Patterico's Pontifications

10/27/2016

Editor Exposes Dishonest Underpants Of Biased Media

Filed under: General — Dana @ 6:23 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Whether a supporter or non-supporter of Donald Trump, it’s likely everyone can agree that media bias is baked into this election. Unlike Democrats, and per usual, Republicans have to push the big rock uphill without the help of the mainstream media.

With that, there is a great take down of the mainstream media and their obvious bias by Frank Miele, managing editor of The Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. In his column, Miele exposes the subtle, manipulative reporting which easily blurs the line between reporting the facts and opinion writing:

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about what Donald Trump calls “the dishonest media,” and I did so because as a member of the news media myself, I feel a sense of obligation to hold my profession to the same standard of accountability that I would expect for any public servants.

There are many decent, ethical highly professional people who work in journalism. I am happy to say that I work with a number of them at the Daily Inter Lake.

But sadly, the standards that we try to hold ourselves to here in Kalispell, Montana, seem to be foreign to many reporters and editors on TV and at other newspapers around the country. Because of that, I could probably write a column taking my fellow journalists to task every week and never run out of material, but honestly I didn’t expect to return to the theme quite this quickly.

Miele gives us a prime example of media bias with a recent report from the AP and then demonstrates how objective reporting works:

The lead of the story was as follows:

“A beleaguered Donald Trump sought to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. presidential election on Saturday, pressing unsubstantiated claims the contest is rigged against him, vowing anew to jail Hillary Clinton if he’s elected and throwing in a baseless insinuation his rival was on drugs in the last debate.”

There are three major examples of bias in this one sentence, which would have been fine if the reporter was supposed to be writing an opinion piece, not a news article. I’m sure I don’t have to explain this to my readers, but apparently the trained journalist who wrote the story (and her editors) were completely oblivious to the difference between a fact and an opinion.

BIAS 1: Trump “sought to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. presidential election.”

Wait a minute! Does the “reporter” really think that Trump’s speech was intended to sabotage the election? That would be quite evil, wouldn’t it?

But that’s what “undermining” implies. In fact, Trump was saying that he does not trust the legitimacy of the election process. In my edited version, I wrote that Trump “questioned” the legitimacy of the election.

That was accurate, and substantiated as accurate by the Trump quote that followed: “The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing completely false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect [Clinton] president.”

BIAS 2: Trump was “pressing unsubstantiated claims the contest is rigged against him.”

Hold on! How did the reporter determine that the claims were “unsubstantiated”? Calls to the Democratic National Committee? A Ouija board?

I easily corrected this example of bias by simply removing the conclusory word “unsubstantiated.” If you are a reporter covering an election, you are supposed to write down what candidates say, not tell your readers whether you agree with the candidate or not.

BIAS 3: Trump threw in “a baseless insinuation his rival was on drugs in the last debate.”

There is no doubt that Trump, whether jokingly or seriously, insinuated that Hillary Clinton was pepped up on drugs during the second debate. How the reporter determined that the allegation was baseless is less certain. Did Hillary consent to a pee test for the Associated Press?

Solution: Take out the opinionated word “baseless.”

Now contrast and compare:

Original AP story:

A beleaguered Donald Trump sought to undermine the legitimacy of the U.S. presidential election on Saturday, pressing unsubstantiated claims the contest is rigged against him, vowing anew to jail Hillary Clinton if he’s elected and throwing in a baseless insinuation his rival was on drugs in the last debate.

Miele’s paragraph published in his newspaper:

A beleaguered Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the U.S. presidential election on Saturday, pressing claims the contest is rigged against him, vowing anew to jail Hillary Clinton if he’s elected and throwing in an insinuation that his rival was on drugs in the last debate.

Miele points out that his revised paragraph is just as thought-provoking and informative, yet doesn’t presume to tell readers what to think about the information: “It’s called the difference between reporting and analysis. Or more to the point, the difference between honest reporting and dishonest reporting.”

It’s great to see a journalist actually be concerned with *not* telling readers how to think, or leading them on, or worse. And it’s even more inspiring to be reminded that there are indeed some reporters who are more interested in actual reporting rather than trying to shape public opinion by pushing a specific narrative to benefit a particular candidate or party:

Here’s a list of the “Progressive Helpers” and “Columnists/Pundits” that the Clinton campaign has that they are considered friendly and will place narratives for them in columns and news stories. You want to hear some of the names? This is in the Podesta email dump from WikiLeaks. And, again, these people come from internal memos the Hillary campaign. These are the people that are sympathetic.

They’ve had them to dinner. They’ve been invited to Podesta’s house. These are the people who, if we need to get a narrative established about Trump or about Hillary, these people will do it for us. “Dan Balz,” Washington Post. “Wolf Blitzer,” CNN. “Gloria Borger,” CNN. “Mika Brezinski [sic],” MSNBC. “David Brooks,” New York Times. The “conservative columnist” for the New York Times is considered a great resource for the Clinton campaign to place a narrative. “Gail Collins,” New York Times.

“John Dickerson”, CBS. “EJ Dionne,” junior, Washington Post. “Maureen Dowd,” New York Times. “Ronan Farrow,” at the time MSNBC. “Howard Fineman,” MSNBC. “Ron Fournier.”

It’s all about reaching out to receptive reporters, and planting the preferred narrative:

3. They do not plan to release anything publicly, so no posting online
> or anything public-facing, just to the committee. That said, they are
> considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP (Matt Lee or Bradley
> Klapper), that would lay this out before the majority on the committee has
> a chance to realize what they have and distort it.
>
> On that last piece, we think it would make sense to work with State and
> the AP to deploy the below. So assuming everyone is in agreement we’ll
> proceed. It would be good to frame this a little, and frankly to have it
> break tomorrow when we’ll likely be close to or in the midst of a SCOTUS
> decision taking over the news hyenas.

And if some reporters aren’t already on the go-to list of the Clinton campaign, they might fall in the camp of those reporters willing to violate their own publication’s policy and seek out “quote approval” by the campaign.

All in the name of objective, non-partisan reporting.

–Dana

27 Responses to “Editor Exposes Dishonest Underpants Of Biased Media”

  1. So what’s new, eh?

    Dana (d17a61)

  2. my friend stephen waters whose been fighting the ap narrative wars had a few thought on the subject,

    narciso (d1f714)

  3. It almost makes me want to vote for Trump. I dislike both of the fossils equally, which gives free rein to both my sense of fairness and my media BS meter.

    Almost!

    nk (dbc370)

  4. Some of those aforementioned names are actual opinion columnists (EJ Dionne, et al) so it’s neither surprising nor a big deal, but John Dickerson, Wolf Blitzer, and Dan Balz do “reporting” and “news” and have even been debate moderators.
    Jerks!

    Cruz Supporter (102c9a)

  5. ronan farrow, why would they give him the rissotto tray, he is like in sleeper in they tried to clone sinatra, and something went horribly wrong, also the poor vulcans in the first trek film,

    narciso (d1f714)

  6. Greetings:

    “What you see is news. What you know is background. What you feel is opinion.”

    – Lester Markel, late Sunday editor
    of The New York Times.

    11B40 (6abb5c)

  7. The Clintons have always been great for ratings. Their show has been running even longer than Trump’s. They’re about to anoint themselves the saviors of civilization for the very same media bias you and Miele describe.

    And it’s omnipresent.

    Alas, although there are counterbalancing media as reflexively biased in one or more generally “rightwards” direction (or some specific right-identifying fringe), it’s increasingly hard to find any practitioners of what used to be considered, as recently as the 1950s and 1960s, the routine practice of news journalism. It’s all advocacy for someone now.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  8. no beldar, it’s more than that, for a fraction of a second, they were censorious, in the lewinsky matter, then they realized they rise and fall with him,

    narciso (d1f714)

  9. …it’s increasingly hard to find any practitioners of what used to be considered, as recently as the 1950s and 1960s, the routine practice of news journalism.

    That’s because, as far as broadcast news goes it became a profit center. In the era you reference, television news was a loss leader; little more than a public service. CBS’s Paley once quipped the profits from a single entertainment program, ‘I Love Lucy’ paid for the entire annual operations budget for CBS News.

    Them days is long gone.

    Revisit the prescient 1976 film, ‘Network.‘ As late as the mid 1970’s, the concept of a television news division forced into developing programming to be a profit center accountable to the network was such an absurdity it made fodder for satire.

    Less than five years later, as CNN went on air and demonstrated there was money to be made in cable news, which was unregulated, and conglomerates actually did buy up the networks, the shift from loss leader to profiteering began. And it has been chasing a buck down hill ever since. The Reagan era’s end of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ was the final blow. Now it is not about delivering ‘news’ but producing programming to generate ratings– and profits. So you have leg lights and Megyn Kelly to watch rather than Huntley & Brinkley to report.

    “And that’s the way it is…” Walter Cronkite, CBS News anchorman signoff, 1962-1981

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  10. There’s a tidy little piece about the concerted efforts of the mainstream media to not report on the Podesta emails in any substantive way, and to downplay any revelations. But not because they are biased of course:

    This has been a constant theme in coverage of the WikiLeaks release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s by major liberal news outlets, to ignore the actual newsworthy content in the release and focus on boring process stories. The Washington Post has not written on Hillary Clinton telling Goldman Sachs that American allies fund terrorists and opposition to immigration is “un-American.”

    The same is true at The New York Times. When national political correspondent Jonathan Martin was asked on Twitter why he isn’t covering WikiLeaks, he replied saying that a WikiLeaks story was on the front page the day before.

    The story was: “Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Strained to Hone Her Message, Hacked Emails Show.”

    The front page piece is about the emails showing Clinton staffers and allies discussing her views on several issues and how to deal with Vice President Joe Biden entering the race and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy.

    The same day that article was published, October 11, The Daily Caller reported that Clinton told bankers in private Saudi Arabia, a major Clinton Foundation donor, is the number one exporter of “extreme ideology,” and that New York Times writer and CNBC anchor John Harwood had given John Podesta advice. Both stories have yet to be covered by the Times.

    Dana (d17a61)

  11. there have been perverse incidents like the butterfly effect to us policy, the esso spill triggered the environmental panic, which was the signal for qaddafi and the sauds and the shah to put a chokehold on the oil supply, this created a petrodollar surplus, which broke the bargain between the tribes and the kingdom, had similar effects in iran, as andrew cooper relayed, and allowed muammar certain influence in western europe and africa, out of the whole petrodollar matter there was channels like bcci, and then there was the instability in the gulf, now cnn was funded in part through a bcci affiliate, then you have the afghan incursion,

    narciso (d1f714)

  12. How is this not reason enough to vote for Trump. We must destroy the American Pravda.

    NJRob (b2ff3b)

  13. it’s a long piece, but you’ll agree with the sentiment,

    https://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2016/10/26/the-truth-about-tom-hayden/2/

    narciso (d1f714)

  14. The media know that illary’s record as Sec of Mistakes is terrible. They know that the Clinton Foundation is a money laundering operation.
    That’s why they were pining for Trump to become the nominee; they knew Trump would give them a license to talk about HIS baggage rather than hers. They also knew Trump would talk about Trump rather than talk about illary.

    Cruz Supporter (102c9a)

  15. they don’t care, cs, they are on her team, saudi could explode into civil war, along the pipeline routes, for reasons I pointed up above, and they would blame trump or w. or reagan

    narciso (d1f714)

  16. so refer from the old credence clearwater, ‘she is the voice of rage and ruin’ and if she get in ‘we’re in for nasty weather’

    narciso (d1f714)

  17. I live in Alberta, Canada, and often travel to Montana, especially Kalispell, to golf and ski and just hang around. Back before 9/11 I used to cross the border quite freely while hunting just east of where the Milk River flows into the USA, and American hunters likewise crossed into Canada – deer and antelope know no borders. Good times, good friends.

    If you Yanks were all Montanans the USA would be perfect.

    Fred Z (b0a041)

  18. do you now, are you as embarassed with prime minister zoolander, as we are, alberta is generally a saner province, although the ndp boomlet sometime back was concerning,

    narciso (d1f714)

  19. I never got how he got a rep for empathy, data had more emotion,

    https://twitter.com/markknoller/status/791742550067535872

    narciso (d1f714)

  20. so john lobbied for the kingdom or was it his brother, and sis lobbied for raytheon,

    http://hotair.com/archives/2016/10/27/john-podestas-sister-law-worked-state-department-lobbyist/

    narciso (d1f714)

  21. agenda driven hacks caused by greed puts us all at risk.

    mg (31009b)

  22. used to be megyn was sharper about this,

    https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/791813600436301824?lang=en

    narciso (d1f714)

  23. I don’t blame the reporters exactly. I blame an institutional bias that will destroy the career of any journalist that doesn’t play by these simple rules: help Democrats, hurt Republicans.

    Sure, there are right-of-center reporters. They end up, sooner or later, hitting a glass ceiling ant the MSM. Everyone needs a token, but not above a certain level. George Will was supposed to get This Week after Brinkley. He didn’t and waiting didn’t help. Now he’s at Fox with everyone else.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  24. And he’s proven himself a hack, in the last eight years

    narciso (d1f714)

  25. Another typical tactic is used when dealing with matters that show Democrats in an unfavorable light. The media will not just come out and say what happened. It is framed in the context of ‘something happened that Republicans will use to attack Democrats.”

    AZ Bob (f7a491)

  26. Mark Kirk crapped the bed last night with “how could an Asian be a DAR”, but all it does is hasten the self-immolation of the vocal NT a la Ayotte, Ryan. Chaffetz is woke now, so there’s that.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  27. A beleaguered Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the U.S. presidential election on Saturday, pressing claims the contest is rigged against him, vowing anew to jail Hillary Clinton if he’s elected and throwing in an insinuation that his rival was on drugs in the last debate.

    Why even have beleaguered?

    Tanny O'Haley (c674c7)


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