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> I'd be very interested to learn the back alley reasons why this was treated as significantly less important a drum to bang in the bulk of the media than the C

> I'd be very interested to learn the back alley reasons why this was treated as significantly less important a drum to bang in the bulk of the media than the Clinton emails. IMHO, a large segment of the media is not really journalism, but ideological promotion. This includes Fox properties (Fox News, the WSJ - at least their editorial page, NY Post, various UK publications, etc.), Rush Limbaugh and most talk radio, right-wing blogs, and many others. Therefore a large segment of the news media doesn't cover scandals on the right, while everyone covers them on the left: * An unsubstantiated hint of scandal on the left gets blanket coverage from the ideological sources. Consider the fake Planned Parenthood emails, or the fake investigation of the Clinton Foundation. * A substantiated scandal on the left is covered by everyone, the ideological right as well as the real journalists. For example, the NY Times broke the Clinton email server story and covered the Russian/Wikileaks emails extensively. Of course, Fox et al. covered and promoted these stories to maximum extent. * A substantiated scandal on the right is covered only by real journalists, and ignored (or used as fodder for spin and attacks against accusers) by the ideological right. * An unsubstantiated scandal on the right is ignored by everyone.

philovivero 10y ago
Not to disagree with one half of your assertion (that media leaning right is corrupt and broken), but you appear completely blind to the media that leans left being equally corrupt and broken. Many scandals about the left were covered up and hidden away. You just didn't look for them. I struggle to find any mass media that hasn't been rendered completely useless during this election cycle. To contrast your Fox/WSJ/WaPo list of egregious terrible media, consider BBC, CNN, TYT, HuffPo, Slate (I'll stop there, but I could list 50 more). Honestly, the best coverage I could find in this last election cycle came from dreary underground groups. All major media had clearly picked a side and was uninterested in providing useful, factual information.
- pnathan 10y ago
  That's factually a a half false equivalency, and will badly mislead you into conspiracy theory. - Fox, WSJ, and WaPo are news organizations. HuffPo is definitely not up to their standard, being, AFAICT, a collection of blogs; Slate is primarily essays- not news. - CNN and BBC are actual news orgs. Leaving the BBC out of it, as they are British. Please demonstrate where CNN covered a left scandal up.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    IMO, Fox News is clearly the leading source of ideology, and the WSJ's editorial page, if not their news (though it's owned by the same people as Fox News), is the same ideology repackaged for the 'elite'. In my experience, that's clear to people from everywhere on the spectrum. There's a reason the ideologues on the right only listen to Fox.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > To contrast your Fox/WSJ/WaPo list of egregious terrible media, consider BBC, CNN, TYT, HuffPo, Slate (I'll stop there, but I could list 50 more). I agree that much is bad in that it's sensationalism, which provided Trump with free media and made them useful idiots (the technical term, not a pejorative) for his campaign. But I don't agree: 1) That it's the same as ideological news; CNN has some real journalistic standards and tries not to lie. 2) That the NY Times in particular, or the BBC, belong in that category. They were neither sensational nor ideological, IMO. (I wouldn't have listed Slate, but I don't know them well enough.) Certainly the serious journalism outlets are flawed, being human institutions, but I think they do a pretty good job. It's too easy to say, 'it's all bad' - it saves us having to carefully discern and accept imperfection.
pnathan 10y ago
> IMHO, a large segment of the media is not really journalism, but ideological promotion. This includes Fox properties (Fox News, the WSJ - at least their editorial page, NY Post, various UK publications, etc.), Rush Limbaugh and most talk radio, right-wing blogs, and many others. Therefore a large segment of the news media doesn't cover scandals on the right, while everyone covers them on the left: Quite so. I don't wonder about those. I wonder about Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc. The Clinton emails on her private server were an error in judgement; minor compared to most of the muck that came out about Trump. That a nation-state was attempting to influence the elections should have been a five-alarm fire in all the media, but particularly anything that isn't bought and paid for by the Murdoch crew.
- hackuser 10y ago
  I do think it got reasonable coverage among real journalists, though I would have liked to see more.
  - pnathan 10y ago
    > I do think it got reasonable coverage among real journalists, though I would have liked to see more. A lot of blather has gone on about Real Journalism in the last few years, and it's starting to give me the vibe of a Real Scotsman. I do agree that the print-oriented news groups seemed to have their head more screwed on than the cable-oriented ones.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > I do agree that the print-oriented news groups seemed to have their head more screwed on than the cable-oriented ones. Interestingly, I've had the (very broad, over-generalized) hypothesis that the longer the period between publication dates, the better the quality tends to be. Cable news, with it's minute by minute updates, is the worst. Daily newspapers are better; weeklies better yet (The Economist); monthlies and journals are the best periodicals; and then books are best. Of course, daily newspapers now update 24/7, weeklies are disappearing, and no theory holds universally. > A lot of blather has gone on about Real Journalism I haven't heard it - I wish there was more. But I think it's dangerous and false to say it's all equivalent and no source is better and significantly more accurate than others.

philovivero 10y ago

Not to disagree with one half of your assertion (that media leaning right is corrupt and broken), but you appear completely blind to the media that leans left being equally corrupt and broken. Many scandals about the left were covered up and hidden away. You just didn't look for them. I struggle to find any mass media that hasn't been rendered completely useless during this election cycle. To contrast your Fox/WSJ/WaPo list of egregious terrible media, consider BBC, CNN, TYT, HuffPo, Slate (I'll stop there, but I could list 50 more). Honestly, the best coverage I could find in this last election cycle came from dreary underground groups. All major media had clearly picked a side and was uninterested in providing useful, factual information.

pnathan 10y ago
That's factually a a half false equivalency, and will badly mislead you into conspiracy theory. - Fox, WSJ, and WaPo are news organizations. HuffPo is definitely not up to their standard, being, AFAICT, a collection of blogs; Slate is primarily essays- not news. - CNN and BBC are actual news orgs. Leaving the BBC out of it, as they are British. Please demonstrate where CNN covered a left scandal up.
- hackuser 10y ago
  IMO, Fox News is clearly the leading source of ideology, and the WSJ's editorial page, if not their news (though it's owned by the same people as Fox News), is the same ideology repackaged for the 'elite'. In my experience, that's clear to people from everywhere on the spectrum. There's a reason the ideologues on the right only listen to Fox.
hackuser 10y ago
> To contrast your Fox/WSJ/WaPo list of egregious terrible media, consider BBC, CNN, TYT, HuffPo, Slate (I'll stop there, but I could list 50 more). I agree that much is bad in that it's sensationalism, which provided Trump with free media and made them useful idiots (the technical term, not a pejorative) for his campaign. But I don't agree: 1) That it's the same as ideological news; CNN has some real journalistic standards and tries not to lie. 2) That the NY Times in particular, or the BBC, belong in that category. They were neither sensational nor ideological, IMO. (I wouldn't have listed Slate, but I don't know them well enough.) Certainly the serious journalism outlets are flawed, being human institutions, but I think they do a pretty good job. It's too easy to say, 'it's all bad' - it saves us having to carefully discern and accept imperfection.

pnathan 10y ago

> IMHO, a large segment of the media is not really journalism, but ideological promotion. This includes Fox properties (Fox News, the WSJ - at least their editorial page, NY Post, various UK publications, etc.), Rush Limbaugh and most talk radio, right-wing blogs, and many others. Therefore a large segment of the news media doesn't cover scandals on the right, while everyone covers them on the left: Quite so. I don't wonder about those. I wonder about Time, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc. The Clinton emails on her private server were an error in judgement; minor compared to most of the muck that came out about Trump. That a nation-state was attempting to influence the elections should have been a five-alarm fire in all the media, but particularly anything that isn't bought and paid for by the Murdoch crew.

hackuser 10y ago
I do think it got reasonable coverage among real journalists, though I would have liked to see more.
- pnathan 10y ago
  > I do think it got reasonable coverage among real journalists, though I would have liked to see more. A lot of blather has gone on about Real Journalism in the last few years, and it's starting to give me the vibe of a Real Scotsman. I do agree that the print-oriented news groups seemed to have their head more screwed on than the cable-oriented ones.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > I do agree that the print-oriented news groups seemed to have their head more screwed on than the cable-oriented ones. Interestingly, I've had the (very broad, over-generalized) hypothesis that the longer the period between publication dates, the better the quality tends to be. Cable news, with it's minute by minute updates, is the worst. Daily newspapers are better; weeklies better yet (The Economist); monthlies and journals are the best periodicals; and then books are best. Of course, daily newspapers now update 24/7, weeklies are disappearing, and no theory holds universally. > A lot of blather has gone on about Real Journalism I haven't heard it - I wish there was more. But I think it's dangerous and false to say it's all equivalent and no source is better and significantly more accurate than others.