Trapped in a Deep Blue bubble and blinded by overweening self-regard
The chief theoretical organ of the MSM comforts the journalists who read it: “It’s not you, it’s them”
Ten or fifteen years ago, this article would have made for a good fisking. But what’s the point?
How did Republicans learn to hate the news media?
For many Republicans, the existence of a liberal media bias is an established fact, like the temperature at which water freezes. Attacks by Donald Trump, like the one he made last week on CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta, resonate loudly with his base. Scores of opinion polls show that Republicans think journalists favor Democrats and oppose the GOP. A late-2017 Cato Institute survey found that 63 percent of Republicans believe that journalists are an “enemy of the American people,” reiterating a charge that first came from Trump.
My father didn’t want to hear any evidence that contradicted his views, and neither do today’s Republican media haters. The hallmark of a prejudice is that you don’t have to prove it: You just know it.
The people who read blogs which fisk journalists have been convinced (correctly in my opinion) that Marco Rubio was right:
The MSM, for its part, has never been willing to engage its critics on the Right. To protect its monopoly on “explanation space” they prefer to dismiss opposing arguments rather than engage them.
The Democrats have the ultimate ‘super PAC’; it’s called the mainstream media.
The article strikes all the boring tropes we’ve heard for ages: Nixon Agnew and Fox News Bad! Edward R. Murrow Good! Joe McCarthy Very Bad! Richard Hofstadter Very Good! Orange Man and his Deplorables Very Very Bad!
As I said, the author wants his readers to feel good about themselves by assuring them that it is their critics who are the problem. There is no need for reform since they are good enough, they are smart enough and doggone it, [the respectable] people like them.
Related:
Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
Max Peak MSM Blue Bubble
What you see when you connect the dots
Why do journalists love twitter and hate blogging?
Journalists and Twitter redux
They still don’t get it
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