Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The lights are all blinking red.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

People are weird.

You are here: Home / Politics / ‘There’s a Lot of Anger With the National Media’

‘There’s a Lot of Anger With the National Media’

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Three weeks ago today I put up post saying we should all subscribe to this Cleveland paper – the Plain Dealer – because of his editorial stating that there aren’t two sides to facts.

We Should All Subscribe to this Cleveland Newspaper – The Plain Dealer

And now I want to post a follow-up.  We weren’t the the only ones who felt this way!

An interview with a newsroom leader who speaks the truth about Donald Trump

On the overwhelming response: “There’s a lot of anger with the national media.”

I was shocked. I told my wife and the editor that I asked to read it: “You know I was expecting the complete opposite.” I expected to get a hundred, two hundred emails and texts saying: “You’re an idiot, you’re in the bag for the libs,” and that kind of thing. And when immediately it was not that I was surprised.

And then it just blew up. People were reposting it on their social pages. And you know, I started hearing from across the country and across the globe. And by the end of that first day, I had so many emails from people just to say thanks from everywhere. “Tears in their eyes,” they said, multiple people, saying “I’m reading this with tears in my eyes.”

And I gotta tell you I was taken aback because I didn’t feel like it was anything that we hadn’t said. But then I thought, you know, when you work on something like this for six months, and you’re trying so hard to get the language right. Maybe it’s the tone. Maybe it’s the timing. Maybe it was just the time was right.

There’s a lot of anger with the national media, the New York Times and the Washington Post in particular. People feel that they have allowed the Fox News kind of media to set the agenda — that if you go back and count how many times they’ve looked at Joe Biden’s mental state… Anybody that has read a detailed interview with Joe Biden knows he’s not some dribbling idiot that can’t speak. He’s still got his faculties. But Fox News pieces together the places where he stumbles and says dumb things, and tries to portray him as a blithering idiot, and the people who watch that truly believe it. I mean, I get notes from people that are definitely afraid about the future of this country because they think a guy who has no brain matter left is running it.

So [the readers I heard from] are mad that instead of kind of standing firm and setting their own agenda, because Fox News shows it that way, because a sizable part of the population starts to believe it, they feel like they’ve got to address it like it’s a legitimate concern. Instead of saying: “This is absolute horse shit, we’re not gonna do that.”

I was surprised at how many people brought that up — that understood that and are furious about it. And so they were saying: We wish other national media would do what you’re doing: Speaking about this as clear-headedly as you can, and saying,” the truth is the truth, and we’re not going to veer from the truth.”

Read the whole thing!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

76Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    I think it’s important that this anger translates to something that hurts their bottom line. Until we do that they are not going to get the message

  2. 2.

    Steeplejack

    This was funny. (Nitter links.)

    @frankthorp: Sen. Susan Collins just cast her 9000th *consecutive* roll call vote.

    @nycsouthpaw: The Cal Ripken of voting with leadership but expressing concerns.

    Basically a gold star for attendance. 🙄

    ETA: For someone who promised to serve only two terms when first elected in 1996; she’s in her fifth term now.

  4. 4.

    smith

    @cain: Too many liberalish people still accept the myth that FTFNYT is a liberal paper, and resist any suggestion that they are being propagandized into adopting a corporate viewpoint, which is necessarily rightwing-friendly.

    Then they are perpetually surprised by the paper’s slant, as evidenced by the many times their readers comment loudly and vociferously against something that’s been published there. And still, even with massive reader feedback, nothing changes.

  6. 6.

    Hob

    I think it’s worth mentioning (as others with more local knowledge have – I may not have a 100% accurate understanding here) that the Plain Dealer under current management has cut back dramatically on staff in what looks like a union-busting effort, and been absorbed into an online media chain, in which Chris Quinn, the editor being interviewed here, had a major role. I think the general consensus is that he has led efforts to greatly reduce the actual journalistic content of the paper.

    So, while I agree that these particular editorial pieces are good, I feel like rewarding the Plain Dealer with a bunch of new subscriptions could be interpreted one of two ways. It could tell Quinn and the chain’s management that they should focus more on getting substantative political news out there, and reverse some of the cuts they’ve made in that area, because there’s an audience out there that wants more of this in particular. Or, it could tell them that what they’ve done to the paper is working fine— that they don’t need more reporting, just some angry editorials. I really don’t know the answer.

  8. 8.

    Quicksand

    “Tears in their eyes,” they said, multiple people, saying “I’m reading this with tears in my eyes.”

    “Big guys, strong guys.  Sir,” they say to me . . .

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    Did anyone else see this?  Trump’s attorneys filed with the appellate court to STOP THE TRIAL!

    UNFAIR JURY SELECTION!

  10. 10.

    Geminid

    The House just took its first vote and rejected a Republican border security bill. Reporter Jaime Dupree says there are 8 votes coming on the foreign aud bills. Sounds like maybe they’ll vote on one amendment for each bill, then on the bill.

    The border bill roll call shows 17 Representatives “Not Voting.”  That’s 8 of one party, 9 of the other. I wonder if they figured the outcome wasn’t in doubt and left early.

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @Hob: Did you read the article I linked to?  It’s pretty obvious that know the increase in contact, and I’m sure subscriptions, was related to the commitment to sharing facts, not “alternative facts”.

  13. 13.

    Scout211

    I enjoyed this AP article this morning.  I think as the Trump news is getting worse and worse for him, the media is starting to just report it and not search far and wide for “both sides.” At least when it comes to his criminal and civil trials.  We’ll see if that also applies to the campaign.

    There was a Trump spokesperson quoted about how defiant and brave he was but the whole article was not at all complimentary to him.

     

    Trump was forced to listen silently as potential jurors offered their unvarnished assessments of him
    Over the past week, Donald Trump has been forced to sit inside a frigid New York courtroom and listen to a parade of potential jurors in his criminal hush money trial share their unvarnished assessments of him.

    It’s been a dramatic departure for the former president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee, who is accustomed to spending his days in a cocoon of cheering crowds and constant adulation. Now a criminal defendant, Trump will instead spend the next several weeks subjected to strict rules that strip him of control over everything from what he is permitted to say to the temperature of the room.

    “He’s the object of derision. It’s his nightmare. He can’t control the script. He can’t control the cinematography. He can’t control what’s being said about him. And the outcome could go in a direction he really doesn’t want,” said Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and critic.

    ‘ ‘ ‘

    New Yorkers who said they couldn’t approach the case fairly were excused during jury selection. But one of the women with the harshest assessments of him will be among those who will determine his fate on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

    “I don’t like his persona, how he presents himself in public,” said the woman, who has lived in upper Manhattan for the last 15 years. The woman said she didn’t agree with some of Trump’s politics, which she called “outrageous.”

    “He just seems very selfish and self-serving, so I don’t really appreciate that in any public servant,” she said, adding that while she doesn’t “know him as a person,” how he “portrays himself in public, it just seems to me it is not my cup of tea.”

    Trump’s legal team took issue with her responses, but they were out of challenges by the time she was up for consideration.

    . . .

    On Friday, one prospective juror, who said she had attended the 2017 Women’s March protesting Trump’s inauguration, complained of the influence he has over his base.

    “I think his rhetoric at times enables people to feel as if they have permission to discriminate or act on their negative impulses,” she said, citing people she has heard make homophobic or racist comments. Still, she said she didn’t have strong feelings about the former president and wasn’t sure of his current policy positions.

    Another man said he’d grown up admiring the former president and business mogul’s real estate portfolio and even thinking he might someday live in Trump Tower. But he had come to oppose Trump’s “negative rhetoric and bias against people that he speaks about.”

  14. 14.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott: So these are the final votes?

    I put this up thinking that it was noon, and that it would be another hour or 90 minutes before they would be voting.

    Fucking time zones, how do they work?

  15. 15.

    cain

    @smith:

    I don’t get it either. Must be a strain of Democrats that like being part of an abusive cycle of being told their values suck.

    It seems all this stuff is being replaced by tiktok which is also radicalizing folks to on both the left and right.

  16. 16.

    Hob

    @Quicksand: Ha! Yeah, that phrasing stood out to me too as weirdly Trumpy. Maybe that’s unfair, I know people should have tears in their eyes sometimes, but after hearing 10000 of those “sir stories” it’s unavoidable.

  20. 20.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: Yup.

    They’re allowing 5 minutes for votes on the 4 main sections, 2 minutes for votes on amendments.  And unlike most votes in the House, they’re enforcing the time limits.

    They’re flying.

    Spartz amendment #1 goes down in flames.

    MTG’s amendment #2 vote starts now.  2 minutes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  22. 22.

    PAM Dirac

    Second amendment to the Ukraine funding (by the whacko MTG) going down 71Y 351N

    ETA: the amendment votes are 2 minute votes.

  25. 25.

    PAM Dirac

    @WaterGirl: The first amendment was something to do with oversight. The MTG amendment was to strip out all money for Ukraine. The third voting now is to strip out all military money.

    The third goes down 146Y 276N

  29. 29.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I used to listen to Jaime Dupree long ago when he appeared on Neil Boortz’s radio show. Dupree was a Capitol Hill reporter for Atlanta’s WSB radio, which was Boortz’s home station. Boortz had Dupree on just about every day Congress was in session, and he was very informative.

    And not very partisan at all. One day I heard Boortz kidding him about his true political views, and said he probably voted Democratic. Dupree answered that he did not vote at all, that he needed to stay detached in order to report objectively.

    Dupree has Georgia roots, but he grew up near Washington because his father was a lobbyist. He was a Congressional Page while in high school, and later came back as a reporter. A few years ago, Dupree came down with a rare neurological disorder that severely affects his speech, so now he just writes excellent reporting. .

  30. 30.

    WhatsMyNym

    the next platform will be people behind AI generated personalities.

    You mean like VTubers?

  34. 34.

    PAM Dirac

    Now a vote to send the bill back to committee. The last procedural vote before the final vote. It is failing 54Y 318N so we will get to the Ukraine and Israel votes in about 5 minutes

  37. 37.

    PAM Dirac

    Ukraine vote up to 262 Y so will pass easily. No Ds voting No at the moment.

    ETA: Looks like all Ds present (210) voted Yes. 111Rs vote No.  Final vote 310Y  111N

     

    Ds waving Ukraine flags

    Chair reminding Ds that it is a violation of the rules to wave flags on the floor.

  38. 38.

    TS

    One would thin there were no democrats in congress reading the WaPo coverage. This is why the media wants trump – democrats doing the right thing is boring.

  40. 40.

    Another Scott

    No Democratic votes against Ukraine final passage.

    More GQPers vote against final passage than for.

    Yet again, both parties are not the same.

    Good, good.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    hrprogressive

    Because the vast majority of “normies” in our country are not aware that “the media” is neither (writ large, anyway) an independent bastion of “just the facts” reporting nor “the liberal media”.

    Mass media companies are by and large owned by giant corporations whose shareholders run the spectrum from Totally Fash to Fash For Profit.

    Further, due to consolidation/private equity buying out all the little guys / real economic concerns (I used to subscribe to my local paper 15 years ago but don’t anymore…just…yeah the model isn’t great any longer), when people see “real journalism committed”, it makes them happy.

    I don’t wish for a “liberal media pushing leftist agendas” or anything.

    I want the fucking truth of the matter, whatever it is.

    And unfortunately, reality does have a well-known liberal bias, so. It’s not my fault if things like the truth about COVID, the Climate Collapse, or the rise of Fascism including within the GOP / Trumpworld don’t happen to be supported by the left side of the aisle.

    Tough shit.

    The right is going to live in their fantasy fever dream forever.

    Journalism needs to reach the 60% or so of Americans who aren’t chronically online and don’t pay attention to this stuff except long enough to vote, and sometimes not even then.

    Those people may not be “mythical centrist unicorns” or anything, but they are likely people for whom they have a lot of not-strong opinions about a lot of hot topics.

    Journalism is supposed to bridge that gap.

    “Comfort the afflicted, Afflict the comfortable” as it were.

    Let’s get back to that. Before it’s too late.

  43. 43.

    Soprano2

    @WaterGirl: They aren’t going to stop trying to find a reason to stop the trial, no matter how crazy it is. He thought he could postpone all of them until after the election because he knows how bad it is for him. At this point I guess the attorneys are doing what he wants rather than tell him how dumb it is. I suppose they want the venue to be in a county that voted 80% TFG.

  45. 45.

    dmsilev

    @Another Scott:

    More GQPers vote against final passage than for.

    Two thoughts:

    * It’s sort of ‘free’ for most Republicans to vote no if they think that is the way to curry favor with Trump and/or Putin because, once again, the Democrats are doing the heavy lifting.

    * A majority of the GOP just voted against something very high profile that their own Speaker put forward. How long until the looniest of the loons come gunning for him? Greene has already queued up a motion to vacate…

  46. 46.

    B1naryS3rf

    Ukraine aid passed – finally. But try telling “better late than never” to the wounded, dead, impoverished and homeless. Get them the ordinance TOMORROW!

  47. 47.

    PAM Dirac

    The Israel bill will also pass easily. 32 Ds voting No, but only 19 Rs voting no at the moment.

    Final tally looks like 366Y 58N. 37 Ds voted No.

  50. 50.

    brendancalling

    I especially enjoyed the jab at NPR, an organization I have come to hate and despise. I dropped them like  bad habit, FINALLY, back in November ’22. I heard one too many garbage Marketplace pieces about how “Biden’s Recession” was coming along ANY DAY NOW, coupled with one too many garbage Both Sides All Things Considered stories about the nonexistent “Red Wave”, and decided “enough is enough.” So it’s good to see the fellow at the Plain Dealer calling them out in particular, because NPR has coasted on their unearned reputation as “left of center” for years, when at best they’re a right of center organization hiding behind “both sides.”

    [On a side note, I also enjoy the delicious irony of NPR bending over to accommodate the right—one of the deciding incidents to take NPR off my presets was when they had Jonah Goldberg on as a guest during ATC to discuss Biden’s record as president—and the right coming after them anyway.]

  51. 51.

    Another Scott

    @PAM Dirac: 37D Nos out of 58 total Nos.

    From the C-Span voiceover description, most of the money is for missile defense and aid to Gaza, etc., so it’s a defendable vote for Team Blue.  It would be a much harder vote if it were for artillery, tanks, etc.

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @smith:

    Too many liberalish people still accept the myth that FTFNYT is a liberal paper…

    Same with Totebagger Radio.

  56. 56.

    Frankensteinbeck

    So, my prediction was correct.  Johnson dithered and procrastinated and postured until he finally felt like he was out of time, then he allowed a vote on a relatively clean bill.

    I admit when I’m wrong.  I didn’t think he would dither this long.  Still, yeah, the pattern held and Ukraine got its funding and the supposedly unbudgeable zealot folded.

  57. 57.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @brendancalling:

    I especially enjoyed the jab at NPR, an organization I have come to hate and despise.

    Stopped giving them money sometime during Bush II, stopped listening sometime during Obama’s 2nd term.  My wife still listens to them but her ear is now tuned into a lot of their craptastic reporting stenographic techniques.  She, at least, also stopped giving them money.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    The Biden Administration to announce sanctions against an IDF unit under The Leahy Law. UNIT – not the whole IDF – the Leahy Law can be applied to units or groups within an army or police agency.

    pro Palestinian activists and some Dems in Congress have been asking for this since December.

  59. 59.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:  Stopped giving them [NPR] money sometime during Bush II…

    Bemused Senior soured on them during Shrub’s term. I have a higher tolerance but now I only listen on Sunday mornings. I’m grateful to know that Will Shortz is recovering, the puzzle is mainly what I tune in for. “Nice Polite Republicans” indeed. But of course the Right is never satisfied, see Here’s why Uri Berliner couldn’t stay at NPR [WaPo gift link]

  63. 63.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I think the State and Treasury Departments are proceeding independently of Congressional action. These sanctions may have come out of a incident a couple days ago when a large number of settlers rampaged through an Arab town. I think the sanctioned battalion at best just watched, and probably helped out.

  65. 65.

    UncleEbeneezer

    A good companion piece:

    Why We Need Press Objectivity, Not Balance:

    What happens when the normal press gets tuned out by half the country because attempts at objectivity and pro-democracy coverage produces a perceived partisan bias?

    That is happening right now in the United States and elsewhere. It’s leading to horrifically destructive information bubbles and news sorting, in which the “mainstream media” becomes synonymous in the minds of millions with “anti-Trump.”

    It may be true that the motivation is legitimate—objective, pro-democracy coverage must often be anti-Trump because he is an authoritarian liar. But that doesn’t negate the toxicity of that dynamic for the broader health of democracy.

    And it yields an awful Catch-22.

    Pursuing “balance” requires lying about reality with the slim possibility of restoring trust and attracting back some lost audiences. Pursuing “objectivity” means truthfully catering to a smaller Prius-driving slice of the electorate, while everyone else goes further down the rabbit hole into media that deliberately lies to them, from Newsmax to crazy Substacks written by delusional right-wing grifters.

    Both approaches have significant downsides.

    However, I know which camp I’m in: the press has a responsibility to truth and democracy and that responsibility overrides worries about its perception.

    In the long run, though, if we don’t cure the underlying malaise—the social drivers that are leading people to believe grifting authoritarian liars and podcasters and random internet cranks on TikTok or Twitter or YouTube instead of fact-checked news sources—then we will be faced with the prospect of a democratic press that just shouts objective facts into the delusional authoritarian wind.

  67. 67.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @eclare: ​Not an MLB fan, but I think Ripken actually accomplished something?

    Cal Ripken Jr not only broke what was long considered the most unbreakable record in Major League Baseball (Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-game streak of 2,130) by playing in 2,632 consecutive MLB games, he holds the unofficial (but generally acknowledged**) record for consecutive innings played (8,243 – one inning short of 916 full 9-inning games). Iron Man hisownself!

    ** Data for compiling consecutive-innings streaks can be incomplete for early MLB seasons, but almost no one thinks anyone else has ever approached Ripken’s number.

  68. 68.

    Kay

     

    @Geminid:

    The Leahy law requires a committee to recommend.

    This is for an offense prior to the Gaza war – the issue was Blinken had the recommendation late last year and sat on it.

  69. 69.

    Ken

    Maybe it’s the tone. Maybe it’s the timing.

    I’m going to go with timing. His piece came out just in time for the emperor’s new clothes moment of Trump slumped asleep in his chair farting. Years of “sleepy old Biden” undone in two days.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Now I read the article and see that the sanctions relate to actions last year including the death of an American citizen.

    The incident I spoke of will probably result in sanctions also. And yesterday the State Department hit two Israelis with sanctions, including one of National Security Minister Ben-Gvir political henchmen.

  72. 72.

    Bill Arnold

    @Kay:
    Backgrounder from mid 2022, written with Ukraine (& Azov, though distinct legislation was passed banning funding them a decade-ish ago) in mind, but generally applicable, including to IDF units with have good evidence for engaging in systemic (war) criminality.
    The “Leahy Laws” and U.S. Assistance to Ukraine (justsecurity, Sarah Harrison, May 9, 2022)

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    @Bill Arnold: There is also a sanctions regime created by Biden’s executive order issued on February 1. That’s the program under which the two Israelis were sanctioned yrsterday. Although, it turns out they were already sanctioned as individuals; the Treasury Department sanctioned their fundraising entities yesterday.

    France and the UK added their own sanctions shortly after the Biden administration announced theirs and Germany followed suit a couple days later.

  74. 74.

    CliosFanBoy

    @brendancalling:

      The only thing NPR does that is “left of center” is talk about issues that Democrats like to discuss more than republicans. Since they’re not all outrage, all the time, they’re taken to be “liberal.”

  76. 76.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @brendancalling: I dumped NPR over their coverage of the 2004. They weren’t explicitly campaigning for Bush but they fell down in their coverage of the Swiftboating & other efforts to smear Kerry. It would have been very easy to show what an orchestrated set of attacks those were, but they covered them without any digging into who & what was behind it all.

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