Hmm, I wonder why trust in the regime media has absolutely cratered? There’s something terribly wrong when so-called journalists are debating if they should platform the Republican presidential candidate, one who has the support of half the country.
But ya, keep patting yourself on the back as impartial observers of world events. For anyone outside your insular bubble, the mere fact this is a conversation demonstrates why the regime media is unfit for purpose. Just another nail in the coffin of an industry in circling the drain of irrelevancy.
This is a great example of how incompetent and partisan the regime media has become; “We wouldn’t have heard our president toying with the idea of UV rays and bleach injections in a way so instantly stunning that it was the rare nonsensical utterance to break through the dense fog of Trump blather.”
Trump never suggested people inject bleach. A two-minute internet search would reveal the actual text of what he said. Bu ya, keep patting yourself on the back as impartial observers of world events.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has been the Dem presidential candidate for nearly three weeks, and has yet to conduct a real interview. Maybe those in the regime media should get off their ass and do real journalism.
Once Donald Trump is dead and gone, will they return to proper journalistic principles? That seems very unlikely. No, they will name a new existential threat.
This century Republicans have thrust Bush/Cheney/Hastert and Trump upon Americans…the problem was never Trump. The Republican voters whose brains have been fried by the right wing echo chamber are the problem. I have no idea how to deprogram a cult of 50 million Americans who don’t even care that their votes have harmed them the most!?! Their children were sent to Iraq only to return to American carnage after Bush shipped jobs to China!?! Wealthy Republicans benefited from GOP tax cuts and came out of Covid wealthier than ever and cut in line to get vaccinated…while working class Americans were tricked into not getting vaccinated and ended up dying at a much higher rate once the vaccines became available. So East Palestine was decimated first by Bush and then by Covid but only after the vaccines became available!?! But JD Vance and Tucker Carlson demagogue on a derailed train that killed no one and was of little consequence!! Trump was never the problem—Trump voters have been the problem since 2000!!
You missed the memo. The Dems are now the party of Bush and Cheney. It’s the Dems who now support forever wars. It’s the Dems who now support open borders. It’s the Dems who now support censorship.
Biden has had a record low number of American combat deaths. The only way Trump had fewer global war casualties than Biden is if you don’t count Yemeni as full humans which most Republicans believe they are subhuman.
Huh? Biden scuttled a peace deal in Ukraine two months after the war started. So by your logic, he is responsible for all those deaths - on both sides actually. Oh ya, the U.S. and Britain have both bombed Yemen in 2024.
The most deaths in Yemen were when Trump was president. And Biden gave Zelensky all of the information for him to make the best decision for Ukraine and he chose to fight. Americans believe some causes are worth fighting for and so that’s Zelensky’s decision to make.
Except this is not what happened. Zelensky was willing to sign a peace deal and Boris Johnson went over there and scuttled the deal. He did this on behest of the US. Under Trump, the U.S. was involved in no wars and there was peace in the Middle East. Biden’s shambolic retreat from Afghanistan and financial appeasement of Iran have sparked the global conflicts we see today.
I don't know about people who grew up in liberal democracies, but having grown up with the censorship of Apartheid South Africa I can _smell_ information suppression (usually as a result of lack of information on a particular topic) and my instinctive response is to discount the views of the suppressors and place greater weight on statements my their opposition.
Reading Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" (at school - the English curriculum was quietly subversive) certainly helped me to distinguish political speech from evidence-based discussion.
Very good. At the core of the thinking that Rosen and Sullivan exemplify is a bad, simple-minded notion that the average person is completely lacking in critical faculties, a sponge that instantly soaks up whatever is put in front of them. It makes as little sense now as it did 40 years ago - the only difference is that now it's inflated and magnified by social media, where loudly insisting is somehow equated with making change. I think the popularity of this notion is the neatness: it's orderly. It's also just wrong. At any given moment throughout the day, anyone who works at a 9 to 5 job, from bus drivers to parking attendants to EMS crews to sanitation workers, is engaged in complex mental operations and on the spot critical thinking that leave such baby talk in the dust. Why do people vote for Donald Trump? As someone who would not consider voting for him under any circumstances - up to and possibly including a gun at my temple - I find it hard to fathom, too. But I would never consider the idea that anyone who does vote for him is the mental equivalent of a lemming lining up at the cliff's edge. As you say, the answer is ALWAYS to expose, NEVER to suppress.
Why not call them what they are: propagandists. Curating and shaping news in such a way as to lead the reader to reach the conclusion you want them to hold is propaganda and a symptom of the totalitarian mind.
"As The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell points out, 'One of the things that’s always been true of Donald Trump is that when voters see less of him, his approval ratings tend to go up, when voters see more of him, his approval ratings tend to go down'."
I had the same experience listening to Louis Farrakhan give a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, which was carried live on C-SPAN and PBS. It was a full-on shamble of a speech, based entirely on numerology (paraphrasing here): "And there are 12 steps in this monument which is 11 plus the 1, and the 1 and 1 together make the 2, and the 2 are the mother and the father, and that is our law and our votes, and ..." I was so, so glad to be able to hear those words directly from him, because I wouldn't have believed anyone else's report they were so wild.
Let free speech reign! There is no better way to keep ourselves free.
Not the stakes. Not the odds. The news. Report the facts without fear or favor. If and only if you can do that, you are worthy of being called a journalist.
Glad to see this, but you're too kind to the press in the process. Jay Rosen laid the intellectual groundwork for Resistance Journalism, Sullivan followed along and provides lower-brow cover for a progressive-dominated journo workforce to do what they want to do anyway. Their authoritarian ideology continues to be hugely influential, particularly among the kids (some of them now hitting 40 or so!) not raised up on newspaper-world values. There's been pushback a la Joe Kahn, and I'm very glad to see that, but I think it's a losing cause in the medium to long term.
My Dad would be rolling in his grave. Hell, I’m rolling in mine, and I’m not even dead yet.. It’s pretty scary what they feel comfortable saying out loud…
Great piece. I think the problem may simply be the word "platform" -- it's fun to say! "Why are you PLATFORMING this existential threat to humanity? I suggest we DE-PLATFORM him!" Not logical, but it sounds kinda cool when you say it out loud. Almost believed it myself, for a second there.
Good piece. I remember when Sullivan chastised the NYT Book Review (when she was NYT ombudsman) for publishing a "sneering" review of a book by Glenn Greenwald (then an ideological ally). So adversarial journalism is good, except for people that she likes.
It's fascinating that this duo is always so annoyed with all the front-page stories about Hillary's emails in the New York Times. And while I agree it was overkill, who, even in 2016, ever looks at the front page of the New York Times? It's a different world now, with social media reigning, but this duo is still obsessed with the old one.
I agree, a lot of the media has followed Sullivan and Rosen's advice and has become a lot more openly partisan. You have Fox on the right, MSNBC on the left. Does anyone really consider that an improvement?
Sullivan & Rosen aren't in it alone. I have whiplash from broad media defense of J. Biden's obvious neuro-degeneration over the last 3 years followed, specifically on June 27, by "If only we'd known..." media coverage. They knew. Everyone knew.
These people first decide the public is somehow too illiterate and uneducated to make their own choices based on all evidence being presented. Next, they decide to attack and belittle the public for being too uneducated while withholding evidence the public can see. Gaslight. Lie. Ignore major news. Watch as the public loses trust and still have the nerve to wonder why people believe Trump when he says they are "fake news." It actually makes him look more trustworthy as the entire operation is so blatantly obvious to all but the willingly brainwashed. Journalism is propaganda at best at this point, and the solution is to fire everyone and start from scratch (preferably with state school employees who actually understand the hoi polloi.
Is it journalistic malpractice for the New York Times to publish articles today indicating that the defeat of Cori Bush was not due to constituents losing faith in her but rather due to AIPAC donations to Wesley Bell? Must every political situation be reframed as due to a Jewish conspiracy?
"...slinging their supercilious slop..." It's an instant classic.
I hold Pesca in high regard, but I think he went a little too far with this polemic. He's entire brand is Centrist. This feels antagonistic. Almost 3 brandy Pesca.
But as we should learn from the Olympics. A platform is different from a springboard.
Hmm, I wonder why trust in the regime media has absolutely cratered? There’s something terribly wrong when so-called journalists are debating if they should platform the Republican presidential candidate, one who has the support of half the country.
But ya, keep patting yourself on the back as impartial observers of world events. For anyone outside your insular bubble, the mere fact this is a conversation demonstrates why the regime media is unfit for purpose. Just another nail in the coffin of an industry in circling the drain of irrelevancy.
This is a great example of how incompetent and partisan the regime media has become; “We wouldn’t have heard our president toying with the idea of UV rays and bleach injections in a way so instantly stunning that it was the rare nonsensical utterance to break through the dense fog of Trump blather.”
Trump never suggested people inject bleach. A two-minute internet search would reveal the actual text of what he said. Bu ya, keep patting yourself on the back as impartial observers of world events.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has been the Dem presidential candidate for nearly three weeks, and has yet to conduct a real interview. Maybe those in the regime media should get off their ass and do real journalism.
Once Donald Trump is dead and gone, will they return to proper journalistic principles? That seems very unlikely. No, they will name a new existential threat.
This century Republicans have thrust Bush/Cheney/Hastert and Trump upon Americans…the problem was never Trump. The Republican voters whose brains have been fried by the right wing echo chamber are the problem. I have no idea how to deprogram a cult of 50 million Americans who don’t even care that their votes have harmed them the most!?! Their children were sent to Iraq only to return to American carnage after Bush shipped jobs to China!?! Wealthy Republicans benefited from GOP tax cuts and came out of Covid wealthier than ever and cut in line to get vaccinated…while working class Americans were tricked into not getting vaccinated and ended up dying at a much higher rate once the vaccines became available. So East Palestine was decimated first by Bush and then by Covid but only after the vaccines became available!?! But JD Vance and Tucker Carlson demagogue on a derailed train that killed no one and was of little consequence!! Trump was never the problem—Trump voters have been the problem since 2000!!
You missed the memo. The Dems are now the party of Bush and Cheney. It’s the Dems who now support forever wars. It’s the Dems who now support open borders. It’s the Dems who now support censorship.
Biden has had a record low number of American combat deaths. The only way Trump had fewer global war casualties than Biden is if you don’t count Yemeni as full humans which most Republicans believe they are subhuman.
Huh? Biden scuttled a peace deal in Ukraine two months after the war started. So by your logic, he is responsible for all those deaths - on both sides actually. Oh ya, the U.S. and Britain have both bombed Yemen in 2024.
The most deaths in Yemen were when Trump was president. And Biden gave Zelensky all of the information for him to make the best decision for Ukraine and he chose to fight. Americans believe some causes are worth fighting for and so that’s Zelensky’s decision to make.
Except this is not what happened. Zelensky was willing to sign a peace deal and Boris Johnson went over there and scuttled the deal. He did this on behest of the US. Under Trump, the U.S. was involved in no wars and there was peace in the Middle East. Biden’s shambolic retreat from Afghanistan and financial appeasement of Iran have sparked the global conflicts we see today.
I don't know about people who grew up in liberal democracies, but having grown up with the censorship of Apartheid South Africa I can _smell_ information suppression (usually as a result of lack of information on a particular topic) and my instinctive response is to discount the views of the suppressors and place greater weight on statements my their opposition.
Reading Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" (at school - the English curriculum was quietly subversive) certainly helped me to distinguish political speech from evidence-based discussion.
Very good. At the core of the thinking that Rosen and Sullivan exemplify is a bad, simple-minded notion that the average person is completely lacking in critical faculties, a sponge that instantly soaks up whatever is put in front of them. It makes as little sense now as it did 40 years ago - the only difference is that now it's inflated and magnified by social media, where loudly insisting is somehow equated with making change. I think the popularity of this notion is the neatness: it's orderly. It's also just wrong. At any given moment throughout the day, anyone who works at a 9 to 5 job, from bus drivers to parking attendants to EMS crews to sanitation workers, is engaged in complex mental operations and on the spot critical thinking that leave such baby talk in the dust. Why do people vote for Donald Trump? As someone who would not consider voting for him under any circumstances - up to and possibly including a gun at my temple - I find it hard to fathom, too. But I would never consider the idea that anyone who does vote for him is the mental equivalent of a lemming lining up at the cliff's edge. As you say, the answer is ALWAYS to expose, NEVER to suppress.
Fantastic. Hard agree.
Why not call them what they are: propagandists. Curating and shaping news in such a way as to lead the reader to reach the conclusion you want them to hold is propaganda and a symptom of the totalitarian mind.
"As The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell points out, 'One of the things that’s always been true of Donald Trump is that when voters see less of him, his approval ratings tend to go up, when voters see more of him, his approval ratings tend to go down'."
I had the same experience listening to Louis Farrakhan give a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, which was carried live on C-SPAN and PBS. It was a full-on shamble of a speech, based entirely on numerology (paraphrasing here): "And there are 12 steps in this monument which is 11 plus the 1, and the 1 and 1 together make the 2, and the 2 are the mother and the father, and that is our law and our votes, and ..." I was so, so glad to be able to hear those words directly from him, because I wouldn't have believed anyone else's report they were so wild.
Let free speech reign! There is no better way to keep ourselves free.
AMEN!
Not the stakes. Not the odds. The news. Report the facts without fear or favor. If and only if you can do that, you are worthy of being called a journalist.
Glad to see this, but you're too kind to the press in the process. Jay Rosen laid the intellectual groundwork for Resistance Journalism, Sullivan followed along and provides lower-brow cover for a progressive-dominated journo workforce to do what they want to do anyway. Their authoritarian ideology continues to be hugely influential, particularly among the kids (some of them now hitting 40 or so!) not raised up on newspaper-world values. There's been pushback a la Joe Kahn, and I'm very glad to see that, but I think it's a losing cause in the medium to long term.
My Dad would be rolling in his grave. Hell, I’m rolling in mine, and I’m not even dead yet.. It’s pretty scary what they feel comfortable saying out loud…
Great piece. I think the problem may simply be the word "platform" -- it's fun to say! "Why are you PLATFORMING this existential threat to humanity? I suggest we DE-PLATFORM him!" Not logical, but it sounds kinda cool when you say it out loud. Almost believed it myself, for a second there.
Good piece. I remember when Sullivan chastised the NYT Book Review (when she was NYT ombudsman) for publishing a "sneering" review of a book by Glenn Greenwald (then an ideological ally). So adversarial journalism is good, except for people that she likes.
It's fascinating that this duo is always so annoyed with all the front-page stories about Hillary's emails in the New York Times. And while I agree it was overkill, who, even in 2016, ever looks at the front page of the New York Times? It's a different world now, with social media reigning, but this duo is still obsessed with the old one.
I agree, a lot of the media has followed Sullivan and Rosen's advice and has become a lot more openly partisan. You have Fox on the right, MSNBC on the left. Does anyone really consider that an improvement?
Sullivan & Rosen aren't in it alone. I have whiplash from broad media defense of J. Biden's obvious neuro-degeneration over the last 3 years followed, specifically on June 27, by "If only we'd known..." media coverage. They knew. Everyone knew.
These people first decide the public is somehow too illiterate and uneducated to make their own choices based on all evidence being presented. Next, they decide to attack and belittle the public for being too uneducated while withholding evidence the public can see. Gaslight. Lie. Ignore major news. Watch as the public loses trust and still have the nerve to wonder why people believe Trump when he says they are "fake news." It actually makes him look more trustworthy as the entire operation is so blatantly obvious to all but the willingly brainwashed. Journalism is propaganda at best at this point, and the solution is to fire everyone and start from scratch (preferably with state school employees who actually understand the hoi polloi.
Is it journalistic malpractice for the New York Times to publish articles today indicating that the defeat of Cori Bush was not due to constituents losing faith in her but rather due to AIPAC donations to Wesley Bell? Must every political situation be reframed as due to a Jewish conspiracy?
"slinging their supercilious slop" is the most Dickensian thing I've heard all week. Well done.
I just copied this from Pesca's bit:
"...slinging their supercilious slop..." It's an instant classic.
I hold Pesca in high regard, but I think he went a little too far with this polemic. He's entire brand is Centrist. This feels antagonistic. Almost 3 brandy Pesca.
"Journalists should journal."
We get it Mike.