this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 152 points 8 months ago (5 children)

CNN was really bad about this in 2016:

"Here we are outside the Trump rally due to take place in about six hours now..."

Meanwhile, Sanders blows the roof off with 30,000 people. CNN? Silence.

The joke I was telling back then was Trump couldn't pass gas without live coverage on CNN with talking heads discussing if it were more "fruity" or "nutty".

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 47 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, Sanders blows the roof off with 30,000 people.

CNN: Sanders has zero chance to win. Everyone hates him, and he is a poopypants. Vote for Hillary, because Sanders is doo doo cacca.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Oh, no, they just didn't talk about him at all.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They did once he started winning primaries. That meltdown was especially telling (and entertaining).

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 6 points 8 months ago

Suddenly every story was misrepresenting Bernies compliments... He mentioned Cuba has a good education system so to CNN that means "Bernie wants communism! Bernie loves Castro!"

MSNBC was even worse. Those chucklefucks were literally crying about Bernie being elected and executing them. (I wish)

It was so disgusting to watch...

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago

Neolib media owners much prefer a raging fascist president to a socialist, as a fascist won’t challenge the status quo, just make it worse for the poors and minorities.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago

Trump couldn’t pass gas without live coverage on CNN

Appropriate, since "trump" is British slang for "fart".

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

CNN wanted Trump over Bernie, Trump gave them more views and Bernie would be an upset to the status quo.

[–] AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago (12 children)

Nail on the head. There are some who call themselves Democrats who would rather have 1000 Trumps for President than let someone who would shake up the status quo get their hands on the levers of power.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Trump runs on "shaking the status quo" though, just not in a way we would support.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

Which one gets more views? Trump gets supporters and angry opponents watching, Bernie barely gets supporters watching. Their job is to sell ads and therefore need viewers.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 75 points 8 months ago (1 children)

S’real simple, corporate news. Use the words “lie” and “liar”. Start there. Now.

True journalists may also note that “convicted fraud” “sex offender” and “high profile adulterer” are rock-solid legally and ethically. Go forth and fulfill your purpose. For once.

[–] ringwraithfish@startrek.website 30 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Lie is a tough word to use in law and journalism. To accuse someone of lying you have to prove intent to tell the lie vs being truly mistaken.

For example, if I say the Earth is flat am I lying or mistaken? If I truly believe that, then it's not a lie, even though facts clearly say otherwise. I'm just not aware or choose to disagree with those facts.

It's maddening. I'm with you and wish journalists would use harsher language in obvious cases, but I understand why they tend not to as a standard to ensure they're not opening themselves up to claims of liable and defamation.

[–] cogman@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm sorry but no, they are not open up to liable or defamation lawsuits by calling a public figure running for office a liar. For pete sake, Tucker regularly called pretty much every popular democrat a liar over the course of his show. Pretty much every right wing mud slinger does.

Here's an example of CNN saying trump lied

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/16/politics/fact-check-dale-top-15-donald-trump-lies/index.html

NY Times V Sullivan and the fact that this is political speech grants a WIDE amount of latitude for the accusations you can place against politicians.

[–] KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm not saying you're wrong, but we may need another example since Fox successfully got a case dismissed under the specific premise that "no 'reasonable viewer' takes the primetime host Tucker Carlson seriously"

[–] cogman@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

Which is specifically why I linked to CNN calling trump a liar with no ensuing lawsuit. That's your other example.

You can google and find a bunch of other examples of media outlets freely calling politicians liars.

[–] bort@sopuli.xyz 3 points 8 months ago

I think "lie" should not only refer to "bold-faced lies", but all lies. I also think it's important to distinguish between differnt types of lies.

... If I truly believe that, then it’s not a lie

that's an honest lie

you can even say the truth while lying. e.g. lying by omission, or using Weasel word. Wikipedia has a list (because of course they do)

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[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 60 points 8 months ago (4 children)

The press reported that Donald Trump said he was a serial rapist who liked to just walk up and 'grab them by the pussy.'

The press reported that Donald Trump had gone on Howard Stern's show and talked about how he was allowed to walk into the dressing rooms of the Miss Teen USA pageant.

The press reported that Donald Trump called American prisoners of war cowards; while comparing his tom cat days as his personal Vietnam.

Don't blame the press, blame the voters who heard about Trump and decided they were okay with him because he hated the people they hate.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There's a difference between reporting on the candidate and giving him free air time by broadcasting his rallies and speeches live. Most of the 24 hour networks (CNN especially) ran out of significant things to report on Trump relatively quickly, but they knew Trump stories (negative or positive) were huge for ratings, so they would cover everything he said. It's estimated he got $2 Billion worth of free airtime this way. For every important story you mentioned, there's days worth of mindless coverage the media companies churned out for ratings, and it absolutely helped Trump get elected.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

People perceive as important that which is given lots of exposure.

I believe it's called the "Halo effect".

That's why people pay attention to, say, what movie celebrities say in subjects that have nothing to do with acting or movie making, to the point of paying much less attention to what subject specialists say than to what those celebrities say. If you thing about it, in absolutelly logical terms, the opinions of a well know movie actor on, say, poverty, have about as much value as the opinions of the local street cleaner (in fact, probably less value, as said street cleaner is likelly to actually be poor him or herself and thus know more about it) and yet people will actually pay much more attention to what said actor has to say on that subject.

So Trump and others like them don't even need much more airing of their actual words for this to work: the more they're talked about the more important they will be perceived to be and hence when they do get their actual words aired the more attention people will pay to their words and even the more likely they are to trust those words (because he's an "important" person).

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 28 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's not necessarily as simple as actual mutual hatred. That only explains a fraction of his votes.

His voters want to believe that if something is okay for the president, then it's okay for them, even if it's not.

All his voters have "bone spurs" of some kind, so they want to enable people with "bone spurs", and vote for Mr.Bone Spurs, even if trump would gladly fire someone for having "bone spurs".

They hate everyone else and he hates everyone else, so they feel represented, even if he hates them. What good has he ever done for the demographic that voted for him and paid his bills? Absolutely nothing. It's one big ass grift.

That also turns it into a sunken cost fallacy for a lot of them. They lie to themselves, because they're too vain and afraid to face their mistake. The extremism plays into this as well. Once you cross a point of what is normal morality, it gets considerably harder to walk back from there.

If Trump really hates immigrants, then why does he keep hiring them at Mar-a-Lago? The answer is simple: money. He has absolutely no interest in cutting off the supply of cheap workers. The extremely expensive wall construction also didn't work in any meaningful way.

The only thing he did successfully was to rile up a lot of angry people just to collect their money.

[–] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago
[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

Human are way more irrational that we care to believe, which is why all that exposure made people feel he was important which in turn increased the attention they paid to him and the chances of them voting for him.

It's quite a common and massive error amongst the most politically-aware types to confuse the way in which politics are approached by themselves and others with whom the generally discuss politics (and it's almost always other politically-aware types who care to discuss politics) with the way in which most people out there approach politics.

Marketing works, so it makes sense that when it comes to people who are not strongly political and hence basically relate to it as they would to brands, marketing in politics works.

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[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 32 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This was Hillary's strategy for winning in 2016, believe it or not. This was revealed by WikiLeaks.

No way they could've predicted that backfiring, right?

[–] rab@lemmy.ca 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Just imagine how much better the world would be right now if she fucked off and allowed Bernie to win

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That’s assuming that her moderate voters wouldn’t have gravitated around another moderate Dem early in the game.

[–] force@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

"moderate" americans are just conservatives without the nazism lol

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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

To be fair, the onslaught of negative Trump coverage also helped him lose the house in 2018, the general in 2020 and a shit load of easy Republican house seats in 2022.

People seem to forget that a lot of folks stayed home in 2016 because they thought it was impossible for that clown shoe to get elected. No one believes that anymore.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 23 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And now we're doing it again.

[–] Wogi@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It certainly doesn't help that any criticism of Biden online, valid or not, is immediately met with "BuT tRuMp Is WoRsE!"

Like, I get it, orange man bad, but if any discussion of Biden's failures immediately devolves in to talking about the other guy, then opportunities to talk about his accomplishments are washed away by the people who need to be focusing on them.

This isn't just the media. The entire fucking conversation is always directed towards that dipshit.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The entire fucking conversation is always directed towards that dipshit.

Understandable right now, because he's an existential threat to the US, and will remain so every election until he's either elected (at which point we're done) or he dies.

[–] force@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

the threat is never going away, even if donald trump died after this election we still have losers like nikki haley, MTG, mike johnson, desantis (although no way he'd get elected to a meaningful position again), etc. to worry about. even if they don't have the cult following of trump, they're still big issues

[–] Microplasticbrain@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Really? I don't think it's nearly as bad this time around, maybe cause he has fuckin dementia and nothing he says lands anymore.

[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Hated this the first time, hate it this time. If everyone shut the hell up people wouldn't have paid him much attention.

[–] Chr0nos1@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

I've also been saying this for a while. If the people who hate him quit talking about him, they will quit advertising for him. Let him be forgotten. I honestly hear significantly more people and news media who are against him, talking about him, than I do people in favor of him. Don't let him live in your head rent free. Talk about the person who you DO want as president. Talk about the things that are important to you, that your candidate is for. Don't talk about the other guy. Let his name fade into history.

[–] NutWrench@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

You don't have to report "both sides" of an issue if one side of that issue is blithering insanity.

News today: "Should we eat horse paste and shove UV lights up our own asses to fight Covid? Donald Trump says 'Yes' but honestly, WHO KNOWS? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ "

[–] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Shouldn't the bottom newspaper be "November", not "September"?

[–] charonn0@startrek.website 4 points 8 months ago

The headline says "nomination" so September is about right.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 months ago

In a modern world where we are capable of doing so much more ..... we instead actively choose to want to do far, far less

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