Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
The last month or so of Trump-Hillary coverage may have been the worst stretch of pure journo-shilling we've seen since the run-up to the Iraq war. In terms of political media, there’s basically nothing left except Trump-bashing or Hillary-bashing.
Take last week's news cycle:
Red-state media obsessed over a series of emails about the Clinton Foundation.
Meanwhile, the news consumed by Democrat-leaning audiences, MSNBC and CNN, spent most of last week hammering Trump's latest outrages.
Practically every story on non-conservative media last week was a Democrat Party news flash.
It's not that stations were wrong to denounce Trump's comments. He deserves it all. But he's not the only stupid, lying, corrupt politician in the world, which is the impression one could easily get watching certain stations these days.
There's a huge difference between advocacy journalism and electoral advocacy. Not just occasionally but all the time now, private news organizations are doing the work that political parties used to have to pay for in the form of ads.
In the same way that Fox used to (and probably still does) save on reporting and research costs by simply regurgitating talking points from the RNC, blue-leaning cable channels are running segments and online reports that are increasingly indistinguishable from Democrat Party messaging.
The formula for profit in the news business has grown stale.
Commercial news shows now are subsisting on audiences of mostly older viewers who tend to enjoy programming that simply bashes whatever party it is they’ve grown to hate over the years, be they Republicans or Democrats. The median age of both Fox and MSNBC viewers is over 60.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi-on-the-summer-of-the-media-shill-w434484
Take last week's news cycle:
Red-state media obsessed over a series of emails about the Clinton Foundation.
Meanwhile, the news consumed by Democrat-leaning audiences, MSNBC and CNN, spent most of last week hammering Trump's latest outrages.
Practically every story on non-conservative media last week was a Democrat Party news flash.
It's not that stations were wrong to denounce Trump's comments. He deserves it all. But he's not the only stupid, lying, corrupt politician in the world, which is the impression one could easily get watching certain stations these days.
There's a huge difference between advocacy journalism and electoral advocacy. Not just occasionally but all the time now, private news organizations are doing the work that political parties used to have to pay for in the form of ads.
In the same way that Fox used to (and probably still does) save on reporting and research costs by simply regurgitating talking points from the RNC, blue-leaning cable channels are running segments and online reports that are increasingly indistinguishable from Democrat Party messaging.
The formula for profit in the news business has grown stale.
Commercial news shows now are subsisting on audiences of mostly older viewers who tend to enjoy programming that simply bashes whatever party it is they’ve grown to hate over the years, be they Republicans or Democrats. The median age of both Fox and MSNBC viewers is over 60.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi-on-the-summer-of-the-media-shill-w434484