Back in 1976, Paddy Chayevsky, the screenwriter of “Network,” was asked whether his movie was “a cautionary tale” about the future of the media. He replied, “No, I was writing about today.” 46 years later, the movie has lost none of its scabrous punch. If anything, the situation is even worse than it was portrayed back in those more-innocent days.
I am increasingly frustrated with the “Yes, but …” coverage in the news, where any Biden positive news is followed by a may-or-may-not-be actually related negative, which is given at least twice as much coverage.
Yes, inflation sucks, but I remember gas lines in the 70s (at least gas is readily available) and house hunting while pregnant in 1983, when prime mortgage rates were 13%. Since our younger generations don’t seem to be learning much about history, they lack perspective, and everything is presented by the media as catastrophic. I’ll be more sympathetic about gas prices when I stop walking past several cars sitting in a parking lot with their engines running on a beautiful day, or the 10 or 15 car long line in the drive through.
This is 100% spot on. When President Biden was elected, I started keeping a tally of the "headlines" that showed up on my browser each day. The ratio of "Trump" in the headlines to "Biden" in the headlines was about 99/1. That a con artist masquerading as a president continued to dominate the "news" while the duly elected and wildly popular incumbent received NO attention at all was breathtaking and so very obvious. When CBS did its dastardly thing, I sent them a message and removed them from my browser feed. Faux noise hasn't been on it for so long, I can't even recall the last misinformation piece of garbage that showed up there. I no longer pay attention to anything that comes via ABC or CNN. And if MSNBC crosses over the line, they get personalized blasts from me (some of them follow me, so I hope they care.) I have a gripe with NPR for its all things are equal, even if they aren't "reporting" so I don't give a fig for anything that comes from them. In my opinion, they DO have their entire organizations on the scale with regards to Biden and the midterms. This is a misuse of their power and I think they should be monitored and called out for it. BTW, I tweeted the link to this article to WaPo with a comment that I agreed with it 100%. It will be interesting to see what comes back from other followers.
I cannot fathom the depths to which news reporting has sunk. Oh, wait, I forgot. The dumbing down of our public school curriculum, the absence of critical thinking skills and the addiction to ratings, not content. Silly me.
24 Hour News channels......like feeding a hungry elephant....every story is a little morsel ending up having equal value so we move, incredibly, from looking at dead bodies on the streets of Bucha to a "feel good" fluff story....OR, worse, to a week long headlining of the "slap heard round the world". Repetition and unfolding stories, misleading headlines and screen summaries...... It is whiplash and ultimately nonsensical. At the same time as they are feeding the elephant they refuse to pay people to do the long, hard investigative work.....rather, hire more pundits, ex White House staff, political celebrities....... With very few exceptions, we are fed a high carb, low protein news diet. Meanwhile, younger generations simply are not watching TV but taking headlines off of news feeds on their phones IF they are not scrolling through to the pop culture stuff and where their friends are eating at the moment. What a mess. I often go to BBC which is less flashy, more focused...but you can see the pressure is on them to get more glitzy. HardTalk is one of the best in-depth interview shows going. Thanks, TC. This helps me recover from yesterday's rape and pillage post which I made the supreme mistake of reading just before I went to bed. Needed to be said. I just need to read it in the daylight at least!!! Thank you, as always.
I think the problem might be the presentation. I follow the pres, veep and press sec on Twitter, and mostly they are a snooze trending toward comatose. I can't stand too much of it, and as a former computer programmer, I have a very high tolerance for mind-numbing boredom. Mr. Biden is an awesome administrator, and he has performed remarkably well, but with gridlock in the Senate, his exciting signature legislation gathers moss and his constituency slumbers.
.....and why, when it's been a good deal longer than a decade that Chuck Todd has been the go-to punchline for "media" jokes, does he still have a show? and wasn't Zucker the moronic asshole who ran Universal for all those years and released a whole bunch of movies that are themselves go-to punchlines for terrible movie jokes? I know that MSNBC uses General McCaffrey as an "expert" and he tends to say the "right things." the problem with McCaffrey is that back when he was Clinton's so-called "Drug Czar" (itself a joke position), I watched him testify before Congress that needle-exchange programs had been statistically proven to ramp up heroin addiction. now, first of all, this was a complete lie. but the more important thing was that AIDS was killing people at an insane rate (including whole bunches of my friends) and there was excellent research demonstrating that needle exchange programs worked extraordinarily well to cut down infection numbers. I was a high school counselor in Manhattan at the time, and was heavily involved in developing the AIDS Prevention Curriculum for the city, so I was extremely well-informed about this stuff. watching McCaffrey, I decided that nothing coming out of his mouth was anything I was ever going to trust coming out of his mouth. and getting back to the general coverage of Biden's "problems," I recall that when TFF boasted about "his" economy, it was something like a month or two into his term. and it got covered to death, without a whole lot of what has come to be called "pushback," previously known as a "correction," or (somewhat worse) a "fact check." I know that it's a characteristic of old age to be nostalgic about the past, but sometimes it's not nostalgia, it's FACTs.
TCinLA…You Are Absolutely Right. Been tracking on WaPo (given up on the NYT) and Punchbowl News. The bias is very, very evident. Press Run reports on this several times a week. On PBS Washington Week they just can’t bring themselves to say much of anything positive about anything this administration is doing or has done. There is also an addiction to negativity and drama to the point where they start or blow on the fire. I’ve started saying “Biden’s doing a great job.” Everywhere. Last year. I watched Network (a favorite) again and was reminded anew at how prescient the movie was. It’s even worse in the USA now. So much worse. (We can thank Zuckerberg for giving Trump the persona of a winner on network tv. Thanks Jeff.) ❤️🤍💙
A bit of Brainwashington Post everywhere it seems. Journalism trapped by click-bait competition. - "Being unhappy gives a reward, you feel greater; ordinary happiness comes at a price, you feel smaller." (Bert Hellinger).
you're 1000% right, and it's impossible to know what to say, except for something that can only be represented by a long non-word that mimics some kind of primal scream.
How representative is The White House press corps of the news now consumed by the American public? Does this group of journalists, correspondents, and members of the media assigned to the White House in Washington, D.C., to cover the president of the United States constitute the sources from which Americans are now getting the news?
'More than eight-in-ten Americans get news from digital devices'
‘… adults (86%) say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet “often” or “sometimes,” including 60% who say they do so often. This is higher than the portion who get news from television, though 68% get news from TV at least sometimes and 40% do so often. Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently, with half saying they turn to radio at least sometimes (16% do so often) and about a third (32%) saying the same of print (10% get news from print publications often).'
'Within digital platforms for news, most age groups turn to news websites at higher rates than other platforms, with one exception. Americans ages 18 to 29 stand out in that the most common digital way they get news is social media, with 42% saying they get news this way often versus 28% saying the same of either news websites or search engines'
‘The transition of news from print, television and radio to digital spaces has caused huge disruptions in the traditional news industry, especially the print news industry. It is also reflected in the ways individual Americans say they are getting their news. A large majority of Americans get news at least sometimes from digital devices, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020.’
How has the White House Press Corps adapted to this big change in the way Americans now get their news? I do not know, but that’s a big question for the White House that needs get its message to the American people. The most up-to-date information I obtained is a year and a half old. I do not know for sure, but my guess is getting the news from digital sources has not gone down in the time period.
'Though digital devices are by far the most common way Americans access their news, where they get that news on their devices is divided among a number of different pathways. About two-thirds of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from news websites or apps (68%) or search engines, like Google (65%). About half (53%) say they get news from social media, and a much smaller portion say they get news at least sometimes from podcasts (22%). (PewResearch)
‘The White House Correspondents’ Association has laid out new seating assignments for reporters who attend daily briefings and news conferences. It’s the first time since 2017 that the journalists’ organization, which controls the 49 press seats in the cramped James S. Brady Briefing Room, has rejiggered who sits where, or doesn’t sit anywhere at all.’
‘But the chart now looks much different than it did the last time seats were handed out.
Notably, the WHCA has expanded the number of news organizations with assigned positions to a record 65 — and 14 of them are first-timers. It did so by splitting up seats in the middle and back rows among 30 news outlets. Reporters from the BBC and Newsweek, for example, will take turns occupying a spot in the last row, as will correspondents from the Daily Caller and EWTN.’
‘The goal, said WHCA President Steven Portnoy of CBS News Radio (second row, left side), was to reflect “the changing nature of the press corps and the country the press corps covers.”
‘And so seats have now been set aside for religious broadcasters (Salem Radio Networks, EWTN, the Christian Broadcasting Network); for news outlets aimed at Black audiences (the Grio, American Urban Radio Networks); for those that broadcast in Spanish (Telemundo and Univision); and for a cadre of conservative news sites (the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Daily Caller and Newsmax). The Washington Blade is the first LGBTQ-oriented publication with an official seat. Outfits that didn’t exist a few years ago, like the streaming network Cheddar News are in the mix, too.’ (WAPO)
The next step in finding out how reflective the Press Corps is of the most popular sources of the news that Americans turn to may be to contact the office of The White House Correspondents’ Association’s President, Steven Portnoy. He and the Association decide which news gathering organizations are members of the White House Press Corps.
How close does the Press Corps mirror the news that Americans are getting from digital devices?
I am increasingly frustrated with the “Yes, but …” coverage in the news, where any Biden positive news is followed by a may-or-may-not-be actually related negative, which is given at least twice as much coverage.
Yes, inflation sucks, but I remember gas lines in the 70s (at least gas is readily available) and house hunting while pregnant in 1983, when prime mortgage rates were 13%. Since our younger generations don’t seem to be learning much about history, they lack perspective, and everything is presented by the media as catastrophic. I’ll be more sympathetic about gas prices when I stop walking past several cars sitting in a parking lot with their engines running on a beautiful day, or the 10 or 15 car long line in the drive through.
This is 100% spot on. When President Biden was elected, I started keeping a tally of the "headlines" that showed up on my browser each day. The ratio of "Trump" in the headlines to "Biden" in the headlines was about 99/1. That a con artist masquerading as a president continued to dominate the "news" while the duly elected and wildly popular incumbent received NO attention at all was breathtaking and so very obvious. When CBS did its dastardly thing, I sent them a message and removed them from my browser feed. Faux noise hasn't been on it for so long, I can't even recall the last misinformation piece of garbage that showed up there. I no longer pay attention to anything that comes via ABC or CNN. And if MSNBC crosses over the line, they get personalized blasts from me (some of them follow me, so I hope they care.) I have a gripe with NPR for its all things are equal, even if they aren't "reporting" so I don't give a fig for anything that comes from them. In my opinion, they DO have their entire organizations on the scale with regards to Biden and the midterms. This is a misuse of their power and I think they should be monitored and called out for it. BTW, I tweeted the link to this article to WaPo with a comment that I agreed with it 100%. It will be interesting to see what comes back from other followers.
I cannot fathom the depths to which news reporting has sunk. Oh, wait, I forgot. The dumbing down of our public school curriculum, the absence of critical thinking skills and the addiction to ratings, not content. Silly me.
Thanks for never holding back.
24 Hour News channels......like feeding a hungry elephant....every story is a little morsel ending up having equal value so we move, incredibly, from looking at dead bodies on the streets of Bucha to a "feel good" fluff story....OR, worse, to a week long headlining of the "slap heard round the world". Repetition and unfolding stories, misleading headlines and screen summaries...... It is whiplash and ultimately nonsensical. At the same time as they are feeding the elephant they refuse to pay people to do the long, hard investigative work.....rather, hire more pundits, ex White House staff, political celebrities....... With very few exceptions, we are fed a high carb, low protein news diet. Meanwhile, younger generations simply are not watching TV but taking headlines off of news feeds on their phones IF they are not scrolling through to the pop culture stuff and where their friends are eating at the moment. What a mess. I often go to BBC which is less flashy, more focused...but you can see the pressure is on them to get more glitzy. HardTalk is one of the best in-depth interview shows going. Thanks, TC. This helps me recover from yesterday's rape and pillage post which I made the supreme mistake of reading just before I went to bed. Needed to be said. I just need to read it in the daylight at least!!! Thank you, as always.
This is a good column today. Send it to CNN.
I think the problem might be the presentation. I follow the pres, veep and press sec on Twitter, and mostly they are a snooze trending toward comatose. I can't stand too much of it, and as a former computer programmer, I have a very high tolerance for mind-numbing boredom. Mr. Biden is an awesome administrator, and he has performed remarkably well, but with gridlock in the Senate, his exciting signature legislation gathers moss and his constituency slumbers.
Thank You TC. Sharing
.....and why, when it's been a good deal longer than a decade that Chuck Todd has been the go-to punchline for "media" jokes, does he still have a show? and wasn't Zucker the moronic asshole who ran Universal for all those years and released a whole bunch of movies that are themselves go-to punchlines for terrible movie jokes? I know that MSNBC uses General McCaffrey as an "expert" and he tends to say the "right things." the problem with McCaffrey is that back when he was Clinton's so-called "Drug Czar" (itself a joke position), I watched him testify before Congress that needle-exchange programs had been statistically proven to ramp up heroin addiction. now, first of all, this was a complete lie. but the more important thing was that AIDS was killing people at an insane rate (including whole bunches of my friends) and there was excellent research demonstrating that needle exchange programs worked extraordinarily well to cut down infection numbers. I was a high school counselor in Manhattan at the time, and was heavily involved in developing the AIDS Prevention Curriculum for the city, so I was extremely well-informed about this stuff. watching McCaffrey, I decided that nothing coming out of his mouth was anything I was ever going to trust coming out of his mouth. and getting back to the general coverage of Biden's "problems," I recall that when TFF boasted about "his" economy, it was something like a month or two into his term. and it got covered to death, without a whole lot of what has come to be called "pushback," previously known as a "correction," or (somewhat worse) a "fact check." I know that it's a characteristic of old age to be nostalgic about the past, but sometimes it's not nostalgia, it's FACTs.
TCinLA…You Are Absolutely Right. Been tracking on WaPo (given up on the NYT) and Punchbowl News. The bias is very, very evident. Press Run reports on this several times a week. On PBS Washington Week they just can’t bring themselves to say much of anything positive about anything this administration is doing or has done. There is also an addiction to negativity and drama to the point where they start or blow on the fire. I’ve started saying “Biden’s doing a great job.” Everywhere. Last year. I watched Network (a favorite) again and was reminded anew at how prescient the movie was. It’s even worse in the USA now. So much worse. (We can thank Zuckerberg for giving Trump the persona of a winner on network tv. Thanks Jeff.) ❤️🤍💙
A bit of Brainwashington Post everywhere it seems. Journalism trapped by click-bait competition. - "Being unhappy gives a reward, you feel greater; ordinary happiness comes at a price, you feel smaller." (Bert Hellinger).
you're 1000% right, and it's impossible to know what to say, except for something that can only be represented by a long non-word that mimics some kind of primal scream.
Thank you TC for reminding us about the bias in the news! I will share your post whereverI can.
And it would make a difference as it seems:
https://osf.io/jrw26/?fbclid=IwAR24Xgx_eTzk8WnQ2NX4dOsCDvUETLAhsZ8MZfHb2jO_QPCTMO96PI6nLtQ
How representative is The White House press corps of the news now consumed by the American public? Does this group of journalists, correspondents, and members of the media assigned to the White House in Washington, D.C., to cover the president of the United States constitute the sources from which Americans are now getting the news?
'More than eight-in-ten Americans get news from digital devices'
https://www.pewresearch.org › fact-tank › 2021/01/12
‘… adults (86%) say they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet “often” or “sometimes,” including 60% who say they do so often. This is higher than the portion who get news from television, though 68% get news from TV at least sometimes and 40% do so often. Americans turn to radio and print publications for news far less frequently, with half saying they turn to radio at least sometimes (16% do so often) and about a third (32%) saying the same of print (10% get news from print publications often).'
'Within digital platforms for news, most age groups turn to news websites at higher rates than other platforms, with one exception. Americans ages 18 to 29 stand out in that the most common digital way they get news is social media, with 42% saying they get news this way often versus 28% saying the same of either news websites or search engines'
‘The transition of news from print, television and radio to digital spaces has caused huge disruptions in the traditional news industry, especially the print news industry. It is also reflected in the ways individual Americans say they are getting their news. A large majority of Americans get news at least sometimes from digital devices, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020.’
How has the White House Press Corps adapted to this big change in the way Americans now get their news? I do not know, but that’s a big question for the White House that needs get its message to the American people. The most up-to-date information I obtained is a year and a half old. I do not know for sure, but my guess is getting the news from digital sources has not gone down in the time period.
'Though digital devices are by far the most common way Americans access their news, where they get that news on their devices is divided among a number of different pathways. About two-thirds of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from news websites or apps (68%) or search engines, like Google (65%). About half (53%) say they get news from social media, and a much smaller portion say they get news at least sometimes from podcasts (22%). (PewResearch)
‘The White House Correspondents’ Association has laid out new seating assignments for reporters who attend daily briefings and news conferences. It’s the first time since 2017 that the journalists’ organization, which controls the 49 press seats in the cramped James S. Brady Briefing Room, has rejiggered who sits where, or doesn’t sit anywhere at all.’
‘But the chart now looks much different than it did the last time seats were handed out.
Notably, the WHCA has expanded the number of news organizations with assigned positions to a record 65 — and 14 of them are first-timers. It did so by splitting up seats in the middle and back rows among 30 news outlets. Reporters from the BBC and Newsweek, for example, will take turns occupying a spot in the last row, as will correspondents from the Daily Caller and EWTN.’
‘The goal, said WHCA President Steven Portnoy of CBS News Radio (second row, left side), was to reflect “the changing nature of the press corps and the country the press corps covers.”
‘And so seats have now been set aside for religious broadcasters (Salem Radio Networks, EWTN, the Christian Broadcasting Network); for news outlets aimed at Black audiences (the Grio, American Urban Radio Networks); for those that broadcast in Spanish (Telemundo and Univision); and for a cadre of conservative news sites (the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Daily Caller and Newsmax). The Washington Blade is the first LGBTQ-oriented publication with an official seat. Outfits that didn’t exist a few years ago, like the streaming network Cheddar News are in the mix, too.’ (WAPO)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/whca-seating-chart-2022/2022/02/01/77820ba2-807b-11ec-bf02-f9e24ccef149_story.html
The next step in finding out how reflective the Press Corps is of the most popular sources of the news that Americans turn to may be to contact the office of The White House Correspondents’ Association’s President, Steven Portnoy. He and the Association decide which news gathering organizations are members of the White House Press Corps.
How close does the Press Corps mirror the news that Americans are getting from digital devices?