For anyone who has actually watched these press briefings in their entirety: Does anyone else think these are pretty much the worst way to get to the bottom of issues? Here's how it seems to work:
* The press secretary (or President, or whoever) makes a statement
* He or she chooses a journalist to ask a question
* Journalist asks question
* Press secretary answers question in as much or as little detail as he/she wants
* Press secretary calls another journalist
* This goes on for maybe 20-30 minutes, and it's over.
How does this even help at all? It's not like the press secretary is going to answer a question that he/she doesn't want to answer anyway.
These press briefings provide direct, multilateral, and unmoderated access to the Presidential Administration by the Press Corps. They are incredibly important to holding the administration to account for policy.
Can the administration spin their own narrative? Sure, but they can't directly control or audit the questions asked.
The price good people pay for indifference to public affairs (ie populism, corruption and Electoral College ineptitude) is to be ruled by evil simians.
Alex Jones loves Donald Trump. He's unlikely to hold him to account for anything, except maybe not being paranoid enough, until his audience drops and new ideas come crawling out of whatever hole Alex keeps them in.
I would say he's a joke, but it's way creepier than that.
"The national press is likely to be among the first institutional victims of Trumpism. There is no law that requires the presidential administration to hold daily briefings, none that guarantees media access to the White House. Many journalists may soon face a dilemma long familiar to those of us who have worked under autocracies: fall in line or forfeit access."
I don't see anything about next moves in either. The only thing I could get from the first one is that Trump will produce a lot of bullshit. That's not exactly next move, he's doing it for years now. The second one mostly devoted to mocking Trump's first press-conference, still no next moves.
Right. Because last I heard Trump just nationalized CNN and had state-controlled oil monopoly buy NYT and replace all previous editorship with his cronies.
Nobody wants hard questions, as such, but I agree it would be good for the President to allow diversity of viewpoints be represented in the press pool. I'm just saying journalists being soft and submissive towards the government with which they are politically aligned is not exactly the new thing that Trump threatens to unleash on us - it has happened many times before.
It's not that some of the press was excluded, it's not that only "trusted" media was invited, it's that they agreed to not even report on what they talked about or who they met with. I think private meetings with no mention of them and reporting based on this as if they arrived to it by themselves and not were instructed by the administration is much cozier relationship than just being invited or not invited in one briefing.
Why that would be all? Of course it's not all. It's just one random article that I've seen couple of days ago, I didn't make a full survey of whole 8 years. It is enough though to establish the fact that the some of the press did field softball questions to Obama - in addition to publicly gushing about how awesome he is - which fact should be obvious to anybody who paid any attention through his tenure.
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This is exactly why journalism today is mostly lacking in integrity: journos having to cozy up to and not offend officials to maintain access. Without viable, advarasial news, society is headed towards a precipice of greater corruption and authoritarianism because the press failed to hold leaders accountable for their actions.
>The administration has taken increasing steps in recent weeks and months to isolate the TV network, with some Capitol Hill veterans recalling no such similar steps by any president since Richard Nixon’s retaliation against The New York Times and The Washington Post during Watergate.
>“The point is this, and it really needs to be made: Fox is not just another television network,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), a close Obama ally. “Fox has become the official/semi-official voice for the Republican Party, in opposition to the president. And I think calling them out is the only way to delegitimize them as political propaganda.”
Why would you post a link which proves my point for me?
>The effort hasn’t been a total blackout; White House press secretary Robert Gibbs still calls on Fox News reporter Major Garrett at press briefings
Obama decided not to go on some Fox talk shows one time which apparently hurt their feelings. It would be truly shocking if we had a president who wasn't nice to the press like that.
Thank god ours constantly reassures reporters that he would never have them killed, even though he hates them and thinks they are disgusting, and he has to remind us that he thinks people who kill reporters are bad people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxI04hcgRNg
He did not ban them from press conferences, in fact his press secretary called on their reporters.
Suggesting this is somehow equivalent is way off the mark, at best it is grasping for straws.
Trump not sitting down with MSNBC to discuss immigration would be equivalent. Barring media outlets is completely unprecedented, because we have freedom of the press in the United States.
The difference in this case is how wildly inaccurate their reporting has been. Nearly everyday they're misrepresenting what President Trump has said, and sometimes they outright lie. It borders on hysteria. Which is ridiculous, because if they didn't ratchet everything up to 11, they could make serious points against Trump.
For instance in the latest Sweden nontroversy, Trump misspoke when he tried to make reference to a report he saw on the Tucker Carlson show. Instead of having articles that would point out that a President should speak more clearly and that we expect more from him, instead they stated that he made up a terror attack! Really?! Instead of making a point that we could all agree with, they made themselves look bad to those of us who are non-partisans.
So the Treasury department tried to stop Fox from attending a meeting once, but didn't actually do it because it was wrong.
And he didn't go on a Fox Sunday news show one time.
Not really helping your case here.
They don't lie about him, they don't have to; they represent him as he represents himself. He says something out loud and they describe it, it's not their fault he changes his mind about what he wishes he had said after the fact.
He has taken to blatantly and explicitly lying about simple verifiable facts, and doubling down on those lies when challenged. How should the press deal with that besides calling it what it is? Why should they give him the benefit of the doubt after that?
Then why should Obama have given any airtime to Fox? Why should the next democratic president? And now you see the problem: suppressing journalism that you don't agree with is a fucking dangerous precedent.
It's two fold: 1) I agree the President shouldn't suppress journalism so long as it's respectful as that could set a "dangerous" precedent. 2) CNN has been one of the major proponents of the Trump is Hitler/bigot/racist/xenophobe/x_____ist/phobe AND the bullshit, racist, anti-white people narrative started under Obama's watch and they have set a dangerous precedent of abusing their size and power to lead half the country into civil unrest and make them believe that Trump is to blame for all of their problems.
Obama didn't exclude news organizations because he didn't like them when he was president as far as I'm aware and if he did I'm going to be just as mad at him as I am at Trump.
December 2012: Several journalists reported that MSNBC hosts were meeting privately with President Obama to discuss the impending “fiscal cliff” fight.
May 2013: NPR’s Ari Shapiro reported that President Obama was meeting privately with “lefty columnists,” but hastened to add that there was “nothing nefarious” about it.
November 2013: President Obama met again with liberal journalists, as Obamacare struggled with the failure of healthcare.gov and other problems.
March 2015: Politico’s media reporter, Hadas Gold, reported that “a group of journalists and columnists,” all on the left, met privately with President Obama, but the White House refused to say “who else was at the meeting or what was discussed.”
To be fair, your initial response was not particularly conducive to continuing the conversation. Why would they choose to respond to someone who is apparently antagonistic?
My first comment in this thread was responding to a baseless comment about someone's own memory, so I didn't feel the need to put a lot of effort providing sources.
My first reply to billfor was a question asking for clarification on his comment.
I don't see in what way I'm being antagonistic. As to why would they choose to respond, I don't know, but they did choose to, so I don't see why asking for clarification is such a bad thing.
Apologies for not looking far enough up the thread. I am referring to this comment:
Where have you copy-pasted this list from and what is it's relevance?
Perhaps it wasn't your intent, but this can easily be read as "you're just copy/pasting stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the conversation". With contentious topics, extra care needs to be taken to ensure constructive conversation.
It's very clear that it is copy-pasted from somewhere, just from the formatting of the text, so I was honestly wondering where it was from. As it is it's just an unsourced block of text without any commentary about what they meant to show by it or even if it is accurate.
>this can easily be read as "you're just copy/pasting stuff that doesn't have anything to do with the conversation".
Good, because that is what I meant. Until they can show the source of that information and can explain why they posted it I have no way of knowing if it has anything to do with the conversation.
>With contentious topics, extra care needs to be taken to ensure constructive conversation.
I do not consider just copying blocks of text at someone without any attempt at elaboration a constructive conversation. I asked a valid clarifying question and I feel no need to beat around the bush. Nothing in my comment was unnecessary or aggressive. Read it literally, as that is the way it was written.
If you no longer think the person you're engaging with is interested in constructive discussion, it does absolutely no good to make it worse by raising the level of antagonism. If you're interested in rehabilitating it, you need to make it abundantly clear that that's what you're doing. Otherwise, just leave it be.
Given the nature of internet forums with text being the only medium, you do need to take extra care to ensure the best possible reading of your comments. I wasn't the only one to read your comment in a negative way (as another commenter posted as well), and your comment didn't elicit the response from 'billfor that you were looking for. The bar needs to be higher. Although it happens much too often, HN isn't intended for battle or point-scoring debate: it's intended for substantive, constructive discussion.
Similarly, at this point I don't think I've done an adequate job in presenting what I've intended, so I'll leave it at that.
Awesome! Thank you, I appreciate it. Looks like that's just a rehost of a Brietbart article.
Seems like some of the events disagree with the collation article:
>On Thursday, Fox News’ Ed Henry tweeted that MSNBC hosts Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell, as well as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post and Fox News’ Juan Williams, had been invited for a private off-the-record chat with President Obama.
So not exactly the "lefty" conspiracy painted in the root article.
He may have inferred from your tone a common algorithm:
1. Ask to clarify meaning when the meaning requires only superficial analysis.
2. Ask for sources.
3. Dispute illegitimate sources, while clarifying which sources are acceptable, without ability to see bias in "legitimate" sources.
4. Await response, assuming it will be hostile.
5. Respond with other hostile algorithm.
>Ask to clarify meaning when the meaning requires only superficial analysis.
A block of text of potentially real, potentially fabricated dates and events without any clarifying text doesn't really fit this description.
I mean, if we want to throw arguments into algorithms I can just as easily point to:
1. Throw out dubious claims and/or unrelated/incorrect facts 2. Claim dishonesty when claims are not accepted on face value 3. Resist any attempts at clarification of argument 4. Claim opponent is disingenuous and declare victory.
What? No, I don't understand what he said. It was a list of dates and events that I don't know are true or accurate, without any context of why he commented them. I was referring to you when I said
>Claim dishonesty when claims are not accepted on face value
I made no claim that I wish you accepted at face value. So as far as i understand, you must be referring to bills claim. Otherwise, to which claim are you referring?
Assuming it is bills claim to ehich you refer, if you don't understand the context, how can it be a claim?
It's basically (when run the traditional way) a means for the press corps to apply pressure, if an issue is either emergent or common, a substantive question is likely to be asked and answered on it, and followup can occur on other forums, which are less public and provide less pressure on their own, but far more fertile when the issued been raised based on the public questions and responses (or lack of response) and stories based on that are out or imminent.
OTOH, if you bar outlets that tend to ask bothersome questions from the briefing in favor of friendly outlets, that breaks down.
You're right in that this does not significantly block NYT, etc.'s ability to gather news (btw you can check the transcripts online: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings) but it's an important symbolic gesture by the White House.
Blocking only NYT might not change things significantly, but showing that they will ban anyone who asks difficult questions means the ones who are left will think twice. The ones who keep "misbehaving" will also get banned. That will change things for everyone trying to get news.
The banned parties should make an alternative venue that asks questions of shadow governments. It will be more interesting and erode the Presidents power to choose how to address the people by overshadowing his useless PR and making the other governments easier to imagine.
Also fun, but I didn't mean a cutout of trump.. an actual clinton or sanders, or anyone who has some backing to run next term can build a shadow cabinet and start answering the NYTs questions.
If the only questions that are asked are softballs, then the only clips that CNN, etc, can air from the press conferences are well-prepared, pat answers. Which will tend to make the administration look better, rather than spluttering and indignant.
I agree its not optimal, but at least the president gets challenging questions from time to time and his reaction will be analyzed by the press and people. If they choose not to answer that is also an answer. if they choose to ignore hard questions, that is also an answer. in case of Trump he gets tripped up and starts blatantly lying and blaming everyone else. it works
It's not useless at all. Banning CNN and other relatively hostile or left leaning news corps is not really meant to protect Trump from them. After all, their readership is likely in large part against Trump already.
No, the move is a warning to the news organizations who stay. It's a message that they will be kicked out if they don't push stuff that the administration likes.
I don't think that is even the issue. It is essential for him and his followers to brand media as the enemy. As long as they are angry and against him it works for him, ie his followers see any negative repirting as hit jobs by spoiled liberal journos. They don't realize that they are helping him with all the outraging.
FCC is in the middle of legalizing regional monopolies, DEA is busy banning Kratom in the middle of the worst opiate crisis in decades, and the White House is barring media outlets from press briefings.
it doesn't even sound like I'm talking about America, right? something is very, very wrong.
> FCC is in the middle of legalizing regional monopolies, DEA is busy banning Kratom in the middle of the worst opiate crisis in decades, and the White House is barring media outlets from press briefings.
Actually everything except the press ban sounds pretty much like the American I can remember since my teenage years. What do you think happened during the crack epidemic? The rules to prevent these large media monopolies have been eroding since the 90s.
Honestly, it's like the Trump administration is trying to undo any social and economic progress since the 80s.
When did the US become so complacent to shit policy? We've tried war on drugs before, IT DOES NOT WORK. We created 'bad hombres' down there.
The crack epidemic was another racially and politically motivated solution.
The fact we still use a law, to this day, that was created to cause destruction to hippie/black communities and break down protests against the war is absurd.
And anyone, in 2017, that still considers drug use a law enforcement issue is out of touch with reality and science.
People see the press ask questions and be ignored or be given responses that have nothing to do with what was asked and some of them take note. Not allowing the press because you disagree with them is a step away from only allowing government approved press. Welcome to the way things are/were in Nazi Germany, North Korea, Venezuela, Soviet Russia, and other great places to share company with.
Freedom of the press being curtailed to such an extent has /always/ signaled worse things to come in literally every historic precedent, ever.
Coming from a republic in which the president is irrelevant and governance is entirely parliamentary in practice, I think it's highly refreshing to see a press secretary publically shooting the sh*t with journalists in this fashion.
The alternative means of getting questions from the public to leaders is to have self-interested politicians grandstanding, asking questions of politicians who are experts in not answering them. It's pointless.
They're not perfect, but these press briefings are far less stage-managed and more honest than any other public forum in which questions are asked, imo.
Yep, the best investigative stories involve catching people in their own lies. Reminds me of that comical quote by Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds, "I love rumors! Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing."
I view press briefings (in almost all contexts) as a platform for the speaker to get their message out. That the press gets to ask questions just helps advise the speaker on where there is uncertainty/ambiguity in their statements.
Under a "normal" administration, they are a pretty good way to get the official story, but journalism still requires investigation.
I've always been jealous of the prime minister's question time. Members of Parliament ask tough questions and demand follow-up, plus it's the prime minister answering instead of a press secretary. I'm sure the prime minister is less enthusiastic about it than I am, but since he is subject to votes of no confidence, he doesn't have much of a choice.
The president will never do something similar in front of Congress, but wouldn't it be great?
> It's not like the press secretary is going to answer a question that he/she doesn't want to answer anyway.
Even when the press secretary refuses to answer a question, it is good because it draws attention to the topic at hand and this helps drive public awareness for important issues. Denial of comments is often as revealing as plain answers. Actually it is pretty good when they refuse to comment on something because you can make this a part of a larger article on a subject and then quote their refusal to comment. This helps make pressure on a sensitive topic way after the press event is done and then in the end some answers might be provided if sufficient attention is focused.
The Press Secretary is the "Official" voice of the White House, and thus is accountable for WH's actions. Now, if nobody knows what was officially said, the WH can deny it and there will be no record of it.
I understand that the current press secretary/briefings are pretty much useless. But they are officially recorded as being useless, which is very important for accountability. Seems like another stunt for the current administration to play fast and loose with facts.
What matters more is what was not said on account of questions not asked. Even an evasion or an alternative fact carries information in its being offered in response.
Thanks for bringing this up! I would rather expect an anonymous set of questions go up on into a ballot and picked up randomly for the Press Secretary to answer. A follow-up could be decided extempore based on who asked the question.
I agree- they are useless. We should have a Monthly state of the union where the President is directly answerable to Public via Periscope/Facebook/Twitter. There are no distribution costs on the Internet so Press will eventually be disintermediated.
(Responding to my own comment) I guess Churchill would say, "Democracy, the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried." That doesn't mean we can't improve. Press briefings just seem broken.
I'm finding I'm having a hard time reconciling the current climate - not necessarily at his supporters (or the opposite), but just at how polar opposite everyone seems to be on this.
For me, I see these organizations as not treating him poorly, but actually willing to call out things he is not being factual on.
But at the same time, maybe I'm being biased against him.
I want the discourse, but I'm just struggling to understand how the views can be so strongly split from one extreme to the other, and what that means moving forward.
> But at the same time, maybe I'm being biased against him.
You're exhibiting the classic -- "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
But you really need to avoid being paralyzed by indecisiveness.
There are mountains of evidence that Trump and his cronies lie all the time. There are videos of them saying contradicting things -- straight from the horses mouth as the saying goes. No need to `struggle`.
I would go much farther than that. The attitude being exhibited here is "mind so open your brains fall out".
The "prior probability" of human nature is called history. You can't look at every event as if it's happening in isolation. This fetishization of the middle ground is intellectually lazy.
At this point, an unbiased observer who just looks at, say, NYT would likely come to the conclusion that one of the following statements must be true: a) President Trump is a pathalogical liar or b) The NYT is a pathological liar when talking about Trump.
There is no middle ground where NYT is being fair, and Trump is being reasonable. This means that any reasonable person with a position on this issue must take at least one of the two extremes.
It's -possible- this is an intentional strategy: people who want to believe the administration are peeled away from news media that aren't 100% in line with the administration's agenda. If you like Trump and want to believe what he says, reading the NYT has got to be an exercise in frustration.
Once all remaining supporters don't watch any media that isn't Trump Approved(TM), they're locked in permanently.
There is another potential strategy: attack the concept of honesty. If we get to a point where a significant portion of the population believes everyone, media and Trump, are lying then Trump has much more reign to do what he wants because any reporting on it will instinctively be branded as a lie. So will Trump's defense, but the net result is still a win over believed reporting on <bad thing>.
This. When others are lying, they make a “decent” effort to hide that fact, while Trump doesn't even try. The resulting confusion, when everyone is fighting over who lied about what, is one of his most effective weapons. People are distracted, cachink, goal achieved.
What makes things difficult is that the legitimacy of corporate media was seriously in question before Trump was elected. There seems to have been massive collusion between the mainstream media & the DNC to keep Bernie Sanders a fringe candidate. And it's tough to say "the mainstream media is rigged, but a president saying so openly is bad."
"Massive" is overselling it, unless there's a large body of evidence that I missed (which, given my preoccupation with Trump, would not be impossible).
While I'm firmly in category A I'm not sure that is a fair comparison because the NYT is a huge organization that could very well have employees set on spreading as much biased, misleading or overblown news they could to hurt Trump politically. Also there is the news part of the NYT and the editorial which could have different quality.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that it might not be that simple.
It's good that you question yourself constantly - it's the only path to wisdom that I know of. But the downside of skepticism is procrastination and refusal to make unpleasant decisions.
When you are faced with Hobson's choice (between unpleasant alternatives), a phenomenon economists call loss aversion inclines us to postpone decisions whose knowable outcomes are likely to be unpleasant. This actually makes things worse, but as the various alternatives remain relatively similar there's an excuse to keep dithering and hope things will somehow change by themselves.
You're not alone in this. Note in weeks and months to come how trivial matters will become every more frequently blown up in the news as people grope for an extrinsic solution to the brewing political conflict.
In our FPTP voting system, a two party system naturally emerges. And during times of hardship, instead of a middle-ground being found like would occur in a multiparty system, things become even more partisan and contentious. It's a fundamental facet of our political system, and won't ever change by using the political system. The political momentum needed is just too great.
I have a feeling this is How Things Work in societies. Similar theories exist about time traveling to the past to kill Hitler: the nationalist population of Germany will then elect the same personality in a different person and we'll still get the same atrocious WWII.
You have to make changes in The Little Guys, The Average People to actually effect change. This is where community comes in: get to know people, hang out with them, openly discuss your opinions on basic rights.
I feel like once in my life I was able to do exactly this, but I don't want to hijack the thread for that story.
Extremism & partisanship does naturally occur, and is seen in every country. However, instead of keeping those groups on the fringe like some political systems do, the American political system amplifies those groups. The majority of people don't like Trump. The majority of people didn't like Clinton. Yet our political system made those our choices. If we want to change our government, we need to find a way to make it capable of changing over time to reflect its people.
I was called for jury selection. I'd forgotten about the summons and failed to show up the first two days, so I called the clerk who said that as long as I showed up on the third day, I wouldn't suffer any consequences. They had me at the bottom of the list so I sat there all day making small talk with potential jurors. I discovered that the first two days had seen few (if any) selections and there was speculation from both attorneys that they'd probably need to call another round of potential jurors.
I found out in the first ten minutes of waiting that our case would be a murder trial. I expressed my opinion many times throughout the day that I could never give someone the death penalty simply because humans make mistakes. Not the defendant, but those collecting evidence and providing testimony. There'd been recent news at the time about a few cases that had been overturned years later - rape cases with better DNA testing, manslaughter cases with new evidence, that kind of thing. My peers dwindled throughout the day and we heard from the deputies guarding us that selection had picked up and just maybe there wouldn't been the need for another set of potential jurors. I was the last in the room, the deputy received word that the last person before me was selected and completed the jury pool, but I needed to hang around because the judge wanted to speak to me. He arrived with both lawyers in tow, I expressed my apologies and was dismissed.
The defense attorney was a former client of my computer hardware business. (The relationship was known to the court.) Because of my familiarity with the lawyer, and because I'd been there during jury selection, I followed the case in the local news. The accused denied he was the perpetrator and maintained his innocence. His lawyer, my acquaintance, argued that his client was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was mistakenly identified as the assailant. (The details about whether this meant he was indeed near the scene elude me, but it's not important to my point.)
I was disappointed to find out the man was convicted. Perhaps the jury was afraid of releasing a criminal back onto the streets. I was relieved that he was given life in prison instead of the death penalty. Six months later, new evidence came to light, the right man was arrested, and our poor innocent soul was released.
Perhaps even if he'd been given the death penalty, he wouldn't have been executed in six months. But what if it had taken years or decades to discover the new evidence? I feel certain that my discussions with other potential jurors kept this man from receiving the death penalty.
If you think about it a two party system has a tendency to make the parties move towards the center in general. If a party gets much more extreme than the populace then they will lose easily against an opponent just a little more moderate than them. Trump's views seem a little more extreme than the general populace but if you look at it he didn't even win the popular vote.
> If you think about it a two party system has a tendency to make the parties move towards the center in general.
No, it doesn't.
> If a party gets much more extreme than the populace then they will lose easily against an opponent just a little more moderate than them.
This requires lots of assumptions that may not be true in the real world. First, it assumes a party in power can't shift the electorate by suppressing voting rights of its opponents. Second, it either ignores propensity to vote effects, or assumes a unimodal distribution of preferences so that moderation not only brings you closer to the median voter but also doesn't make people who are closer to your position less likely to vote; whereas a two-party system over time promotes a bimodal distribution where moving away from one of those peaks, even toward the center between them, reduces enthusiasm and votes recieved.) It also ignores communication assymetries and their relation to money, and therefore support from moneyed interests.
There are a lot of things to pulls the two parties back out from the middle again and I'm aware that practically it's not like both parties are actually centrist. Maybe I should've been more clear but my intent was saying that a two party system leads to more centrist parties than a multi-party system. I honestly think that multi-party systems might be better but I also think that two party systems aren't completely aweful
> Maybe I should've been more clear but my intent was saying that a two party system leads to more centrist parties than a multi-party system.
It might result in more centrist parties (though I've never seen a convincing comparativr argument or evidence; median voter theorem is fine and all for the abstract idealized world it applies to but ignores pretty much every significant aspect of real-world political dynamics), but even so it doesn't seem to lead to more centrist governments.
> I honestly think that multi-party systems might be better but I also think that two party systems aren't completely aweful
Among democracies, degree of proportionality of representation is pretty directly correlated with popular satisfaction with government, and smaller numbers of parties are correlated with poorer proportionality; from the perspective of providing people the government they want, two-party systems turn out to mostly be, empirically, pretty awful, and the US's particular implementation near the bottom of the barrel among established democracies.
> Among democracies, degree of proportionality of representation is pretty directly correlated with popular satisfaction with government
While dual or multiple parties can affect this, the degree of representation currently in the US is currently more of detriment to finding a middle ground.
The average member of the lower house has around 650K constituents more then any senator did at our founding. The US Constitution was suppose to allow the House to grow and expand as the country did, however Congress passes a law setting the limit of members to the House almost a century ago.
If we multiply the House by 10, each member represents 65K we are still within the Constitution and will get closer to what you are stating then a complete overhaul. This has the effect of give more representation to people and makes it more likely to get to a middle ground. As an example a district votes 60% for one party in the current system results in 40% being unheard. With a 10x, keeping in mind it wouldn't really work entirely we have, 6 members that agree with the 60% and 4 members that agree with the 40%. It's not going to be that exact but hopefully you get the idea. This is going to decrease the power of each member of the lower house to state "Mandate" and force getting closer to middle ground.
In the 60/40 example it is mostly likely gerrymandered or a state with a single member in the House which results in no general election. The district is already assumed to win the general and thus the primary becomes the real election which is nominally 50% of the a general election. So in the current system 30% of the 650K in our example district effectively elect the member to House. Given typical 50% voter turnout we then can say that basically say that about 15% of of a district pick the representation. So in our example 98K are represented fully and 552K people are under represented. By scaling that back we would probably have less gerrymandered districts but even in this extreme we have 10K people vs 55K people and may even be able to increase voter turnout since a vote actually matters at this point. In my district my vote is worthless, I still vote in primary and general, but I live someplace more gerrymandered than the 60/40 it's closer to 80/20.
On the other hand, in America both parties have moved to the right at a clip. The Nixon administration was to the left of Obama (and Clinton) on a good number of the most high-profile social and economic issues we face today. This country's "center" is firmly in the right-authoritarian section of a political compass.
That's true, except both of our parties have been taken over by corporations & the system makes a third party candidate almost always unviable. It's an illusion of choice where the people always lose, and the system didn't work in a way that can recover.
Obviously you have less choices than the in the two party system but it also means that the choices need to appeal to a broader subset of the audience. Third parties don't win but they can make one of the main parties lose so if there is a really popular third party one of the main parties would probably just absorb most of their ideas into their main platform. I'm not saying that the two party system is perfect (or even good), just that the parties have to fight for votes has a tendency to move the parties to where the voters are.
It's not just FPTP. FPTP creates the two party system, but something else creates partisanship (as evidenced by numerous other countries that have FPTP and two parties, but they're nowhere near as diverged).
My theory is that what creates partisanship in US is primaries. It might sound counter-intuitive, but hear me out.
In the system without primaries, the candidates that run in general elections are decided through inner party politics, in which only party functionaries participate. Said functionaries generally wield influence proportionate to the amount of time they spent within that system, and they constantly fight each other for power and influence. Since they don't have to explain themselves to the voters in the process, ideological concerns are secondary to influence. Furthermore, because of how byzantine such systems can get, you get a lot of compromise and power sharing happening on all levels - and any functionary has to go through multiple levels to get to the point where they can contest for general election nominations, so they are well-conditioned in power sharing / compromise arrangements, and consider them natural.
This system naturally rewards more moderate politicians that are capable of such compromises, and sideline more extreme (ideologically pure) ones that might not compromise for the sake of ideology. So by the time the voters have their say, they usually pick between two moderates. Overall, the parties remain relatively close, with a lot of overlap on their respective moderate/centrist flanks.
Now consider what happens when you add primaries open to the voters (even if it's just registered party voters). On one hand, voters don't participate in the routine, day-to-day party politicking - they show up to vote once per cycle, and that's that. On the other hand, because primaries are perceived as less important than the general, the turnout bar is higher, and only the more motivated voters show up at all. These voters tend to be more extreme, because ideology is a strong motivator to vote, and comparatively fewer centrists/moderates feel strongly about their centrism. Thus, you get electorate that 1) is more towards the extreme end for the party, and 2) is not inclined to compromise or power share.
Now your candidates need to pander to that electorate in order to win the primaries and advance to the general. Initially, it wouldn't make that much of a difference, because embracing the extreme views becomes a detractor in the general - so long as parties remain close, moderates from either party can swing easily, and so it's important to both attract as many moderate voters as possible from the other party, and to not let your own moderate voters defect. However, there needs to be some pandering in the primaries, and so the rhetoric there becomes a bit more extreme - and the parties start slowly drifting apart.
And this becomes a positive feedback loop. As more extreme positions get gradually normalized, party platforms drift apart, and those stuck in the middle are forced to sort themselves out. At the same time, because of increasing distance, each party sees the other as more hostile, which drives more heated rhetoric that further promotes more extreme sentiments. A lot of it becomes less about policy rationalizations, and more about emotional appeal (just look at most of the arguments surrounding abortion today, and compare to the same 40 years ago).
This, in turn, decreases the utility of pandering to moderates in the general. Once parties are sufficiently far apart, most moderates will start voting for extremists in their own party over moderates in another party (even if they hold their nose). So the risk of pushing away your own moderates by adopting extreme views in the primary is reduced substantially, and at the same time the moderates from the other party are no longer a viable target demographic. At this point, primaries become a race to embrace more and more extreme politics, because whoever does it best moves on to the general. This accelerates the loop further.
The other aspect that I think plays into it is the desire of people to "belong". When parties are close, ideology matters less, and it's possible to self-identify with one of the parties while not adopting large parts of its platform - and, for that matter, the platforms themselves are much more vague and have fewer uncompromising points in them. But when the parties spin apart ideologically, and ideology itself becomes more prominent in party identification, there's a trend for people who initially joined the party because one of its positions to adopt its other positions as well, as a single ideological packet. So, for example, 40 years ago, someone might be a Democrat because it was a pro-labor and pro-union party (and they didn't really care about the rest); and another, because it was a pro-civil rights party (and they didn't really care about the rest); and so on.
But today, most members subscribe to most or all of these positions, with deviation on even one of them often seen as ideological betrayal, triggering a rejection response (all those labels like "RINO" or "Fox News liberal"). The resulting ideological packages aren't even particularly coherent - consider a triad of taxation, gun control and abortion for an example of seemingly unrelated things that have an extreme correlation today - and largely represent the amalgamation of ideas that parties acquired in their historical evolution. But because each package has so many "wedge" issues, their broad acceptance pretty much guarantees polarization in the electorate, because at least one, and often many, are strongly emotional. So for a Republican, the notion of compromising with a "baby murderer", for example, becomes unthinkable. And for a Democrat, the notion of compromising with someone who "denies the right of LGBT to exist" is unthinkable. And they both carry those concepts to their respective primaries, and elect such candidates that promise to be as hardline as possible in the ideological struggle against those unthinkables.
The worst part of all this is that it's not a problem that can be easily solved unilaterally. If a faction in one of the parties realizes that this all is not in our long-term advantage, and decides to dial its rhetoric down, it'll get hammered in the primaries. And if it manages to advance to the general, it will often get punished by partisans from its own side (either not showing up at all, or showing up to vote for some independent or third party "alternative candidates"), and lose to the other party that remained true to its partisans.
Same thing goes for cooperation and compromising after election. Because elected representatives have to contend with primaries, they cannot be seen as too weak, otherwise the partisans in their own party will throw them out as not sufficiently ideologically pure (again, "RINO" etc) and replace with hardliners, like Tea Party did in 2010. So the advantages from cooperation across party lines are diminished to the point where it basically stops altogether, and anything and everything becomes a straight party line vote. Partisanship defines politics in all respects: everything that is legal is fair game to stop, or at least frustrate, the other party, because you know they will do the same to you when it's their turn. To maximize the gains from a political victory (in terms of ability to push your ideological agenda) in such a system, you need to mercilessly steamroll over the opposition when you're the majority party, and obstruct as much as you can when you're the minority.
I think we're already in that endgame. Republicans have arrived here first, with the Tea Party. Democrats are now learning that this approach works best, the rules being what they are, and are adopting similar tactics. The inevitable outcome is complete deadlock of the government, with occasional bursts of frenzied activity when one party happens to take over both legislative chambers and the presidency (as seen currently), to cram as much as possible in while they can.
The only legitimate way out, so far as I can see, is to rewrite the rules. But it needs to apply to both parties at once to be effective, it can't be a unilateral attempt. So most likely we're talking about a revision of the electoral system here. A true proportional representation, or at least some sort of transferable vote, would make centrism more viable, and push the extremes back into the fringe. But such a revision is made extremely hard by the existing rules (it would probably take a constitutional amendment), and there will be considerable resistance from the partisans who would stand to lose political power in it.
Which means that the current dysfunction will continue until a truly major crisis breaks the system to the point where it can be rebooted.
BTW, this model makes a falsifiable prediction: that any system with FPTP and primaries (and specifically "one member, one vote" primaries) will have runaway partisanship. So if there's a country out there that has FPTP and broad primaries, and doesn't have an increasing trend of partisanship, then that would disprove the theory, or at least poke a big hole in it.
I haven't really looked at all other countries to verify if this is the case, and I would appreciate if other people more familiar with their respective political systems could do so.
So far as I can tell, based on my limited reading, UK and Canada have FPTP, but they don't have primaries similar to the likes of US, or (in case of UK) didn't until very recently.
they chose a side during the election. I have no pity on them but I am not happy with the current Administrations solution to that issue. They should have let them attend and just ignore them. Fortunately there were more than enough agencies left to be representative
These news organizations vacated all responsible journalism for eight years, ignoring for the most part two of their own being chased down by an Administration for asking the wrong questions and setting the IRS after another who dared ask on TV the wrong question. Yet all they did was side with that Administration and for the most part they still do.
Trump for all his wrongs is using the bully pulpit to call them out. That is not standard Washington and this is why the elites and their paid for press are scared. Both parties are afraid that they have someone who won't bend to their will.
Now if he would just get some sense in his head. Damn it is state rights when it comes to bathrooms but not pot? Really?
Does anyone know why the ranking algorithm demoted this article and not the other (even though this one is younger and more popular)? I know it applies penalties for certain sites and if an article is deemed "controversial" (more comments than votes), but I don't think either would trigger here.
I just saw a video of Jake Tapper talking about reporters working together and possibly protesting the White House briefings and how not going doesn't necessarily solve the problem. He suggests that going to the briefings to ask tough questions is more important for the press to do than protesting by not going. I probably wouldn't have thought of it in these terms before hearing his interview, but I won't hold it against the other news organizations (as long as they are going and holding the white house accountable for this decision).
Well, on the other hand, some (relatively) honest reporters should be there to record the latest alt-truths spun by this administration. I don't want to hear "Nah, that's totally not what Trump meant yesterday, despite he literally said that, and if you've been listening to Breitbart you would understand it. Oh and there's no other source!"
That's very noble of the AP, but I would imagine that though those organizations must feel as though they must attend their press briefings out of duty to their readership. I think as long as they're willing to treat their trade with the dutifulness it deserves, those organizations do not deserve shame for this.
The narrative from the New York Times and CNN claims that they did know. However, I was unable to find a statement from either Time Magazine or the Associated Press.
The issue is slightly confused by the fact that the New York Times newspaper was barred from entry, (which refers to itself as "The Times" in this article) while Time Magazine (of Time Inc/Time Warner, no relation to the New York Times) chose not to attend. CNN adds [1] that the Los Angeles Times was also barred from attendance.
It would've had to be a game-time decision by an individual reporter- I would give those organizations a little time to figure out what they want to do in response. This just happened.
I could imagine a scenario where the NYT et al were kept from the door, and the others had already entered. I'm not defending, I'm just trying to be reasonable.
Also this event occurred before Obama was President...
Not only are the practical aspects of the two situations different, but on top of that comparing the official actions of a sitting President versus those of a non-incumbent candidate make it even more falsely equivalent.
> The campaign says that a limited number of seats forced it to make the tough decision of which journalists would be permitted to follow the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four days of the campaign
That seems like a much more limited kicking-out than what our current administration is doing, and the constraints of an airplane seem much more limiting than those of the white house's press room.
To be clear, you are comparing being banned from official White House press briefings to being refused a seat on Air Force one for four days for campaign coverage.
Do you not see a problem with cutting people who just so happen to work for newspapers that endorsed his opponent? On the balance, would cutting those people improve or degrade the quality of media coverage of Obama, compared to cutting reporters who are already on his side?
This is a mostly symbolic gesture (these organizations still have their assigned seats in the room) but is very much against WH press tradition. Coupled with Trump's strong words at the Convention this is a sign for these organizations to tune down their criticism of the President.
This country appears to be on a very dangerous path. I don't remotely deny Trump and his administration's responsibility and complicity for taking us down this path, but given how widely understood his issues are within mainstream discourse, I wanted to take a step back and critically look at the not-Trump aspects.
Firstly, Trump needs to be understood in context as the outsider who none of the establishment took seriously, who disrespected everyone and touched every third rail of US politics, who railed against a corrupt system and argued to burn it all down. And 46% of voters bought that and won him 85% of US counties and the presidency.
And ever since, a vast "bipartisan" swath of US media and civic institutions, the deep state and many members of the elites of both political parties have been edging towards outright hysteria, active #Resistance, bureaucratic mutiny and widespread media/celebrity/talking-head delegitimization of Trump's presidency on a level that is utterly unprecedented in modern US history. The level of abject, contemptful hostility from ostensibly "objective" media outlets like the NYT has been breathtaking.
Many, many stories have been exaggerated, slanted and framed in ways that cast Trump as some comic-book villain/Manchurian candidate/Hiter-in-wait beyond any basis in fact or contextualization within existing/recent US policy.
I want to just be clear that I don't support Trump or his policies, I've voted and volunteered for Obama/Bernie and other Democrats, but what I see occurring is a ratcheting up of tensions towards outright war between Trump and the existing establishment of this country. And that in fact is exactly the way Trump actually can justify cutting off media access and purging the ranks of the IC after all the leaks. Bannon and Trump want a war against the establishment, because they know how much of the country is disgusted by the establishment and wants someone to use them as a punching bag.
Trump himself should be like a relatively harmless pathogen within our government's co-equal constitutional immune system - perhaps even an excuse to strengthen legislative and judicial oversight that's been badly lacking in recent years of executive overreach. Instead we're witnessing the fourth estate and military/spook bureaucracy go to war with Trump, which is exactly the sort of non-credible/illegitimate opposition that can enable him to actually consolidate more public support and power.
Trump's tactic is clear as it is effective. He behaves exactly as ridiculously as the press makes him out to. The press look like they are exaggerating and making him look bad because if they report true facts, those true facts are so ridiculous that people assume they are the product of bias.
Trump really did say he wanted to murder the children of terrorists. He really did say the press is the enemy of the American people. He really did trash American war heroes who were captured in combat. Et cetera, ad nauseum.
How do you write a story about that without making it seem biased? Nobody would believe he said those things. It must be an exaggeration. It must be unfair reporting. And look, that's what he's claiming. That must be it.
But you can actually watch him speak and it's horrifying. What will it take for people to accept he's an actual threat to the country? Will he have to grow a tiny mustache before you believe he's Hitler-in-wait? He'll just muddy the waters by explicitly lying and blame media bias no matter how bad the things really are.
Maybe in 4 years when we have an election and he refuses to step down because the election was illegitimate -- he actually won, the media lied about the vote totals, millions of illegal voters tipped the scales -- after having replaced the entire national security/military apparatus with rabid loyalists.
Perhaps a terrorist attack will happen and he'll execute a power grab, declare the courts irrelevant or martial law during these trying times where national security is the utmost concern.
Maybe then people will accept it. Or maybe they'll say "how do we know? There must be something to what he's saying, I'm sure he's not really that sinister. The media is biased too, we had better listen to both sides I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. "
> How do you write a story about that without making it seem biased? Nobody would believe he said those things. It must be an exaggeration. It must be unfair reporting. And look, that's what he's claiming. That must be it.
> But you can actually watch him speak and it's horrifying
I wonder if the appropriate response can be found in the medium. Use video instead of words. Rather than writing about Trump or quoting him, perhaps we need more video news, showing him saying the things he says. Make the 'story' from the editing...
Have you watched his press conferences and speeches? Just watched the live feed - no commentary?
He really does call the press an enemy of the people. He really does repeat factually incorrect statements over and over even after he was corrected. I've talked to a lot of people who have espoused the "It can't really be this bad - the media must be exaggerating". Trumps own words quickly casts away that delusion. Seriously go watch the live feeds at the next press conference.
He made a big point of complaining about this characterization at CPAC. He says he loves the media, welcomes criticism, isn't against negative stories, but is against fake news, making up sources, making up stories.
You don't have to believe that this is happening at the NYT to agree with the principle of what he's saying, that those who wage disinformation campaigns against the American people are the enemy of the people. Maybe you believe this is Trump. Maybe you believe this is the mainstream media. Maybe you believe it's the Russians, but somebody here is lying, and they are absolutely the enemy of the people.
The President should be nuanced enough to be aware that calling the press an "Enemey of the people" is something tin pot dictators do on the eve of their ascension to power. The phrase is deliberately inflammatory.
If this were all just an honest mistake he wouldn't have repeated it over and over.
He said clearly that he wasn't talking about the entire press, just the people who lie to to the public. If he's the liar, he's ironically talking about himself. If the mainstream media is intentionally lying to deceive people for political purposes, then he would be negligent not to speak against it.
So I'm not disagreeing with you. But this really comes down to the question of who is lying.
Nobody had to cast Trump as a "comic-book villain". He did that himself. He ticks every single box on the authoritarian checklist. He's combative and hateful against nearly everyone except Russia and he is demonstrably ignorant and/or misinformed.
These are objective facts. The difference in 2017 is that facts no longer matter. His people are clear in that they value their beliefs more than they value facts.
I completely agree. My request can be satisfied by simply removing the "s" from "briefings" to make it singular. As far as I know, this has only occurred at a single briefing.
False. Obama held several "private sessions", often inviting only left-leaning journalists [0]. I think people are conflating "press gaggle" with official press briefings.
"According to a source who saw the group leaving the Roosevelt Room, where the meeting was held, those present included John Harwood of CNBC and The New York Times, Juan Williams of The Hill and Fox News, and Washington Post columnists Eugene Robinson and Jonathan Capehart."
This country has gone mad. The Trump supporters will justify and applaud everything he does while he burns down the world.
Why even pretend we have a democracy anymore? Trump and his WH are busy eroding and suprressing every form of free speech and I can't think of a single thing him or the Republicans stand for that actually helps people.
Not only are they barring news agencies they don't like from press briefings, they're bringing in radio talk hosts in the form of submitted video to fill the gap. Completely insane.
> Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended.
The sentence is misleading and normalizes something that is very dangerous: The WSJ and Fox absolutely have conservative leanings. IMHO, WSJ, at least their editorial page, and Fox are propaganda outlets. (To be clear, I despise propaganda of all stripes; the conservative side is far more powerful these days - there is no left-wing propaganda outlet with a fraction of the power of Fox and the WSJ (or Rush Limbaugh and the rest of conservative talk). Huffington Post is maybe the biggest, but I don't read them enough to know if they qualify as propaganda. Publications like Common Dreams or Tom Paine are laughable as competition.)
Reporters from Time magazine and The Associated Press, who were set
to be allowed in, chose not to attend the briefing in protest
of the White House’s actions.
Kudos to them for taking a stand.
Respected, principled journalists must support each other. When only propagandists and conspiracy nuts show up that will be a powerful indictment.
I am with you on HuffingtonPost but they also have so much fake news on their site that it is hard for me to know which one is Outbrain and which one is HuffPo. I am also afraid they will go out of business because of these practices.
> I am also afraid they will go out of business because of these practices.
Propaganda is a very good business - better than the real thing these days. Look at who are the leaders by far on cable and talk radio, and in the business community.
I have a subscription to the WSJ. I also subscribe to The Economist. You can read the NYT for free easily, although if I were willing to spend more money I would gladly support their work, but I already spent over $300 in annual subscriptions.
I also like how the economist and the WSJ apps have weekly and daily editions respectively. The NYT app is one continuously updating feed.
Does anyone else find this article confusing or misleading?
"Organizations allowed in included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended."
So, we're the only outlets allowed in the "conservative leaning" ones or the not-so conservative ABC and CBS as well?
> Aides to Mr. Spicer only allowed in reporters from a handpicked group of news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed
from the paragraph before your first quote. My parsing of it is that the hand picked news orgs were breitbart et. al. and the ones that weren't hand picked were still allowed in as long as they were not specifically banned. awkward writing though so who knows.
Considering NYT, CNN and Politico were all implicated via wikileaks for directly colluding with the Hillary campaign I don't blame Trump one bit. The mainstream media needs to be reigned in an not represent one single political party in this whole current mess, but it's not the government's job to do it.
> Organizations allowed in included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fox News also attended.
I wonder if the message conveyed would be different if we rephrase it another way:
> Organizations allowed in included ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg. Journalists from Breitbart News, the One America News Network, The Washington Times and Fox News, all with conservative leanings, also attended.
Also, I think NYT is playing with the word "allow" here. By saying "Organizations allowed in included X, Y, Z. ... A, B, C also attended", this gives the false impression that A, B, C are somewhat "not allowed" by separating the list into "allowed" and "also attended". This is obviously false since they attended it.
Congratulations on burying the lede. Nowhere in the article's phrasing is an intent to mislead. It clearly states that some organizations were not allowed to attend --- which is the real story here --- and some were allowed to attend.
Now I wonder, if my aunt had balls, would she be my uncle?
It's not a 100% precise match, but I'd look dimly on anyone trying to argue it's completely different somehow. Reverse the affiliations and you'd almost think it was written today. (Almost.)
I know many won't actually click through to read the linked article, so I think it's important to cite this here in the comments:
> The effort hasn’t been a total blackout; White House press secretary Robert Gibbs still calls on Fox News reporter Major Garrett at press briefings, but the Obama White House is clearly targeting the network that it believes is biased.
> In a weekend interview with The New York Times, White House spokeswoman Anita Dunn said the administration would “treat them the way we would treat an opponent.”
A similar situation, and not "completely different", but not exactly the same, either.
It's not that similar. Fox wasn't barred from the briefings. It's just that folks weren't willing to be personally interviewed by them or go on their panel shows. The latter requires active engagement from the establishment, as people have to do a lot of prep work for interviews; the former is just another reporter in the scrum.
Wow. I would have read that in 2009 and thought that it was totally fine. Reading it now I see quotes like "calling them out is the only way to delegitimize them as political propaganda" and I'm extremely against the notion.
That article was a great dose of perspective, thanks for digging it out.
The Obama administration attempted to freeze out Fox News, although it wasn't so explicit. To the credit of the rest of the press, they revolted enough that they backed down.
They did bar them from attending some press briefings. Again, it wasn't as explicit, and it didn't come on the heels of such explicit aggression towards the media in general, but it very much was in the same ballpark.
“Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement.
> Barack Obama's campaign has booted from its airplane three reporters who work for newspapers that have endorsed John McCain.
> The campaign says that a limited number of seats forced it to make the tough decision of which journalists would be permitted to follow the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four days of the campaign, but the papers are calling foul, claiming they were targeted for their editorial-page positions and kicked off while nonpolitical publications like Glamour and Jet magazines remained on board.
This action is about the press briefings. What are you talking about? Do you have something specific in mind?
Your link doesn't match your title, so what's up with that? But in any case, wasn't that wrong too—the thing you linked to about leakers and whistleblowers? I don't think I understand what you mean with how about these then. (Unless you genuinely do mean it as whataboutism, in which case it doesn't seem to me like a valid point.)
Keep in mind that the 24-hour news cycle is a relatively new 21st century thing, so comparisons about information control to earlier times isn't straightforward. Monitoring every action of a politician is much more intense than previously.
It doesn't make the actions in the link right, but it's important to keep that context in mind.
Obama wasn't president when this happened. This wasn't Air Force One they couldn't fly on. Limited space without the logistical capacity to bring in another plane seems a perfectly valid excuse to me.
If the sole goal of the press briefings becomes manipulation and propaganda, then at some point giving them airtime and headline space can be worse than abstaining from coverage altogether. This is why some cable news channels have stopped inviting Kellyanne Conway on the air, for example.
Right, which usually requires press people to show up to do the reporting.
I mean it may not be as much of a requirement now in the age of live TV and internet streaming, but if we're going to argue about norms then certainly the norm of sending reporters to actually report on stuff is kind of important.
It requires people to do reporting. It does not require them to show up at a press briefing - that doesn't happen in a lot of countries, or if it does, the press is a mouthpiece for the government to say whatever it wants to say whether true or false.
It's certainly helpful for the White House to distill information into an easy-to-digest press briefing. But the AP, Time, and other barred and protesting organizations are certainly capable of reporting on what actually happens rather than what they're told at a press briefing. Reuters described it aptly here:
> Become ever-more resourceful: If one door to information closes, open another one.
> Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.
> Don’t take too dark a view of the reporting environment: It’s an opportunity for us to practice the skills we’ve learned in much tougher places around the world...
So I can see the rationale for Barring CNN, or more specifically, Jim Acosta from attending Press briefings after his disruption back in January but as for barring the rest, is this really as corrupt as it sounds? Only allow in press who are "Trump friendly".
This is great. More ammunition to build a case against Trump. This type of behavior doesn't benefit him, but scares a lot of independent voters. He will be in for a rude awakening in the next election cycle
much ado about nothing. press access has always been limited to a select handful. even making it into the room doesn't guarantee you'll be acknowledged or, if called on, have your question answered.
at times there is literally one reporter in the room (MLK Bust story). I'm not arguing they should be excluded forever, just think all perspective is lost when dealing with Trump. Somehow CNN being excluded from a gaggle turns into Trump being a dictator at war with the 1st amendment.
Maybe he is, and maybe this is a tiny piece of a multi-year plot. Or maybe not.
At times..but that's not what we're talking about. Why should they be excluded at all? Regardless if it's a multi-year plot or just throwing a fit, it's unacceptable. One of factors behind Trump becoming President is how much time the media spent on him because of his unusual campaign style and rhetoric, and now he wants to pick and choose the media allowed to cover him to suit his narrative and it doesn't work that way.
What I don't understand is why so many tolerate his lies.
This isn't about banning particular media outlets for asking hard questions or being fake news or whatever. This is about setting up the mainstream media as the enemy, and treating them as such. Trump's target is his supporters. "Do you trust me? If you trust me, then you can't trust them."
I think at this point the White House Correspondents Association should disband, and all reputable outlets should pull their reporters, similar to how a government official might resign in protest of something.
I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but liberals vote. There's just not enough of them to win Presidential elections decisively by themselves.
If you are a liberal, do not fall into the same trap the conservatives did after their loss in 2012. They believed that there was a Missing Conservative Voter Who Stayed Home, who could be won over if the party went further rightward. Ted Cruz bet his whole candidacy on that. Trump is proof that voter either isn’t real or isn't motivated by ideology.
I don't know what the Democrat version of Trump is going to be, but there will be space for one if you assume that there's Missing Liberal Voters Who Stayed Home and all you have to do is go further leftward to pick them up.
That doesn't mean liberals don't vote. It may mean other things:
1. Obama voters flipped for Trump (this actually happened in PA)
2. Moderate voters may have stayed home or flipped.
3. Some races were not terribly competitive, so people stayed home even though it would not have mattered for them to vote (e.g. the CA Senate race between two Democrats)
I mean, if you're really a liberal, would you have not voted? Exceptions perhaps being carved out for people who objected specifically to Hillary Clinton because of her other problems... which would mean Democrats need to pick better people as candidates.
The Democrats won the popular vote by 3 million votes, so this doesn't seem right. But for some surgical gerrymandering we might not be having a conversation about President Trump at all.
> Gerrymandering affects congressional districts and has no direct effect on the presidential election.
There are a couple states that assign Presidential electors on a basis of two to the statewide winner plus one to the winner in each Congressional district, rather than winner-take-all, so Congressional districting (including gerrymandering) does have a direct effect on Presidential election s as well as House elections.
They have a total of 5 electoral votes. When split the only election where they could have made a difference was in 2000. But yes, in this case it those have a direct effect but a VERY minor effect that has never affected the outcome of an election.
By the way. 29.9% of eligible voters didn't vote last November. I think it's dubious to assume they approve of Trump. It's more likely they just see him as the same stupidity they see in all politics.
But I have this crazy hope that Trump will awaken some of these voters to progressive politics.
Not a Trump supporter in the slightest but after seeing how they mis-characterized Pewdiepie I have to say I have no trust in the media either so do hell with them.
Just for some perspective, the previous administration was also not great in this regard:
"Obama shuts Fox out of press briefings related to Benghazi" [1]
"The Obama White House went to war against Fox News": Jake Tapper. [2]
"Fishbowl DC has been keeping tabs of which media outlets have been allowed to ask a question at President-elect Barack Obama’s five press conferences so far. They report Fox News is 0–5. “Questions instead went to such outlets as ABC, New York Times, CBS, Reuters and the Associated Press.”" [3]
"In 2010, President Obama said that Fox News had a point of view which was “ultimately destructive” for America...The University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier tallied up the number of questions each member of the White House press corp had been able to ask during all of Obama’s first term press conferences. ABC, CBS, the Associated Press and NBC led the pack, with ABC having been selected for questioning 29 times over 36 solo press conferences. (Overall, reporters have had fewer chances to ask questions than any White House press corps since Ronald Reagan’s.)...Fox News, though it has a reach that far outstrips its competitors and sometimes rivals the broadcast networks, was in ninth place on the list, having been called on 14 times...NBC’s Chuck Todd and ABC’s Jake Tapper (now at CNN) were called on the most of any reporters — they each got 23 chances to question Obama." [4]
"Mr. Axelrod said it was the view of the White House that Fox News had blurred the line between news and anti-Obama advocacy...By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn...Those reports included a critical segment on the schools safety official Kevin Jennings, with the on-screen headline “School Czar’s Past May Be Too Radical”; urgent news coverage of a video showing schoolchildren “singing the praises, quite literally, of the president,” which the Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson later called “pure Khmer Rouge stuff”...There followed, beginning in earnest more than two weeks ago, an intensified volley of White House comments describing Fox as “not a news network.”...Then, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, the president went public. “What our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes,” he said. “And if media is operating, basically, as a talk radio format, then that’s one thing. And if it’s operating as a news outlet, then that’s another.”...“We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the deputy White House communications director." [5]
December 2012: Several journalists reported that MSNBC hosts were meeting privately with President Obama to discuss the impending “fiscal cliff” fight. [6]
March 2015: Politico’s media reporter, Hadas Gold, reported that “a group of journalists and columnists,” all on the left, met privately with President Obama, but the White House refused to say “who else was at the meeting or what was discussed.” [7]
if we're going to be honest, most are upset because they have an issue with trump to start with. after he was elected Trump did hour-long interviews with 60-minutes, ABC, O-Reily, and Hannity. Where's the outrage over that? Shouldn't equal time have been given to Dateline, CBS, Anderson Cooper, and Van Jones?
Sooner or later there will be a real issue and most of us are going to tune it out because CNN/NYT/Others have treated every day since he took office as the 2nd coming of Hitler and beginning of WW3.
agreed. being excluded from one is also different from being excluded from all.
there's also 6+ other news organizations in there -- not all trump friendly. I just don't see how CNN being excluded equates to the end of freedom of the press. The reach of those included is far greater than those explicitly excluded.
I don't think it's the end of freedom of the press, but it's a dangerous step towards it. The fact that other groups have more reach doesn't lessen the damage excluding a major news organization just because you don't like what they're reporting. If they're not reporting the truth that's one thing, but this isn't that.
Maybe this will send a message to said media outlets to stop making crap up and traffic in real issues with some impartial professional journalism that used to occur in this country.
The journals' audience and, more generally, the citizens of the country.
A huge pillar of the press in the US is that it keeps the president in check. You can't be the one regulating what keeps you in check. Have you ever heard the phrase "judge, jury and executioner"?
Yes, and I think this illustrates why the political ban on HN should be re-instituted. Downvotes without explanation are emotional, and do nothing to improve quality of conversation.
God forbid one doesn't immediately leap up and denounce $POLITICIAN in the impromptu Two Minutes' Hate.
Point is, the media has done a terrible job, misguided the people, and deserve _no sympathy_.
It failed to give a honest account of Cuba [1], Vietnam [2], Iraq [3], Syria [4] (Nicaragua, Guatemala, and so on). In fact, it lied about it. That had deadly consequences for millions of humans.
> He has taken to blatantly and explicitly lying about simple verifiable facts, and doubling down on those lies when challenged.
I'm not saying that's not true (I'm not a Trump supporter), but what sticks out to you as an instance of him doubling down on a lie?
Edit: It's disappointing to be down voted rather than being directly engaged. If you have a beef with what I said, please tell me where I've erred. I would love to change my mind on this topic. This is Hacker News after all, not Reddit.
Shame on you. You don't like his politics, fine, but cut the propaganda.
> Lying about his past support for the Iraq war
Go watch his Howard Stern interview yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OU_Vrb_QXo. Listen at how indecisive he is for that question compared to the rest of the interview. It's wishy washy. It's hesitant. It's not a statement of support to call someone a liar over, unless you have an agenda.
> Shame on you. You don't like his politics, fine, but cut the propaganda.
You can't address other users like that on Hacker News, so please don't do it again.
Also, this account has been using HN exclusively for political battle. That's an abuse of this site and we ban accounts that do it. The purpose of HN is to gratify intellectual curiosity. It can't both be that kind of site and a political battlefield.
"I was totally against the war in Iraq." — Donald Trump on NBC News in 2016[0]
That's a lie, and one he's repeated often. Wishy-washy, hesitant support for a thing is not the same as being totally against a thing. His assertion that he was in opposition to it from the very beginning is a deliberate, egregious misrepresentation of his past views intended to convey authority on a subject that he simply does not possess.
I'll update the wording of my initial point to be more clear, since you have my original wording quoted here for posterity.
"Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county? C’mon. Two minutes after we leave, there’s going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he’ll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn’t have. - Trump in Esquire 2004
Sure. A lot of people were against it after it started, especially when it began to go south. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about statements like this:
"[H]ad I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a vote in opposition." — Donald Trump at an education event on 8-Sep-2016[0]
Considering that the vote was on 11-Oct-2002, and we have audio of Trump expressing hesitant, wishy-washy support for the war on 11-Sep-2002, that is almost certainly not true.
You're trying to put his statement into a different context now. I thought we were talking about him saying that he was totally against the war in Iraq, which he was. So we agree that wasn't a lie.
> "[H]ad I been in Congress at the time of the invasion, I would have cast a vote in opposition." — Donald Trump at an education event on September 8th, 2016[0]
You can't disprove a hypothetical situation that never happened to call him a liar. Who knows what he would have done if he had been in congress instead of a businessman. It's clear though he was questioning it publicly as early as 2003 in the Cavuto interview, which was before the war started, and came out totally against it publicly in 2004 less than a year after it started. Who knows what he was saying privately before that. You don't know. This isn't grounds to call him a liar.
This is actually a great example of how modern day propaganda works. One tactic to discredit someone is to combine two true statements by them that look similar to create a false statement. Case in point:
Claim 1: Trump says he was against the war before it started. In the Cavuto interview he's questioning the war, and he says he used to argue with Sean Hannity about it. Sean Hannity backed this up. There's no reason to doubt this.
Claim 2: Trump says he's different from his opponents because he came out strongly against the war before anyone else did. That's a fact and there's plenty of evidence.
Then comes the spin. The media will mix the two statements together to say Trump said he came out strongly against the war before it started. They'll use this to call him a liar. Try to find me one example of him saying he came out strongly against the war before it started. You can't, because he never did.
Claiming he was against the war, after it started is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how many times you act as though it is.
One person saying they had a private argument with him before the war is also irrelevant. How many other people had private arguments but didn't express these reservations publicly?
If Trump was against the war before it started and had been brave enough to say so there would be evidence.
There is not. You can support Trump without having to be his propaganda ministry. The man makes false statements.
Bullshit. Obama was a presidential candidate when this took place, not even the president. You're making this into a partisan issue; not the others upthread of you.
>The administration has taken increasing steps in recent weeks and months to isolate the TV network, with some Capitol Hill veterans recalling no such similar steps by any president since Richard Nixon’s retaliation against The New York Times and The Washington Post during Watergate.
>“The point is this, and it really needs to be made: Fox is not just another television network,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), a close Obama ally. “Fox has become the official/semi-official voice for the Republican Party, in opposition to the president. And I think calling them out is the only way to delegitimize them as political propaganda.”
That wasn't the original source, nor was it discussing the same issue. This is a very different issue, which I do think was a case of overstepping by the Obama administration. However, your comment was entirely out of line for what the thread was actually discussing.
This is known as "moving the goalposts". You commented on a thread discussing one issue and jumped to a conclusion that this was partisan bickering. Then when called out on it, you moved the goalposts to another issue. It's not conducive to honest discussion.
As a non-American, it fascinates me to watch the mental gymnastics indulged in by Trump supporters to justify behavior that's clearly harmful and indicative of more harmful behavior to come.
Does it not seem like a bad thing that your president is excluding media that are critical of him from press briefings? Doesn't that seem like it might not be a good thing for the general well-being of the nation?
The GOP mantra has been for at least 10 years that anyone in the media criticizing anything they do is a Liberal Shill Who Is Lying. Trump is just the natural conclusion of that stupidity, which is why he hates the NYT so much. They print evidence of his corruption and he can't stand it.
Thankfully this stunt is probably going to cause the NYT's subscription rate to go even higher than it currently is and will probably break another subscription record this month.
But they never presented it as factual. What was "true" was that they reported on a 35 page dossier created by a former British intelligence official.
In fact, they never even released the dossier -- they only reported that the classified documents were presented to Obama and Trump. Your post is some serious disinformation.
Ok, so that's the template that make fake news legitimate.
1) Get a dossier from an anonymous source claiming X did Y. According to you, it doesn't even have to exist.
2) Report on the existence of the dossier, making sure to click-bait the hell out the Y.
3) When criticized, respond that you are are "just reporting."
How well would it go over with you if Fox had started reporting on the existence of an a dossier from an anonymous source saying that former President Obama had a faked birth certificate?
The source (unless you are referring to some intermediary source that delivered the dossier to the media rather than the original source) is not anonymous; media covered his background more than his identity because "former British intelligence officer" conveys more meaningful information than "Christopher Steele".
1) Get a dossier that can be traced to a British intelligence officer, which is so damning that John McCain decided to deliver it personally to the director of FBI.
FTFY.
But if you have, say, an email sent by Bill Clinton to NSA urging to investigate Obama's secret Kenyan birthplace as documented by an officer of Mossad, feel free to share with us.
I just can't get worked up about this. Had these "news" organizations been doing their jobs I might be more concerned. As it stands this is just elevating one group of propaganda orgs over others.
The difference between what Trump has done here and what prior administrations did is the publicity and brazen transparency around it. I find it amusing that people think this is somehow a terrible, ominous event. This is a trifling thing compared to the egregious ethical violations and corruption, especially around information dissemination through the press, that has existed in this institution for decades.
The most interesting and concerning thing about it is the apparent weight given to these briefings. Except in very rare circumstances (e.g. killing of OBL, some attack like 9/11), these things are basically just PR displays by the administration. They serve no newsworthy purpose.
They have only just started being critical of an administration. Prior to Trump they basically played the "access" game: they would eschew doing genuinely tough journalistic investigation in exchange for having access to high profile politicians in interviews and other situations. This isn't a liberal or conservative thing (I'm far to the left of this country's mainstream). Even the stuff they're going after Trump for is shallow obvious things, mainly because of the shallow obvious ways that Trump lies and otherwise acts poorly.
Ya, well the press's treatment of Trump has been a bit one sided. And well out of proportion to his actual comments and deeds.
You might not like Trump, and you might have good reasons but the above is true all the same. And, he is sitting president of the USA right now, irrespective of how you feel about him, his platforms and his supporters.
The amount of vitriol involving Trump is ridiculous. It really is. I'm not saying Trump has good manners (because he doesn't) but the press hasn't been many steps behind in utter nastiness. And they have, in most cases, stopped even pretending to be objective. It's gotten where I can't even watch or read the news anymore. It's just irrational nastiness from one side or the other with zero nuance.
I don't know where this all ends if we stay on the trajectory. Gang warfare and cutting off heads maybe. Seems the veneer of civilization indeed might be pretty thin. Maybe we might have to relearn the hard way about the things we take for granted in the social order.
Seems like substantiating your allegation would increase the likelihood of being taken seriously -- or proven wrong, of course, which is what I'll assume you are as long as you are unwilling to prove it.
"As appealing as it might be for some people to believe your comment it doesn't pass the basic sniff test."
Thanks for going back through my old comments. I love it when people take me seriously enough to investigate.
You aren't going to be able to "prove me wrong" because what we are talking about here is largely a matter of nuance and opinion. Or manifest and obvious fact if you'd rather see it like that. I know what facts I see. Feel free to register your disagreement.
I probably kept it going for further than I should have also. Apologies.
I understand and accept some people disagree and probably have valid reasons for doing so. Fine. Accepted.
But back the original point, I just don't understand nor get on any level the mouth foaming hatred. It doesn't appear rational. Seems like disagreement would be enough and so much more effective.
If you don't want ludicrous news reports, don't do ludicrous things. The press is going to report what happens and what's said, colored by each outlet's direction and strength of bias. But if there's something to report, it's going to be reported.
Similar for leaks, which are always going to happen. You can't stop leaks, but you can prevent bad things from leaking by not doing bad things.
One sided. The side of truth and sanity. The man tells a steady stream of blatant lies. He doesn't even care if they're readily objectively disprovable. The media should have been shredding him like this for over a year now. That's literally their job. I have major, major differences with every one of his opponents in the primaries, but they're all reasonably sane and professional and I wouldn't be complaining terribly if any of them won(even the equally inexperienced Carson). Only Trump is a pathological liar with a total disregard for the institutions that have kept our country safe, prosperous, and democratic for two centuries. We're not overreacting. I have literally had an acquaintance who is a huge Trump supporter and annoyed at the protests tell me that maybe Trump should have the military run the country and then things would be a lot better. Normally I would have been shocked by that statement, but that seems to be pretty much par for the course in Trumpland.
Absolutism without the admission of nuance historically leads down a dark road with a pit at the end.
I understand you think Trump is wrong and liar. But that doesn't excuse the behavior of the press in this regard. They do themselves no favors and neither do those who aren't "overreacting" while spewing vitriol.
I'm not complaining about downvotes because I don't care but the downvotes on this post are pretty clear evidence of exactly what I'm talking about.
Nastiness and lack of good manners isn't my preferred response to lack of good manners. Because if it keeps escalating it winds up in a very bad place.
There was a time people were close enough to a natural state they knew this. They bowed. They chose their words carefully and respectfully. They treated others, even strangers, by custom with a measure of consideration. And there likely were good evolutionary reasons for this which we have apparently forgotten. Now we figure with a credit card and a laptop we can do whatever and civilization will protect us. But this is just an artificial (albeit important) construct.
* The press secretary (or President, or whoever) makes a statement
* He or she chooses a journalist to ask a question
* Journalist asks question
* Press secretary answers question in as much or as little detail as he/she wants
* Press secretary calls another journalist
* This goes on for maybe 20-30 minutes, and it's over.
How does this even help at all? It's not like the press secretary is going to answer a question that he/she doesn't want to answer anyway.