Great piece that calls out one of the cardinal prejudices of Krugman's Very Serious People: 'objective journalism.'
The Very Serious Pundits have this religion and they think to be wholly objective you have to be nonpartisan and to be nonpartisan you have to criticize and praise the parties 50/50 on everything.
There are a number of problems with this starting from the point that pure objective journalism is an illusion-but nowhere is this illusion believed in more than on CNN.
"First of all, as I wrote with respect to BuzzFeed's garbled ethics guide, the very idea of "objective" journalism is preposterous. It is impossible for any story beyond a recitation of disordered sensory data to avoid slanting in one direction or another. Whether it's through word selection, how the news frame is presented, or even simple subject choice, journalists constantly take political sides."
http://theweek.com/articles/590165/cnns-deplorable-mainstreaming-antimuslim-bigotry
A classic example of trying to prove total objectivity by criticizing both sides equally is Politico this morning.
"Trump exploits our fears, while Obama underestimates them. Why can’t someone just deal with them?"
"Wemple justified Labott's suspension with reference to a supposed CNN standard that reporters are not supposed to be "predictably partisan." This is an utter crock. CNN reporters and anchors constantly express partisan views on all sorts of questions, and often in an extremely predictable way. I have personally been the token anti-war lefty on a couple CNN segments about ISIS. The atmosphere of aggressive militarism was suffocating."
"My experience is not remotely out of the ordinary. Glenn Greenwald has drawn up an extensive list of partisan opinions that caused no suspensions. There's Jim Acosta asking at an Obama press conference on ISIS "why can't we take out these bastards?" There's Christiane Amanpour doing much the same thing, Don Lemon repeatedly generalizing about Muslim countries being extremist, or implying all Muslims are responsible for 9/11, Erin Burnett stumping for war with Iran, and on and on."
"Most recently, in an almost unbelievably bigoted piece of television last week, CNN anchors John Vause and Isha Sesay pressed a French Muslim activist for six straight minutes about how the "Muslim community" needs to "take responsibility" for the Paris attacks. Directed at any other religious or racial group, such commentary would be absolutely out of bounds — indeed, it's a classic anti-Semitic trope, like a "new shoot of poison vine growing up an ancient trellis."
"But when it comes to Muslims, flagrant, predictably partisan bigotry is just fine and dandy to broadcast on CNN."
"It's when that general attitude is combined with the Labott affair that CNN moves from hypocrisy to actual danger. By professionally sanctioning a reporter for pro-refugee opinions but giving free rein to the likes of Lemon, Vause, and Sesay, CNN is mainstreaming anti-Muslim bigotry. It is saying that rank prejudice against Islam is a subject worthy of serious consideration, while humanitarian sentiments in favor of Muslim refugees is a deviant view that must be punished out of journalism"
I am grateful for this piece by Ryan Cooper. I touched on this last week but he's got a bigger platform. This shows you the endgame of the both sides do it mentality,
I fully don't feel any self-consciousness whatsoever now in stating that CNN would have been a bastion of Nazism if it were in Hitler's Germany. It's pretty undeniable at this point.
It would have fired those who criticized candidate Adolph Hilter in the early 1930s.
The Very Serious Pundits have this religion and they think to be wholly objective you have to be nonpartisan and to be nonpartisan you have to criticize and praise the parties 50/50 on everything.
There are a number of problems with this starting from the point that pure objective journalism is an illusion-but nowhere is this illusion believed in more than on CNN.
"First of all, as I wrote with respect to BuzzFeed's garbled ethics guide, the very idea of "objective" journalism is preposterous. It is impossible for any story beyond a recitation of disordered sensory data to avoid slanting in one direction or another. Whether it's through word selection, how the news frame is presented, or even simple subject choice, journalists constantly take political sides."
http://theweek.com/articles/590165/cnns-deplorable-mainstreaming-antimuslim-bigotry
A classic example of trying to prove total objectivity by criticizing both sides equally is Politico this morning.
"Trump exploits our fears, while Obama underestimates them. Why can’t someone just deal with them?"
So Trump is wrong for exploiting our fears whereas Obama is wrong for not exploiting them. .Perfect example of 'objective journalism' that just so happens to cancel itself out. But, it's better to be objective than to make sense.
I've often argued that in the media's zeal to be evenhnaded, that if the Republicans were to say the Holocaust didn't happen and the Democrats said it did happen and six million Jews were gassed, the media would demand that the Dems stop being so dogmatic about that. Why can't they meet in the middle sand say that maybe 2 million Jews were slaughtered-after all opinions differ.
When I used to use this analogy, I always thought I was overstating it to make the point. But in this 2016 election even more post Paris, this analogy is no longer a mere analogy.
Again, nowhere is the prejudice of objective journalism believed in more piously than at CNN where journalists and pundits at the station aren't allowed to editorialize in 'predictable ways.'
Yet last week Elise Labott was suspended for tweeting that the Statue of Liberty was 'bowing her head in anguish' after the House passed anti Syrian refugee bill. Erik Wemple took the trouble to tattle and she was suspended for two weeks.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/11/cnns-perverse-definition-of.html
What this does is make criticism of anti refugee bigotry as deviant. Yet, earlier Ms. Labott had sent a tweet that razzed President Obama for being 'defensive' at his press conference and the oh so fastidious Erik Wemple had nothing to say and CNN did not censure this.
In fact, CNN shows bias all the time. Certainly it's very biased towards 'hawkishness' which is clear if you've ever watched Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper.
"My experience is not remotely out of the ordinary. Glenn Greenwald has drawn up an extensive list of partisan opinions that caused no suspensions. There's Jim Acosta asking at an Obama press conference on ISIS "why can't we take out these bastards?" There's Christiane Amanpour doing much the same thing, Don Lemon repeatedly generalizing about Muslim countries being extremist, or implying all Muslims are responsible for 9/11, Erin Burnett stumping for war with Iran, and on and on."
"Most recently, in an almost unbelievably bigoted piece of television last week, CNN anchors John Vause and Isha Sesay pressed a French Muslim activist for six straight minutes about how the "Muslim community" needs to "take responsibility" for the Paris attacks. Directed at any other religious or racial group, such commentary would be absolutely out of bounds — indeed, it's a classic anti-Semitic trope, like a "new shoot of poison vine growing up an ancient trellis."
"But when it comes to Muslims, flagrant, predictably partisan bigotry is just fine and dandy to broadcast on CNN."
"It's when that general attitude is combined with the Labott affair that CNN moves from hypocrisy to actual danger. By professionally sanctioning a reporter for pro-refugee opinions but giving free rein to the likes of Lemon, Vause, and Sesay, CNN is mainstreaming anti-Muslim bigotry. It is saying that rank prejudice against Islam is a subject worthy of serious consideration, while humanitarian sentiments in favor of Muslim refugees is a deviant view that must be punished out of journalism"
I am grateful for this piece by Ryan Cooper. I touched on this last week but he's got a bigger platform. This shows you the endgame of the both sides do it mentality,
I fully don't feel any self-consciousness whatsoever now in stating that CNN would have been a bastion of Nazism if it were in Hitler's Germany. It's pretty undeniable at this point.
It would have fired those who criticized candidate Adolph Hilter in the early 1930s.
Did you see the story over the weekend about the European teen Muslim's facebook page on which he wrote "Why does everybody think I should be saying more against terrorism? I can't even get a girl to text me back, and I'm supposed to stop ISIS?" (paraphrased quote)
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