> it sucks it leaked to nutty Brietbart and not a real news organization.
That right there is the issue. “Real” news organizations share ideological views and their choice of what to investigate is a result of that ideology. When a newsroom cheers or is despondent over an election result, it’s unrealistic to expect them to provide hard-hitting coverage that potentially undercuts their own biases.
The coverage of Russian “collusion” is a great example. Hillary Clinton’s people met with the ambassador of China as well as Russian officials during the campaign. But there was not even cursory coverage in mainstream media outlets or any investigation into Hillary’s campaign while similar alleged actions by members of the Trump campaign have led to a years long special prosecutor. I am not going to relitigate the collision case here, but alleged Trump collusion or alleged Clinton collusion would both be considered crimes, that Clinton didn’t win is immaterial since the crimes being alleged are collusion before the election. However, there hasn’t even been any cursory investigative reporting of the actions of the Clinton campaign despite secretly meeting with both Chinese and Russian officials. Just those meetings alone would be grounds for concern, but media outlets, in their disdain for Trump, ignored a potentially identical crime committed by Clinton’s campaign, not because it wasn’t newsworthy, but because it didn’t fit the ideological ambitions of many major “reputable” news outlets. I am not claiming Clinton did or didn’t collide; only that there was enough evidence to inspire at least some investigative reporting by the media — but the problem is that such reporting would weaken the “case” against Trump in terms of public opinion.
Keith Ellison a congressman with multiple, credible sexual assault accusations against him gets a pass in the media despite him running for Attorney General of Minnesota and he’s the deputy Chairman of the DNC. Yet, the media goes after the Kavanaugh story despite a far weaker accusation than the police-record supported claims against Ellison. Why? Because it doesn’t fit the narrative. Again, I am not litigating the Kavanaugh case here, only pointing out that the media has a propensity to cover news with an intensity to suits an obvious agenda as opposed to covering news impartially.
With the Google politics situation, why would the “reputable” media care when it’s a sentiment they already share.
I was a contract journalist for Reuters from 1996-2002 and, in my opinion, journalism has declined prodigiously since then. It has become a click-bait driven industry that preys on tribalism and emotion. My first real exposure to the 24 hour news cycle was during Desert Storm and I remember the coverage of CNN was not only reputable, but explemplary. The NY Times was an extraordinary paper along with the Seattle PI, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe And Miami Herald. My old hometown paper where I interned before going to Reuters was also great — attacking left and right with equal aplomb, passion and fairness. But something happened along the way. We could blame Trump as is the fashion, but Trump was a product of this, not the cause. There have always been fringe media outlets like Breitbart, however they really didn’t have much of an audience because the majority of people of all political stripes had a reasonable trust in the major media outlets. The issue of media bias isn’t even one of specific stories and how they are written, but something far most sinister — the quiet influence of the assignment editor who decides what stories are even worth considering. The NY Times for example, well written, generally solid stories however, the real bias comes from what they choose not to cover. The Trump stories are certainly worth ink, but so are the stories about Clinton Foundation irregularities, quid pro quo arrangements with foreign governments, the Moroccan phosphate deals, Russian Uranium and campaign money laundering to the time of $84 million.
In full disclosure, I didn’t vote for Trump, didn’t support him at all, but I am a libertarian-leaning conservative frustrated that ridiculousness like modern Breitbart even needs to exists. (I say “modern” Breitbart because under Andrew Breitbart, it was actually a pretty decent new source, albeit from a right perspective — it was the conservative answer to the Huffington Post, though now, it’s pretty close to Infowars territory.
I apologize for the rant, but I agree, it’s a shame that fringe media has done more investigating into google than the “reputable” media.