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Friday, July 29, 2016

The Daily News Also Wants no Part of False Equivalence

First there was the Washington Post. It didn't waste any time after the GOP convention to anti endorse Donald Trump.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/07/no-false-equivalence-for-washington-post.html

Now I see the Daily News also is avoiding the perils of false equivalence:

"She also goes forth having conclusively demonstrated that she is far and away the choice for the presidency of the United States in 2016. With Trump representing a clear and present danger to the republic, waiting until November would be irresponsible: The Daily News endorses Clinton now."

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/daily-news-editorial-board-hillary-clinton-president-article-1.2730476

While the Washington Post negative endorsed Trump, the DN is endorsing Hillary now. I appreciate the sense of responsiblity.

You can debate if it matters, I think it does. Normalizing Trump helps him at least marginally.

On the other hand, I take some issue with Howard Fineman here:

"Despite declarations of scorn from the likes of The Washington Post editorial page (and The Huffington Post), the media is not going to ― nor can it ― throw Trump off the stage for his outrageous remarks on race, gender, immigration, religion or constitutional freedoms."

"To be sure, there is plenty that is disturbingly out-of-bounds about Trump’s faux populism and authoritarian ignorance of and contempt for the norms laid down by the Founding Fathers here in 1787. President Barack Obama himself made that case Wednesday."

"But television and the rest of “mainstream” media have a campaign to cover, profits to reap and, in the end, can’t be relied on to preemptively do the work that Democrats must do themselves. To many, the coverage will reek of an infuriating “false equivalence” that Trump doesn’t deserve to get."

"But he will. He’s the Republican nominee. Team Hillary must assume the worst about the role of the press. It’s usually a safe assumption."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-campaign-strategy_us_579aa52ae4b08a8e8b5d759f

It is. Still, I think this absolves the media of responsibility. And I do think that for WAPO and now the Daily News to put aside false equivalence is only to the good. At least on a marginal basis it helps.

Is it better for them to say this in July or not? It's clearly better that they do. I do think the media can falsely frame things-how else do you explain most Americans in 2002 believing in a Iraq-9/11 link?

So good on the DN and WAPO for avoiding FE. Jay Rosen:

"Maybe if he does things without precedent he has to be covered in a way without precedent."


https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/758787267498504192

This is a point Rosen has been making for awhile.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2016/07/13/donald-trump-is-crashing-the-system-journalists-need-to-build-a-new-one/

3 comments:

  1. http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2016/07/29/cnn-poll-hillarys-convention-speech-received-much-favorably-trumps/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike I love this: it undercuts the one conservative argument for Trump: supreme court picks:
    http://theresurgent.com/the-one-thing-i-trust-about-donald-trump/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Are you ready for another patented Tom Brown nutty fantasy? My fantasy is to take the abortion issue off the table. How could that be done? There are probably legal ways to imagine it, but all I can come up with is fantasy: Dr. Evil (AKA Tom Brown) concocts a virus who's symptoms are so mild as to be almost undetectable. By the time anybody realizes who's responsible, it's too late: it's spread the world over. What does this virus do? It leaves you infertile except if you do something easy but odd: like smoke a banana peel. Smoking said banana temporarily restores your fertility. It works on both men and women. And the virus alters our genes so that the trait is passed down to offspring. The upshot? Abortion rates fall to zero, and suddenly that's a non-issue. Then the only other show-stopping issue in the US is guns (and to a lesser extent "men in my little girl's bathroom").

    But I'm sure the right would find some other show stopper. Politically they need those to survive. Because I don't believe abortion was ever about the fetuses... it's about sex and God's retribution on wayward women who copulate outside of marriage. It's the same instinct that drives female genital mutilation, head to toe hijabs, and women as 2nd class citizens in the Islamic world.

    BTW, I have a fantasy about how to take guns off the table too, but I'll share that with you another time (whether you want me to or not! Lol!)

    ReplyDelete