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How is that any different from major news organizations like CNN with a national reach clearly pushing biased anti-Trump news constantly? It's funny: Trump att

How is that any different from major news organizations like CNN with a national reach clearly pushing biased anti-Trump news constantly? It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are. People would have had much more respect for CNN if they had stuck to the middle path in the face of Trump's insults. We should not turn a blind eye towards some instances of bias in media simply because they reinforce our own values and beliefs.

nitrogen 9y ago
Instead of derailing with "you too", can we focus on one thing at a time? National news programs are a separate issue from secretly biased local news.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  CNN doesn't stand up and say "we're devoting our reporting resources to all things anti Trump, this is our bias, it's not secret". They simply report the news they choose to report. Just like Sinclair. People watch the news hoping to get an accurate depiction of reality. When only one side of a multifaceted situation is reported on, the depiction becomes distorted. It's never OK to do this, regardless of whose side you're on.
  - ModernMech 9y ago
    All news is based. Anyone telling you otherwise (that they are fair and balanced and unbiased) is lying to you. I don't need CNN to explicitly tell me their biases, because they are not my only source of news. It's not CNN's job to make sure i get unbiased news. It my job to make sense of biased news and weave it into a consistent mental model of the world. This let's me do things like watch CNN and Fox News and recognize when they're not telling me the full story. That's the only way to fight this kind of thing.
    - mnemonicsloth 9y ago
      If all news is biased, then what Sinclair is doing should be no big deal. They have a message they're pushing, just like everybody else. Do you believe that? And if everybody has a bias, it also shouldn't be a big deal for me to ask you: What's yours?
      - ModernMech 9y ago
        It's one thing to put your message out there without having to constantly inform everyone you're biased, as CNN does. It's quite another to put your message out there and insist that everyone else is biased and therefore unfair and untrustworthy. This is what Fox News and Sinclair are doing. They don't want you to watch anything else, because it gives away the con. > What's yours? That's the thing about bias: It's multifaceted, and often subconscious. I could list some biases I'm suspicious I have, but this list would be incomplete and inaccurate.
      - jimbokun 9y ago
        If they had to put a disclaimer in front of every local news anchor saying "the following content was produced by Sinclair Corporation in collaboration with President Trump", there would not be a problem. Just like we do with other kinds of political advertisements. The problem is not the bias. The problem is the deception about who is responsible for the content. And yes, this falls into the same category as government employees in St. Petersburg masquerading as US citizens while publishing political propaganda.
    - state_less 9y ago
      > All news is based. The truth isn't biased, so if the news reports the truth, "x said y" and we have evidence that x said y, then it is not biased and therefore all new is NOT biased.
      - mejari 9y ago
        That's not true at all. If I say "x said y", and don't tell you that "y said z", then that is biased, while telling you only the truth.
  - Bud 9y ago
    This actually isn't remotely comparable to what Sinclair is doing. Not remotely. I am tempted to say that you know it's not comparable and that you're simply outright lying, but I'll restrain myself, and instead just note that you're completely and outrageously incorrect. CNN is not dictating what its personnel report and it's certainly not coordinating forced fake "reporting" in unison by dozens of TV stations, or forcing anyone to air Sebastian Gorka, etc.
    - meri_dian 9y ago
      "CNN is not dictating what its personnel report" Come now, you think managers and executives at CNN are just playing board games all day? No, they're crafting policy and setting the direction of news room reporting.
      - jvagner 9y ago
        ...which is different than dictating.
    - creaghpatr 9y ago
      >I am tempted to say that you know it's not comparable and that you're simply outright lying, but I'll restrain myself, and instead just note that you're completely and outrageously incorrect. Obvious cognitive dissonance tell right here.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        If your own cognition weren't so dissonant, you would know that cognitive dissonance only afflicts those of particular political leanings.
    - wanderer2323 9y ago
      >CNN is not dictating what its personnel report this is incredibly naive. >it's certainly not coordinating forced fake "reporting" CNN itself may not be the coordination center, but leftist media does coordinate its reporting, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
  - digitaltrees 9y ago
    This is a more insidious problem than any one media property because the very structure of the local news organization -being small and distributed - gives them a unique credibility for most viewers because they assume that their local news team is more closely align with their local beliefs, values, and interests. People do not assume every word from a local news anchor is the exact script for the entire country. Further, it is one thing for them to use the same script. It is entirely another thing for the script to be "you can't trust any other news outlet because they all report fake news with no research or verification. YOU CAN ONLY TRUST US". I have never seen that message on CNN. You may not like CNN's coverage of Trump, but they do not undermine every other media outlet.
    - creaghpatr 9y ago
      >I have never seen that message on CNN Give me a break. You don't remember "This an Apple", one of the most elitist, pretentious advertising campaigns in recent times: ""This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you that it's a banana. They might scream, 'Banana, banana, banana,' over and over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe it's a banana, but it's not. This is an apple." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckz6EAn30Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckz6EAn30Y
      - digitaltrees 9y ago
        Fair point. I have never seen this add campaign.
        rndmize 9y ago
        IIRC this ad campaign wasn't a "trust only us" campaign; it was a direct response to the never-ending calls of "fake news" from the president and right-wing against CNN. In a world where the the president literally sends out his press secretary to lie on Day 1 about the size of his inauguration crowd, this is a reasonable (though I suspect utterly useless) response.
- wanderer2323 9y ago
  That's not derailing, you are trying to split hairs to stifle discussion. Global media is pretty clearly biased against the current administration. It seems that Sinclair is the asymmetrical response. Discussing them in the larger context of the US news is completely valid.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    It's hilarious. Just like Facebook privacy issues only blew up when it might have benefited Trump, but it was fine when Obama used that data (on a much larger scale), it's funny that NYT is suddenly paying attention to this coordinated reporting campaign when they and the national TV media parrot Media Matters all day, every day. It's easy to find a dozen examples of national TV talking heads all using the same phrases and vocabulary to report on some pro-left or anti-right issue.
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    - larkost 9y ago
      The data that the Obama campaign used, and the one that the Trump campaign may have used (it is clear they had it, unclear that they used it) were very different both in collection and in scope. The Obama campaign asked supporters which of their FaceBook contacts they thought were likely to be receptive to messages from the team, and only collected the FaceBook handles. The information shared with the Trump campaign was collected (not by the Trump campaign) was far more reaching than just the FaceBook name, including a lot of personal information both about the people who installed the "personality test" app, and the personal information of all of their FaceBook "friends". Trying to equate these two is just not honest. Separately I would expect the same phrasing and vocabulary to emerge in the media. They are all talking to the same general pool of sources, and listening to each other. What I do not expect (and smacks of authoritarianism) is for them to all be reading from the exact same script.
dguaraglia 9y ago
Well, for one: CNN isn't getting a sweet new FCC head honcho to shape policy to benefit them. Second: do you understand the difference between a free press and a propaganda machine, right? One goes against the government's views, the other one pushes it.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  "One goes against the government's views, the other one pushes it." No, that's not it. A free press is "free" because it's unconstrained by a Government or capricious regulation, not because it "goes against the government's views". Sometimes members of a free press will support the government, other times they won't. It's not a priori virtuous to go against the Government's views. Sometimes the Government is right and sometimes it's not. Like everyone else.
  - dguaraglia 9y ago
    I'd agree with you, except for this: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sinclair-broadcasting-jared-kushner-232764 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sincla...
  - digitaltrees 9y ago
    Your definition of free press ignores the impact of government involvement in the press and preferential treatment it confers on specific organizations. Where the government favors one media/press organization and gives preferential treatment, every non-preferred media outlet is less free because they are constrained in ways the preferred outlet is not. You're right it's not inherently virtuous to go against the Government's views. But it is inherently bad to push government views in exchange for preferential treatment which is what appears to be happening here and with the National Enquirer. If you are concerned about a free press, you should be equally concerned about the commingling of government and press such that the government captures certain media properties and converts them to state run media. Free press means a separation of government and press; any governmental involvement damages a free press.
  - fmihaila 9y ago
pasbesoin 9y ago
CNN is a network. It is not station ownership. Stations have obligations in return for their licensing. Some of which require them to serve the public good. Local newscasting falls in that category. Sinclair is turning that "public good" into propaganda. This is counter to the license terms. At least, in my opinion. Maybe we'll see that addressed, in court, at some point. There are also marketshare caps, created to prevent this kind of bias from gaining dominance of the broadcast market. Sinclair has been lobbying and buying its way towards circumvention of those caps. Numerous studies indicate that, with all the changes in media, many people still go to their local broadcast news station for their news, and that they have a higher level of trust in it than in other sources. Arguably, when you turn on CNN or Fox -- networks, that cable and satellite providers can choose to carry along with however many other channels they want to sell you -- you know what you're getting. This, by contrast, is a creeping menace of bias, masked as your trusted local news source. (And as other "public service" broadcasting. Whereas people reasonably argue that the demonstrated bias to one political agenda, as well as the masking of the source of said programming, is not "public service".)
mcphage 9y ago
> It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are. CNN reporting negatively on Trump doesn't make them "fake". He's a bad president and a bad leader; reporting on that means you're telling the truth. Fake mean lying, not reporting truth you don't want to hear.
- gwbas1c 9y ago
  Have you read their editorials? They're so biased and poorly written that I can no longer regard CNN as a good news source. It's a case of "two wrongs don't make a right." Lowering reporting standards because the other side lowered reporting standards means we have no good news. Not being able to trust the media (both CNN and Faux news) is a bigger problem than electing a lousy president.
- deleted 9y ago
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gwbas1c 9y ago
I'm disappointed that the above comment got so many downvotes. It's an important observation in the bigger context. I used to get most of my news from CNN, and the amount of "bad" anti-trump editorials they publish really scared me. CNN has a lot of anti-Trump articles that take a trolling tone. We (me and CNN) didn't vote for Trump, and we (me and CNN) don't like him, but that's no excuse for bad journalism. Part of a democracy is getting along when you loose the election.

nitrogen 9y ago

Instead of derailing with "you too", can we focus on one thing at a time? National news programs are a separate issue from secretly biased local news.

meri_dian 9y ago
CNN doesn't stand up and say "we're devoting our reporting resources to all things anti Trump, this is our bias, it's not secret". They simply report the news they choose to report. Just like Sinclair. People watch the news hoping to get an accurate depiction of reality. When only one side of a multifaceted situation is reported on, the depiction becomes distorted. It's never OK to do this, regardless of whose side you're on.
- ModernMech 9y ago
  All news is based. Anyone telling you otherwise (that they are fair and balanced and unbiased) is lying to you. I don't need CNN to explicitly tell me their biases, because they are not my only source of news. It's not CNN's job to make sure i get unbiased news. It my job to make sense of biased news and weave it into a consistent mental model of the world. This let's me do things like watch CNN and Fox News and recognize when they're not telling me the full story. That's the only way to fight this kind of thing.
  - mnemonicsloth 9y ago
    If all news is biased, then what Sinclair is doing should be no big deal. They have a message they're pushing, just like everybody else. Do you believe that? And if everybody has a bias, it also shouldn't be a big deal for me to ask you: What's yours?
    - ModernMech 9y ago
      It's one thing to put your message out there without having to constantly inform everyone you're biased, as CNN does. It's quite another to put your message out there and insist that everyone else is biased and therefore unfair and untrustworthy. This is what Fox News and Sinclair are doing. They don't want you to watch anything else, because it gives away the con. > What's yours? That's the thing about bias: It's multifaceted, and often subconscious. I could list some biases I'm suspicious I have, but this list would be incomplete and inaccurate.
    - jimbokun 9y ago
      If they had to put a disclaimer in front of every local news anchor saying "the following content was produced by Sinclair Corporation in collaboration with President Trump", there would not be a problem. Just like we do with other kinds of political advertisements. The problem is not the bias. The problem is the deception about who is responsible for the content. And yes, this falls into the same category as government employees in St. Petersburg masquerading as US citizens while publishing political propaganda.
  - state_less 9y ago
    > All news is based. The truth isn't biased, so if the news reports the truth, "x said y" and we have evidence that x said y, then it is not biased and therefore all new is NOT biased.
    - mejari 9y ago
      That's not true at all. If I say "x said y", and don't tell you that "y said z", then that is biased, while telling you only the truth.
- Bud 9y ago
  This actually isn't remotely comparable to what Sinclair is doing. Not remotely. I am tempted to say that you know it's not comparable and that you're simply outright lying, but I'll restrain myself, and instead just note that you're completely and outrageously incorrect. CNN is not dictating what its personnel report and it's certainly not coordinating forced fake "reporting" in unison by dozens of TV stations, or forcing anyone to air Sebastian Gorka, etc.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    "CNN is not dictating what its personnel report" Come now, you think managers and executives at CNN are just playing board games all day? No, they're crafting policy and setting the direction of news room reporting.
    - jvagner 9y ago
      ...which is different than dictating.
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    >I am tempted to say that you know it's not comparable and that you're simply outright lying, but I'll restrain myself, and instead just note that you're completely and outrageously incorrect. Obvious cognitive dissonance tell right here.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      If your own cognition weren't so dissonant, you would know that cognitive dissonance only afflicts those of particular political leanings.
  - wanderer2323 9y ago
    >CNN is not dictating what its personnel report this is incredibly naive. >it's certainly not coordinating forced fake "reporting" CNN itself may not be the coordination center, but leftist media does coordinate its reporting, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  This is a more insidious problem than any one media property because the very structure of the local news organization -being small and distributed - gives them a unique credibility for most viewers because they assume that their local news team is more closely align with their local beliefs, values, and interests. People do not assume every word from a local news anchor is the exact script for the entire country. Further, it is one thing for them to use the same script. It is entirely another thing for the script to be "you can't trust any other news outlet because they all report fake news with no research or verification. YOU CAN ONLY TRUST US". I have never seen that message on CNN. You may not like CNN's coverage of Trump, but they do not undermine every other media outlet.
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    >I have never seen that message on CNN Give me a break. You don't remember "This an Apple", one of the most elitist, pretentious advertising campaigns in recent times: ""This is an apple. Some people might try to tell you that it's a banana. They might scream, 'Banana, banana, banana,' over and over and over again. They might put banana in all caps. You might even start to believe it's a banana, but it's not. This is an apple." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckz6EAn30Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vckz6EAn30Y
    - digitaltrees 9y ago
      Fair point. I have never seen this add campaign.
      - rndmize 9y ago
        IIRC this ad campaign wasn't a "trust only us" campaign; it was a direct response to the never-ending calls of "fake news" from the president and right-wing against CNN. In a world where the the president literally sends out his press secretary to lie on Day 1 about the size of his inauguration crowd, this is a reasonable (though I suspect utterly useless) response.
wanderer2323 9y ago
That's not derailing, you are trying to split hairs to stifle discussion. Global media is pretty clearly biased against the current administration. It seems that Sinclair is the asymmetrical response. Discussing them in the larger context of the US news is completely valid.
- ams6110 9y ago
  It's hilarious. Just like Facebook privacy issues only blew up when it might have benefited Trump, but it was fine when Obama used that data (on a much larger scale), it's funny that NYT is suddenly paying attention to this coordinated reporting campaign when they and the national TV media parrot Media Matters all day, every day. It's easy to find a dozen examples of national TV talking heads all using the same phrases and vocabulary to report on some pro-left or anti-right issue.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - deleted 9y ago
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  - larkost 9y ago
    The data that the Obama campaign used, and the one that the Trump campaign may have used (it is clear they had it, unclear that they used it) were very different both in collection and in scope. The Obama campaign asked supporters which of their FaceBook contacts they thought were likely to be receptive to messages from the team, and only collected the FaceBook handles. The information shared with the Trump campaign was collected (not by the Trump campaign) was far more reaching than just the FaceBook name, including a lot of personal information both about the people who installed the "personality test" app, and the personal information of all of their FaceBook "friends". Trying to equate these two is just not honest. Separately I would expect the same phrasing and vocabulary to emerge in the media. They are all talking to the same general pool of sources, and listening to each other. What I do not expect (and smacks of authoritarianism) is for them to all be reading from the exact same script.

dguaraglia 9y ago

Well, for one: CNN isn't getting a sweet new FCC head honcho to shape policy to benefit them. Second: do you understand the difference between a free press and a propaganda machine, right? One goes against the government's views, the other one pushes it.

meri_dian 9y ago
"One goes against the government's views, the other one pushes it." No, that's not it. A free press is "free" because it's unconstrained by a Government or capricious regulation, not because it "goes against the government's views". Sometimes members of a free press will support the government, other times they won't. It's not a priori virtuous to go against the Government's views. Sometimes the Government is right and sometimes it's not. Like everyone else.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  I'd agree with you, except for this: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sinclair-broadcasting-jared-kushner-232764 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-campaign-sincla...
- digitaltrees 9y ago
  Your definition of free press ignores the impact of government involvement in the press and preferential treatment it confers on specific organizations. Where the government favors one media/press organization and gives preferential treatment, every non-preferred media outlet is less free because they are constrained in ways the preferred outlet is not. You're right it's not inherently virtuous to go against the Government's views. But it is inherently bad to push government views in exchange for preferential treatment which is what appears to be happening here and with the National Enquirer. If you are concerned about a free press, you should be equally concerned about the commingling of government and press such that the government captures certain media properties and converts them to state run media. Free press means a separation of government and press; any governmental involvement damages a free press.
- fmihaila 9y ago

pasbesoin 9y ago

CNN is a network. It is not station ownership. Stations have obligations in return for their licensing. Some of which require them to serve the public good. Local newscasting falls in that category. Sinclair is turning that "public good" into propaganda. This is counter to the license terms. At least, in my opinion. Maybe we'll see that addressed, in court, at some point. There are also marketshare caps, created to prevent this kind of bias from gaining dominance of the broadcast market. Sinclair has been lobbying and buying its way towards circumvention of those caps. Numerous studies indicate that, with all the changes in media, many people still go to their local broadcast news station for their news, and that they have a higher level of trust in it than in other sources. Arguably, when you turn on CNN or Fox -- networks, that cable and satellite providers can choose to carry along with however many other channels they want to sell you -- you know what you're getting. This, by contrast, is a creeping menace of bias, masked as your trusted local news source. (And as other "public service" broadcasting. Whereas people reasonably argue that the demonstrated bias to one political agenda, as well as the masking of the source of said programming, is not "public service".)

mcphage 9y ago

> It's funny: Trump attacks CNN for being fake, biased news, then CNN responds by focusing all of their negative reporting on Trump, becoming exactly what Trump says they are. CNN reporting negatively on Trump doesn't make them "fake". He's a bad president and a bad leader; reporting on that means you're telling the truth. Fake mean lying, not reporting truth you don't want to hear.

gwbas1c 9y ago
Have you read their editorials? They're so biased and poorly written that I can no longer regard CNN as a good news source. It's a case of "two wrongs don't make a right." Lowering reporting standards because the other side lowered reporting standards means we have no good news. Not being able to trust the media (both CNN and Faux news) is a bigger problem than electing a lousy president.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

gwbas1c 9y ago

I'm disappointed that the above comment got so many downvotes. It's an important observation in the bigger context. I used to get most of my news from CNN, and the amount of "bad" anti-trump editorials they publish really scared me. CNN has a lot of anti-Trump articles that take a trolling tone. We (me and CNN) didn't vote for Trump, and we (me and CNN) don't like him, but that's no excuse for bad journalism. Part of a democracy is getting along when you loose the election.