I’m gonna throw this out as an answer to why the Times (and other supposedly responsible media outlets) are acting so strange on Trump and CLinton. Yes, the senior management of the New York Times has had a hard-on for the Clinton family since 1992. But Krugman is right, this year they have acted really, really strange. I think it comes down to something more fundamental than personal animus or whether Hillary Clinton has held any press conferences. At its heart the Times and similar media outlets have a hackable business model. And Trump is hacking it.
It all comes down to the graphic below. The Times stakes its reputation on independence, balance etc., which means this figure below must not be allowed to happen under any circumstances.
The New York Daily News could not care less if you call it biased. The NYDN is biased. They think Republicans are assholes. They have a clear editorial perspective. In a city with six hundred different print news outlets that is a perfectly reasonable position to take. FOX News? You could make a thousand graphs like that and they still won’t give a shit. Just ask Media Matters. In the same way Trump only ‘courted’ black people to reassure white suburban women, that ironic FOX slogan comforts people who want to think black people are bad and dangerous but hate the connotations that a word like racist carries with it.
The Times is not one more paper in a crowded market. The Times imagines itself to be the outlet, the singular gateway to journalistic credibility. You could say the Wall Street Journal and the Times are the dual avatars of conservatives and centrist Democrats, but the NYT is not having any of that. They want to be the first place Republicans and Democrats get their news. Maybe five or six other outlets spread around print and TV see themselves the same way.
An outlet like the Times has no real defense against a human Gish gallop like Trump. He has done so many reprehensible things, is doing, and will do next week that it takes superhuman resources just to keep up. How is that Trump University fraud case going? I have no idea. I almost forgot about it between reading how amazingly racist Trump was as a landlord and goggling at the chutzpah of him complaining about the Clinton foundation while every detail of the Pam Bondi bribery story is so much worse than I thought*. Just last week he gave a screaming fascist tirade in place of a speech about immigration policy and I already have to remind myself how bad it really was.
Meanwhile Hillary is a fucking boy scout. She doesn’t do anything worth criticizing. She stays on script. She has good advisers who keep her from offending anybody unless she means to (i.e. Breitbart, Stormfront and the KKK). If you dig a little deeper, you find that she basically does things by the book. If you interview everyone who has ever known her, you find out that she…does things pretty much by the book. You can read every damn email she has written in her capacity as Secretary of State and the story stays frustratingly the same. If anything the story gets weaker, not stronger, the more you know about it. I challenge people to find any other remotely powerful human being who would withstand this level of scrutiny. Okay, fine, Obama. Find me two. In a fair world where stories reported actual bad things that people did Times coverage would look like the graph above, and half of the stories about Hillary would be stuff like accidentally starting a reply-to-all disaster at State.
Bus as I said, the graph must not happen. And as the old advice goes for attorneys when you don’t have the facts or the law on your side, pound the table. CNN and the Times have to criticize something, but she rudely gives them stale crumbs to work with. Trump is a lavish cruise ship buffet of leads. In any normal race that Pam Bondi bribery story (also fraudulent donation reporting and tax evasion) would be duck confit on glazed figs. You could work a story like that for months. But try to visualize the main buffet table on a upper-tier cruise. You can’t see the end of it. You could cross the international date line before you realize the confit is even there.
Further, I think that point about taking your time to digest a story is extremely important. Gish gallops work because people cannot process any one lie before the next one hits you. Clinton is the polar opposite of a Gish gallop. Unless someone wants to claim Benghazi has some meat left on its bones (Gowdy? Has anyone seen Trey Gowdy?) emails is all they have. A reporter assigned to say something bad about Clinton** has to keep coming back to the email thing over and over again. That means they have time to understand it, to dig in, try different angles, find the person who won’t answer questions and make them a villain. People keep hearing about this same story to the point where they assume she did something wrong. Not everyone knows the first rule of judging a scandal story – the most damning specific allegation leads. If a two thousand word story opens with shadows, or clouds, or a coolish breeze out of the northeast then you will not find anything worth reading further in. Burying the killer allegation where only devoted readers will find it is journalistic malpractice of the first degree.
The Times needs to print something, because figure one above. So we get clouds, and people imagine Clinton must have done something bad, and Paul Krugman pulls his hair out, because the only thing you need to hack the business model at the Times is to be the worst person on Earth.
(*) Time to dust off Brad DeLong’s rule #1 about the Bushies: even knowing it is worse than you think, it is still worse than you think.
(**) A given reporter would certainly protest if you phrase it that way, but from an editorial standpoint that’s what it is.
Trentrunner
MSNBC just a showed a timeline of “key upcoming campaign dates,” and it included, among debate dates and congress coming back in session, this one (September 22?):
“More Clinton emails to be released.”
Baked into the cake, people.
Trentrunner
List of people/outlets who have called out the MSM, especially the NYT, on their fake balance/false equivalency coverage this cycle:
– Paul Krugman
– James Fallows
– Josh Marshall
– Vox
– The New Yorker
Any other big names or major publications I’m missing?
debbie
It’s very sad to see what has become of the Times. I think I’d blame Bill Keller but I should probably give it more thought.
Betty Cracker
@Trentrunner: I think that kind of coverage matters, and I’m glad the folks/organizations named have stepped up. Sometimes, working the refs works.
Gin & Tonic
@Trentrunner:
At this point I’ll bet you not one person in a thousand would be able to tell whether this means “official State Department e-mails released under FOIA” or “e-mails from HRC’s privately-run server released by the FBI” or “DNC e-mails hacked by the Russians and given to Assange to be released by Wikileaks.”
schrodinger's cat
@Trentrunner: The Washington Post has been relentless in their Trump coverage. Its scathing and not like the wishy washy Times stuff.
hovercraft
This is what’s frustrating to me, rooting around in non=existent scamdal does not create balance, it destroys your reputation as a reliable source of information. False equivalence is not journalism, cable TV is supposed to be the bastion of bullshit he said she said nonsense, the NY Times is supposed to be the paper of record. Sadly, they have relinquished that tittle, and are now no better than cable.
germy
@schrodinger’s cat: Wonder if it has something to do with being banned from his events.
Never bite the (media) hand that feeds you.
hovercraft
He has expressed the desire to begin a new investigation into Hillary’s testimony before his committee and to the FBI. So there’s more fun to look forward to.
? Martin
I think the bottom line is that the media are already looking past the election. [In their mind…] there’s no point focusing on Trumps scandals for the same reason there is no point focusing on Jill Stein’s – they won’t be president and therefore it’s just a waste of time. Instead they are focusing on the person that will be president and seeking to be a check on that. That’s okay, I suppose, but it does a huge disservice to the media. The media clearly isn’t biased toward Trump – they are horrified by him, but their uneven coverage sure as shit makes it look like they have it out for Clinton. And the media is really ambivalent about covering Trumps racism because inevitably that’s a judgement of the millions of people that will vote for him, and no respectable media outlet is going to have an easy time vilifying millions of people. I’d go so far as to argue that they don’t actually know how to do it.
Doug R
Given Trumps known links to mob figures and his cozy relationship with the Russians, maybe even Putin, could it be that they actually fear for their lives? Putin’s critics tend to end up murdered.
Luthe
@? Martin: Yes, but by villifying Clinton they are potentially shooting themselves in the foot in two ways: 1) they raise the likelihood of Trump being elected *shudder* and 2) they guarantee any Clinton administration will freeze them out so hard we will be able to use them to reverse global warming.
Don’t piss off the lady who has learned from Obama and already hates your guts.
Splitting Image
I suspect you’re right about the Times’ mentality. I would only add that their goal is to be the first place “people they think of as Democrats” and “people they think of as Republicans” get their news. The people who still buy newspapers trend older, so their opinion of both parties is twenty years behind the times. Thus, Democrats are suspicious of the Clintons because they make policy by triangulating to the right, and Republicans pivot to the left in the general election after pandering to conservatives in the primary. So let it be written.
James E Powell
@Trentrunner:
Except none of those listed are big names in the “connect with the general US public” sense of the term. The great mass of American voters have never heard of those people and likely will not know of them any time soon.
The NYT knows this. They can run anti-Hillary stuff non-stop with no regard to fact or reason. The cable shows will never question it because anti-Hillary stories from the NYT is what they want to run with.
Trentrunner
Welp, Hillary apparently had a “2-minute coughing fit” during a speech today.
We know what will be leading tonight’s news.
Trentrunner
@James E Powell: Correct. But these outlets are read by other media types, and so, IMHO, still wield some power to influence them. Maybe naive.
James E Powell
@Gin & Tonic:
They will know exactly what it means: Hillary is bad, corrupt, a liar, not to be trusted, evil, etc.
Roger Moore
I think you’re missing an important point with your graph. While it’s true that graph is unacceptable, apparently the reverse is acceptable. At the very least, that’s what we’ve gotten. The Times has reported on most of the Trump scandals- their ignoring his bribing attorneys general is a rare miss- but those have been mostly one and done. The net result is that Hillary’s non scandals have gotten far more coverage in total than Trump’s numerous real scandals.
James E Powell
@Trentrunner:
I’m not saying naive; that’s condescending. I would say overly optimistic.
Chris
And as a result, those six or seven outlets (i.e. “the mainstream media”) only manage to piss off majorities on both sides and fall increasingly out of touch with everybody, except the dwindling minority of professional centrists.
In my circle of acquaintances, the Venn Diagram of “people who take the New York Times seriously” and “people who thought Michael Bloomberg would have been a wonderful national unity candidate this year” was basically one circle.
FlyingToaster
While this explains what’s going on at the Times, or at Fox, or at AP, it doesn’t explain in the least what’s going on with TV, nor with NPR.
None of the networks are spending any time on Trump’s scandals. If they simply asked “where are the tax returns” at the politics segment of the evening news every night from now until the election, that would improve the situation about 1000%.
NPR is all in against Hillary and barely mentioning Trump’s issues, even when they’re interviewing freaky white supremacists” who support Trump. I gave up on NPR a decade ago, and clearly it’s gone downhill from there.
schrodinger's cat
@germy: I think that’s the reason.
hovercraft
@efgoldman:
She will be under investigation for the next four years (I agree the house is probably out of reach), she needs to have every democrat fan out everyday asking why the GOP house is spending all it’s time investigation shit that’s been under investigation for the last four years. They need to institute a Cost Clock’ that will keep a running tab on how much the GOP house has spent on multiple investigations that have revealed no wrongdoing. Make them own it, show every week what that money would have paid for. Go to their districts and show crumbling infrastructure and how that the money could have better spent.
Chris
@Trentrunner:
Krugman deserves credit for having called out the national media on this BS before this cycle, as well. At least as far back as the Bush administration he’s been calling attention to the fact that the MSM values “balance” over accuracy – the “shape of Earth, views differ” parody is from him.
(Don’t know if the others have done it too, they may well have, I just wanted to note that for Krugman).
LookingForACanadian
@Trentrunner: Mark Cuban is doing a good job on Twitter
JPL
@Trentrunner: In the previous thread, I mentioned that MSNBC cut away from the speech and talked about the coughing.
D58826 commented Well the ‘allergy attack’ is a direct result of the stroke that she suffered and obvious the brain damage is affecting her lungs. It’s all tied together. Alex Jones told me so./
I think it was only a minute and I feel her pain, since scents can cause me havoc.
hovercraft
@Trentrunner:
I think it’s Ebola. So if she has to drop out, Trump is going to focus on Tim Kaine’s “gifts” while governor scandal? He was the most corrupt politician in the history of Virginia?
JerryN
I’m not sure how much of a difference it would make, but there is something that that Clinton campaign could be doing that it really hasn’t – giving the media something else to report on. What I mean can be illustrated by yesterday’s top news on the NYT website. They had the Trump in Detroit story to front-page and nothing current to feature on Clinton. So, they go with the fundraising story to give them an HRC headline. There was nothing time sensitve or newsy about the story, it could have been run on any day. Had the Clinton campaign counter-programmed some event, maybe the Times features that and either kills the fundraising story or at least doesn’t feature it. As a camapign, if you know that Trump is going to do something to grab a fresh headline every damned day, you may have to adjust your tactics.
encephalopath
I’ve been thinking the same thing today. If the political press reported reality, there would be 40 negative stories about Trump for every 1 about Clinton. Editorial board people think that would make them look biased even though, you know, it’s all fucking true.
So in order to maintain “balance” in their reporting the ignore most of the stuff Trump does and just make shit up about Clinton. “See? We write the same number of critical stories about each candidate. We’re doing a great job. How could you possibly object to that?”
Quinerly
@FlyingToaster:
NPR always manages to find and interview all those Obama and Bernie voters who are now voting for Trump. Always amazing.
hovercraft
@JPL:
You need a chalk board to sketch it out.
James E Powell
@Chris:
And as we can see he had zero effect on how the national press/media cover political campaigns, including the coverage in the paper that publishes his column.
Aleta
The Times knows it will be endorsing HRC, so to keep all possible ad money flowing they believe they must prove they gave the question a hard look. I surely hope it’s part of some cynical corporate scaffolding to support a pivot to fair HRC articles.
But there’s absolutely no excuse for publishing this junk. The articles seem written by hires from corporate communications departments, and the headlines by infiltrating Republican interns whose parents won’t allow them to get dirty at Fox.
ETA And who the fuck writes the headlines for any of the internet news stories from anywhere?
sunny raines
while obama is generally better than most polls, people should not give him a pass on drone wars, indefinite detention, extra-judicial assassinations of US citizens, black sites, and surveillance of US citizens, aka his record on civil rights is pretty atrocious.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Yes, exactly. Even if they like to think they’re above it all, they still effectively skew Republican.
I said something like this in the last thread: yes, they want a horse race, but I also can’t imagine that if the Democrats had nominated someone as extreme, unqualified, and antidemocratic as the Republicans did this time, the MSM would be covering it in this half-assed, horse-race-comes-first way. They’d be all in behind the Republican. Whoever he was.
Taylor
Reposted from another thread because it seems relevant:
NYT [Saturday] had an article on the reality of coastal flooding caused by climate change. Local governments want to protect themselves from flooding. The military wants to act to protect their bases.
The liberal NYT attributes the lack of federal action to “gridlock in Washington.”
rikyrah
@Trentrunner:
Benen?
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
This is another avenue to de-legitimize a Democrat. This is attempt to “Acorn” the Clinton Foundation.
JPL
@hovercraft: Where is Betty Cracker when you need her?
hovercraft
@Quinerly:
It’s like the millennials of color are rejecting Hillary story, it feeds the impression that she’s in trouble with core groups story to balance his woes with large chunks of what should be his base. Trump has problems with college educated and white women, so she must have problems with black voters and some Obama voters. Last I checked there were people who voted Obama the first time but not the second, it happens. As for the youth, as evidenced by first Occupy and then Bernie, there are many young voters of all races who are disenchanted with both parties, this is not unique to Hillary. O’Malley didn’t do much better with the youth during his brief run. There is also the small matter of the Clinton surrogates who are going to be out on the trail for the next two months. Little know figures like Barrack and Michelle and Bernie, and of course Uncle Joe.
p.a.
@Splitting Image: Maybe not the Times’ target audience, but your garden variety wingnut (much of the maternal side of my family) still, after Iraq, Judy Miller et. al., thinks of it as an ultra-liberal paper. NOTHING the NYT does will alter that. Cranius constrictus for life. Again, probably not the Times’ target audience, but still….
Fair Economist
@? Martin:
If the media were asking questions about Hillary’s strategy for Syria, or what she’ll do with her ambitious platform without the House, or whether she needs to do anything to distance herself from the Clinton Foundation, that would be a reasonable focus on issues likely to come up in a Clinton presidency. But they’re not doing that. Instead they’re running witchhunts on her running her emails more responsibly than any previous Secretary of State and “clouds” on the Clinton Foundation and absurdly one-sided demands that she immediately disconnect from the Clinton Foundation (how many are saying Trump needs to immediately disconnect from all Trump businesses and remove his name from them?)
No, this is about preventing Hillary from being elected, or at least being elected with a friendly Congress.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@srv: Fortunately, srv, you’re never a mystery to us. Just “the common clay of the New West”.
cokane
FWIW, i think the WaPo has been mostly solid in investigating Trump and correctly contextualizing the Clinton issues
daves09
@hovercraft: NYT did pretty much the same thing in 2000, lead by the unspeakable MoDo. They followed it up by cheerleading the Iraq war and giving cover and support to just about everything Bush and co. did.
And there were absolutely no consequences-MoDo continues an ass, NYT continues the paper of broken record. There are no consequences of bad journalistic behavior.
hovercraft
@Fair Economist:
My favorite is when they say that she’s not talking about her policy prescriptions, and is just spending all her time attacking Donald Trump. These are the same reporters who when accused of ignoring her will defend themselves by saying that her stump speech is all policy and is boring, so there’s no new news in it whereas Trump has something new and exciting that needs to be reported.
Whiplash.
Doug R
@sunny raines: Easy on the ODS Gish Gallop. Citations please. Show your work
Lizzy L
No link, sorry, but (as Trentrunner noted) James Fallows has a terrific article up about the ethics and behavior of the media. Very much worth reading.
redshirt
@cokane: Agreed. I wonder if it’s only because Trump cut them off, or is it also because Bezos wishes it.
We see Mark Cuban actively working against Trump. Is their a group of billionaires out there who are anti-Trump?
Doug R
@redshirt: Haven’t heard of one billionaire that’s pro-Trump.
NJ Maine Coon Slave
@Trentrunner: Tim F??
Major Major Major Major
@cokane: Yeah, that whole “getting banned by the campaign” thing seems to have left a mark.
burnspbesq
@sunny raines:
You’re very confused.
(1) There is no such thing as a “drone war.” There are weapons systems that either are, or are not, used appropriately.
(2) indefinite deterntion of prisoners of war has always been permissible, and continues to be so. If there are certain persons being detained indefinitely who are not appropriately classified as prisoners of war, name them and provide specifics.
(3) Zarquawi was actively engaged in offensive military operations against the United States. He was a legitimate military objective, and his US citizenship was irrelevant to that determination.
(4) is there even a shred of evidence that any of the former CIA “black sites” is still operational? If yes, please provide it or cite to a reliable source.
(5) Feel free to cite to a controlling appellate court decision holding any ongoing surveillance operation by any US government agency to be unconstitutional or beyond statutiory authority. If you can.
Seriously, do you actually believe the shit you come here to spout?
LookingForACanadian
@redshirt: He’s more than anti-Trump; he’s pro-Hillary. he’s spending a good deal of time dismantling the crap Tim lays out in his post.
gwangung
@hovercraft:
Another manufactured story, right? It’s based on a study done in mid to late July, before the conventions.
daves09
@srv: Even for you that’s pretty delphic-on first, second and last reading it means absolutely nothing.
JPL
@Doug R: It’s pretty bad when billionaires don’t want to be associated with you.
LAO
@Doug R: Peter Thiel.
SenyorDave
@Doug R: Haven’t heard of one billionaire that’s pro-Trump.
Icahn, Pickens, Thiel. The first two would vote for any Republican
Anoniminous
@sunny raines:
And Obama is paying* an Army of Lesbian farmers to corrupt the countryside with their lezbo ways.
* Personally! He comes to your door and everything! Well, not you but them dyke pre-farmers that he knows want to become farmers because he uses his Magick IslamoKenyan power of time travel to go into the future to find out.
redshirt
@LookingForACanadian: Who? Cuban or Bezos?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: Who ya callin’ a junkie? Where a new post? I need a fix baaddd!
catclub
@hovercraft:
That is one substantial difference with 2000. There are no divisions in the Democratic party.
Also Elizabeth Warren seems to have been on vacation for the last 6 weeks. With anyluck thinking up ways to get under the Trumpenskin.
daves09
@LAO: Adelman, Wynn. Gambling billionaires are still billionaires.
LookingForACanadian
@redshirt: Cuban. I mentioned way up thread that he’s doing a good job on Twitter (in response to Trentrunner)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@redshirt: Cuban.
Doug R
@LAO: Yeah, well Thiel proves the nutcase exception to the rule.
Citizen_X
@Chris:
Oh, that’s coming, for real. Every NASA facebook post is guaranteed to be met by an international (!) group of “Flat Earthers” demanding that they stop lying. They’re some mutant spawn of moon truthers, UFO types and creationists. They’re *slightly* more out there than creationists or global warming deniers, but have you ever seen those groups being treated skeptically by the MSM? Flat Earthers, you just need to get your numbers up a little, and mainstream respectability is yours! Just ask the alt-right neo-nazis!
Major Major Major Major
@catclub: @hovercraft: Bernie’s been on the trail for Hillary?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: You need to find a higher quality farmers market. Only the best have the Army of Lesbian Frarmers. Look for the AoLF label.
daves09
@catclub: The 2000 split was caused exclusively by Gore running away from Clinton. If Gore had allowed Bill to campaign in Fla. that last week the results would have been much different. It’s cold comfort but Gore did win the popular vote and a less politicized SC. would have used that as the reason for a recount rather than giving the election to Bush.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: That’s tomorrow, please try to keep up; and it’s only a 180 degree lens.
LAO
@Doug R: Agreed! Thiel is an odious human being (much like Trump).
Doug R
@SenyorDave: Icahn’s done deals with Donald, Pickens agrees with his Muslim ban.
Kat
@Roger Moore: Posted about 3 hours ago:
Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one? (without their numerous embedded links)
In the heat of a presidential campaign, you’d think that a story about one party’s nominee giving a large contribution to a state attorney general who promptly shut down an inquiry into that nominee’s scam “university” would be enormous news. But we continue to hear almost nothing about what happened between Donald Trump and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.
I raised this issue last week, but it’s worth an update as well as some contextualization. The story re-emerged last week when The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold reported that Trump paid a penalty to the IRS after his foundation made an illegal contribution to Bondi’s PAC. While the Trump organization characterizes that as a bureaucratic oversight, the basic facts are that Bondi’s office had received multiple complaints from Floridians who said they were cheated by Trump University; while they were looking into it and considering whether to join a lawsuit over Trump University filed by the attorney general of New York State, Bondi called Trump and asked him for a $25,000 donation; shortly after getting the check, Bondi’s office dropped the inquiry.
At this point we should note that everything here may be completely innocent. Perhaps Bondi didn’t realize her office was looking into Trump University. Perhaps the fact that Trump’s foundation made the contribution (which, to repeat, is illegal) was just a mix-up. Perhaps when Trump reimbursed the foundation from his personal account, he didn’t realize that’s not how the law works (the foundation would have to get its money back from Bondi’s PAC; he could then make a personal donation if he wanted). Perhaps Bondi’s decision not to pursue the case against Trump was perfectly reasonable.
But here’s the thing: We don’t know the answers to those questions, because almost nobody seems to be pursuing them.
For instance, there was only one mention of this story on any of the five Sunday shows, when John Dickerson asked Chris Christie about it on “Face the Nation“ (Christie took great umbrage: “I can’t believe, John, that anyone would insult Pam Bondi that way”). And the comparison with stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails or the Clinton Foundation is extremely instructive. Whenever we get some new development in any of those Clinton stories, you see blanket coverage — every cable network, every network news program, every newspaper investigates it at length. And even when the new information serves to exonerate Clinton rather than implicate her in wrongdoing, the coverage still emphasizes that the whole thing just “raises questions” about her integrity.
The big difference is that there are an enormous number of reporters who get assigned to write stories about those issues regarding Clinton. The story of something like the Clinton Foundation gets stretched out over months and months with repeated tellings, always with the insistence that questions are being raised and the implication that shady things are going on, even if there isn’t any evidence at a particular moment to support that idea.
[…]
But the truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:
•Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money
•Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses
•Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.
•The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money
•The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins
•Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did
•Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work
•Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work
•Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination
•Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction
•The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company
•The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.
[…]
SenyorDave
OT, but I followed a link from a link and ended up on RedState. A lot of the website seems to be anti-Trump stuff, with some actual serious articles about the Florida AG payoff and Trump’s lack of general knowledge. They are still far right, of course, and one of the main articles is how good income inequality is.
ruemara
@sunny raines: Jesus Christ. You’re an imbecile. There has got to be a Jill Stein event somewhere for you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ruemara: There is, but Dr. Jill Stein showed up in the wrong state, again.
daves09
@?BillinGlendaleCA: If that’s supposed to be framers does this mean the AoLF is also taking over the building trades-THANKS OBAMA!!!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@daves09: That’s supposed to be farmers, I blame Obama(and Hillary).
Iowa Old Lady
@Lizzy L: That Fallows article is a good one.
Anoniminous
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Goddamn it dude. You busted security on the Underground Army of Lesbian Construction Workers.
Doug R
@daves09: Here’s a preview of AoLF taking over the building trades!
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Major Major Major Major: No, but he stuck a shiv in her yesterday.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: When I was a youngin’ in grad school I took the NBC studio tour(I had friends visiting from the rainy PacNW) and as we were passing by the part of the tour that went by the Tonight Show studio; Johnny drove up in his white Vette and asked the tour group “have they taken your money yet?”.
hovercraft
@gwangung:
Plus it’s just bullshit, if she is getting 90+ percent if the black vote, and Obama got between 96 and 94, then how much of a problem can this really be. Will the headline on November 9th be “Hillary Suffers Historic Drop-off in African American Vote !” And then the article will actually say that the drop off from Obama was from 96 for Bams, to 91, with Stein and Johnson each getting 4 and Trump getting 1. But the headline is true, she lost 5 whole points from where Obama was.
Iowa Old Lady
@Major Major Major Major: He’s in NH today campaigning for Clinton. A friend of mine who lives there emailed me that she and her husband were going to be in a parade for Clinton. I think that was part of the same event.
pseudonymous in nc
@JerryN:
That’s what will happen from now on, as the number of top-tier Dem surrogates on the trail (incl. POTUS and FLOTUS) fills out.
But HRC has a campaign to run. And that involves things other than events in August. Shit’s gotta get done. Trump only got to do so many events in August because he’s not running an actual campaign.
I’ll add a point re the post. The NYT probably thinks that its reporting on Trump’s cas1n0s and other longer pieces levels up that bar chart. But those pieces tend to be one-and-done, because they’re somethingburgers where the conclusion (“Trump’s as dodgy as fuck”) is obvious. Repeatedly reheating nothingburgers (especially with shadowcloud language) conveys more implied guilt than dishing out an array of somethingburgers and leaving them to go cold.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
He was in New Hampshire for her today ! Of course some in the media tried to make out that he behaved like Cruz, focusing on the fact that he first reminded the crowd about his glory days, and didn’t mention her for the first 20 minutes. The big difference was that when he got to her, he was full throated in his support, calling her far, far superior in every respect. So yes he went out for her today.
pseudonymous in nc
ugh, cas1n0 sent me to moderation jail. Can I get sprung?
hovercraft
@SenyorDave:
It’s Bizzaro World, a short time ago there was a Deputy Editor of the Weekly Standard on trashing Trump, most of the “serious” conservative media is really against him, and is therefore practicing actual journalism. Many of them are putting the MSM to shame.
Major Major Major Major
@hovercraft: Didn’t he talk about how she needs to shut down the Foundation yesterday?
At any rate, I’m glad he’s out campaigning!
Emma
I’ve been reading but not commenting much the last couple of days. After thinking about all the forensic dissection of the possible reasons the MSM has for hunting Clinton to destruction, I’ve come to a conclusion.
I don’t care.
Addiction to the narrative; addiction to the pivot; lackadaisical acquiescence to their masters’ wishes; stupidity; evil. I don’t care. The reasons why they are damaging the country are irrelevant.
What I do care is that we have to find ways to continually decrease their influence until we can drown the whole industry in Grover’s bathtub.
JR in WV
@? Martin:
They knew how to do it back in the 50s and 60s when civil rights workers were being tortured to death and buried in dams with backhoes. They knew how to do it when black people wearing suits and ties were beaten with clubs wrapped with barb wire.
Now, the worst racist fascist in the history of American politics to be nominated by a major party is running for president and the Press is afraid/ignorant of how to cover it? I guess that’s one guess as to why this is happening. Bought and sold is another.
Total agreement with much of his platform is another, as short sighted as that would seem for Jewish management staff. Bigots hate a lot of people, and you never know when YOU are going to be the next target, if a new target is needed.
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Not for real? Right?
hovercraft
@efgoldman:
She was supposed to go to Cleveland, but instead flew to Cincinnati or somewhere else in Ohio.
Kat
@pseudonymous in nc:
Me too — possibly deserved for quoting too much of today’s excellent WashPo post on the issue:
Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Aleta: “You Won’t Believe The Shocking Truth About Internet News Headlines!”
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
NoraLenderbee
@Anoniminous:
He’s referring to the secret lesbianism of the delegates who wrote our Constitution.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
He said after being pushed that “at the very least, she should have nothing to do with it if elected”, they kept on pushing and he said if it was him he would shut it down. Here is the video from Meet The Press yesterday.
Ohio Mom
I am related by marriage to two newspaper people. Their entire focus is, “Will this sell papers?” A short story to illustrate:
About ten years ago, when my kid was in the early years of elementary school, BIL and SIL came to town. At that time, SIL was state editor of the Richmond, VA paper and there had been a hatchet murder in the area that her paper was covering very closely.
We were eating lunch out and she was giving a blow by blow of how the case developed, day by day, and how each new twist and turn made each day’s circulation go up and up. She was so excited!
I kept trying to change the topic, when I wasn’t nervously glancing over at how my kid was taking all the blood and gore.
Finally I just blurted out, “I have a kid with an anxiety disorder, can we talk about something else?”
Which did shut her up, and she did Iook contrite. That my kid had/has anxiety wasn’t/isn’t news, and who thinks that is appropriate table talk around *any* child?
But what has stayed with me was how she wove the daily circulation figures into her story. Daily hatchet murders would be fine with her if they led to record sales figures.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
Of course he has. It’s been the lead story on the national news, every channel, every night. I have to turn off my TV to get some respite from the incessant “Bernie ripped Trump ANOTHER new one today!” stories. Hillary herself has asked him to tone it down, because she doesn’t want to upset Trump too much.
Why, yes, the sky IS yellow and the sun IS blue — why do you ask?
Today I got an e-mail request to sign Bernie’s birthday card. I did, and got a chance to leave him a personal message. I thanked him for his tireless efforts to get Hillary elected.
SFAW
@Ohio Mom:
If it bleeds, it leads, as they say.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, is that what he calls it?
gwangung
@hovercraft: Yeah, the whole Clinton Foundation thing in particular pissed me off (I work in the non-profit fundraising world). It’s gotten the progressive left in a lather about corruption, when it’s clear the behavior is part and parcel of power in general–i.e., human nature, and is in the not-quite-eradicable part of the way things work.
@hovercraft: Heh. Not very swift on his feet and not very knowledgeable on how large operations work (but we saw that from how he ran his campaign). Not very competent to run anything more than a small city or maybe state.
jsrtheta
@debbie: These are the people who created Whitewater. This is nothing new. Phony, fact-free scandal is their medium.
Fun trick: At a party, ask a Republican what Whitewater was about. Good for hours of fun while they struggle to answer.
debbie
@hovercraft:
Stein was supposed to go to Columbus, but landed in Cincinnati. She then drove to Columbus. It took her two hours. I’m not sure how many people stuck around.
gogol's wife
Excellent post. Please send a copy to Mr. Dean Baquet.
gogol's wife
@debbie:
You’re going back that far? Yeah, I guess he was pretty bad.
gogol's wife
@Doug R:
They poisoned Megyn Kelly . . . .
Ohio Mom
@SFAW: But if you said that to either of them, you’d get a lecture on how newspapers are the underpinning of democracy. Yeah, like being up to date on every detail of a grisly murder helps anyone figure out how to vote.
They have huge blind spots about how newspapers actually function. My husband had a discussion with his brother a few months ago where BIL defended the necessity of reporting both sides even when it is obvious one side has no legitimacy. I am sure he is currently defending how newspapers are presenting Trump, as if he is actually a typical candidate.
I guess the purpose of my story is, Yup, no surprise here on how the papers are covering this election.
Doug R
@debbie: So which Springfield is Stein showing up in next?
ColeDBiers
@Trentrunner:
Paul Waldman
washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-wh…
Jeff Jarvis
buzzmachine.com/2016/08/30/news-new-silent-majority-clinton-supporters/
Ohio Mom
@hovercraft: The Cincinnati airport is across the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky, about 15 miles from downtown Cincinnati.
Hence the jokes about Stein landing in the wrong state. Which she did.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
You have to understand that, at least, 27% of the population truly believe that the MSM is ignoring Hillary’s scandals and is covering for her. And the only reason she is not in jail is that the fix is in with the FBI & DOJ.
debbie
@Doug R:
Idaho.
debbie
@gogol’s wife:
I needed Google to help my memory, but I might even say Howell Raines since he was responsible for Jayson Blair (the first crack in NYT’s credibility while I was a loyal reader). But definitely Keller for jonesing for the Iraq invasion and for enabling Judith Miller.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@hovercraft: I haven’t kept up with this “OMG! The CF!!11” thing, because, I mean, she’s a Clinton and Therefore Corrupt™, amirite?!?!, but I do remember that she had “negotiations” with Obama’s team about it before she was appointed SoS. Have any of our oh-so-principled national political reporters looked back at those restrictions and asked experts whether they were sufficient, overly restrictive, too lax, anything?
It’s
amazinginfuriating how history doesn’t exist in political reporting…Cheers,
Scott.
(Who thinks they should not be forced to do anything about the CF (unless they think it wise) because if she gives in they’ll just come up with some other Corrupt™ thing to hound her about.)
hovercraft
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
They’ve been saving it up for years, I remember when she too the job and negotiated the terms, people like Andrea Mitchell sounding very eager about the many ways she would fail those terms. No matter what she did they would find a way to say she did wrong. If you search long enough you’ll find something.
Slightly OT
Steve Cortes a Trump surrogate was on with Joy Reid a little while ago, and when asked about the Trump donation to Pam Bondi, he said that the difference between the Clinton Foundation “scandal” and the Bondi situation, is that Trump is a private citizen, and lots of powerful business people engage in pay to play. When Joy and a guest jumped on him and pointed out that that is illegal, he said it was his personal money, and then changed it completely to he never payed to play. Trump has the best surrogates ever !!
Miss Bianca
@Ohio Mom: Blow by blow? All forty whacks one at a time, eh? Ewww…
Central Planning
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Splitters! The Lesbian Farmer’s Army (LFA) has much better produce!
rachel
Ahem! Girl scout.
Xantar
@sunny raines:
Unlike some others, I’ll take you seriously. All the things you mentioned are policy issues, not issues with Obama personally. Even the most ardent Obama critic doesn’t believe that he uses drones because somebody made a contribution to his campaign. What Tim F is talking about in this post is personal corruption. And nobody has found even a hint of corruption in Obama’s life (I don’t think anybody has even found corruption in the whole damn administration).
JR in WV
@Emma:
I don’t think we have to do anything but wait. The Internet is doing in paper newspaper production in two ways. First, people can click around and see the news that interests them, gear heads see who won the race, which car is quickest on the track. Political folks see how current polling is going, in far more detail than is ever printed. Imagine the 538 poll survey data on a newspaper page? Not going to happen.
Second, and more important, the advertisers are leaving paper publications behind, and TV as well. There’s a little advertising in the papers, but it’s a fraction of what you saw from the 1970s until the early 2000s – car dealers don’t buy big color ads twice a week, neither do grocery stores.
The Internet allows you to compare pricing on cars, print out coupons for the grocery store, and advertisers don’t pay for everyone, just for the people who saw their ad and clicked. People who use Google and don’t click the commercial ads Google puts at the top of their results, the advertisers don’t even pay for those clicks.
As the money flows away from the Times and CNN so will their power to influence the world.
Bobby Thomson
All true, except that Trump isn’t the first to take advantage of this. He’s just taken it to new extremes.
KS in MA
@efgoldman: Sorry, can’t help thinking “She stood in tears amid the lesbian corn.”
Classics for our time…?