Apostate David Frum writes: It's true: in piercing the dense thicket of lies told by Trump and his circle to conceal their deep wrongdoing, some media organizations have sometimes made promptly corrected errors. Revealing and confirming truth in the face of orchestrated and shameless official deception is difficult, and errors of fact and emphasis are inevitable.
I'm trying to think of a single important mistake by a non-Fox news organization that wasn't caught & corrected within at least 24 hours. This last correction took only about 2 hours.
Where the error originated in reportorial carelessness, non-Fox news organizations have actually sanctioned or even fired those making the errors. "Non Fox" an important caveat. Whereas at WashPo, NYT, CNN etc it's a rare day when a reporter makes a hurtful mistake; at Fox it's big news when Shep Smith is allowed to tell the truth.
But we should never lose sight: when non-Fox reporters slip in their work, the work itself is trying to inform the public about the doings of the most systematical untruthful administration in American history. Considering the ferocity of the deception they confront, non-Fox media organizations have made impressively few errors. They know what is at stake, and how any mistake will be weaponized by bad faith actors - not least pro-Trump pseudo-news organizations.
Never forget, though, that the media are not the protagonist in the drama. The protagonists are the officials engaged in the deception, headed by the president himself. In the unequal contest between deception and those seeking to ascertain the truth, it is the deceivers who hold the power of the state. To paraphrase FDR: Better the occasional faults of those who seek truth than the consistent deceptions of those frozen in corruption and collusion.
Except these mistakes consistently go in one direction and not the other. You would think the mainstream media would be chagrined after calling the election so spectacularly wrong and then facing a President who calls them "fake news." But then something as simple as checking a single-source report becomes too cumbersome. Now ABC News has banned their chief political reporter from covering Trump.
In my opinion, the mainstream media utterly abdicated their mission during the ass-kissing era of Obama and, in particular, the Obamacare debate. It was so much easier to paint Republicans as heartless bastards than to explore the nuts and bolts of a program so that Jonathan Gruber would later brag about how it was so easy to fool those stupid Americans
Six days before last year's election, Fox News' Bret Baier reported that Hillary Clinton was about to be indicted for the "pay to play" story from "Clinton Cash." Baier said he had two FBI sources. He didn't, and she wasn't.
On the same day, six days before the election, Fox Business' Lou Dobbs reported that five different agencies were reporting that Clinton's email server had been hacked. They weren't, and it wasn't.
CNN reverses its mistaken report in two hours, while America's still waiting for the correction/apology for Sean Hannity's nightly "Seth Rich was murdered to cover the DNC's corrupt tracks" saga.
And bonus laughs for Gateway Pundit citing a Dally Caller story in which “informed ppl” are confirming that multiple Democratic Representatives deliberately lied to CNN in order to… and this should go without saying… "affect a news cycle." BOOM. Nailed ‘em.
Because that motive for knowingly lying - a whole cycle! - is just so plausible. The scheme is so airtight. The risks so small. And the payoff so apparent.
Every clear-eyed skeptic of the media has long experience in spotting the media's unnamed sources and confirmation bias. They're the perfect audience of free thinkers to gobble down this kind of logical, well-sourced premise.
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Apostate David Frum writes:
It's true: in piercing the dense thicket of lies told by Trump and his circle to conceal their deep wrongdoing, some media organizations have sometimes made promptly corrected errors. Revealing and confirming truth in the face of orchestrated and shameless official deception is difficult, and errors of fact and emphasis are inevitable.
I'm trying to think of a single important mistake by a non-Fox news organization that wasn't caught & corrected within at least 24 hours. This last correction took only about 2 hours.
Where the error originated in reportorial carelessness, non-Fox news organizations have actually sanctioned or even fired those making the errors. "Non Fox" an important caveat. Whereas at WashPo, NYT, CNN etc it's a rare day when a reporter makes a hurtful mistake; at Fox it's big news when Shep Smith is allowed to tell the truth.
But we should never lose sight: when non-Fox reporters slip in their work, the work itself is trying to inform the public about the doings of the most systematical untruthful administration in American history. Considering the ferocity of the deception they confront, non-Fox media organizations have made impressively few errors. They know what is at stake, and how any mistake will be weaponized by bad faith actors - not least pro-Trump pseudo-news organizations.
Never forget, though, that the media are not the protagonist in the drama. The protagonists are the officials engaged in the deception, headed by the president himself. In the unequal contest between deception and those seeking to ascertain the truth, it is the deceivers who hold the power of the state. To paraphrase FDR: Better the occasional faults of those who seek truth than the consistent deceptions of those frozen in corruption and collusion.
Except these mistakes consistently go in one direction and not the other. You would think the mainstream media would be chagrined after calling the election so spectacularly wrong and then facing a President who calls them "fake news." But then something as simple as checking a single-source report becomes too cumbersome. Now ABC News has banned their chief political reporter from covering Trump.
In my opinion, the mainstream media utterly abdicated their mission during the ass-kissing era of Obama and, in particular, the Obamacare debate. It was so much easier to paint Republicans as heartless bastards than to explore the nuts and bolts of a program so that Jonathan Gruber would later brag about how it was so easy to fool those stupid Americans
The media had a responsibility and they blew it.
Oh, but Fox News.
Six days before last year's election, Fox News' Bret Baier reported that Hillary Clinton was about to be indicted for the "pay to play" story from "Clinton Cash." Baier said he had two FBI sources. He didn't, and she wasn't.
On the same day, six days before the election, Fox Business' Lou Dobbs reported that five different agencies were reporting that Clinton's email server had been hacked. They weren't, and it wasn't.
CNN reverses its mistaken report in two hours, while America's still waiting for the correction/apology for Sean Hannity's nightly "Seth Rich was murdered to cover the DNC's corrupt tracks" saga.
Who are the dumbasses here?
And bonus laughs for Gateway Pundit citing a Dally Caller story in which “informed ppl” are confirming that multiple Democratic Representatives deliberately lied to CNN in order to… and this should go without saying… "affect a news cycle." BOOM. Nailed ‘em.
Because that motive for knowingly lying - a whole cycle! - is just so plausible. The scheme is so airtight. The risks so small. And the payoff so apparent.
Every clear-eyed skeptic of the media has long experience in spotting the media's unnamed sources and confirmation bias. They're the perfect audience of free thinkers to gobble down this kind of logical, well-sourced premise.
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