Taibbi: The News Media Is Destroying Itself

I think you have to view it as Taibbi specifically speaking about one side of the coverage spectrum.

Not trying to start a political war here, but I absolutely hate Trump, not because he's Republican but because I've always thought he's just a horrible human being. Anyway, to be fair, there was tons of coverage excoriating him for that ridiculous photo op. Taibi is pretty clear in his disdain for Trump at the outset of the column.

 

Well it isn’t all that interesting, per se, unless you believe Trump was sending a secret message to a cult when he did it.

I thought his photo op was a ludicrous stunt and it was immediately marked as such by the supermajority of the media and America.

 

The newspaper media has already destroyed itself with a print product worth about a dime, not $2.50 or whatever it costs. And hard to navigate internet sites worth about .10 to .20 a day. The problem is TV. Like Ted Koppel said, these shows are destroying the country. The shows on all the cable news channels are propaganda at best. They are divisive, false, terrible. Yes the newspapers do have slants, but they always have had them and they are more subtle than cable news shows which have ruined America with their hate/misfacts/misguided opinions. No news at all; only screaming b.s.

 

Sort of my point.

A lot of what Taibbi complains about is a function of legacy news operations trying to cover a president who lies outrageously every time he speaks.

It's driven most of the big outlets crazy since he came down the escalator.

And to write a piece like this without framing that challenge - in addition to libertarian hobbyhorses like 'cancel culture' - weakens the piece.

Taibbi is in the Rogan Zone now - profitably in the "center," but only ever firing left.

 

Fair enough.

My opinion on Trump has basically been, look, you can just de-legitimize the guy by stop pandering to his attention whore-seeking ways and just let the malignancy rot on its own. But I suppose we have an obligation to cover news, whether it's vomit-inducing or not.

 

Have zero reference point to this phrase ... but it's a funny phrase to read out of the blue.

 

Songbird-

That came out of a newsroom- where I learned a lot of my best shit (and certainly the most ribald humor).

Hemingway once got in a fistfight over the Oxford comma, if I am not mistaken.

That's the kind of thing Taibbi would do too.

When do we get to talk about Matt's rather untidy Russian past? I'll hang up and listen.

 

How people react to and perceive truth is relative. That doesn't necessarily mean truth itself is relative.

 

His replacement, Kathleen Kingsbury, issued a staff directive essentially telling employees they now had a veto over anything that made them uncomfortable: “Anyone who sees any piece of Opinion journalism, headlines, social posts, photos—you name it—that gives you the slightest pause, please call or text me immediately.”

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That's pretty terrifying.

As for "why doesn't Taibbi go after conservative media like he goes after liberal media?" ... at least Tucker Carlson provided an unflinching look at the earliest and worstest lootings and savage beatings in a segment that was as close to the center as Fox will allow itself to get. Sure it was an opinion piece but it was straight reporting. It was the truth of the moment during those 24-48 hours. Has the liberal media gone there yet? Maybe that's what Taibbi's really clamoring for ... for the liberal media to show some fucking balls in what's becoming, and I use this word again, terrifying, cancel-culture.

 

Yeah, well, that was a pretty bad fuckup and why they did that makes no sense.

The video I posted was probably the most honest thing Tucker has done that I can remember.

But then he -- or perhaps his overlords and he'll claim ignorance -- went too far which is too bad.

Maybe I'll just stick to Shep Smith's version of central conservative intellectual honesty.

 

Part of this is the fact that we have two extremely weak political parties in this nation. Idk if I'd go as far as to say the two-party system doesn't work because I see the need for it.

The Democratic party has had awful, weak, disingenuous candidates for President the past two years (I should say "will have") and the Republican party has adopted Fox News as its mouthpiece. Trump is a horrible person, horrible president and the Republicans didn't have the courage to refuse to acquiesce to its fringes and allow him to be their candidate. The Democrats obviously aren't gonna do anything about it either.

Therefore, the cable news channels don't have much intelligent discourse to really cover and they devolve into "news entertainment."

Or maybe it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg thing with this. I can't tell