: “Keep calm and look at the polling averages.” The point of this piece from Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Andersen was that you can reduce your stress by realizing that polls shift and change all the time. “The ups and downs that can come from seeing your preferred candidate pingpong back and forth, from day to day, became less stressful when placed into context.” 

Believe me, it’s not the shifting polls that are stressing me out; it’s the knowledge that if Trump is elected, American democracy may well be over. Her take reminded me of the infamous column from Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post on Nov. 4, 2016: “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.”

Readers, we weren’t.

And we won’t be, if Trump wins. Those are the stakes.

So over the next two weeks — though it’s arguably too late — every media outlet should be trying to correct its long-term errors. It should be trying to get across to those mysterious individuals known as undecided voters that this really matters, and why. That Trump is a danger, declining by the day, and that the prospect of a radical, but much younger, President Vance is very real.

I’ll be keeping track here, and I deeply appreciate your joining me. Please let me know — in the comments or on social media — what you’re seeing in the media that strikes you as admirable or objectionable.

Getting it right in the last two weeks is probably too little, too late. But, in a very tight election, any improvement just might be enough to matter

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Los Angeles Times: Owner Orders No Endorsement in Presidential Race; Editor Resigns in Protest

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2024 //
43

The Los Angeles Times has steadfastly criticized Trump as a “dangerous” and “dishonest” man. It is a liberal newspaper in a liberal state. Its editorial board intended to endorse native Californian Kamala Harris, as it did when she ran for Senate.

But on October 11, the owner of the newspaper, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, ordered the editorial board not to issue any endorsement. The Trump campaign reacted with glee, casting the non-endorsement as a rejection of Harris by the editorial board.

The editor of the editorial board, Mariel Garza, resigned in protest. Veteran journalist Sewell Chan wrote the back story in The Columbia Journalism Review, where he is now editor after a long career that included The Los Angeles Times.

This is Garza’s resignation letter, addressed to Terry Tang, the editor of the paper.

Terry,

Ever since Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I have been struggling with my feelings about the implications of our silence. 

I told myself that presidential endorsements don’t really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many “Trump is unfit” editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her.

But the reality hit me like cold water Tuesday when the news rippled out about the decision not to endorse without so much as a comment from the LAT management, and Donald Trump turned it into an anti-Harris rip.

Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state—and one of the largest in the nation still—declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won’t even be straight with people about it. 

It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?

The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner.

Seven years ago, the editorial board wrote this in its series about Donald Trump “Our Dishonest President”: “Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.” 

I still believe that’s true. 

In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity. I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.

Mariel

Categories Accountability, Character, Elections, Ethics, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Borowitz: When Did the New York Times Fall in Love with Trump?

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
41

Andy Borowitz used to be the humorist for The New Yorker. A joke a day. Then he created his own blog. The following is no joke. I didn’t post it all because I’m not a subscriber. Here is an opener:

When Did the New York Times Fall in Love with Trump?

Photo by David Smooke on Unsplash

Just hours after the first presidential debate of 2024, the New York Times editorial board, citing Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, urged him to quit the race. They issued no such directive to Donald Trump, whose only moments of coherence during the 90-minute contest came in the form of lies.

The Times’s love affair with Trump is reprehensible—but it’s not new. In fact, it goes back decades. 

How did this sick romance begin? And how will it end?

The first evidence of the Times’s infatuation with Trump appeared on November 1, 1976: a profile so gushing that he could have written it himself, except for its use of complete sentences.

“He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford,” wrote Judy Klemesrud, who needed either new eyewear or a stint in rehab.

Klemesrud’s journalistic atrocity yields too many howlers to mention, but here’s an especially gobsmacking one: “Mr. Trump, who says he is publicity shy, allowed a reporter to accompany him on what he described as a typical work day.” (What rare access, Judy!)

Amazed that he is to receive an award from a Jewish group, the publicity-shy Trump notes, “I’m not even Jewish, I’m Swedish.” (He’s neither.) The article also states that he was “a student at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated first in his class in 1968.” A 1984 Times story belatedly corrected this whopper: “Although the school refused comment, the commencement program from 1968 does not list him as graduating with honors of any kind.”

That’s right—it took the Times eight years to (partially) correct an article as riddled with falsehoods as Melania’s book. The “paper of record” had already established its lax approach to holding Trump accountable.

Was the Times going easy on Donald because it had discovered what the New York tabloids had already figured out—that Trump stories sold papers?

The Times would surely deny that its pampering of Trump—then and now—has been driven by a thirst for profits. Money, however, clearly motivated one of the darkest chapters in the Times’s codependent relationship with him

I like to criticize the Times because I think its owner and editors pay attention. If too many influencers complain that the Times’ coverage doesn’t tell the whole truth about Trump, that they fail to report his latest outrage (was it his story about Arnold Palmer’s penis or his fake appearance as a worker in a McDonald’s, where the “customers” were carefully selected Trump partisans?)

Categories Elections, Media, Trump

“60 Minutes” Rejects Trump’s Claim of Pro-Kamala Bias

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2024 //
28

The CBS News program “60 Minutes” has interviewed every major-party candidate in Presidential elections since 1968. Not this year. Trump rejected the invitation. After Kamala’s interview appeared, Trump said repeatedly that her interview had been edited to show her more favorably. He complained to the FCC and demanded that CBS lose its license.

Trump loves to play the victim and the martyr, which helps him connect to his base. Playing the victim enables his base to forget that he is a billionaire, who lives in splendor, and a draft-dodger who belittles the military.

CBS doesn’t usually respond to complaints, but they did this time. They also invited him to appear at a time of his choosing. Trump prefers friendly interviewers.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

In a rare rebuke, the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” denied charges by former President Trump that the program doctored an answer in Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent interview to make her look better to viewers.

CBS ran an excerpt of the Democratic presidential candidate’s interview on “Face the Nation” the day before it ran in a special edition of “60 Minutes” that aired Oct. 7. The answer to a query about the Biden’s administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war was different from the one that aired on the program.

In speeches and appearances on his favorite conservative media outlets, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, insists CBS was deceiving the public by editing the answer for the program as a way to put Harris in a more favorable light.

“This is false,” the program said in a statement posted Sunday on X. “’60 Minutes’ gave an excerpt of our interview to ‘Face the Nation’ that used a longer section of her answer than that on ’60 Minutes.’ Same question. Same answer but a different portion of the response.”

The portion used on “60 Minutes” was “more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21 minute long segment.”
Harris’ entire answer appears in a transcript on the CBS News website.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Eugene Robinson: Bret Baier Showed FOX Viewers How Smart and Strong Kamala Is

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2024 //
28

Eugene Robinson, a regular columnist for The Washington Post, says that Bret Baier intended to make Kamala Harris look bad when he interviewed her on FOX News, but he actually allowed her to demonstrate that she’s articulate, fearless, and strong.

He writes:

One of the people Vice President Kamala Harris might want to thank in her victory speech, if she wins the election, is Fox News anchor Bret Baier. His combative interview Wednesday gave Harris the chance to display qualities — and present facts — that Donald Trump desperately wants to keep hidden from the network’s millions of viewers.

Don’t take it from me; take it from Baier himself. He said afterward that he thought Harris came to the interview seeking “a viral moment” and added: “I think she may have gotten that.”

Baier was surely referring to the exchange about Trump’s repeated threat to deploy the U.S. military against domestic critics he calls “the enemy within” — using the language of totalitarian despots. Baier presented a too-brief clip from a town hall event, aired on Fox earlier Wednesday, in which Trump denied saying any such thing. This was gaslighting: A slightly longer clip would have shown Trump railing against “the enemy from within” and naming two leading Democrats, Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, as being part of that “sick” group.

Baier obviously knew that — and Harris called him on it.

“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the ‘enemy within,’ that he has repeated. … That’s not what you just showed,” Harris said forcefully. “Here’s the bottom line: He has repeated it many times, and you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him.”

Only after having her say — and mentioning that retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, believes he is a threat to U.S. democracy and national security — did she let Baier move on to another topic.

Practically since the day Harris became the Democratic nominee, Fox News hosts and guests have blasted her for not doing more unscripted interviews. Wednesday’s half-hour encounter was a reminder that we should all be careful what we wish for.

From start to finish, Baier was more of an inquisitor than an interviewer; there was none of the deference that fellow Fox anchor Harris Faulkner had given Trump when she moderated his town hall. Baier repeatedly interrupted the vice president, trying to talk over her and posing questions seemingly cut and pasted from the list of Republican talking points.

Intentionally or not, all of this was a gift to Harris. She stood her ground, refuting the Trump campaign’s claim that she is weak and easily pushed around. She spoke fluently and cogently, putting to rest GOP claims that all she offers is word salad. She brushed off the most tendentious questions, engaged with the substantive ones, and insisted on finishing her answers whether or not Baier liked it.

When he laid an obvious trap, asking whether she thought the millions of voters who support Trump are “stupid,” she sidestepped it with ease. “Oh, God, I would never say that about the American people,” she said — before reminding Baier of some of the vicious things Trump does say about Americans who oppose him.

Harris got to present facts that Fox tries to keep its audience from learning. Viewers heard that Harris had just come from a rally attended by 100 prominent Republicans who are crossing party lines to endorse her candidacy. They heard about the host of Trump administration officials who oppose giving their former boss another term in office. They heard Harris say she does not favor “decriminalizing” undocumented border crossings, despite what some Fox hosts regularly claim.

Fox viewers heard, perhaps for the first time, that Harris has offered concrete plans to boost the economy and support middle-class families. And they learned about all the economists who say Trump’s policies, compared with hers, will make inflation much worse and add trillions of dollars to the national debt.

In a contest that polls show as margin-of-error close, will Harris’s foray into hostile territory make any difference? Who knows. It is hard for me to imagine anything Harris might say or do that would weaken the bond between Trump and the core MAGA faithful. They are accustomed to believing what their Dear Leader says over the “lies” told by their own eyes and ears.

But there are moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents who recognize Trump’s faults but have been told by Fox News that Harris is insubstantial, inarticulate and unqualified. If they watched the interview, they saw a woman whose policies they might not love but who has command of the issues, handles pressure with ease and is nobody’s pushover. Those voters saw a viable alternative to four more years of Trump and his insanity.

Some might think Baier was properly adversarial, others might think he was obnoxiously rude. Either way, the Harris campaign ought to send him flowers.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Harris Won the Debate with FOX News

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2024 //
20

In my household, there was a vigorous debate about whether Kamala Harris should sit for an interview with Bret Baier of FOX News. Was it wise to enter the Lion’s den? I thought it was a great idea; Mary did not. From what I have read, it was a debate, not an interview, as Baier turned his questions into MAGA talking points.

Heather Cox Richardson watched the debate and believes that Kamala was dominant, even though Baier repeatedly interrupted her, spoke over her, and didn’t let her finish her answers to his questions.

She wrote:

Two Fox News Channel interviews bracketed today: one this morning with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in front of an audience of hand-picked Republican women in Georgia, the other by Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris with host Bret Baier. Together, the two were a performance of dominance. 

FNC billed Trump’s so-called town hall as a chance for female voters, a demographic that is swinging heavily to Harris, to ask Trump about issues they care about. But Hadas Gold and Liam Reilly of CNN reported that FNC had packed the audience with Trump supporters. The first question came from the president of the Fulton County Republican Women, though she was not identified as such. FNC then edited the broadcast to cut out remarks in which the attendees expressed support for Trump. 

It seems unlikely that Trump attracted any new voters by speaking to an audience of loyalists audibly cheering him on.

After Trump refused to debate her again, Harris voluntarily moved into his right-wing territory, agreeing to an interview with FNC host Bret Baier. In that interview, Baier reframed right-wing talking points as questions, essentially giving Trump a second shot at a debate. Baier kept talking over the vice president’s attempts to answer—even putting out a hand to interrupt her—in a stark contrast to FNC’s deference to Trump. Harris asked him to let her reply, and then answered his questions, sometimes testily, usually turning them into opportunities to contrast her own candidacy and record with Trump’s. 

Control of the interview changed abruptly when Harris called out Trump for referring to the “enemy within” and talking about using the American military against those he considers enemies. Baier used that opportunity to show a clip of Trump saying he wasn’t threatening anyone, but the clip was edited to remove his threats against “sick,” “evil,” “dangerous” “Marxists and communists and fascists” including Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) and “the Pelosis”—presumably former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her husband, who was attacked by a man with a hammer in 2022 by a man who wanted to force Nancy Pelosi to renounce the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. 

Harris had had enough propaganda.

“Bret, I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about the enemy within that he has repeated when he’s speaking about the American people. That’s not what you just showed…. You and I both know that he’s talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy. And in a democracy, the president of the United States in the United States of America should be… able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake, which is why you have someone like the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying what Mark Milley has said about Donald Trump being a threat to the United States of America.” 

Simply by going on the right-wing network, Harris was demonstrating dominance. Then, by answering as thoroughly as she did, she undercut the right-wing narrative that she is stupid and inarticulate. By calling out the FNC for deliberately misleading its viewers, she took command. Baier, rather than Harris, was the one doing the post-interview spinning.

Writer Peter Wehner, who worked for presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, wrote: “Bret Baier has rarely looked as bad (or tendentious) as he did in his interview with Kamala Harris. On the flip side, this was one of her best interviews. She dominated Bret. All in all it was quite a bad day for MAGA world’s most important media outlet.”

In between the two FNC events were two others that also told a story, this one about how the Republican Party’s descent into MAGA is creating a new political coalition to defend American principles.

Trump held a town hall with undecided Latino voters moderated by Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo for Univision. Members of the audience asked excellent questions: how would he bring down household costs, who would take the jobs left behind by undocumented workers if Trump deported them and how much would that drive up food costs, why Trump took so long to stop the January 6 rioters, if he had caused deaths during the pandemic by misleading Americans, and if he agrees with his wife, Melania, about protecting abortion rights. 

But Trump did not answer the questions, instead regurgitating his usual talking points. He promised to produce more oil and gas, called undocumented immigrants criminals, repeated the lie about Haitian migrants eating pets, and, after notably referring to the January 6 rioters as “we” and law enforcement officers as “the others,” called January 6 “a day of love.” The audience did not appear convinced.

Meanwhile, Vice President Harris joined more than 100 Republicans in Pennsylvania, near the spot where George Washington and more than 2,000 Continental soldiers crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 to surprise a garrison of British soldiers at Trenton, New Jersey, where they won a strategic victory. 

Harris noted that those gathered were also near Philadelphia, where in 1787 delegates from across the country gathered to write and sign the U.S. Constitution. 

“That work was not easy. The founders often disagreed. Often quite passionately. But in the end, the Constitution of the United States laid out the foundations of our democracy, including the rule of law, that there would be checks and balances, that we would have free and fair elections and a peaceful transfer of power. And these principles and traditions have sustained our nation for over two centuries, sustained because generations of Americans, from all backgrounds, from all beliefs, have cherished them, upheld them, and defended them. 

“And now, the baton is in our hands,” she said. [A]t stake in this race are the democratic ideals that our founders and generations of Americans before us have fought for. At stake in this election is the Constitution of the United States…its very self.” 

Harris welcomed the Republicans in the crowd, saying that everyone there shared a core belief: “That we must put country before party.” The crowd chanted, “USA, USA, USA.” 

Harris noted that many of the Republicans on stage had taken the same oath to the Constitution that she had. “We here know the Constitution is not a relic from our past, but determines whether we are a country where the people can speak freely, and even criticize the president, without fear of being thrown in jail, or targeted by the military. Where the people can worship as they choose without the government interfering. Where you can vote without fear that your vote will be thrown away. All this and more depends on whether or not our leaders honor their oath to the Constitution.”

Trump, she pointed out, tried to overturn the will of the people expressed in a free and fair election, has vowed to use the military to go after any American who doesn’t support him, and has called for the “termination” of the Constitution. “It is clear,” she said, “Donald Trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged, and he is seeking unchecked power.” Trump, she said, “must never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States.”

“And to those who are watching,” she said, “if you share that view, no matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time: There is a place for you in this campaign. The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump.”

“I pledge to you to be a President for all Americans. And I take that pledge seriously.”

She reiterated her promise to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and to establish a Council on Bipartisan Solutions to strengthen the middle class, secure the border, defend our freedoms, and maintain the nation’s leadership in the world. She noted that the country needs a healthy two-party system, and described how the Senate Intelligence Committee left partisanship at the door. It “was “country over party in action,” when she sat on the committee, she said, “[s]o I know it can be done.”

“[O]ur campaign is not a fight against something,” she said. “It is a fight for something. It is a fight for the fundamental principles upon which we were founded, It is a fight for a new generation of leadership that is optimistic about what we can achieve together—Republicans, Democrats, and independents who want to move past the politics of division and blame and get things done on behalf of the American people.

“[W]e are all here together this beautiful afternoon because we love our country…and we know the deep privilege and pride that comes with being an American and the duty that comes along with it…. Imperfect though we may be, America is still that ‘shining city upon a hill’ that inspires people around the world. And I do believe it is one of the highest forms of patriotism to fight for the ideals of our country.”

“So, to people from across Pennsylvania, and across our nation, let us together stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals, and for the Constitution of the United States. And in twenty days, we have the power to chart a New Way Forward, one that is worthy of this magnificent country that we are all blessed to call home.” 

Categories Democracy, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Trump

Trump Demands That FCC Withdraw CBS License After Harris Interview on 60 Minutes

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2024 //
9

Trump is weird. He says outrageous things whenever he speaks, and no one is shocked anymore. He lies and makes things up, and it’s another day on the campaign trail. It’s just Trump being Trump.

Trump was furious at CBS “60 Minutes” for allegedly editing Kamala Harris’s comments about Israel. He called it “election interference” and demanded that the FCC strip away CBS license to broadcast. The first question that occurred to me was, how did he know what she said before the conversation was edited (which is customary)?

The Washington Post pulled no punches in its story, pointing out Trump’s authoritarian bent.

Former president Donald Trump said Thursday that CBS News should lose a broadcasting license over how it edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, even though the federal government does not issue licenses for such television networks.

It was the latest example of Trump calling for media outlets that have angered him to lose their rights to broadcast — a push that evokes government control of media, which is a hallmark of authoritarianism.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel denounced Trump’s latest call targeting CBS, flatly rejecting an idea the independent agency has ruled out under both the Biden and Trump administrations.

“While repeated attacks against broadcast stations by the former President may now be familiar, these threats against free speech are serious and should not be ignored,” Rosenworcel said in a statement. “As I’ve said before, the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.”

CBS declined to comment.

Trump has been fixated for days on Harris’s interview with “60 Minutes,” which came after he backed out of sitting for his own interview with the show, according to the network. Since Harris’s interview aired Monday night, Trump has focused on how it featured a shorter version of Harris’s answer to a question about Israel than was shown in a clip previewing the interview.

It is standard for television networks to edit interviews for broadcast, especially to fit time restraints.

“Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, make her look better,” Trump claimed in a post on his social media platform Thursday morning. “A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal. TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.”

Trump went on to baselessly accuse Democrats of making CBS “do this,” calling it “Election Interference” and saying the party should be forced to concede the election.

He later suggested that all broadcast licenses “should be bid out to the Highest Bidder.”

Trump raised the issue again during an afternoon speech in Detroit, claiming the edited Harris interview “will go down as the single biggest scandal in broadcast history.”

The FCC says on its website that its “role in overseeing program content is very limited.” The agency licenses individual broadcast stations, not networks in their entirety.

“We do not license TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations that stations have relationships with, such as PBS or NPR, except if those entities are also station licensees,” the FCC website says.

It is not the first time Trump has called for a network to lose its broadcasting license because he was not happy with what aired or with how he was portrayed. Trump last month suggested ABC should lose its license over its moderating of the debate between him and Harris. Rosenworcel also rejected that suggestion at the time.

Even the FCC head during Trump’s presidency, Ajit Pai, had dismissed Trump’s talk of targeting broadcast licenses.

“I believe in the First Amendment,” Pai said in 2017 after Trump suggested NBC should face consequences for critical coverage of his administration. “The FCC, under my leadership, will stand for the First Amendment. Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”

Democrats have long criticized Trump over his authoritarian tendencies, both in his public comments and in his affinities for certain foreign leaders. He said last year that he would not be a dictator if he wins the November election — “except for Day 1,” a comment that Harris has continued to highlight through the final weeks of their race.

The “60 Minutes” episode broadcast Monday — a special pre-election episode — sparked controversy in the days before it aired. CBS said Trump pulled out of an interview with the show because it would be fact-checked, per usual. Trump’s campaign said Trump never fully committed to the interview but also acknowledged that fact-checking was an area of dispute.

Categories Censorship, Elections, Freedom of the Press, Harris, Kamala, Lies, Media, Trump

Michael Tomasky: Mainstream Media Doesn’t Cover Trump’s Worst Insults

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2024 //
20

Well, by now, we have all grown accustomed to Trump’s mad ravings, so they are no longer newsworthy. So says Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic. Some readers of this blog will say that he suffers from NY Times‘ derangement syndrome, but hear him out. To be fair, Tomasky almost forgave the New York Times after he read Peter Baker’s article about Trump’s incoherence and cognitive decline, which appeared soon after he wrote this piece, titled “The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness.”

He wrote:

It’s a pretty sad commentary on the way our mainstream media cover Donald Trump that if you really want to know what Trump said at a given rally, you would be wasting your time going to The New York Times or The Washington Post and you really need to read Aaron Rupar.

He writes:

Who is Rupar? He’s a liberal Substacker and prolific tweeter who prints all the news The New York Times doesn’t deem fit to print. The latest case in point is Trump’s weekend rally at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin—an appropriately named venue for a speech in which Trump was barking out hatred and bile like a mad dog.

If you’re the sort of person really steeped in campaign coverage, you may have read about what went down; if you missed it, spoiler alert: Trump said something at this rally so insane and offensive that even the Times finally roused itself to cover it. Trump called Kamala Harris “mentally disabled” and added: “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.”

That statement, whatever else we might call it, was obviously news, so the Times couldn’t help leading with it. Ditto the Post, which decided to produce a story that emphasized Trump’s violation of politically correct manners. The Post piece quoted a mental health advocate scolding Trump for his insensitive language—as if what he said was offensive only to people struggling with mental illness!

Meanwhile, here are some other things Trump said at the rally, which you had to read Rupar’s X feed to know about.

 “These people are animals” (referring to migrants).

“I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We’re going to liberate our country.”

“You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.”

And, finally, this gem: “They will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.”

Let’s tarry over that last one for a bit. Here’s a man who wants to be the president of the United States saying of immigrants—all immigrants: women, children, old people, everyone—that they will invade your home and attack you in one of the most violent and painful (and terrifying) ways possible. They will cut your throat.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find that shocking, even coming from Trump. It’s one thing to say that Mexico is “sending rapists,” as he infamously did in 2015. Even making a general statement about how these people come here and commit crimes, while bad enough, isn’t nearly as bad as this. This is saying directly to every American that they will break into your house and cut your throat.

That sure seems like news to me. Yet it didn’t appear in either the Times or the Post account. The Times piece did have a sentence noting that Trump “continued to vilify” migrants and called them “stone-cold killers,” so let’s give them that, at least. But the plain implication of Trump’s statement here is that migrants are an imminent threat to one’s safety. This is an unambiguous incitement to preemptive violence. How can such a vicious statement not be thought of as news?

Here’s how. If your definition of “news” is simply that which is new, then OK, maybe. Calling his opponent who happens to be the sitting vice president of the United States “mentally disabled” was new, and ergo it was news. That I get.

But Trump attacking migrants isn’t new. Obviously, I would argue that a candidate for president raising the specter of people breaking into people’s homes and cutting their throats is new. Perhaps reasonable minds can differ on that, I guess. And if it isn’t new, it isn’t news…

Why is age fair game for discussion but mental infirmity taboo? Is it because of basic human emotional responses to each matter—that is, we all see people age, it’s familiar, we’re comfortable talking about it—whereas with respect to mental health, talking about it makes us uncomfortable? If so, that’s a pretty lousy excuse. It’s journalism’s job to raise uncomfortable questions.

My commentary:

As for me, I don’t think that the issue is Trump’s mental health, although he is apparently suffering cognitive decline as video clips of his meanderings demonstrate.

The fact is that his campaign is based on demonizing immigrants, without regard to facts. He has launched a hateful campaign against them, making them targets of fear. It seems as though he is encouraging his followers to beat them up.

If he carried out his proposed mass deportation of millions of immigrants, not only would it be an act of inhumanity, but it would cripple important sectors of our economy: agriculture, tourism, meat and seafood processing, construction, restaurants, and more.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Insane, Media, Trump

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on “60 Minutes”

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2024 //
37

There’s been a lot of grumbling in the media about Kamala not sitting for interviews, so these past few days she has sat for interviews. She was on “The View.” She sat for a long interview with Howard Stern. She did a podcast with Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy,” a very popular show whose audience is women., especially young women. And she did the obligatory interview with “60 Minutes.” So did Tim Walz. I thought she was terrific. Watch and seeehat you think.

Trump was supposed to be interviewed but he canceled at the last minute. He said the show owed him an apology for something Lesley Stahl said four years ago. He claimed she said that Hunter Biden’s laptop came from Russia; CBS denied it. He complained that CBS would fact check him; that was unacceptable. CBS said it always fact checks.

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media, Vance, J.D.
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »