Media Meltdown and also Media Bias 101

[Screwball]

36 minutes ago, chasfh said:

I don't know that Trump wants the Post to shut down, necessarily. I think he just wants to make sure that the local paper is on board with him. He can't have a major journalistic institution taking potshots at him from his own backyard.

As for serious reform of media ownership, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was the "Big Bang" of media deregulation ("television is just another appliance—it’s a toaster with pictures"), which led to The Telecommunications Act of 1996, the most significant ownership loosening in history. We had those rules for a reason. Now we can clearly see what those reasons were.

Strange, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed into law on this very date in 1996. Exactly 30 years ago by pedo Slick Willy Clinton.

[romad1]

38 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Strange, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed into law on this very date in 1996. Exactly 30 years ago by pedo Slick Willy Clinton.

Vince Foster would be alive today if he had owned a gun...etc. 

[gehringer_2]

4 hours ago, romad1 said:

AWS and Blue Origins contracts with the federal government were the most important things that needed to survive the Trump presidency.  If destroying the WaPo is the cost of that, well Bezos did what he needed to do.  

We need a new media and we need serious reform of media ownership.  

It's more than that though. If Bezos just wanted to be free of the liability that WaPo might have been to his government contracting, he could have just sold it. There was no need to disembowel it.

[romad1]

I am strongly considering subscribing to The Guardian.  Those pesky UK reporters do some work. 

[ewsieg]

22 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

It's more than that though. If Bezos just wanted to be free of the liability that WaPo might have been to his government contracting, he could have just sold it. There was no need to disembowel it.

You act like facts are important with this president.  Not having control of the Post is a bigger liability than watching it crumble and lose a little bit of money.  Even if he sold it to someone that Trump would approve of, what if the new owner 'allowed' an article critical of Trump to be published.  Let's say that happens the day that Trump is making a decision regarding Blue Origin.  Now Blue Origin gets screwed because 'weak Bezos couldn't keep the Post afloat and now the Post is posting fake news about me, I can't in good conscious approve Blue Origin.'

[gehringer_2]

15 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

You act like facts are important with this president.  Not having control of the Post is a bigger liability than watching it crumble and lose a little bit of money.  Even if he sold it to someone that Trump would approve of, what if the new owner 'allowed' an article critical of Trump to be published.  Let's say that happens the day that Trump is making a decision regarding Blue Origin.  Now Blue Origin gets screwed because 'weak Bezos couldn't keep the Post afloat and now the Post is posting fake news about me, I can't in good conscious approve Blue Origin.'

today's 'editorial' was a 'how to lie with statistics' piece from the Cato institute purporting to inform American workers how much better off they are than they think they are because Cato can cherry pick statistics with the best of them. The wife still wants to keep getting the daily inbox feed, I'm trying to convert her to the Guardian.

[ewsieg]

3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

today's 'editorial' was a 'how to lie with statistics' piece from the Cato institute purporting to inform American workers how much better off they are than they think they are because Cato can cherry pick statistics with the best of them. The wife still wants to keep getting the daily inbox feed, I'm trying to convert her to the Guardian.

I used to listen to their 'Post Reports' daily just to get a high level of the days events.  Honestly I felt like it had a slight left lean to it still, but about 6 months ago I just couldn't do it anymore.  Bezos made a mockery the Post and I can't support it.  I have no problem listening to media that is clearly left or right slanted, but its clear he purchased it just to please 'dear leader'.  

[Edman85]

Ugh, RFK on 60 minutes tonight spewing MAHA crap.

[chasfh]

The best thing Bezos could do is to sell the Post to someone who would care about and for it, like Bloomberg. The worst thing he could do is hang onto it and let it disappear into the mist. Which do you think is more likely?

I know a lot of people here dno’t like the New York Times, but if we were to lose that too somehow, that would be a debilitating body blow to the independent press in America.

 

Edited 3 hours ago by chasfh

[gehringer_2]

24 minutes ago, chasfh said:

The best thing Bezos could do is to sell the Post to someone who would care about and for it, like Bloomberg. The worst thing he could do is hang onto it and let it disappear into the mist. Which do you think is more likely?

I know a lot of people here dno’t like the New York Times, but if we were to lose that too somehow, that would be a debilitating body blow to the independent press in America.

 

the thing is, what he he doing there now can't work for any length of time anyway - you can be half in with Trump. A quick survey of the Post Ed Board offerings for the last few days show them almost exactly split down the middle between old style GOP pro free market pieces and velvet glove anti-Admin critiques. That's nowhere good enough for Trump, who just barely tolerates Fox even with their 24/7 sycophancy. So at the end of the day, I'm sure he's not buying himself any useful favor anyway while he continues to drive off his potential reader base, because the Post isn't near MAGA enough for MAGA, and even if it were, MAGA don't do newspapers.

But he's probably too vain to let it close and be seen as a failure. So there is that.

Edited 2 hours ago by gehringer_2