The Fourth Estate

Doug:
Welcome new readers! FYI, we publish every Wednesay around noon (EST). This has been an exciting week for Blank versus Blank. We were interviewed on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane on the WHYY radio station. You can listen to an archive of the show here:

http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2016/10/

Which brings up the topic of the media and politics. Our founding fathers knew the importance of what others had called The Fourth Estate. This is generally what we now call "the  press" and is protected by our First Amendment to the Constitution. As many have noted, you can't have a true democracy without having a knowledgeable electorate, and you can't have informed people without a strong press.

But Trump hasn't exactly embraced the idea of Freedom of the Press. At his rallies, Trump frequently calls reporters "disgusting" and "sleazy", has retracted access if a reporter writes a negative story, has threatened to sue papers for libel, and threatened to weaken First Amendment protections for reporters.

David:
I think Trump is correct in pointing out media bias. The unsubstantiated stories of his groping dominated headlines and the nightly news for a full week. Stories about Trump's troubles averaged 10 minutes on network news programs each night. Stories about Wikileaks email releases, which document more serious issues for Clinton, averaged 30 seconds.

Newspapers and reporters are not immune to slandering or libeling people. But as a major media figure, I think the standards Trump would need to prove makes his argument for libel un-winnable.

Doug:
Unsubstantiated stories of groping? Trump admitted as much in his own words. And there are many witnesses that report that each of these women told them privately at the time that each group occurred. Trump's troubles? When a major party candidate has a dozen women come out accusing him of exactly what he was bragging about, this is all of our troubles. This is usually caught much earlier.

David:
Exactly the point...

Doug:
No, that is not your point. My point is that we have to do 40 years of background checks in a short time. Your point is that that information is coming out in this short time.

David:
Please, wait until I finish the comment.

While all of these events may have occurred, and I think they likely occurred, the fact that no one came forward until now, and all on the same day, as an October surprise, questions the integrity of the story.

Doug:
No, it does not question the integrity of the issue. You can't argue that the story is true, but the timing "questions the integrity of story." That is not a thing. Next time a famous person sticks his tongue down your throat, let me know why you didn't come forward and report it immediately. It would (as it is now) be your word against theirs. And they have enough money to destroy you and your reputation. All of these women came out with their stories when Trump claimed that he didn't do what he bragged about. That was too much for them to bear.

David:
And here's another scenario, if you can entertain one. If you are a candidate, and your opponent has already made it clear that if you play the gender card, he will bring up your husband's infidelities and your treatment of the women who accused him. That discussion rattled around the news cycle for a week, and you recognize it's a major liability that may wreck the only real reason you're running: to be the first female president. What do you do? You spend months finding women who will claim that the candidate has exhibited the same behavior. The issue is now neutralized, or becomes an issue in your favor. This is just politics 101, brother. And how quickly everyone has forgotten about Monica Lewinsky and Hillary's "Bimbo" and trailer trash attacks against women who still accuse Bill of sexual assaults.

Doug:
This issue is not about sex, but consent. If you think that Clinton is only running to be the first female President, and she is winning, you may want to rethink your political strategies. Clinton's life has been in public service, and in the public. Trump has not been in government and is largely an unknown quantity. We never did see his tax returns. There may still be additional October surprises. But don't be surprised.

David:
Clinton has run heavily on the idea that she'll be the first woman president. It's a fact that is present in almost every ad she runs, even in her negative attack ads. Trump has been in the public eye almost as long as Hillary, but in a different role. You may argue that it was an acting role, but he was playing himself. If you don't think Hillary had people managing her image for the past 30 years, you're kidding yourself.

Doug:
Should Clinton's hacked emails be getting the same amount of coverage as Trump's attacks on women? Has anything newsworthy come from the hacked emails? Not that I can see. Lot's of interesting points about how the sausage is made, and some internal discussion. If anything, her emails make her look more appealing to Republicans, and less appealing to Sander's supporters. But then again, many of these are private, one-on-one conversations devoid of context.

I do think that the WikiLeaks email release has brought us into a new situation. Unlike Snowden's revelations, the leaks weren't made to reveal anything in particular. Most of us believe that even Clinton or Trump deserve to have some private conversations. How should the press deal with this information, some of which could never be verified? It has brought computer security to front of the stack. I wouldn't be surprised to see a President Clinton make security more a important priority for everyone.

David:
That last comment made me smile. Clinton, who says that you need a cloth to wipe a server clean, is now claiming to be an expert in cybersecurity. Excuse me while I catch my breath, I'm laughing so hard now.

Doug:
That was just my hypothesis (or wish, really). Hacking is a serious problem, and we don't really take it seriously. Perhaps because this happened to Clinton, she will take it seriously. We all need our privacy, from government and others.

David:
The Wikileaks documents have not been denied by anyone. In fact, Clinton acknowledged they were real when she attempted to accuse Abraham Lincoln of having made her say that she's lying to the public, and doesn't really mean what she says. When the sausage making includes information that Clinton is a dishonest and conniving hypocrite, it seems noteworthy. There are numerous pieces of information in the leaks that raise questions of how the Clinton Foundation operated and collected cash. That is, the information is there if you care to understand it in it's context.

Doug:
No one has verified that the 20,000 emails are real and haven't been edited. There are some from Podesta's email account that have been cryptographically signed that we can confirm that not a single character has been altered. But the others would require confirmation from one of the participants. There has been no evidence that anything illegal occurred. Which is amazing! If someone stole the private email of any criminal, there would be smoking guns everywhere. Trump won't even release his tax reports, and yet we see Clinton's private emails, and you still think there is any question about who to trust. Amazing!

David:
Again, no one has denied their authenticity. The Clinton campaign has been shown to have pushed the conflict-of-interest boundaries with the cosy relationship of foreign donors to the Clinton Foundation. In an exchange about whether to take donations from lobbyists from foreign countries, Clinton's team had no questions. "I’m ok just taking the money and dealing with the attacks," writes Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager. Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s campaign manager, added "Take the money!!"

Doug:
You blur the distinction between the "Clinton campaign" and the "Clinton Foundation" by talking about "Clinton's team." Very clever. But these are different groups of people. The conversation really is interesting to see how the foundation carefully examines what money that should and should not accept. Recall that this foundation does a lot of good work. They do need money to do this work. And it is amazing that everything that they do, and the way that they do it, is legal. Even when we examine their private emails. Amazing!

And yet you wonder why this doesn't get nearly the airtime as the other candidate first admitting to assaulting women, followed by women confirming his exact words.

David:
Mook and Palmieri are both Clinton campaign managers, and they were talking about the Clinton Foundation accepting foreign cash for expected access to the Clintons, and the optics those transactions presented. Glad I could connect those very difficult-to-follow dots for you.

I'm not sure if the media bias we are now witnessing represents a return to the "yellow journalism" of the past, or just a temporary bias brought about by the desire of Democratic-run networks and newspapers to get their candidate elected in a close election. Several of America's highest-ranking news kingpins are married or related to stalwarts of the Obama administration, and journalists are likewise connected to the Clintons' campaigns, past and present. Perhaps it only represents lazy journalism, as they report scandalous accusations without having to do any research to back up any of their stories.

Doug:
I disagree. I think most newspapers and reporters work very hard. I encourage everyone to support their local news coverage.

David:
Yellow journalism was a highly sensationalized and dramatic reporting style used by New York newspapers run by William Randolph Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer in the 1890s to promote and sell their newspapers. Both men were Democrats, so there was not really a partisan edge to the reporting. While "yellow journalism" is a well-known term, it really didn't play out anywhere other than New York, and the two newspapers that used it in such outlandish ways were not even the most popular newspapers in New York at that time. The problem we run into now, with partisan, biased reporting, is that most cities only have one newspaper. There are not multiple papers to offer varying opinions and news angles. The internet may provide a wide and easily accessible variety of news sources, but the internet is full of very partisan viewpoints, and really rides the coat-tails of classic yellow journalism.

Doug:
The problem is that newspapers have to make money, and many people want to be entertained rather than given the truth about someone on their Political "team." Many people don't want the truth, and they certainly don't want to have to pay to hear negative information about their side. CNN tries too hard to be both entertaining and informative. Although they have some very talented reporters, they also try to stretch a non-story into 24-hour coverage.

David:
I believe that's what I said. Then you sort of denied it, and then agreed that news media are more interested in ratings than reporting real or unbiased news.

Doug:
Not quite. Each woman that is accusing Trump of sexual assault is a story. What is a non-story is when they give Trump airtime to sell steaks. They have too many "breaking stories" just to fill airtime. Ironically, there are enough real stories to fill a 24-hour news cycle, but we don't hear about those. And I'm not talking about fake stories about the "optics" of Clinton's email.

David:
Avoiding the Wikileaks emails is not quite the same as selling steaks. The media is still the filter of news. They still get to decide what you see, and what gets omitted. Here's how that works:

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/10/techniques-of-bias-how-journalists-can.html

The media has real power. Malcolm X said, "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses. "

Doug:
Yes, we are all biased. That is a fact. But some news organizations work to remove, or at least curtail, that bias. But because you believe in a false equivalency between every "Clinton X" and "Trump Y" that does not mean that that view is valid. It is not.

David:
There is data that does not support your view. Corruption in government is the thing Americans fear most, not Donald Trump's gropes. While the media has played up the sex, they have overlooked quite a few emails that lay out a reasonable case for corruption within the Clinton campaign and Foundation. The FBI emails, which have also been essentially ignored, also note favoritism shown Clinton in their investigation. There is a justice system for a few select, elite individuals, and then there is a justice system for the rest of us.

Doug:
Again, Trump's troubles are not about "sex" but about "consent." Many of these fears are irrational. Fear of gun control?! I wish! People's ginned-up concerns don't change the equation of false equivalency. The future of news does not look good if people only hear what they want to hear. This blog is a good example of that. Blank versus Blank is hard to read regardless of which "side" you are on exactly because one is confronted with the "other" side's position. What is the solution?

David:
You like to use the term "false equivalency" a lot. Whenever you don't think something is as important as the rest of the country does, you feel it's not on equal footing? I believe that is a new phrase you've come up with to attempt to minimize or deligitamize arguments that you can't actually argue against effectively. Kind of like your phrase, "It's too nuanced for you to understand", when you've run out of ammunition.  Perhaps you need to get out more and meet people outside of your little liberal bubble. Here in Indiana, as has been done in a dozen other states, we will be voting on a state constitutional amendment to protect the right of Hoosiers to hunt and fish. In other words, to protect the right to actually use the gun you own. That's how fearful people are of gun control.

The obvious solution to the problem is more Blank Versus Blank!

Aside from that, the unabashed bias in the main stream media has pushed some people away from traditional sources for news. The internet has made it much easier for people to seek ever more polarized viewpoints, which will make candidates ever more polarized, which will make politicians more polarized as well. Right now, both major party candidates have greater than a 60% disapproval rating across the board. Whomever gets elected is going to have a very difficult time pursuing anything at all, as a majority of Americans will not be on board for anything that candidate has to offer. If either candidate also controls the Senate, and pushed ideological candidates for the Supreme Court, this country is in for some very bitter political fighting in the near, and potentially far future.

Doug:
Nah. I see bright future full of love and hope. Oh, there will be "Trump TV" as I predicted two weeks ago. There will be a pus-filled boil of anger on Trump TV. But at least it will be contained. I think people will come back to mainstream media. Even Rush Limbaugh this week admitted that he was wrong to reject polls reported in the 2012 election. So, support your local press. Now is a good time to support your local NPR station too.

David:
What do you think?