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While 2016-2020 did seem particularly crazy in how every little thing got outrage coverage, I remember similar things from Obama's presidency. Things like the w

While 2016-2020 did seem particularly crazy in how every little thing got outrage coverage, I remember similar things from Obama's presidency. Things like the week long outrage over him asking for dijon mustard on his burger. I also felt a lot of parallels between Trump and his tax returns / ties with Russia and Obama with his citizenship conspiracies/outrage. I don't know if recency bias plays into the Trump stuff feeling way more covered, or if it actually was, but I'm not sure media did particularly more this time around compared to last. Maybe it was just who the target audience for outrage was this time, instead of the amount of coverage. Not really sure of my point, but food for thought to the lurkers I guess.

colpabar 5y ago
I don't disagree that our media sucks and chooses to cover things that I don't think are important. I have a very clear memory of a fox news headline disparaging obama for taking his jacket off in the white house, because apparently that was against the custom or whatever. And I thought, who cares, and it was then I knew that I shouldn't take fox seriously. But then, when trump was elected, I saw cnn spend a whole day talking about how trump got two scoops of ice cream and everyone else only got one, and had the same realization. But I have to disagree with the idea that these stories were spread to the same degree. Go on twitter, go on facebook, go on snapchat - name a platform, and that platform will promote ideas against a republican significantly more than stories against a democrat. And you can argue that "that's just the algorithm" or whatever, but it is what it is, which is biased.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  > Go on twitter, go on facebook, go on snapchat - name a platform, and that platform will promote ideas against a republican significantly more than stories against a democrat. I had always rationalized this with the thought that these platforms had larger Democrat populations than Republican, which explains the broadcast bias. Maybe that is an incorrect assumption.
kolbe 5y ago
This is just because you didn't watch Fox. Fox and Limbaugh had been milking the idea that news should be about invoking outrage and gaslighting for a very long time. MSNBC copied the model starting about 2010, and then every single news outlet realized it was the best business model by the time Trump came into office. I don't think there's a particular left/right/whatever bent to running this business model. It's just that there isn't a lot of news that engages people in this world, so you cannot sustain a 24/7 media empire unless you wrap them up in a conspiracy or create a false narrative that there's some evil group that their news is fighting against with the truth. Then, all of a sudden, some random person's Tweet about mixed sex bathrooms becomes an hour's worth of news to engage people with.
_-david-_ 5y ago
While Fox does have large market share it was the only major media company that was constantly critical of Obama. When it comes to Trump NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and whoever else were all critical of Trump. It felt far more widespread when it came to Trump.
moduspol 5y ago
I don't think anything during the Obama years comes remotely close to the 2+ years of wall-to-wall coverage of Russian collusion that failed to materialize... and that's just the most obvious case.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ss108 5y ago
  Except it did materialize. There were indictments that arose from that investigation, and we know they were interested in acquiring Russian "dirt" on Clinton. If you expected something more dramatic or obvious, that's uninformed and naive.
  - moduspol 5y ago
    It was two years of incessant media coverage, fully including open discussion of whether or not Trump or his family members would be indicted. If you expected anything less, you were not consuming mainstream media [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908
    - ss108 5y ago
      There was a lot of debate over whether Trump even could be indicted, whether Mueller would even if he had the evidence, etc., and such discussions did make it into coverage by the "mainstream media" (I am generally wary of people who use that term tbh). It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare. It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not.
      - moduspol 5y ago
        > "mainstream media" (I am generally wary of people who use that term tbh). It's just a shorter phrase than "ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, all late night comedy shows, SNL, and nearly all newspapers." It becomes a bit of a mouthful. It's the most neutral form of phrasing all of this media that seems to lean toward the same political party, though I'll accept recommendations if you have a better term. > It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare. It wasn't just my expectations, and I absolutely do expect news media saturation of a story to correlate with its actual relevance. Instead, they over-hyped and sold outrage day after day until the rubber hit the road. And then they just moved on. The idea that one should have simply ignored all the supposed journalists and reporting to read one guy's legal blog (???) seems bizarre to me. This is a very revisionist view of those 2+ years. > It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not. I'm not excusing anything. I'm saying the media hyped this up as "Watergate times a thousand" over a two year stretch, and it ended up being nothing near that.

colpabar 5y ago

I don't disagree that our media sucks and chooses to cover things that I don't think are important. I have a very clear memory of a fox news headline disparaging obama for taking his jacket off in the white house, because apparently that was against the custom or whatever. And I thought, who cares, and it was then I knew that I shouldn't take fox seriously. But then, when trump was elected, I saw cnn spend a whole day talking about how trump got two scoops of ice cream and everyone else only got one, and had the same realization. But I have to disagree with the idea that these stories were spread to the same degree. Go on twitter, go on facebook, go on snapchat - name a platform, and that platform will promote ideas against a republican significantly more than stories against a democrat. And you can argue that "that's just the algorithm" or whatever, but it is what it is, which is biased.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
> Go on twitter, go on facebook, go on snapchat - name a platform, and that platform will promote ideas against a republican significantly more than stories against a democrat. I had always rationalized this with the thought that these platforms had larger Democrat populations than Republican, which explains the broadcast bias. Maybe that is an incorrect assumption.

kolbe 5y ago

This is just because you didn't watch Fox. Fox and Limbaugh had been milking the idea that news should be about invoking outrage and gaslighting for a very long time. MSNBC copied the model starting about 2010, and then every single news outlet realized it was the best business model by the time Trump came into office. I don't think there's a particular left/right/whatever bent to running this business model. It's just that there isn't a lot of news that engages people in this world, so you cannot sustain a 24/7 media empire unless you wrap them up in a conspiracy or create a false narrative that there's some evil group that their news is fighting against with the truth. Then, all of a sudden, some random person's Tweet about mixed sex bathrooms becomes an hour's worth of news to engage people with.

_-david-_ 5y ago

While Fox does have large market share it was the only major media company that was constantly critical of Obama. When it comes to Trump NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and whoever else were all critical of Trump. It felt far more widespread when it came to Trump.

moduspol 5y ago

I don't think anything during the Obama years comes remotely close to the 2+ years of wall-to-wall coverage of Russian collusion that failed to materialize... and that's just the most obvious case.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ss108 5y ago
Except it did materialize. There were indictments that arose from that investigation, and we know they were interested in acquiring Russian "dirt" on Clinton. If you expected something more dramatic or obvious, that's uninformed and naive.
- moduspol 5y ago
  It was two years of incessant media coverage, fully including open discussion of whether or not Trump or his family members would be indicted. If you expected anything less, you were not consuming mainstream media [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908
  - ss108 5y ago
    There was a lot of debate over whether Trump even could be indicted, whether Mueller would even if he had the evidence, etc., and such discussions did make it into coverage by the "mainstream media" (I am generally wary of people who use that term tbh). It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare. It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not.
    - moduspol 5y ago
      > "mainstream media" (I am generally wary of people who use that term tbh). It's just a shorter phrase than "ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, all late night comedy shows, SNL, and nearly all newspapers." It becomes a bit of a mouthful. It's the most neutral form of phrasing all of this media that seems to lean toward the same political party, though I'll accept recommendations if you have a better term. > It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare. It wasn't just my expectations, and I absolutely do expect news media saturation of a story to correlate with its actual relevance. Instead, they over-hyped and sold outrage day after day until the rubber hit the road. And then they just moved on. The idea that one should have simply ignored all the supposed journalists and reporting to read one guy's legal blog (???) seems bizarre to me. This is a very revisionist view of those 2+ years. > It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not. I'm not excusing anything. I'm saying the media hyped this up as "Watergate times a thousand" over a two year stretch, and it ended up being nothing near that.