Fixing it through coverage
It occurred to me that I made a New Year’s resolution to offer more constructive suggestions in the new year. It’s hard not to complain these days, but at least we can offer some suggestions in the meantime. I talked about concentric circles yesterday without offering any constructive ideas to fix that. That’s on me. I need to do better.
Our mainstream media also needs to do better. They are caught up into a both sides narrative where they feel the need to give exposure to all points of view. In normal circumstances that seems okay. Furthermore, the idea of covering the horse race nature of this thing makes sense. It sells ad space. It sells newspapers. It gets subscriptions to the subscription only services. There is a reason why Steve Kornacki is a thing.
When we were going through journalism school, one of the things they taught us was that it was the journalist’s job to call balls and strikes. Somehow that evolved into making sure there were as many balls as there were strikes. We had an equal number of walks as strikeouts. That has been the case whether it was Greg Maddux on the bump or Nuke Laloosh (from Bull Durham).
Someone came up with another analogy that made more sense. Let’s say that it is pouring rain outside. It makes no sense to run a story where you have one expert saying it’s raining and another ”expert” saying it’s not raining. Look outside. You can see it’s raining, so why in the hell are we quoting some jamoke saying that it isn’t raining? Why do we need to both sides objective reality?
What that does is allow people to believe that objective reality isn’t all that objective. In a free society it is difficult to do anything about right wing media. That toothpaste is out of the tube, but this falls into another false narrative. People just naturally assume that both sides do it. Left wing media may distort the importance of things. They are certainly guilty of overhyping certain stories and ramping up the hysteria, but they generally don’t make shit up.
It’s about pushing back. Both sides don’t operate the same way. One side lies and the other side doesn’t. Period. End of discussion. Then, the mainstream media simply reports what is actually going on. The economy is doing well. Report it. Immigration is not nearly as bad as what it seems. Report it. The so-called crime riddled cities really aren’t all that crime riddled. Report it. Unfortunately, both sidesing this thing just isn’t creating an informed public.
Again, you aren’t reaching everyone. You have a segment of the population watching a steady diet of Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax. They might be reading Breitbart on the interwebs. There is no way you can watch a steady diet of that stuff and come away informed. Still, you can inform everyone else. You can at least allow them to have access to accurate information. If the right isn’t producing truth or building arguments on facts then don’t give them a lifeline. If they aren’t participating in substantive debate then they don’t get coverage. There’s only one serious party right now and they are the only one worthy of coverage.
Excellent writing Nick, as always. Recently I was visiting in (very) rural Louisiana, speaking with a lady that was as sweet and kind as anyone you could ever encounter. We were watching the construction of a cell phone tower when she, out of the blue, said you could use a cell phone to pop popcorn. She was absolutely convinced that was true. Took about thirty seconds searching the internet (when I was back home) to completely debunk the story. Seems some guys were attempting a startup company. They needed some click bait and fabricated a ridiculous story to draw attention to their product. These are sweet, but not highly educated folks. I only see solutions from this miasma when we can get people to fact check, and simply not believe highly questionable stories. Although this is a seemingly harmless example, these same folks are the ones you mention – border crisis, high crime rates, etc. When I visit friends and family in this rural area, almost without fail, Fox News is blaring away.
1Here in the bruised purple wishing it was true BLUE Nevaduh we found those 60,000 dead voters. All of them were registered as Republicans. If we can manage to remove the ghost town portion of the electorate, we might finally rid ourselves of Mark Amodei in NV-02. Who he? Think Louie Gohmert, but slightly less amusing.
A Democratic President is always a plus. Howevuh we need to fight these down ballot races as if our lives depended on it. We could have a winning duo of Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama in 2024. But whoeveuh the duo for us might be in 2024 we’d be sending them to the Oval Office unarmed if we don’t give them a working/governing Democratic Congress.
Messaging for 2024? For starters TARGET women and the Boomers. Most Boomers are now on social security so whack them upside the head with the fact pulling the “R” lever is the equivalent of shooting off their own feet. Would say the ladies have their priorities all ducks in a row except what is with all those registered R women. SMDH as to why anyone who is not a straight white male and member of the .01% elite economic group would evuh vote for the non-governing GOP?
Back to you, Nick. While each state needs “the message” what would you recommend as the national whammy for Democrats to tsunami the 2024 elections?
2And sometimes one side doesn’t report it because it’s embarrassingly stupid for their guy, and the other side doesn’t report it because it’s embarrassing that a member of the human race might say it. We just can’t bring ourselves to compare the number of chromosomes we have to the possibility that he might have the same:
https://x.com/acyn/status/1747818968549634411?s=61
3One side is clearly in the bag for their guy while the other side is busy covering the spectacle of his court cases. It’s just so odd how one side focuses on age (which is a concern) while glossing over this. I need fricking subtitles to listen to him. What exactly is “debanking’? Is it debunking? Does he mean that banks won’t work with you like most of the banks have done with him?
I suddenly have a morbid curiosity to figure out how the inner workings of his brain get to these new fangled words and science facts that just don’t seem to check out. Is he really flushing a toilet ten times each time? Why? How exactly do windmills harm whales? Can we get a Trump to English dictionary? Maybe a basic tutorial of how he views science and history so we can understand how there were airports in the revolutionary war or how he said he was going to higher Frederick Douglass.
Yes, he’s a crook. We all know this. What isn’t brought up often enough is that he is a drooling idiot. I don’t care if he is 27 or 77. He may not be suffering from dementia for he is f’ing dumbass and that’s far worse.
4Interesting article about our political polarization. My impression was most of the reporting centered on people at recent republican presidential rallies. This is typical of mainstream media reporting.
https://apple.news/Av0QGw0FnR_63Cd0II9M2CA
5I blame postmodern journalism schools. Their cargo cult “theory” of narrative maintains that there is no objective reality, there is only the text (or content). They’ve successfully transmitted the message of Chico Marx to their students who make up the journalism and editorial classes: “Who’re you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Me, of course.
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