Donald Trump for President?

I didn't say they were pro-Trump, I said they covered Trump every single day for the past 18+ months. Trump was good for ratings and they went with the ratings, and in the process every other Republican nominee was squeezed out. What I think you're missing is that for Trump any coverage was good coverage, regardless of how shocked and horrified Don Lemon or Anderson Cooper might have been at it. There was a large segment of the population who ate up all this negative coverage of Trump and either loved it or dismissed what was uncomfortable as "fake news." But the fact is CNN gave a hugely disproportionate amount of coverage to Trump over everyone else, even when most of us thought Trump's chances were zero to none, and I still blame CNN and to a lesser extent MSNBC, for where we are. I can't stand FOX news, but it didn't seem to me that they were anywhere near as guilty of this before the primaries.

Also CNN fell for Trump's tricks. If there was a real story, Trump would just make a bizarre tweet, and guess what, all night long CNN would be talking about the sensational tweet and not the actually news. I'm with you in not liking CNN, I just think we're coming at it from different angles.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

I agree with Kap here, if CNN hadn't focused so much of their coverage on stupid Trump Fluff...they would have had air time for the other candidates, and we might have had Marco Rubio or Carly Fiorina running against Hillary.

This is pretty dead on--and funny!




And I remember watching that show, but had completely forgotten it.

Un-believable

P.S. Great show.

Aha. I see common ground. I can work with this. Fair warning this will be a very long post. And major points will be highlighted.

First the common ground. I can see we indeed are not fans of CNN. And I agree we are coming from different angles. You come from the CNN helped Trump with what you describe as "negative fluff pieces" helped Trump and I come from a more general jaded hatred for the news media. Allow me to explain.

The CNN stories about Trump were intended to be negative. I think we can agree on that. Now you claim that because Trump got the majority of the news coverage from CNN for what you described as "fluff" pieces for ratings leading to a disproportionate amount of news time then the other Republican candidates which helped his campaign. Now I will agree that the buzz surrounding Trump certainly helped him in the primaries for the purposes of media exposure. We most certainly have common ground there, but i will say that I don't think it made that much of a difference. It is not like he had to do some huge underdog comeback to get the nomination. Trump was always the front runner. And that never changed. And the mere fact that we had over a dozen potential Republican candidates reflects that the Republican party was not at it's strongest in 2015. The fact that Trump and Cruz rose to the top is in part their own doing and the fact that they already biggest name recognition. So far so good with common ground.

On other common ground, for a cable news network ratings is indeed a huge reason for the coverage; I contend it is by no means the only reason or even the complete reason. Media sources as no longer reporting news for the sake of truth, being the watch dog for people in power, and disseminating information; it is now about money and ratings thanks to the rise of the 24 hour news cycle.

This is where you and I might make the big break in thinking though. I say that in order to get said ratings, it is not enough to have the best news stories that other networks are not running, the anchor with the best charisma or hair, trustworthiness, etc. You have to create your own niche and appeal to demographics. A new network no longer advocate truth, integrity and the first amendment being the news' driving force; the news now pitches itself like a sitcom complete with what appeals to what age group, demographic, and most impotently political stance. And part of that now included outright pushing an agenda for the sake of appealing to that viewership.

MSNBC has plated their asses in the progressive camp with "Lean Forward" tag lines and their prime time editorial programming like Rachael Maddow and for a bit Keith Olbermann (before the firing). Fox News' tagline is "Fair and Balanced." And while their straight news tends to be maybe a bit fairer then the others, their prime time editorial shows clearly show the network is aimed at a conservative audience. And CNN while the oldest of the two and tried to sell itself as the "non ideological" news source is still very much left leaning. Hell the Fox News network was created out of what was an untapped market of people who wanted a cable news network that wasn't CNN. And that is not even taking into account news blogs and the "fake news ironically so it is okay" shows like The Daily Show, and talk radio that is overwhelmingly conservative outside of NPR. Air America tried, but that bombed harder then Showgirls and Battlefield Earth.

And here is where we definitely will be at different angles. You say "No coverage is bad coverage for Trump." I take it very differently. It is not that the negative stories helped Trump, it is that American's have caught to the media's bias and have outright rejected certain news sources and more impotently their political agenda; thus making them have no effect at all.

The major news networks like MSNBC, CNN, and major blogs like the Huffington Post made the biggest mistake in assuming that the political agenda they were pandering was shared by the majority of Americans. They threw aside Trump as a joke. A side show. A freak to be pointed at and mocked. Not entirely undeserving. The man does not exactly act the most presidential. That was the one of the main reasons I initially preferred Ted Cruz, Dr Carson, and Carly Fiorina.

What happened was these people while doing said negative pieces engaged in outright rumor mongering and slander of Trump and especially his supporters due to a complete disconnect of these news sources with the American people. Trump supporters were labeled "deplorables" and racists, the Huffington Post had an editorial mandate where every article about Trump included several different "isms" and "phobe" labels. They were labeled as "the crazies" from said the news sources and more then a few moderate Republicans like John McCain. They rejected the notion that anyone other then bigots would vote for Trump and this was sung from cable news and The Daily Show style shows to Twitter. Not just because they wanted the material for good ratings, but because they get said ratings by pushing their agenda. Problem was not everyone bought into the agenda. Unless someone thinks that the US is filled with 50 million plus bigots, we have to acknowledge that many American's have become so fed up with the current media narrative that, I will agree with you here too, many just straight up ignored the media sources. Not because the new stories made people uncomfortable, but that they just did not subscribe to what the media was selling. I think we might even agree that that these news sources even sold their stories about Trump it poorly.

Paired this with an unpopular Democratic candidate that outright robbed the nomination from Bernie Sanders, and that lead to the now infamous lopsided results of the pre-election polling, and what the actual election results were. CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the like had Hilary in a landslide victory. An easy election for Clinton. But reality gave us something different.

In a hindsight sort of sense, I can kind of see how CNN and it's ilk could be seen that they "helped Trump." But it is not solely because of disproportionate coverage, it is because the coverage alienated the electorate due to the media elites disconnect. This is the news media version of what Fahrenheit 911 did for George W Bush in 2004. Now Fox News is not singled out by this by any stretch of the imagination. Lord knows Trump butted heads with them. And Fox itself horribly failed in it's own polling issues. That is more a struggle between Fox New's brand of conservatism and the new Trump brand. But the current state of affairs is more then just disproportionate coverage. Though it helped, but we clearly see it from different angles.

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Fear and Loathing in MoFo... The Gunslinger 45's Top 50 Favorite Films

In the 10 Ring: Gunslinger45's reviews

Some of what you think I don't agree with I do in fact agree with, at least up to a point. Obviously Trump's path to where he is had a lot more to do than just news coverage. But I think the coverage had way more to do with what happened than you're recognizing. Trump did not run an organized campaign and he did not spend a lot of money on his campaign, especially early on. He got millions of dollars worth of free advertisement. To say otherwise is to say political ads are worthless. It's putting your name out there. It's getting people to take you seriously. I also think you overestimate CNN's negative coverage. Even when CNN clearly was opposed to Trump in a particular story, and let's take the infamous leaked video of him with Billy Bush, CNN always had Kellyanne Conway and various other Trump mouthpieces to give the other side and they were always allowed to speak their piece without being shouted down or cut off. I think you forget that, or else didn't watch CNN at all. CNN did not have one official spokesperson of Hillary's on as a regular commentator during news stories. (You can blame Hillary, but it doesn't change the fact.)

I also think we all need to check our biases and not forget that just because we view a news channel, or the media in general, in a certain way, it doesn't mean everyone else views them the same way. These news channels do have an affect on people. And love CNN or hate them, they are a real news channel, and they hold themselves to certain standards, and they are not fake news. And they do try to be fair, sometimes, maybe too often, to a fault. Journalism should be about latching onto a story and digging deep and uncovering the truth, and it doesn't mean you dig a little, then stop and let the other side present their most loquacious mouthpiece to spin a bunch of nonsense, and that's the end of the program. I'm critical of CNN for so many things, and have been for a long time, and I used to enjoy John Stewart's bashing of them, but it's because they aren't living up the highest standards of journalism as they should be, and they come across as lightweights in the process.

Anyway, I think we talked this subject to death.

Nothing going on here, everything is on the up and up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.9455e6e97da0

As I said I am far more cynical on the 24 hour news cycle and the journalism business then you.

I will agree on the last part though.

Loved that show! They aired it here in Belgium as well while I was a child (like they do with many American TV shows).

Funny and clever video!

P.S.

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

Pff, my man Gunslinger really said the same thing

Anyways, President Donnie's doing an Inauguration Countdown,

It's like a MoFo countdown, it's really great! Maybe he reads MoFo, hi Don!



It's like Skepsis in the 1980s countdown, anyways, keep up the fighting!

Trump definitely is surrounded by the pretty ladies, his wives keep getting better looking.

Please note that it is not what he said but how he said it. At least he came up with a joke instead of sounding like a Twitter egg.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

They mean the same thing bogus man!

Where exactly did you get the impression that I didn't know that?

Wrong. She won Bill Clinton's heart.

She didn't win his penis.

Quite undeservingly in hindsight.