It wasn't; it was an organ of the Communist Party and had to publish whatever the party wanted. But the American MSM is an organ of no party, whatever illusions you may have to the contrary.
The real reason for Trump's war on the press
- Thread starter zipman
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It wasn't; it was an organ of the Communist Party and had to publish whatever the party wanted. But the American MSM is an organ of no party, whatever illusions you may have to the contrary.
zipman
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I agree Trump is certifiable as he is the one who said the press is his opponent and that the news is the enemy of the American people.
Pretty unbelievable to come from a so-called president.
BotanyBoy
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Right, it's not Republican enough.
I thought we were talking about freedom of the press, not your opinion on their ideology.
The fact that conservative media can bullshit every bit as hard is what makes the press free.
You can also believe the Earth is flat....
Not with me you don't....either that or you still can't read.
Why is that certifiable?
And how is that a war on the free press?
Why is it unbelievable for a POTUS to call certain elements of the media out for being anti-democratic, propaganda peddling scum bags?
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Just out of curiosity, what publication or media outlet with a liberal orientation would you consider a free one? There must be some out there in the world -- unless you regard "free" and "liberal" as somehow flatly incompatible, which would be nonsense.
If Kyrie Irving whispered "the earth is flat" into Trump's ear, Trump would quote him as a credible source, and actually believe it.
Colonel Hogan
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I call it "stupidity" for which stupid people are wholly responsible rather than the dishonest people who deceive them: AS LONG AS THAT DECEIT OCCURS LEGALLY! It's why some people buy brand name aspirin rather than the generic product. Go figure.
ANYBODY can call ANYTHING "fake." There are idiots running around claiming all the Apollo moon landings were fake. And there are bigger idiots who actually believe it.
There are numerous authors who've made a career alleging that former President Kennedy was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy involving the CIA, FBI, Cuba, organized crime, the former Soviet Union AND Vice-president Johnson. And there are gullible, paranoid fools who believe it.
Now you can make an argument that the electorate was "fooled" into electing Trump in the first place, and I wouldn't even attempt to dispute you. Because that's pretty much how all political campaigns are conducted. It was either get fooled into voting for Trump or get fooled into voting for Hillary, not unlike we got "fooled" voting for Obama, Bush I and II, Bill Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon....
There is a REAL world out there, and by YOUR OWN estimated numbers, 70% of Americans in it either don't pay the least bit of attention to nonsense accusations like "fake news" or they are at least smart enough to try and discriminate about what news is or isn't fake.
That is a high enough number for me to have great faith in the INABILITY of any would-be-fascist-dictator to lie his or her way to power on the premise that enough people will believe anything he says.
The question is, why isn't it a high enough number for you?
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BotanyBoy
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Rightguide
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There's probably some Bigfoot fans and Ancient Aliens believers around here someplace as well.
Just out of curiosity, what publication or media outlet with a liberal orientation would you consider a free one? There must be some out there in the world -- unless you regard "free" and "liberal" as somehow flatly incompatible, which would be nonsense.
BotanyBoy
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Not entirely considering how much "liberals" (socialist/social justice Demz) hate freedom, especially that of speech and the press, surpassed only by their hatred of guns and private property.
LincolnDuncan
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I call it "stupidity" for which stupid people are wholly responsible rather than the dishonest people who deceive them: AS LONG AS THAT DECEIT OCCURS LEGALLY! It's why some people buy brand name aspirin rather than the generic product. Go figure.
ANYBODY can call ANYTHING "fake." There are idiots running around claiming all the Apollo moon landings were fake. And there are bigger idiots who actually believe it.
There are numerous authors who've made a career alleging that former President Kennedy was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy involving the CIA, FBI, Cuba, organized crime, the former Soviet Union AND Vice-president Johnson. And the are gullible, paranoid fools who believe it.
Now you can make an argument that the electorate was "fooled" into electing Trump in the first place, and I wouldn't even attempt to dispute you. Because that's pretty much how all political campaigns are conducted. It was either get fooled into voting for Trump or get fooled into voting for Hillary, not unlike we got "fooled" voting for Obama, Bush I and II, Bill Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon....
There is a REAL world out there, and by YOUR OWN estimated numbers, 70% of Americans in it either don't pay the least bit of attention to nonsense accusations like "fake news" or they are at least smart enough to try and discriminate about what news is or isn't fake.
That is a high enough number for me to have great faith in the INABILITY of any would-be-fascist-dictator to lie his or her way to power on the premise that enough people will believe anything he says.
The question is, why isn't it a high enough number for you?
I guess that you're point of view is o.k if you're an atheist. As long as it's legal wtf! If they pass a law that all old white men have to enter a FEMA death camp, that would be cool.
Rightguide
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First let's clarify the word free in this context. Anyone or entity is "free" to say what they want but a system that excludes the free exchange of ideas isn't what the founders had in the mind.
When the Founders wrote the first amendment they envisioned an independent Press, free of government, a fourth estate without regulation, except maybe that in Article I Section 6 which is thoroughly defunct these days which made it potentially illegal to criticize any speech made from the floor of Congress in "any place."
It didn't contemplate a monolithic mainstream media in an incestuous relationship with the government, switching employment back and forth.
The bloggers of today are the Pamphleteers of yesteryear yet the government hard at work to protect their "journalists" tried to narrowly decide who was a journalist and in so doing was ready to suppress the first amendment rights of bloggers as the Nation pointed out:
"Senator Dianne Feinstein argued for an amendment that would have restricted the shield to salaried journalists. “Should this privilege apply to anyone, to a seventeen year-old who drops out of high school, buys a website for five dollars and starts a blog? Or should it apply to journalists, to reporters, who have bona fide credentials?”
What we have today in large part is a pseudo press, a conduit for Democrat government policy and propaganda arm against any political action by elements of the civil society that question that policy.
Don't see how not; any newspaper of their day might have been so partisan as to exclude the free exchange of ideas.
Benjamin Franklin was both a statesman and a journalist, among many other things.
Carnal_Flower
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Anybody can call anything fake, true, but it's a slightly different thing when the goddamned President does.
And let's be real.
CNN is not fake news.
Faux News is not fake news (cough)
FAKE NEWS IS THE PIZZAGATE STORY
FAKE NEWS is fake, not biased, not an extremely right wing interpretation of facts, not a mistake, but fake. FAKE NEWS IS MAKING UP A MASSACRE THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. FAKE NEWS IS CLAIMING SANDY HOOK DID NOT HAPPEN.
It is goddamned irresponsible and fucking crazy for the President of the United States to toss that around to any media representation he does not like.
Jesus Christ, how many times can people point out on this thread:
No, there seem to be checks and balances against ACTUAL crackdowns on authoritarian power. No one's claiming they could, short of a military enforcement. No one's saying that.
But that doesn't mean, which you refuse to see because you're so literal, that the rhetoric is not there, the DESIRE isn't there, and the brainwashing isn't there. Just because no one's been rounded up in cattle cars yet does not mean there isn't a precedent being set, DUH. (Although let's not forget what happened to the press at Trump rallies)
It is happening, at an ideological level, no doubt.
And why are you so secure in this 70%?
If that is so, it's because we have a sort of educated populace who've grown up with the free press, and no President screaming at them not to mistrust everything except what he says for 200 years.
Give it another 20 years, another Betsy DeVos, etc. and that percentage will just shrink and shrink.
And let's be real.
CNN is not fake news.
Faux News is not fake news (cough)
FAKE NEWS IS THE PIZZAGATE STORY
FAKE NEWS is fake, not biased, not an extremely right wing interpretation of facts, not a mistake, but fake. FAKE NEWS IS MAKING UP A MASSACRE THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. FAKE NEWS IS CLAIMING SANDY HOOK DID NOT HAPPEN.
It is goddamned irresponsible and fucking crazy for the President of the United States to toss that around to any media representation he does not like.
Jesus Christ, how many times can people point out on this thread:
No, there seem to be checks and balances against ACTUAL crackdowns on authoritarian power. No one's claiming they could, short of a military enforcement. No one's saying that.
But that doesn't mean, which you refuse to see because you're so literal, that the rhetoric is not there, the DESIRE isn't there, and the brainwashing isn't there. Just because no one's been rounded up in cattle cars yet does not mean there isn't a precedent being set, DUH. (Although let's not forget what happened to the press at Trump rallies)
It is happening, at an ideological level, no doubt.
And why are you so secure in this 70%?
If that is so, it's because we have a sort of educated populace who've grown up with the free press, and no President screaming at them not to mistrust everything except what he says for 200 years.
Give it another 20 years, another Betsy DeVos, etc. and that percentage will just shrink and shrink.
I call it "stupidity" for which stupid people are wholly responsible rather than the dishonest people who deceive them: AS LONG AS THAT DECEIT OCCURS LEGALLY! It's why some people buy brand name aspirin rather than the generic product. Go figure.
ANYBODY can call ANYTHING "fake." There are idiots running around claiming all the Apollo moon landings were fake. And there are bigger idiots who actually believe it.
There are numerous authors who've made a career alleging that former President Kennedy was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy involving the CIA, FBI, Cuba, organized crime, the former Soviet Union AND Vice-president Johnson. And there are gullible, paranoid fools who believe it.
Now you can make an argument that the electorate was "fooled" into electing Trump in the first place, and I wouldn't even attempt to dispute you. Because that's pretty much how all political campaigns are conducted. It was either get fooled into voting for Trump or get fooled into voting for Hillary, not unlike we got "fooled" voting for Obama, Bush I and II, Bill Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Nixon....
There is a REAL world out there, and by YOUR OWN estimated numbers, 70% of Americans in it either don't pay the least bit of attention to nonsense accusations like "fake news" or they are at least smart enough to try and discriminate about what news is or isn't fake.
That is a high enough number for me to have great faith in the INABILITY of any would-be-fascist-dictator to lie his or her way to power on the premise that enough people will believe anything he says.
The question is, why isn't it a high enough number for you?
Rightguide
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Weak and unresponsive. You can do better.
Like this is even analogous.
Colonel Hogan
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Oh, I see. If you can construct a single absurd fictitious example of a reprehensible moral relativistic "law" and attack the equally reprehensible strawman presumption that my respect for law supports such nonsense, then I suppose you can create the proposition that ANY "LEGAL" partisan statement NOT based on provable FACT is an effort to "undermine" a person or position of higher moral standard, and that the offending speaker should himself be legally constrained.
I mean, if ALL moral relativism is reprehensible, than the only alternative is a corresponding commitment to moral absolutism. Is that what you are advocating?
If not, but if the President's comments are so dangerously on the precipice of moving us toward fascism, by all means tell us where to draw the line LEGALLY (because we remain a nation of laws) so as to prevent this deplorable possibility while NOT creating a prior restraint of speech that is itself fascist. American courts hate that and there are tons of case law precedent repudiating it.
You can do that can't you? You've thought it through to that extent, yes?
Well, you referred to "a system that excludes the free exchange of ideas." One newspaper is not a system, and the FFs relied on a wide range of newspapers to facilitate the free exchange of ideas, it didn't matter how dogmatic or partisan any one paper was.
But, today's American MSM, apart from being owned by a small number of megacorps, is substantially no different in that regard from the press of the FFs' day. If there are some things all MSM outlets agree in considering beyond the pale of serious discussion -- and that appears to be your main beef with it -- well, so there were some such things in 1789, such as abolitionism or women's suffrage.
It is, to whatever you thought you were talking about. There is a revolving door between jobs in government and jobs on Wall Street/K Street. There is no such revolving door between government and the media -- but, if there were, it would be analogous to Franklin's career-path.
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Colonel Hogan
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Okay. Given the President's many irresponsible, inflammatory and unarguably inaccurate statements dating back throughout the campaign and extending into his Presidency which, I can assure you, I am no more fond of than you are, and even granting the (remote) possibility that a "brainwashing precedent" could actually manifest itself over the next "20 years"
rolleyes, my question to you is the same one I posed to LincolnDuncan in my last post: What would you suggest we do about that? LE-GAL-LY??? What law would you enact that would protect this country and still not constitute an unconstitutional infringement of speech -- a right which Presidents have every bit as much as you?We've all heard your complaint. What is your solution?
BoyNextDoor
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#TheOrangutang is just taking a page out of Putin's playbook. The Putin spent the first few years consolidating his power by the destruction of the free press that was emerging in Russia.
THAT is "The real reason for Trump's war on the press".
THAT is "The real reason for Trump's war on the press".
LincolnDuncan
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We all respect the law but some of us are aware of and respond to our higher impulses. I guess it's all about how evolved one is.
Colonel Hogan
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Which apparently does not include giving straight answers to direct questions. That's some high road you're traveling.
LincolnDuncan
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Hogan, I know your game. Only fools play by your rules.
Colonel Hogan
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Game? What is foolish about discussing practical and reasonable legal solutions to potentially serious legal problems?
You guys appear to be seriously alarmed about the realistic potential harm from Trump's comments and, far more importantly, his actual motivations behind those comments.
It would seem to me that a person so exorcised by these prospects would have at least a theoretical plan of action rather than just random bitching.
I fail to see what is so sinister in my asking to hear it.
His comments alone are harmful. They lower the standards of political discourse, they detach it from the assumption that anything a powerful public official says to the microphones will have at least some basis in reality and fact. By the next midterms, all candidates will feel free to just make shit up.
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LincolnDuncan
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There is nothing wrong with discussing practical and reasonable solutions to legal problems. The game to which I refer is the game you've been playing for many years with varying success. Of course, you're not the only one to attempt to erroneously restate someone's position so that they feel compelled to respond to things they didn't contend. At which point you think you cleverly set a word trap in an effort to impress the peanut gallery with your awesome knowledge and debating skills.
Let me know if you're interested in having an honest exchange about anything.
