Political Theatre category archive

Scott Lemieux argues convincingly that the fuss over “fake news” is overblown. He points out that, by and large, viral “fake news” stories preach to the converted. He sees corporate “real news” as the real problem. A snippet:

To summarize the media’s performance in the election campaign that installed Donald Trump in the White House, its coverage of his opponent was completely dominated by trivial pseudo-scandals, and the quality of the coverage given these topics was extraordinarily bad. There is no possible defense of this, no conceivable argument that Hillary Clinton’s email server management was far more important that every policy issue but together, no possible justification for the implicit claim that the Clinton Foundation was similarly corrupt to one of Donald Trump’s many actual cons including his actual fake foundation. This is just a huge institutional failure with disastrous consequences.

Follow the link; the whole thing is a three-minute read that is well worth your while.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Wasserman tries to draw some lessons from the corporate media’s coverage of the recent election. Here they are:

• Exposure trumps substance.
• Evenhandedness has its limits.
• Covering politics isn’t just covering politicians.

Follow the link for his explication of each one.

Read more »

Reg Henry has a theory that Donald Trump’s campaign strategy involved beating a dying horse. A snippet (emphasis added):

The biggest loser in the election was not Hillary Clinton. It was the media, whose defeat continues. Mr. Trump ran as much against the media as he did against Ms. Clinton. The whole election was an exercise in kicking an old dog that was already beaten down.

After 50 years of lesser politicians trying, Mr. Trump finally persuaded the people to blame everything on those who would hold politicians accountable. He sold the theory that the media constitute one great liberal monolith marching in lockstep.

But that doesn’t reflect reality. Never before in history has news come from such diverse sources — and fake news is available to those who don’t find the real news slanderous enough and need a pain-relief patch for their brains.

I gave up on television news a long time ago, when I noticed that it made creme-filled doughnuts and candy corn seem nutritious. As my two or three regular readers have probably figured out, I visit lots of newspaper websites every few days or so. (No, I do not read every word of every website.) Despite the annoyance of ads and other distractions, newspapers still provide some depth of coverage and reading a number of them provides some breadth of coverage, neither of which are available between the Xarelto ads on broadcast news.

Follow the link for the rest of the article.

I think Fox News should be lower down on the “Reliability” scale. Any objectivity or accuracy that they may demonstrate in their news coverage is neutralized by the cavalcade of lies on their opinion propaganda shows.

Via PoliticalProf.

Thom discusses with a caller what the “Russian hacking” may have meant–and may not have meant. His conclusions are subtle and sophisticated and may not be what you–or what I–expected.

Field draws some lessons from the Trumpling of Mitt Romney.

Aside:

The Booman reminds me why I started calling him “Mitt the Flip.”

Via Job’s Anger.

I think Farron might be onto something here.

Life is not a Marvel Comics movie, folks. No Silver Surfer will hang ten in the sky and save the day.

A letter to the editor with a moral.