Nice piece. I just had the

PeraclesPlease — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 06:26:52 +0000

In reply to Next time you wonder why New York Times people get so defensive, read this.

Nice piece. I just had the revelation that "Lock her up" worked - they managed to lock up the #1 Democratic candidate - not allowed to stray from her Chappaqua home without peals of righteous anger, "why won't she go away?" they whine and moan.

They've learned how to box the Dems in, and the NY Times is an important piece of that equation - even as Maggie Haberman protests she hasn't always been at the Times - only 3 1/2 years in fact, and was "outed" by Wikileaks as a Hillary flak, which may have pushed her doubletime to show her both-sides easy setups for Trump (or maybe she's just a relatively amenable facilitator for anyone who comes along, just Trump does more - or does she? she makes some mistakes digging for facts or framing known details, maybe allowing some loopholes that let Trump squirm through, but she's not exactly Trump-friendly).

The problem comes mostly when the Times doesn't seem to dig into anything heavily - letting those "lies can travel the world..." stories out and then possibly offering a meager page 7 rebuttal days later. They used to have the staff & intent to do the heavy lifting, the curators of good news - now they just want to position themselves as the arbiters of good mainstream news opinions. Yeah, they're not Breitbart, but what exactly are they? CNN in print? A Rodney King "why can't we all just get along"?

The MBS phone call/bone saw bit is perhaps a watershed moment for news - the President has done what he always does - dissemble, distract, deflect... Even the right wing is at a loss for how to defend the indefensible, the blatantly false, moreso than even Kavanaugh's outright lies a few weeks ago. Yet the news organ of the right, Fox, can likely run with the fake news or pull the equivalent of Communist's trick in tough times like tanks called out - just broadcast Swan Lake until bad news blows over.

However Frank Bruni's piece yesterday highlights the increasing difficulty every reporter and the Times itself find themselves in - the battles have already been won, the news analysts are reporting from a swam in a ravine, while the Make America Great propagandists control the surrounding ridges. Or bunkered down in a trench somewhere, or an enclave of Syrian freedom fighters holding out. In whatever way, it's like a daily task to deflect all the incredulous, abhorrent statements and behavior to finally get around to reporting actual news - and by that point, who's still standing or still awake to listen, to care? It's near midnight and we're still trying to get through the garbage of the day - maybe try again tomorrow.

The Russian "chaos monkey" is one model people still don't quite fathom - it's not to win the news, it's to overwhelm it, disrupt, undercut, marginalize it. It's not a two-sides proposition - it's a zero-side wins. As long as people go about their business and say "it's too complicated", that's success. Illuminating the darkness isn't enough either. Social media and news onslaught is a different type of challenge and enemy.

dagblog - Comments for "Next time you wonder why New York Times people get so defensive, read this. "

Nice piece. I just had the