Photograph of the briefing room on Feb. 7, 2017 by Doug Mills/The New York Times
Will Rahn, CBS: The unbearable smugness of the press
The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.
This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.
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WNU Editor: The above commentary by Will Rahn is spot on .... but here is an easy prediction .... none of his media colleagues are going to take his recommendations seriously.
5 comments:
WNU,
I fear you are right. This would mean that some Americans have lost their marvelous ability to question themselves. Sad.
Trump is arrogant & smug like a fighter pilot. I throughly dislike fighter pilots and their big egos (like Trump).
But I got over it. I figured, if they had smaller egos, they would get squished by other pilots or the training and wash out. Also I take Trump with a grain of salt. Especially after reading what he was doing circa 2000.
On one hand Trump delivers. On the other hand J-school grads deliver us one Democrat after another and also take time out to tell us how stupid we are. Which is kind of cute, because they took the easier coursework in college.
I'll take Trump over the press corps any day. The way I see it the press corps is pulling a NFL-like ratings coup.
Some evidence:
1) New York Times sells Boston Globe for 93 percent loss - New York Post
https://nypost.com/2013/08/03/new-york-times-sells-boston-globe-for-93-percent-loss/
2) US tycoon Sidney Harman buys Newsweek 'for a dollar'
www.theguardian.com/media/2010/aug/03/sidney-harman-buys-newsweek-magazine
3) Rush Limbaugh Rush says if the media had done its job, he would not have had a job and been so successful.
"Journalists exist primarily in a world where people can get shouted down and disappear,"
www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016/
This use to happen a lot in the pre-Revolution Russia. People who were against the system, but did not advocate the Bolshevik way, were shouted down. I wish I had the reference.
So we have 2 data points, which span time & space. I am not going to say this is a Leftists thing. It is an human thing; it is group dynamics operating as it does about 1/3rd to 2/3rds of the time. I bet if you found another world with sentient beings; it happens there too.
Today is meds day. Take your meds.
Anon,
Who is crazy?
I would say the whole lot working for the NYT is crazy.
They bought a newspaper, The Boston Globe, for $1.1 billion and sold it for $70 million.
These are people, who are crazy enough to think that they can continually lie and people will by their product.
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