Andrea Mitchell Says Facts Don't Matter and Her Reporting Proves This Every Day

Think about that. This is someone who's supposed to bring us the news. And she thinks facts don't matter.

"Andrea Mitchell tells Al Franken that "facts don't matter this election" so Al challenged all @msnbc correspondents to "make them matter"

https://twitter.com/azmoderate/status/757791535328964608

Exactly. Mitchell could at least try rather than go with the flow. But that's what matters to her: attacking Hillary Clinton, not the truth.

https://twitter.com/azmoderate/status/757791535328964608

The only 'facts that matter' to her are those she hopes will drive down Hillary Clinton's poll numbers.

Mitchell makes herself sound like a passive observer rather than one of the pundits debasing public discourse. She created the whole space for 'Lock her up.'

Sure, she's never herself used the phrase. But if someone were to listen to the tone of her own Hillary coverage it makes is sound like maybe she should be locked up-over something or other.

But then this is the coverage of the entire network. It's like Fox News East. Four hours of Hillary hating Morning Joe to start the day. Then an hour dollup of Andrea Mitchell at noon.

Besides this, these two pundits seem to be favorites of MSNBC management.

Then you have last night's coverage. Wow.

Ian Millhiser:

"MSNBC's editorial decision to interview only Bernie holdouts about the convention is questionable.

https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/757781285620375553

MSNBC coverage was just awful. It interviewed only the holdouts and trained it's cameras and speakers on them all night. When they weren't shoving mics in their faces.

They seemed to want to interview very Bernie holdout in the country.

Nate Silver noted this disconnect early when he got to Philly.

"I saw a lot of commentary earlier today about the negative mood at the Wells Fargo Center. In particular, there were a lot of reports along these lines which seemed to imply that the delegates had turned on Clinton:

"But when I arrived on the convention floor at around 5 p.m. — after a lot of these tweets were sent out, I should point out, so it’s possible that the mood had changed — that wasn’t really the vibe I picked up."

"Instead, I saw an atmosphere that might best be described as “charged,” in the sense of being a bit eclectic, a bit raucous and a little unpredictable. There’s a lot of enthusiasm for Sanders in the hall, perhaps more than there is for Clinton."

"But contrary to those earlier reports, there wasn’t a lot of booing when Clinton’s name was mentioned. Certainly, there were some boos coming from some delegations, some of the time — California and Michigan, in particular, and were relatively vocal. But this was in isolated pockets. The booers were usually drowned out by cheers for Clinton, sometimes enthusiastic cheers, especially if the speaker was keeping people engaged. The California delegation is located right next to where a lot of the major networks have their sets, I should point out, which is inconvenient for Clinton."

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/07/if-youre-not-watching-dem-convention.html

Once I switched to CSPAN my eyes were opened. As the speakers and cameras weren't trained on the Berner holdouts, they didn't dominate everything you saw and heard.

Turns out this is not just a food fight at a junior high school cafeteria.

I was able to actually hear the speeches and in their entirety. All of them

This is in total counter distinction to cable news which:

1. Is more about commentators commenting on speeches and the narrative than actually hearing the speeches.

They only let you see a small percentage of speakers and even with those they're constantly interrupting.

So it's less about seeing and hearing convention speeches than the pundits spin on the convention.

2. Is totally biased against Hillary. In other words, mostly you get to hear Beltway pundits explaining why the latest twist is 'really bad news for Hillary Clinton.'

Brian Beutler has some good work on this:

"DC's NPR station covering Dem convention by giving Trump ravings equal time against headline speeches then nutpicking Bernie deadenders."

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/757915615327727616

Which kind of shows that it's not just a problem of commercial media. NPR went down the same rabbit hole.

Greg Sargent:

"I guess they don't want their listeners to know what actually happened last night. Sad!"

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/757915806260920320

However, the media is being too smart by half now. It's so absurd that we, the viewers, are on to them. One of the most discussed memes on Twitter last night as that we should watch CSPAN for conventions.

"Key points from @brianbeutler on how media efforts to equate disunity of GOP/Dems have lost all credibility:

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/757942509125459968

This is what happens when you take false equivalence too far. You lose all credibility.

Brian Beutler:

"The Democrats Just Showed Republicans How It’s Done."

"The convention's first night proved the party's resilience and unity."

https://newrepublic.com/article/135503/democrats-just-showed-republicans-its-done

If you actually watched it, this is exactly what it did.

"The Democratic National Convention gaveled into session Monday engulfed in a toxic fog of bad news and worse media incentives that threatened to stagger what was meant to be a well-planned and festive event."

"Donald Trump’s real, sizable convention bounce, and the release by Wikileaks of hacked DNC emails that outraged Bernie Sanders supporters and forced chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign, provided a backdrop against which the chattering classes could draw an equivalence between Hillary Clinton’s opening night and the GOP’s bloody-shirt-waving kickoff a week ago."

"The intra-Democratic repercussions were sizable enough to relegate to second-tier news status the fact that federal law enforcement officials believe Wikileaks obtained the emails from Russian security service hackers in order to bolster Trump’s candidacy."

"For the first hour or two, pockets of Sanders delegates booed or heckled speakers, raising the unfathomable specter that headliners would be prevented from delivering their remarks uninterrupted. The storyline was tempting enough that media critics speculated cable networks were manipulating their audio pickups to make the booing sound louder on television than it did in the convention hall."

"But by the end of the evening, the disarray story became impossible to credit. Reporting from inside the convention hall corrected the solidifying narrative of a party in shambles; and the basic competence, and occasional brilliance, of the stagecraft left no room for anyone other than the most partisan operatives to pretend the two conventions and parties are equally broken."

"At no point Monday did anyone read plagiarized text. At no point did anyone say anything racist or blame anyone for anyone else’s death. None of the invited speakers called for Donald Trump to be imprisoned or encouraged the delegates to do so. Nobody told Democrats they had permission to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton. The convention organizers settled on themes, and then invited guests on stage who could speak to those themes without veering off topic—the disabled person who criticized Trump for mocking disabled people; the undocumented 11-year-old who worries that her mother will be deported."

"Senator Cory Booker’s pre-primetime speech was the first to overpower the Sanders holdouts. Michelle Obama’s, by universal acclaim, will join the pantheon of great convention addresses. And Sanders himself spoke well past the 11 p.m. network TV cutoff point, in part because the delegates of both candidates interrupted his remarks with standing ovations over and over again. The range of talent on display was such that the keynote address, by Senator Elizabeth Warren—one of Hillary Clinton’s most effective surrogates and a trusted figure among Sanders supporters—largely disappeared behind the others. And it was a good speech, too."

"In a different climate, clustering so many big draws into one night, when they could have been spread out more evenly, would have been an error. But not in this case. The coming three days will feature headline speeches by Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic VP nominee Tim Kaine, Barack Obama, and Hillary herself. Packing the lineup on Monday night was simply a matter of necessity."

"Trump doesn’t have a single surrogate of this caliber or integrity. His oratorically gifted ones (Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich) are corrupt and disliked figures, and he put the other one, Mike Pence, on his ticket. That just isn’t enough manpower to fan across swing states over the next three months to build up Trump’s base."

"Clinton’s convention lineup wasn’t designed to contrast with Trump’s brigade of C-list celebrities and agitators, though it did do that. It was instead meant to serve as a demonstration that Clinton is widely respected in the Democratic Party, which is much less divided than a handful of Sanders delegates would have you believe. Where Trump insists to the public that Republicans are unified, Clinton and her supporters showed that they are."

https://newrepublic.com/article/135503/democrats-just-showed-republicans-its-done

The Beltway should worry as their distortion of reality is getting so bad people are beginning to see through it.