Biden rips media for economy coverage: ‘Start reporting it the right way’
Biden rips media for economy coverage: ‘Start reporting it the right way’
President Biden criticized news coverage of the U.S. economy as he faces growing backlash from voters over his handling of inflation. In brief remarks Saturday before boarding the presidential heli…
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I think this is one of the things Trump got right: there should be a more adversarial relationship between politicians and the press. Of course Trump was adversarial because he wanted to do awful things, and also he wanted to set up a state media apparatus, but still.
Well, Trump was adversarial to certain media outlets. Others, like FOX News, were All-But-State TV. They'd parrot whatever he said as the god given truth and he'd parrot whatever they said as truth. If Trump said that the election was stolen and COVID was no big deal, that's how FOX reported it. If they said that vaccines were dangerous and that immigrants were replacing "real Americans" (read: white people), he'd parrot that right back.
Also, adversarial relationships are good to a point. Biden is asking the media to cover things honestly. Trump was calling the media "The Enemy Of The People" and threatening to go after them (or encouraged his supporters to go after them) unless they fell in line. There's a huge difference between those two adversarial relationships.
Do we have to label calling people on their shit "adversarial"? To me that word has a connotation of reacting unreasonably.
One might just call it "reporting" 😉
I have the same connotation with word adversarial...
I would think combative is closer to your connotation and adversarial is judgement neutral.
What the hell are you talking about? Trump did massive damage to journalistic integrity as a whole. You ever hear the words "fake news" before he used it?
Trump did massive damage to journalistic integrity as a whole
Not nearly as much damage as access journalism (e.g. Maggie Haberman style palace intrigue stories) did. The press and politicians being buddy-buddy is a disaster for journalistic integrity.
You ever hear the words “fake news” before he used it?
I did. The first time I heard it was on the PBS NewsHour, second half of 2016. Trump didn't really start using the term until 2017/late 2016, IIRC. They were using the term to describe news sites that felt like "official" news sites but were not journalistic, using social media to spread and get ad revenue.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Trump's press strategy was good. Overall it was harmful; but the adversarial nature specifically was good.