Report on news coverage of the election
A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage during the 2016 general election, and concludes that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received coverage that was overwhelmingly negative in tone and extremely light on policy
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But I am not so sure about "liberal establishment" not having any power. Go to Huffington Post right now and it is all sorts of leftist rage. There's Slate, Mary Sue, Daily Dot, even Cracked tends to be on the left these days. Reddit's the same - it heavily moderates to where posters have noticed big posts being deleted or locked because of content. (luckily it was stupid conspiracy content buhut my point being - it's not like control hasn't been exerted here)
Problem is that media in general is super-entrenched because of the way the model works. You go to the website that posts things you like and completely ignore the rest. Your Facebook feed is tailored to your preferences so you get to see the stories you want. Google and YouTube track preferences and again - tailor what you see whether it's left, right, libertarian, whatever. Fox News's whole business model isn't just about spouting off right bullshit; it's using data to see what programs are watched the most to get more eyeballs on it. Same with Morning Joe - as big as a trainwreck full of fail it is, MSNBC keeps Joe Scarborough around because it's THE MOST watched show in the network's history.
In the end... it's not Alt-Right or Russia or whatever, it's good ol' revenue that's changing media and how things are getting reported or what is considered "valuable" based on user data. And I'm not sure how to counteract that without the companies being willing to take a financial hit in the process because of their own willingness towards integrity... and we all know how many companies have actual integrity. :/
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I don't think of these as 'news' sites, though? I think of them as opinion sites. Like people magazine or Cosmo - almost. Slate is well done, no doubt but when people want 'news' they think, CNN, MSNBC, ABCNews, I'm thinking of newspaper sites too; NYT, Atlantic, etc.
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CNN - leans slightly right
MSNBC - brands itself as left but aside from maybe Chris Hayes and Maddow is pretty darned centrist-pretending-to-pander-left
ABCNews - child company of ABC which is owned by Disney. Probably not as biased but given that there are only a handful of TV conglomerates (and there will be less once Time Warner cable merger goes through which it will in a R administration), kind of doubt its objectivity.
IIRC NYT and Atlantic are both pretty left. Just as WSJ is right. But at least they're generally up front about it.
It's still the same problem - news and which news you choose are commodities to be bought and sold. They still have to pander to their audience to make money. :/ Local news is a lot better about objective reporting in that respect.
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used to. they went so-called mainstream after andy lack took over nbc news. some of it's laid out in GQ's interesting profile of Joe Scarborough http://www.gq.com/story/joe-scarborough-has-big-dreams-trump-musical
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It was baaad this morning. My dad was watching it and Scarborough was literally yelling at guests for "being on his show." But not surprised at all that they let their hosts act like such assholes. :|
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I hear ya but I guess what I'm talking about here is how people engage with the site, reading the comments more than the article themselves.
People scan headlines, glance over the highlights and images, then hop into the comment section to read what others are saying to confirm their own bias. That is where Clinton and the Left get trounced. The 'public market' of media. Hang a flyer up and the crowd gathers with pitchforks.
There is an abundance of orchestrated commenters to plant the right talking points to get people riled up and thinking that 'everyone' thinks this way so it must be true. Completely unaware of how often those comments are spun by troll farms. i know I sound like a conspiracy theorist but it's more pervasive than most people realize.
What gets me about it is that people aren't engaging with their own community, their own neighbors, or even their own country - their engaging with orchestrated rhetoric designed to be divisive.
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What gets me about it is that people aren't engaging with their own community, their own neighbors, or even their own country - their engaging with orchestrated rhetoric designed to be divisive.
+ 1000.
Also wrt a point you made previously - agree on Clinton's lack of messaging in a way that Obama did. I do remember he did an AMA not long after he was elected and was pretty actively engaged beforehand. Clinton's way to be engaged was... to do a weekly podcast. With a trusted friend and pre-scripted questions. She wasn't willing to reach out into the great unkown AT ALL.
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Joss Whedon left (apparently temporarily) after a group of fans bullied him for Black Widow in the most recent Aengers movie.
A group also went after S.E. Hinton after she said that she had not written her main characters in The Outsiders as gay.
mind you - I think this is just the nature of Twitter. There is no way to avoid getting dogpiled / bullied in a super-fast way and that's a serious problem for anyone. It's just not solely a left-right issue
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