“Think of the media as Democrat Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense”.
…
Read the link to identify the MSM who have the front-row seats. I’m surprised FoxNews isn’t banished. I don’t know if a President has the power to throw out or otherwise overrule the WHCA but it needs to happen. Either that or just don’t turn up to this crowd anymore. Have the Press Secretary do briefings in the Rose Garden henceforward.
…
These are the Norms we must finally restore – a corrupt network of a permanent government bureaucrats, extra-governmental shadow operatives, and media figures supposedly “holding the government to account” but who themselves float in and out of government and extra-governmental operative jobs and also marry government bureaucrats, who rule America against the wishes of the citizens and undermine and even openly go to war with any dirty outsider elected by the dirty uneducated commoners who do not share the Inner Party’s vision of an America ruled by the Inner Party.

The other day I looked at how the MSM had failed in their effort to use the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol riots to damage the GOP and put an end to Trump, and that the failure came down to the public finally getting fed up with the massive combination of exaggerations, gaslighting and even outright lies that were mostly never corrected and certainly never apologised for.

But all this failure had been prepped by a slow decline over decades which has accelerated every year. I first noticed it in the 1980’s, not just in the criticisms of Reagan, which mostly seemed fair enough although always from a Left-perspective, but in the shift in tone when Bill Clinton turned up. In the wake of 2008’s insane Will-Rip-My-Panties-For-Obama love fest it’s easy to forget that something similar happened for Bill Clinton. Admittedly no matter how hard they tried the lumbering stiffs, Al Gore and John Kerry, could not be so fluffed, but Obama was the dream of ages.

That election in 2008 marked the real turning point because although I expected Democrat tongue baths from the MSM during elections they had at least criticised Bill Clinton. But with Obama and his policies it just never stopped. In 2016 they hit the Gore/Kerry problem even worse with Hillary Clinton, but after the loss to Trump they obviously felt they had to go all in.

The descent became steeper after 2016 with the 24/7 attacks on Trump even with no opponent, and then the total ass-covering of Biden, both during the election and since. I actually thought it had peaked with the outrage against Trump from 2015 to today, and the circling of wagons to defend Biden against charges of senile dementia from 2020. By 2021 even a former TIME magazine writer, Walter Kirn, was done, Digging Out the Bullshit:

It resembles, in its use of phrases such as “knowledgeable sources” and “experts differ,” what I used to think of as the news, but it isn’t the news and it hasn’t been for ages. It consists of its decomposed remains in a news-shaped coffin…The information it imparts, if one bothers to sift through it, is information about itself; about the purposes, beliefs, and loyalties of those who produce it: the informing class.

They’re not the ruling class—not quite—but often they’re married to it or share therapists or drink with it at Yale Bowl football games. They’re cozy, these tribal cousins. They cavort. They always have. What has changed is that the press used to maintain certain boundaries in the relationship, observing the incest taboo. It kept its pants zipped, at least in public. It didn’t hire ex-CIA directors, top FBI men, NSA brass, or other past and future sources to sit beside its anchors at spot-lit news desks that blocked our view of their lower extremities.

I’m reminded of the comment about a recent episode where the MSM had been caught “making sweaty, grunting, undignified love”, to the Democrat Party. Kirn has a lovely part in that essay where he talks of his father’s death during the Great Chinese Lung Rot affair, his Dad being in the same building as AP on the day Kennedy was assassinated:

He told me he regretted not snatching some; those first dispatches might be worth a lot now. I thought about this. One-of-a-kind original paper documents, not identical, infinitely reproducible electronic files. No wonder there was so much bullshit now. It was content. Mere content. Ones and zeros. Lots of zeros, not so many ones.

But 2024 has been the pits: I really don’t think it can be worse than it has been this year. Looking back in history it may be seen that the Trump-Biden debate of June 2, 2024 was not just when Biden fell but when the MSM went into its final nosedive as tens of millions finally saw with their own eyes what their MSM had told them was not true (even right up to debate with the last soundbites being the claim of “Cheap Fakes”)

Perhaps the ultimate lowering of the boom came the other day in the wake of the meltdowns I covered here the other day of newspapers not endorsing Harris for President. But I didn’t put up some of the home truths made by none other than the owner of the WaPo himself, Jeff Bezos, and in the WaPo:

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working… Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion.
…
What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

Although Mr Bezos is correct in his analysis and in withholding an endorsement he completely misses the fact that such is merely the smallest symptom of the WaPo’s bias, and that withholding them means as little as he admits putting them forward is. I think he’s too smart to be under such an illusion but if he was then the reaction of his own staff, including senior people, should have cured him of that. He could also check out this X-thread about about how the WaPo helped Joe Biden win in 2020:

The Washington Post committed massive election interference on behalf of Joe Biden to help him win in 2020. WP produced a fake story through its “fact checking” department that became nationally accepted and served as the basis for exonerating Biden of corruption in Ukraine. From CNN to Senate Democrats, everybody repeated verbatim the WP story in defense of Joe Biden. This was just as big, if not bigger interference than the media outlets claiming Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

That’s quite a claim, especially since the laptop and the Joe-Hunter Biden corruption are joined at the hip, although I see his point about how the WaPo got a “twofer” in helping the first indictment of Trump and covering Joe Biden in the Ukraine when they’re two sides of the same coin.

I laughed in reading about a similar situation with the much smaller and very much local Baltimore Sun and its new owner, one David Smith. Turns out he’s a bit of a Right-Winger and this unhinged the MSM people nearby:

  • “Why the right-wing takeover of Maryland’s largest newspaper is ringing alarm bells” (MSNBC)
  • “Rich ignorant right-wing fanatics buying major newspapers is bad for America” – John Harwood (a rabidly partisan left-wing activist who has somehow found employment as an “objective journalist” at major US media outlets.)
  • Plus more found by Ace of Spades, who had suggestions as to what Smith could do to not advance a left-wing agenda – example of the latter was coverage of a mere local issue with “Residents of Maple Crossing, an area that Trump carried in the last two elections, voiced support for the racially charged proposal…”

In the wake of all this I really must get hold of Michael Walsh’s new book, Against the Corporate Media: Forty-two Ways the Press Hates You, which goes all the way back to the original MSM hate object, Nixon, through to the 1990’s and the explosion of RW talk radio, followed by the blogosphere of the double O’s and beyond. Even after the walled gardens of Twitter and Facebook lured the bloggers in and then slammed the doors shut, Walsh has hope:

But now there’s some pushback. Elon Musk bought Twitter, now X, and although its politicized staff has tried to fight a rear-guard action against his free-speech campaign, the platform is much different than it was. This has forced Facebook and other platforms to relax the censorship somewhat. Substack, a free-speech platform that functions  almost like a blog-hosting site, but with subscription and revenue features, has attracted a large number of independent writers, including  some old-time bloggers—Andrew Sullivan and Virginia Postrel have  moved there, and I have a Substack site where I publish a lengthy essay every week—and people like Bari Weiss who have left Big Media platforms to escape censorship and groupthink.

There are similar hopeful thoughts here, which references another book I need to get where interviews are conducted with a wide variety of journalists:

The author, whose résumé includes stints at NBC, Fox News, and CNN (during the Jeff Zucker era), is uniquely positioned to explain how the media squandered the public’s trust, and what they might do to win it back. “I don’t want to burn it all down,” Krakauer writes. “I love the media. I want to help make it better.” As always, the first step on the road to recovery is admitting you have a problem, recognizing your powerlessness over addiction or mental illness (or both).

To be fair, that article does admit that the proposed solutions don’t match the analysis.

Sounds like Bezos; it’s all too late. When even a maven like Leftist Matt Taibbi, with journalism running in his family, writes the following about the MSM you know they’re done, Be it Resolved: Don’t Trust Mainstream Media. That’s the title of his report about taking part in one of the the prestigious Munk Debates in Toronto, and with Douglas Murray as his debate partner, which is a pretty formidable team. Do read the whole thing:

The story is no longer the boss. Instead, we sell narrative, as part of a new business model that’s increasingly indifferent to fact… Call it the “audience-optimization” model: instead of starting with a story and following the facts, you start with what pleases your audience, and work backward to the story…This is not journalism. It’s political entertainment, and therefore unreliable.
…
I’m no fan of Donald Trump. I wrote a book about the man called Insane Clown President. But I’ve compiled a list of over 100 of these “bombshells” that went belly up, from “Bountygate” to MSNBC saying Russian oligarchs co-signed a loan for Trump to countless others, because these stories offend me. A good journalist should always be ashamed of error. It bothers me to see so many of my colleagues so unashamed.

Here’s two examples of how his colleagues are treated, depending on whether they hurt or help the Democrat Party and TPTB uni-party in Washington:

  • CBS “News” Fired Catherine Herridge As She Was Pursuing Stories About Joe Biden’s Decrepitude – And Then Seized Her Notes, Including the Names of Her Confidential Administration Sources.

    I would always laugh darkly when Brit Hume [FoxNews] would claim that CBS News is a straight-shooting organization because it’s run by David Rhodes, supposedly not a leftist. Just merely the brother of Obama’s Brain, Ben Rhodes.
    …
    Former CNN host and political analyst John Avlon is running for Congress. He announced his candidacy for New York’s 1st congressional district. I know my eyes must be deceiving me, because when he was on CNN he claimed to be an objective journalist without fear or favor for either party.
  • The Washington Post Recuses National Editor Matea Gold From Reporting on Durham and the FBI, Because Her Husband Was Promoted to FBI Chief of Staff.

    In her previous role as Investigations Editor, she reported on all the FBI’s dirty dealings, with the characteristic Washington Post pro-Deep-State, FBI-do-no-wrong slant. And her family connection to the Clinton clan was, of course, undisclosed until now.

    Naturally the WaPo didn’t report that, it took one Paul Sperry reporting it for Real Clear Investigations first before they’d dip a toe in the water and of course there was a reason:

    The recusal means that, among other national stories, Gold will be cordoned off from guiding Post coverage of Special Counsel John Durham’s ongoing criminal investigation of the origins of the Russia probe of Donald Trump, which the FBI and Justice Department initially opened under the Obama administration.

    More ugly, ugly details of Washington D.C. at the link.

Decades ago the “Press” looked down on TV, but read the following from 2020, A Brutal Assessment of Cable News, and tell me that what a recently resigned MSNBC producer said of her company doesn’t fit exactly with Taibbi’s description of all the MSM:

“We are a cancer and there is no cure,” a successful and insightful TV veteran said to me. “But if you could find a cure, it would change the world.”

As it is, this cancer stokes national division, even in the middle of a civil rights crisis. The model blocks diversity of thought and content because the networks have incentive to amplify fringe voices and events, at the expense of others . . . all because it pumps up the ratings. I’ve even heard producers deny their role as journalists. A very capable senior producer once said: “Our viewers don’t really consider us the news. They come to us for comfort.”

Viewers of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow didn’t want to hear her say that President Trump made the right call, just as viewers FoxNews’s Sean Hannity didn’t want to hear him criticising a Trump decision.

When It Comes to Trusting the Media, We’re Past the Point of No Return:

When an industry that is supposed to be objective and fact-based has to create something called a “fact checker,” whose job seems to be nothing more than finding ways to say that a Republican is lying, you sort of get the idea that that whole objective thing really doesn’t apply. And we really have reached the point in media when objectivity is just out the window. It’s now less about honest fact-finding and more about “I’ve got to get my clicks.”

There’s really no going back at this point to the way it used to be. The media really hasn’t been the same since the Drudge Report first came out all those years ago and really exposed Bill Clinton and his lying and scandals. The internet has provided us with the means of finding information that cuts through the spin that comes out of the mainstream media, 

True, Open Sources Have Demolished the Legacy Media, where the writer starts with the October 7 pogrom in Israel:

This time, we could see accounts from both sides, from the pictures and bios of the murdered, injured, and kidnapped civilians, who hailed from countries around the world. This time we could see the videos of the Israeli response. This time we could see the pictures of the bloodshed and hear the accounts of among others, the forensic scientists who examined the butchered bodies of the victims. This time we could hear the voices of, not only Jews, but Bedouins, Moslems, and Druze in Israel and Moslems in neighboring countries as anti-Hamas as you can find anywhere. This time we could see who was supporting this butchery in the West. This time, those who spread the blood libel are fully exposed.

Exactly. Who the hell needs a “journalist”, let alone a “news anchor” like Jack Tame to interpret all this for us when we can watch and make our own interpretations. Could we be wrong? Of course, but no more so than the “experts”, especially as their numbers become thinner, their resources for investigation poorer and themselves more ignorant.

The NYT, for example, merely kept toning down updated headers and has just “re-enlisted a Hitler-praising Hamas propagandist as part of its team covering the war.” 

On X, Musk has removed the NYT’s verification badge and replaced it with a lying emoji.

Well yes: why should the assholes at the NYT assume, and be presumed, to have such status. Perhaps it is we, the Swinish Multitudes, who consider them to be … Low Rent.

Unfortunately the Alternative Media are still fresh new shoots that can be crushed:

  • RedState and Townhall Media Are Being Targeted by ‘Big Censorship’
    Earlier this month, Senator Rand Paul wrote an op-ed at Townhall titled, “Gain of Function Research: A Death Wish for the World.” Not long after it was published, the site management received a notification from Google that it had elected to flag the article as being dangerous content.
    Which means no money from Google advertising, a killer for online sites.
  • How Corporate Media’s Top Dogs Box Out Real Reporters From Asking The White House Tough Questions.
    The WHCA [White House Correspondents Association] creates the seating chart in the briefing room, determining who is most likely to be called on by a press secretary. They place correspondents from the large broadcast and cable networks in the front rows. Only a couple of conservative outlets are given seats at all, and they are plopped in the back. Everyone else has to stand in the aisles, throw some elbows to retain some personal space, and pray they get called on. The Daily Caller just recently gained a seat in the briefing room; it did not have one when I covered the White House. The Spectator does not have one either.

    Read the link to identify the MSM who have the front-row seats. I’m surprised FoxNews isn’t banished. I don’t know if a President has the power to throw out or otherwise overrule the WHCA but it needs to happen. Either that or just don’t turn up to this crowd anymore. Have the Press Secretary do briefings in the Rose Garden henceforward.

And that’s when they’re not in the trough themselves (Biden-Trump debate):

The economy was in a “freefall”? It was “flat on its back”? In a “horrible situation”? These are 100%, solid-gold lies. And Biden knows it.

TBF I don’t think he did, or does. Nevertheless the point is that the MSM lied for him, as the article goes on to detail, none of the following facts were offered up by the MSM in the wake of the June 2024 debate. The “fact checkers” somehow missed it all:

  • GDP had recovered to pre-covid levels by January 2021. By contrast to 2024 there’s no boom.
  • The stockmarket had recovered by January 2021. Since then it’s been flat.
  • Job growth still lags population growth, to the tune of 6 million jobs.

The general decline in quality and reliability that is associated with such brain-dead ideological and partisan behaviour is made clear via Ace of Spades having fun with Jake Tapper’s obsession with his checking his own X-Titter reference:

Yet here was Hillary Clinton, claiming, WITHOUT EVIDENCE, that Russia had literally hacked US voting machines and faked a Trump election win, and CNN and Jake Tapper reported her words WITHOUT COMMENT or criticism. Just a he-said/she-said. So, during the show, I tweeted, “Is CNN going to report on this? Hillary Clinton pushing conspiracy theory that Russia hacked the actual vote totals.”… And immediately — during the commercial break of his own show – [he] appears like Fake News Beetlejuice in my DMs. What does he write to me? He writes: “Cite?” CITE?! IT’S YOUR OWN SHOW!!!

But it was Mollie Hemingway on The Federalist, who really blew up Tapper just the other day after J D Vance savaged him about his bullshitting on the Trump-Russia Collusion hoax (a joy to watch). Mollie was more savage as she brought up the past, Jake Tapper Is Lying About CNN’s Key Role In The Russia Collusion Hoax:

Before I tell you what happened next, I need to explain why I’ve never told this story publicly before. During commercial breaks and while remote reporters are on air, people on television sets share personal stories, funny jokes, and information about stories they’re working on. I have long treated on-set interactions that are not broadcast as not to be discussed.

But in the same way that a reporter can publicly disclose an anonymous source who burns them with bad information, Tapper and CNN are causing serious harm to the country with their revisionist history of their own key role in the Russia collusion hoax. It’s become a matter of conscience that I stop hiding what I witnessed at CNN.

Tapper was burned – but didn’t care:

While Perez’s package was airing, and at the point he read Clapper saying that he didn’t think the leak came from the intelligence community, Sciutto said that he was pretty sure Clapper knew the leak came from the intelligence community “because …,” he said, trailing off as he rolled his hands suggestively and somewhat like a football referee very slowly calling a false start. He said it for all to hear, though I’m not sure anyone else other than Jake Tapper, who he was sitting to the right of, and I heard and understood. Tapper squeezed Sciutto’s left wrist the way my mom used to squeeze my wrist at church when I was being too loud. I interpreted this message roughly as “stop talking you idiot.”

Sciutto was a former Obama administration political appointee in the State Department. It wasn’t clear if he was saying that Clapper had leaked to him or one of his three co-authors, a Clapper aide had leaked to CNN, or merely that Clapper knew Comey or one of his aides was leaking to CNN.

Read both the Ace thread and Hemingway’s article. You’ll never watch Tapper again, even if you’re a guest and don’t know the rules. This incredible gaslighting shit continues to this day, Study Shows the Lengths Media Is Having to Go to Make Kamala Harris Look Good:

Not only has Harris received 66% more airtime than former President Donald Trump, but the spin of Harris’s coverage has been more positive (84%) than any other major party nominee, even as Trump’s coverage has been nearly entirely hostile (89% negative).

I don’t think the MSM can make it back from all this.

Good! Die MSM, Die!