4 ms·

How do you objectively report on trump without it painting him in a bad light?

dahfizz 6y ago
> How do you objectively report on trump without it painting him in a bad light? You are missing the point. Using objective reporting to paint a bad person in a bad light is exactly what "the media" should do. I went to cnn's homepage and clicked on this article[1]. Lets look at the first paragraph: > President Donald Trump's use of the bully pulpit to defy his own government's advice on face coverings has turned into the era's latest ideologically motivated assault on science and civility. His noncompliance is a symbol of his refusal to adopt the customary codes of the presidency during a crisis and his habit of turning even a dire national moment to political advantage. You can't possibly call that objective reporting. The factual content is true, but highly highly subjective and filled with inflammatory language. Saying "Trump refuses to wear a facemask in defiance of $HealthExpert's advice" is objective. Calling that act "an assault on science and civility" is a heavily inflammatory and subjective stance. To be clear, I don't disagree with CNN here. Trump is being dumb. But you can't pretend like CNN is objective or unbiased. CNN, like all news media, is a private, profit seeking corporation who will pander to their audience to generate ad revenue. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But turning around and treating this multi-million dollar corporation as the sole arbiter of absolute, objective truth is plain foolish. [1]https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/donald-trump-covid-masks-politics-health/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/donald-trump-covid-m... EDIT: Some argue that this is an opinion piece and so my point is invalid. Up in the top left corner, this article is marked as "Analysis by $Author" instead of just "by $Author". They don't label it as an opinion, and they don't place it differently on their home page. It is an analysis on current events, written by a CNN reporter, hosted on the CNN front page. This is an explicit endorsement of the content of the article, and it's crazy to say that CNN is absolved of all journalistic integrity because this article is an "analysis" versus "regular" news. The only difference is the addition of the single word "Analysis" hidden in the top left corner. This article is clearly meant to be treated as any other. I suppose that is the problem with using examples, though. People would rather pick apart the example rather than face the larger claim. Without examples, of course, the point would be dismissed as unsubstantiated. It's just not possible to change people's minds, I guess. EDIT 2: This is what an actual opinion piece looks like: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/opinions/trump-racist-tweet-mastery-media-coverage-zelizer/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/opinions/trump-racist-tweet-m... They disclaim that the article is the authors opinion, they host it in the opinions section, and have opinion in the header, etc. The article I linked is not an opinion piece.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  It's not just CNN saying that the President is lying about mail-in voting. There's a long list of news organizations: https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384 https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384
  - golemiprague 6y ago
    And where are in this list the media outlets that support his claims like Fox, OAN or Breitbart? And why the length of the list matters? We all know most media outlets are on the left, if you make a long list of farmers they might be on the right. The length of the list is meaningless when it is more about opinions than "facts".
  - zo1 6y ago
    Sure but that does not make it okay necessarily. Did you read what the OP said? The news sources are all opinion with bias and artistic flare for effect, sprinkled with a few dabs of factually correct details to maintain the aura of "legitimate news source".
  - btilly 6y ago
    You are not responding to the content of what you are replying to. It is irrelevant how many true things CNN says, or how broadly other organizations agree with them. CNN is still not presenting things in an objective way. Which means that those you would like to convince will flip the bozo bit because of the bias, and never even hear the evidence. Note that we seldom notice bias in others when it matches our own. So CNN's bias is invisible to its core audience. Just as Fox News' bias is invisible to theirs. But it can't be missed by anyone whose biases differ, or who are actively looking for whether things are presented with bias. But http://gatewayjr.org/how-a-popular-media-bias-chart-determines-what-news-can-be-trusted/ http://gatewayjr.org/how-a-popular-media-bias-chart-determin... gets it right. CNN skews liberal, and isn't particularly accurate. It is better than Fox News...but not by much.
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
three_seagrass 6y ago
One way is showing what multiple experts and news sources say about the facts, such as the Washington Post, The Hill, Forbes, the ACLU, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, ABC News, Fortune Magazine, Vox, MSNBC, Huffington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor. Which Twitter did - https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384 https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384 This focus on complaining about just CNN is a red herring.
watwut 6y ago
It seems to me that general media are sanitising Trump speech, go out of way to find coherent meaning or sense where original statement had only a little. One could argue they are making him look better despite disliking him.

> How do you objectively report on trump without it painting him in a bad light? You are missing the point. Using objective reporting to paint a bad person in a bad light is exactly what "the media" should do. I went to cnn's homepage and clicked on this article[1]. Lets look at the first paragraph: > President Donald Trump's use of the bully pulpit to defy his own government's advice on face coverings has turned into the era's latest ideologically motivated assault on science and civility. His noncompliance is a symbol of his refusal to adopt the customary codes of the presidency during a crisis and his habit of turning even a dire national moment to political advantage. You can't possibly call that objective reporting. The factual content is true, but highly highly subjective and filled with inflammatory language. Saying "Trump refuses to wear a facemask in defiance of $HealthExpert's advice" is objective. Calling that act "an assault on science and civility" is a heavily inflammatory and subjective stance. To be clear, I don't disagree with CNN here. Trump is being dumb. But you can't pretend like CNN is objective or unbiased. CNN, like all news media, is a private, profit seeking corporation who will pander to their audience to generate ad revenue. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But turning around and treating this multi-million dollar corporation as the sole arbiter of absolute, objective truth is plain foolish. [1]https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/donald-trump-covid-masks-politics-health/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/politics/donald-trump-covid-m... EDIT: Some argue that this is an opinion piece and so my point is invalid. Up in the top left corner, this article is marked as "Analysis by $Author" instead of just "by $Author". They don't label it as an opinion, and they don't place it differently on their home page. It is an analysis on current events, written by a CNN reporter, hosted on the CNN front page. This is an explicit endorsement of the content of the article, and it's crazy to say that CNN is absolved of all journalistic integrity because this article is an "analysis" versus "regular" news. The only difference is the addition of the single word "Analysis" hidden in the top left corner. This article is clearly meant to be treated as any other. I suppose that is the problem with using examples, though. People would rather pick apart the example rather than face the larger claim. Without examples, of course, the point would be dismissed as unsubstantiated. It's just not possible to change people's minds, I guess. EDIT 2: This is what an actual opinion piece looks like: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/opinions/trump-racist-tweet-mastery-media-coverage-zelizer/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/21/opinions/trump-racist-tweet-m... They disclaim that the article is the authors opinion, they host it in the opinions section, and have opinion in the header, etc. The article I linked is not an opinion piece.

three_seagrass 6y ago
It's not just CNN saying that the President is lying about mail-in voting. There's a long list of news organizations: https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384 https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384
- golemiprague 6y ago
  And where are in this list the media outlets that support his claims like Fox, OAN or Breitbart? And why the length of the list matters? We all know most media outlets are on the left, if you make a long list of farmers they might be on the right. The length of the list is meaningless when it is more about opinions than "facts".
- zo1 6y ago
  Sure but that does not make it okay necessarily. Did you read what the OP said? The news sources are all opinion with bias and artistic flare for effect, sprinkled with a few dabs of factually correct details to maintain the aura of "legitimate news source".
- btilly 6y ago
  You are not responding to the content of what you are replying to. It is irrelevant how many true things CNN says, or how broadly other organizations agree with them. CNN is still not presenting things in an objective way. Which means that those you would like to convince will flip the bozo bit because of the bias, and never even hear the evidence. Note that we seldom notice bias in others when it matches our own. So CNN's bias is invisible to its core audience. Just as Fox News' bias is invisible to theirs. But it can't be missed by anyone whose biases differ, or who are actively looking for whether things are presented with bias. But http://gatewayjr.org/how-a-popular-media-bias-chart-determines-what-news-can-be-trusted/ http://gatewayjr.org/how-a-popular-media-bias-chart-determin... gets it right. CNN skews liberal, and isn't particularly accurate. It is better than Fox News...but not by much.
  - three_seagrass 6y ago

three_seagrass 6y ago

One way is showing what multiple experts and news sources say about the facts, such as the Washington Post, The Hill, Forbes, the ACLU, Bloomberg, CBS News, CNN, ABC News, Fortune Magazine, Vox, MSNBC, Huffington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor. Which Twitter did - https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384 https://twitter.com/i/events/1265330601034256384 This focus on complaining about just CNN is a red herring.

watwut 6y ago

It seems to me that general media are sanitising Trump speech, go out of way to find coherent meaning or sense where original statement had only a little. One could argue they are making him look better despite disliking him.