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Here is, roughly, the media's playbook: 1. Never stop talking about Trump. Mention his name 300 times an hour on CNN. He's not a serious candidate, but he is e

Here is, roughly, the media's playbook: 1. Never stop talking about Trump. Mention his name 300 times an hour on CNN. He's not a serious candidate, but he is entertaining so they give him free publicity until he is a serious candidate. 2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. 3. Now Trump is elected. In these tough times, it is more important than ever to support high-quality independent journalism. Subscription numbers swell. 4. We need someone to blame for the outcome of this election. Obviously it is the fault of Facebook, Google, etc, who have been taking the media's ad revenue. Not the fault of the media who would never shut up about Trump.

ixtli 9y ago
I realize that this is tangential to what you're talking about but your comment reminded me of it strongly: As much as it's clear that there was some funny business with trump's people and russia, the way liberals are salivating over mueller's investigation makes me uncomfortable. they need the legal system to pronounce in some way that trump and his people broke the rules, in order to avoid acknowledging that the general thrust of all of this is the system working as it was designed.
- WallWextra 9y ago
  It's like how the 2008 election didn't count, because Obama is actually a Kenyan. People can't just lose an election anymore.
  - ixtli 9y ago
    I like to talk about social issues and politics and stuff but the more I do it in public the more I run into what feels like "politics-as-basketball." It's really begun to feel like team sports as opposed to a critical analysis of conditions and power analysis.
    - mieseratte 9y ago
      As someone in their mid-twenties, I have to ask the older HNers: has it always been this "stupid," so vitriolic and hateful? If not, when did it become this way?
      - adventured 9y ago
        The Revolutionary War era was as bad or worse than it is today. [1] They spit about as much venom at each other as you possibly could. They said arguably far worse things about each other than have been said about Trump or Obama. There was a bit of comparative calm that settled in, from the immediate time after the Civil War, until the late 1960s. The level of ugliness of ideological attacks that Franklin Roosevelt saw, for example, were nowhere near what Obama & Trump have seen. That century was a far calmer era for political vitriol, than the 1780-1860 time frame, or since the late 1960s. A not amusing Civil War era example: "In 1856, U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave a speech criticizing pro-slavery southerners. Three days later, he was beaten so badly - on the Senate floor - by U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina that he didn’t return to the Senate for three years." [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/the-origins-of-todays-bitter-partisanship-the-founding-fathers/244839/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/the-ori...
      - ams6110 9y ago
        It has, but it's never been so easy to spout off to the world before, or be instantly informed about what other people are thinking. In the 1980s the media hated Reagan about as much as they hated Bush or Trump. Before that it was Nixon. But you really only heard about it if you watched the evening news, and that was 30 minutes of the day. It wasn't being fed to you continuously like an intravenous drip on your phone. It's the speed and pervasiveness that have increased, not so much the partisanship.
        tim333 9y ago
        I'd disagree and say through the Bush Clinton Bush Obama period it wasn't as bad. I guess the levels of stupid vitriolic and hateful come and go. The world has definitely gone through worse phases as well, see the 1930s for example.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    ...which is ironic, since due to that same polarization, Presidents in general seem to have less ability (or maybe it's inclination) than ever, to effect any meaningful change about anything that matters. It doesn't matter who's President.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      Arguably that's how the U.S. government was designed to function. The new (well, the recurring thing) is that Congress, White House, and even the judiciary get more political capital from inaction and blame than they get from cooperation.
    - macintux 9y ago
      > It doesn't matter who's President. It absolutely matters when something goes wrong outside our borders. If, hypothetically speaking, a small NATO country on Russia's border devolves into chaos thanks to, say, a massive power grid failure combined with agitation from Russian nationalists, and Russia then intervenes to "stabilize" the situation, the temperament of the president and coherence of the White House as a whole would make a great deal of difference in how the crisis evolves. Purely hypothetical, of course.
      - equalunique 9y ago
        Why does this sound like Ukraine
        macintux 9y ago
        Ukraine is neither small nor NATO, but...yeah.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        Estonia are cool, but they know they need to stay on good terms with their neighbors. John McCain doesn't run things anymore.
  - apotheothesomai 9y ago
    Sure, it's just like that, because all that hacking of Democratic databases didn't happen. I think the assumption that the wrongdoing was a conspiracy to get Trump elected gets far too much attention and is a secondary issue, but unlike the birther issue, there was quite a bit of funny business in general. The birther issue was just made up a priori. The funny business, regardless of whether it benefited anyone, needs to be investigated. Once we understand what happened, then we can worry about whether it was an effort to swing the election or just a tactic for creating chaos.
- tw04 9y ago
  As evidenced by the gerrymandered districts intended to do things like sway presidential elections. Clearly the system is working as designed and not being cheated...
  - ixtli 9y ago
    That's kinda what I'm getting at: gerrymandering is the implementation. Our legislatures need to specify and clarify rules to stop those kind of abuses, but I don't think anyone is going to jail for gerrymandering a district. My point was simply that these are the rules of the game but people seem to believe someone is cheating.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      It's generally the legislators that are drawing the districts. In Michigan there is a constitutional referendum coming up that will take that power away from them if it passes.
  - strictnein 9y ago
    How does one use gerrymandering to sway a presidential election?
    - macintux 9y ago
      Nothing in the short run, but I think an argument could be made that gerrymandering in the age when digital technology has enabled very precise calculations to be made has engendered a completely dysfunctional political system. And that completely dysfunctional political system certainly played a role in the last election.
  - neuronexmachina 9y ago
    Gerrymandering sways House and state-level elections. It doesn't have a direct impact on Senate and Presidential elections.
    - 9y ago
- ordinaryradical 9y ago
  I find it strange you’re made uncomfortable by this as opposed to a president privately profiting off the White House, actively courting a foreign power for his own gain in the election, empowering his own family like banana republic dictator, wantonly obstructing the investigation like a petty child, and being surrounded by incompetents and shady characters who keep dropping like flies for actually breaking the law and getting caught for it. If this were Nixon, wouldn’t it be an appropriate response to hope that all involved were caught? If wanting to see this kind of criminality be ended is “salivating” call me Mr. Drooly.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  Maybe this was a reasonable stance if you were a hardliner skeptic. But it's March 2018. 5 of Trump's senior campaign staff are indicted. Multiple Russian actors are indicted. The Russian government doesn't even deny it, Putin literally blamed Jewish people. CA's c staff was just on video talking about using human trafficking to compromise politicians and their CEO just disclosed that some state governments were cooperating with the Trump campaign. All this is astride the long understood fact that American election security is so bad that there aren't reliable records to disprove a machine that's been tampered with. What's more, the we've also seen corroborated evidence that the machines election officials in some swing States we're compromised by sophisticated actors. These machines aren't just where emails happen, they're the machines where the software that configures the voting machines runs (for some models). None of what I've said is even an uncharitable reading of the facts. The final statement might be surprising but it's well supported in security literature. But sure, you be skeptical as a well-measured and coldly logical citizen.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    All this is astride the long understood fact that American election security is so bad that there aren't reliable records to disprove a machine that's been tampered with. In this context, is it curious that no one has signed on to co-sponsor the following bill? https://congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5147/text https://congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5147/tex...
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      People could kick up a big stink about it, but the reason it won't go anywhere is that Ryan can hold it in committee in perpetutity. , isn't it? The voting machine observations aren't new. They're old, some dating back to Bush-era elections. I think technological illiteracy and States refusing to replace costly machines represent the bulk of the opposition.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        I thought they were trying to win back the House? One couldn't imagine a more evocative campaign issue, for independents suspicious of both parties like me. "We care about democracy and Paul Ryan doesn't! Tell Paul Ryan to restore trust to democracy!" OK, tell me that and I'll vote Democrat. Crickets.
zombieprocesses 9y ago
Don't forget conjuring up an external enemy to distract the public and get the population riled up. 5. Russia and Hackers and Collusion Oh My! > Not the fault of the media who would never shut up about Trump. But look at the ratings and the ad money they are getting? It's the same thing with school shootings. Massive 24/7 coverage turning the shooter into a celebrity. Then they wonder why shootings happen. Oh it couldn't be the media. They can't blame themselves. It must be guns. Another gem is "why is society so divided"? Could it be the media playing population/groups off each other to create drama and make more money? Of course not. They can't blame themselves. So it must be social media and the internet.
- DerfNet 9y ago
  Uh oh, you suggested "Russian collusion" might be a load of crap. Good thing people are here to "downvote" and silence you. We're literally in the middle of yet another Red Scare. You can speak out against such nonsense without being a Trump supporter.
  - tim333 9y ago
    You can also note that "the heads of the top six American intelligence agencies unanimously reaffirmed Russian interference" without being a conspiracy nut.
- WallWextra 9y ago
  Nobody will talk about "common sense media control" for some reason. It's common sense!
Agustus 9y ago
1. Look at the playbook from an agnostic position instead. The reason the media gave candidate Trump the press was because, just like candidate Obama, sold eyeballs; Trump more so because he got both sides mad. Recall the puff pieces and the discussion of Michelle Obama's fantastic arms, that is nothing but puff and she moved the papers, so they covered the candidate more; to Hilary's detriment. 2. You need to think about the emails as compromised material and a failure to secure information. If you are an IT person that circumvents security protocols that then end up with trade secrets being exposed, would you be in trouble. The reason this was covered in the press was that it was classified information on an unsecured server. 4. I shake my head at this, Obama for America was doing the exact same thing in previous elections and no one batted an eye. Now that the people who were okay see that detrimental effects could happen there is concern. The simple thing to do would be to delete / minimize the information on your account. Just remember, the media is horrible at their job; you have people who do not have the time to dig into a story, are influenced by their editors to drop stories if they attack a major sponsor, and then write stories that are stacked with grammatical mistakes.
- g09980 9y ago
  So the use of Facebook data was lauded as genius and now isn't. [1] Now you got me curious if the media would be saying all the same things if Cambridge helped the other candidate get elected. [1] http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-for-obama-is-scandal-when-it-comes-to-trump http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-fo...
  - leesalminen 9y ago
    My opinion is that they would not.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - alwayseasy 9y ago
    Ben Shapiro is disingenuous by isolating Facebook data only. It's the combination of illicit Facebook data + fake news + Russia's APT that is at the heart of the problem. The fact that Facebook was warned about this and didn't work to solve their share of the problem is why they are criticized.
ffffffffffs 9y ago
here, roughly, is the dipshit’s playbook 1) never stop looking for who to blame because people hate hillary fucking clinton so much that donald trump became a viable candidate keep up the good work!
Spooky23 9y ago
That's why we used to have regulation of media; the pursuit of attention is always more profitable for any mass media endeavor. Facebook and Google are media. They are just more effective at engagement than TV. The CNN stuff is particularly telling there as their reach is very low. More people are watching baseball on a given day than CNN. Shows like "Pawn Stars" can attract more viewship than all cable news combined.
hashkb 9y ago
Facebook is actually bad for you, and a bad actor in society. If we can't see that because we're addicted to it, maybe it's worth turning a blind eye to just a little more bullshit; whatever it takes to get us out of social networks.
humanrebar 9y ago
> Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. Well, it was certainly an incident of corruption and/or incompetence. People do (and should) get fired for mishandling sensitive information. Maybe the HN community in general wants to give Clinton a pass on it, but investigating facts that illustrate the character and competence of presidential candidates is certainly newsworthy. There was plenty of similar corruption and incompetence to report on for Trump, but its generally easier and more salacious to report on his Cinco de Mayo taco salad.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  I yearn for the Obama days when this and Beghasi were the biggest scandals that anyone could come up with. Now it’s collusion, financial opacity in business dealings, sex with playmates, etc... it really is too much.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    I thought it was kind of scandalous that Guantanamo never closed, contrary to campaign promises...
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Isn't "not keeping campaign promises" in a different league from "not using email correctly", which in turn is in a different league from colluding with Russia and using government office for personal gain?
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        Certainly. The first scandal was easy for voters to see: closing Gitmo was kind of Obama's thing, from the very beginning of the primaries. The second scandal required a fair amount of investigation, but that investigation was fairly legible to voters. The third requires voters to believe what they're told by unnamed sources: thus far no one will go on the record with any proof of anything. The fourth should be easy to see, so I look forward to hearing more about it. I would love to see a precedent set that corruption leads to impeachment; I'm not holding my breath.
Mc_Big_G 9y ago
So the media should have just said nothing about a candidate who is clearly a danger to the country? How does ignoring problems work out for you in your life?
- jessaustin 9y ago
  How does doing exactly the thing that leads to all your problems, over and over again, work out for you in your life? From the middle of 2015, Trump was on every channel of TV, all the time. If he is indeed such a threat, it is because the news media made him that. Without the news media giving Trump thousands of hours of free and unregulated TV ads, Clinton would have defeated Cruz by a somewhat narrow margin. Discouraged Republicans would have said, "Well, that's what happens when the opponent is the second-least-popular candidate in history, and you nominate the first-least-popular candidate in history..." Since I am a cynic, I see that despite their professed political allegiances, the news media are quite pleased by the prospect of seven more years of political insanity. Every USA president from now until the breakup on will be a veteran of reality TV.
jklinger410 9y ago
>2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. I am really tired of this twisted version of the relative privation fallacy. Trump is worse != Hillary was good Her email situation was, in fact, an issue. Worse than Trump? Absolutely not. But even in context it doesn't belong in "as if that were somehow important" territory. Under normal circumstances (had she been elected) we'd probably still be talking about it.
- cmac2992 9y ago
  We are still talking about it and she wasn't even elected. The emails should definitely have been a scandal. Being the leading story for a few weeks seems reasonable, but its being treated as a massive, important scandal years later.
  - darepublic 9y ago
    How is it being treated as a massive important scandal? I can dig up mainstream articles that denounce the importance placed on it. Can you point me to a mainstream article of any recent origin that makes a big deal out of it?
    - cmac2992 9y ago
      Flip on fox. someone mentions it basically everyday. Fox is the most watched cable news channel.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        The "We" above is rather inclusive then, isn't it? The only time I see Fox is when I visit my grandmother.
        cmac2992 9y ago
        "We", as in discourse in the mainstream media, which includes fox and others who overplayed the story.
devmunchies 9y ago
The media gives politicians more credit than they deserve. More like “politicians are America’s scapegoat du jour”.
whataretensors 9y ago
The news media is at best entertainment, but mostly it's just straight up propaganda. Even the BBC is like that now.

ixtli 9y ago

I realize that this is tangential to what you're talking about but your comment reminded me of it strongly: As much as it's clear that there was some funny business with trump's people and russia, the way liberals are salivating over mueller's investigation makes me uncomfortable. they need the legal system to pronounce in some way that trump and his people broke the rules, in order to avoid acknowledging that the general thrust of all of this is the system working as it was designed.

WallWextra 9y ago
It's like how the 2008 election didn't count, because Obama is actually a Kenyan. People can't just lose an election anymore.
- ixtli 9y ago
  I like to talk about social issues and politics and stuff but the more I do it in public the more I run into what feels like "politics-as-basketball." It's really begun to feel like team sports as opposed to a critical analysis of conditions and power analysis.
  - mieseratte 9y ago
    As someone in their mid-twenties, I have to ask the older HNers: has it always been this "stupid," so vitriolic and hateful? If not, when did it become this way?
    - adventured 9y ago
      The Revolutionary War era was as bad or worse than it is today. [1] They spit about as much venom at each other as you possibly could. They said arguably far worse things about each other than have been said about Trump or Obama. There was a bit of comparative calm that settled in, from the immediate time after the Civil War, until the late 1960s. The level of ugliness of ideological attacks that Franklin Roosevelt saw, for example, were nowhere near what Obama & Trump have seen. That century was a far calmer era for political vitriol, than the 1780-1860 time frame, or since the late 1960s. A not amusing Civil War era example: "In 1856, U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave a speech criticizing pro-slavery southerners. Three days later, he was beaten so badly - on the Senate floor - by U.S. Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina that he didn’t return to the Senate for three years." [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/the-origins-of-todays-bitter-partisanship-the-founding-fathers/244839/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/the-ori...
    - ams6110 9y ago
      It has, but it's never been so easy to spout off to the world before, or be instantly informed about what other people are thinking. In the 1980s the media hated Reagan about as much as they hated Bush or Trump. Before that it was Nixon. But you really only heard about it if you watched the evening news, and that was 30 minutes of the day. It wasn't being fed to you continuously like an intravenous drip on your phone. It's the speed and pervasiveness that have increased, not so much the partisanship.
      - tim333 9y ago
        I'd disagree and say through the Bush Clinton Bush Obama period it wasn't as bad. I guess the levels of stupid vitriolic and hateful come and go. The world has definitely gone through worse phases as well, see the 1930s for example.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  ...which is ironic, since due to that same polarization, Presidents in general seem to have less ability (or maybe it's inclination) than ever, to effect any meaningful change about anything that matters. It doesn't matter who's President.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    Arguably that's how the U.S. government was designed to function. The new (well, the recurring thing) is that Congress, White House, and even the judiciary get more political capital from inaction and blame than they get from cooperation.
  - macintux 9y ago
    > It doesn't matter who's President. It absolutely matters when something goes wrong outside our borders. If, hypothetically speaking, a small NATO country on Russia's border devolves into chaos thanks to, say, a massive power grid failure combined with agitation from Russian nationalists, and Russia then intervenes to "stabilize" the situation, the temperament of the president and coherence of the White House as a whole would make a great deal of difference in how the crisis evolves. Purely hypothetical, of course.
    - equalunique 9y ago
      Why does this sound like Ukraine
      - macintux 9y ago
        Ukraine is neither small nor NATO, but...yeah.
        jessaustin 9y ago
        Estonia are cool, but they know they need to stay on good terms with their neighbors. John McCain doesn't run things anymore.
- apotheothesomai 9y ago
  Sure, it's just like that, because all that hacking of Democratic databases didn't happen. I think the assumption that the wrongdoing was a conspiracy to get Trump elected gets far too much attention and is a secondary issue, but unlike the birther issue, there was quite a bit of funny business in general. The birther issue was just made up a priori. The funny business, regardless of whether it benefited anyone, needs to be investigated. Once we understand what happened, then we can worry about whether it was an effort to swing the election or just a tactic for creating chaos.
tw04 9y ago
As evidenced by the gerrymandered districts intended to do things like sway presidential elections. Clearly the system is working as designed and not being cheated...
- ixtli 9y ago
  That's kinda what I'm getting at: gerrymandering is the implementation. Our legislatures need to specify and clarify rules to stop those kind of abuses, but I don't think anyone is going to jail for gerrymandering a district. My point was simply that these are the rules of the game but people seem to believe someone is cheating.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    It's generally the legislators that are drawing the districts. In Michigan there is a constitutional referendum coming up that will take that power away from them if it passes.
- strictnein 9y ago
  How does one use gerrymandering to sway a presidential election?
  - macintux 9y ago
    Nothing in the short run, but I think an argument could be made that gerrymandering in the age when digital technology has enabled very precise calculations to be made has engendered a completely dysfunctional political system. And that completely dysfunctional political system certainly played a role in the last election.
- neuronexmachina 9y ago
  Gerrymandering sways House and state-level elections. It doesn't have a direct impact on Senate and Presidential elections.
  - 9y ago
ordinaryradical 9y ago
I find it strange you’re made uncomfortable by this as opposed to a president privately profiting off the White House, actively courting a foreign power for his own gain in the election, empowering his own family like banana republic dictator, wantonly obstructing the investigation like a petty child, and being surrounded by incompetents and shady characters who keep dropping like flies for actually breaking the law and getting caught for it. If this were Nixon, wouldn’t it be an appropriate response to hope that all involved were caught? If wanting to see this kind of criminality be ended is “salivating” call me Mr. Drooly.
KirinDave 9y ago
Maybe this was a reasonable stance if you were a hardliner skeptic. But it's March 2018. 5 of Trump's senior campaign staff are indicted. Multiple Russian actors are indicted. The Russian government doesn't even deny it, Putin literally blamed Jewish people. CA's c staff was just on video talking about using human trafficking to compromise politicians and their CEO just disclosed that some state governments were cooperating with the Trump campaign. All this is astride the long understood fact that American election security is so bad that there aren't reliable records to disprove a machine that's been tampered with. What's more, the we've also seen corroborated evidence that the machines election officials in some swing States we're compromised by sophisticated actors. These machines aren't just where emails happen, they're the machines where the software that configures the voting machines runs (for some models). None of what I've said is even an uncharitable reading of the facts. The final statement might be surprising but it's well supported in security literature. But sure, you be skeptical as a well-measured and coldly logical citizen.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  All this is astride the long understood fact that American election security is so bad that there aren't reliable records to disprove a machine that's been tampered with. In this context, is it curious that no one has signed on to co-sponsor the following bill? https://congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5147/text https://congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5147/tex...
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    People could kick up a big stink about it, but the reason it won't go anywhere is that Ryan can hold it in committee in perpetutity. , isn't it? The voting machine observations aren't new. They're old, some dating back to Bush-era elections. I think technological illiteracy and States refusing to replace costly machines represent the bulk of the opposition.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      I thought they were trying to win back the House? One couldn't imagine a more evocative campaign issue, for independents suspicious of both parties like me. "We care about democracy and Paul Ryan doesn't! Tell Paul Ryan to restore trust to democracy!" OK, tell me that and I'll vote Democrat. Crickets.

zombieprocesses 9y ago

Don't forget conjuring up an external enemy to distract the public and get the population riled up. 5. Russia and Hackers and Collusion Oh My! > Not the fault of the media who would never shut up about Trump. But look at the ratings and the ad money they are getting? It's the same thing with school shootings. Massive 24/7 coverage turning the shooter into a celebrity. Then they wonder why shootings happen. Oh it couldn't be the media. They can't blame themselves. It must be guns. Another gem is "why is society so divided"? Could it be the media playing population/groups off each other to create drama and make more money? Of course not. They can't blame themselves. So it must be social media and the internet.

DerfNet 9y ago
Uh oh, you suggested "Russian collusion" might be a load of crap. Good thing people are here to "downvote" and silence you. We're literally in the middle of yet another Red Scare. You can speak out against such nonsense without being a Trump supporter.
- tim333 9y ago
  You can also note that "the heads of the top six American intelligence agencies unanimously reaffirmed Russian interference" without being a conspiracy nut.
WallWextra 9y ago
Nobody will talk about "common sense media control" for some reason. It's common sense!

Agustus 9y ago

1. Look at the playbook from an agnostic position instead. The reason the media gave candidate Trump the press was because, just like candidate Obama, sold eyeballs; Trump more so because he got both sides mad. Recall the puff pieces and the discussion of Michelle Obama's fantastic arms, that is nothing but puff and she moved the papers, so they covered the candidate more; to Hilary's detriment. 2. You need to think about the emails as compromised material and a failure to secure information. If you are an IT person that circumvents security protocols that then end up with trade secrets being exposed, would you be in trouble. The reason this was covered in the press was that it was classified information on an unsecured server. 4. I shake my head at this, Obama for America was doing the exact same thing in previous elections and no one batted an eye. Now that the people who were okay see that detrimental effects could happen there is concern. The simple thing to do would be to delete / minimize the information on your account. Just remember, the media is horrible at their job; you have people who do not have the time to dig into a story, are influenced by their editors to drop stories if they attack a major sponsor, and then write stories that are stacked with grammatical mistakes.

g09980 9y ago
So the use of Facebook data was lauded as genius and now isn't. [1] Now you got me curious if the media would be saying all the same things if Cambridge helped the other candidate get elected. [1] http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-for-obama-is-scandal-when-it-comes-to-trump http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-fo...
- leesalminen 9y ago
  My opinion is that they would not.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- alwayseasy 9y ago
  Ben Shapiro is disingenuous by isolating Facebook data only. It's the combination of illicit Facebook data + fake news + Russia's APT that is at the heart of the problem. The fact that Facebook was warned about this and didn't work to solve their share of the problem is why they are criticized.

ffffffffffs 9y ago

here, roughly, is the dipshit’s playbook 1) never stop looking for who to blame because people hate hillary fucking clinton so much that donald trump became a viable candidate keep up the good work!

Spooky23 9y ago

That's why we used to have regulation of media; the pursuit of attention is always more profitable for any mass media endeavor. Facebook and Google are media. They are just more effective at engagement than TV. The CNN stuff is particularly telling there as their reach is very low. More people are watching baseball on a given day than CNN. Shows like "Pawn Stars" can attract more viewship than all cable news combined.

hashkb 9y ago

Facebook is actually bad for you, and a bad actor in society. If we can't see that because we're addicted to it, maybe it's worth turning a blind eye to just a little more bullshit; whatever it takes to get us out of social networks.

humanrebar 9y ago

> Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. Well, it was certainly an incident of corruption and/or incompetence. People do (and should) get fired for mishandling sensitive information. Maybe the HN community in general wants to give Clinton a pass on it, but investigating facts that illustrate the character and competence of presidential candidates is certainly newsworthy. There was plenty of similar corruption and incompetence to report on for Trump, but its generally easier and more salacious to report on his Cinco de Mayo taco salad.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
I yearn for the Obama days when this and Beghasi were the biggest scandals that anyone could come up with. Now it’s collusion, financial opacity in business dealings, sex with playmates, etc... it really is too much.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  I thought it was kind of scandalous that Guantanamo never closed, contrary to campaign promises...
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Isn't "not keeping campaign promises" in a different league from "not using email correctly", which in turn is in a different league from colluding with Russia and using government office for personal gain?
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      Certainly. The first scandal was easy for voters to see: closing Gitmo was kind of Obama's thing, from the very beginning of the primaries. The second scandal required a fair amount of investigation, but that investigation was fairly legible to voters. The third requires voters to believe what they're told by unnamed sources: thus far no one will go on the record with any proof of anything. The fourth should be easy to see, so I look forward to hearing more about it. I would love to see a precedent set that corruption leads to impeachment; I'm not holding my breath.

Mc_Big_G 9y ago

So the media should have just said nothing about a candidate who is clearly a danger to the country? How does ignoring problems work out for you in your life?

jessaustin 9y ago
How does doing exactly the thing that leads to all your problems, over and over again, work out for you in your life? From the middle of 2015, Trump was on every channel of TV, all the time. If he is indeed such a threat, it is because the news media made him that. Without the news media giving Trump thousands of hours of free and unregulated TV ads, Clinton would have defeated Cruz by a somewhat narrow margin. Discouraged Republicans would have said, "Well, that's what happens when the opponent is the second-least-popular candidate in history, and you nominate the first-least-popular candidate in history..." Since I am a cynic, I see that despite their professed political allegiances, the news media are quite pleased by the prospect of seven more years of political insanity. Every USA president from now until the breakup on will be a veteran of reality TV.

jklinger410 9y ago

>2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. I am really tired of this twisted version of the relative privation fallacy. Trump is worse != Hillary was good Her email situation was, in fact, an issue. Worse than Trump? Absolutely not. But even in context it doesn't belong in "as if that were somehow important" territory. Under normal circumstances (had she been elected) we'd probably still be talking about it.

cmac2992 9y ago
We are still talking about it and she wasn't even elected. The emails should definitely have been a scandal. Being the leading story for a few weeks seems reasonable, but its being treated as a massive, important scandal years later.
- darepublic 9y ago
  How is it being treated as a massive important scandal? I can dig up mainstream articles that denounce the importance placed on it. Can you point me to a mainstream article of any recent origin that makes a big deal out of it?
  - cmac2992 9y ago
    Flip on fox. someone mentions it basically everyday. Fox is the most watched cable news channel.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      The "We" above is rather inclusive then, isn't it? The only time I see Fox is when I visit my grandmother.
      - cmac2992 9y ago
        "We", as in discourse in the mainstream media, which includes fox and others who overplayed the story.

devmunchies 9y ago

The media gives politicians more credit than they deserve. More like “politicians are America’s scapegoat du jour”.

whataretensors 9y ago

The news media is at best entertainment, but mostly it's just straight up propaganda. Even the BBC is like that now.