Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Ooh, me, me, I debate it. This is a dumb thing to say and you should feel dumb for saying it. It makes no sense and is not based on anything. Insults do not qualify as debate. His claim is based on, or should include, the portions of the Podesta emails that have showed a dismaying amount of coordination with the press. Approving quotes, approving stories, printing talking points. Compare their behavior against the g…
You and I must understand entirely different things when we read the phrase "premeditated collusion with the media." Those media organizations and those journalists may have editorial and personal opinions on who they would prefer to win the election, but there's one thing they care more about than any of those preferences: access . The idea that the press wouldn't or shouldn't care about vacuuming up every talking p…
Agreed.
>Those media organizations and those journalists may have editorial and personal opinions on who they would prefer to win the election, but there's one thing they care more about than any of those preferences: access. The idea that the press wouldn't or shouldn't care about vacuuming up every talking point that a campaign is willing to spit out, no matter how obviously-canned it is, is to fundamentally misunderstand the operations of the 24 hour news cycle.
I was trained as a journalist before I became an engineer. I'd argue I understand this stuff better than most. Perhaps I had the benefit of a journalism program that was better than it had any right to be, but we had ethics drilled into us pretty heavily. I can assure you the things in those emails between the press and the Clinton campaign are shameful on a journalistic ethics front.
Further, if you want to buy into the philosophy behind the press and why it's given so much leeway in American law, then their fundamental role is to serve as the fourth estate. It's supposed to be the role of the press to take an adversarial stance to government and hold them accountable. Clearly this doesn't happen much, but worse still, the Podesta emails reveal that they're actively facilitating the goals of a presidential nominee. That's horrible. If you want an off-topic thing to look into for this, look up Amber Lyons. I had her in the 'maybe she's credible' pile until this came out. Now she's in the 'There's something to her claims' pile.
>the peculiarities of that campaign than it says anything about the same media companies' willingness to play the same game of ball with Generic Q. Republican.
Most news organizations are staffed with people who lean fairly heavily to the left. It sounds like you might be surprised to find out just how much. It used to be the case, and was what I was taught, that you fought your bias as much as possible, did your best to avoid editorializing and didn't let yourself just become a mouth piece. There's a reason why someone picks up the New York Times rather than combing through the press releases from the Clinton & Trump campaigns. Obviously Fox News is the notable dissenter in providing this kind of service to Republican candidates. Still, if you run the numbers it's something like 80% / 20%.
Overall, the thing that has been pretty evident to me during this campaign, even before the Podesta leaks, is that the bulk of the press has decided to burn their credibility in promoting Clinton. This even goes back to when she was campaigning against Sanders for the nomination, though to a lesser extent. I think the moment something smelled off to me was when she won the six coin tosses in Iowa (?) to begin the primaries and I didn't see many eyebrows raised in the reporting I looked at. Maybe I missed it, but since then They've held to a pretty consistent pattern of burning bridges to protect her.