Tag: reporting

Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

Say what you will about the man (and believe me I have), President Donald Trump has impacted the world on many levels, not the least of which being modern journalism. From the first utterance of “You’re fake news,” it was clear Trump was not going to be as cozy with the press as previous Presidents had been.

You know, when they weren’t calling Republicans Nazis, that is.

After the 2024 election, you could tell things were starting to shift. Almost a decade of parroting everything anti-Trump netted the media popularity and trust lower than that of used car salesmen. And to you used car salesmen reading this, I apologize to you for comparing you to the press.

Lately, this shift towards more balance reporting has the Leftists in the media (but, I repeat myself) fretting about “partisan hacks” taking over newsrooms, which means it gives me a chance to dive back into the muck that is modern news media. So, yay, I guess?

partisan hacks

What the Left thinks it means – conservatives skewing hard news reporting so they favor Trump and the GOP

What it really means – Leftist projection writ large

To say the media have a Leftist bias is like saying Hunter Biden kinda like drugs; accurate, but not nearly as thorough as it could be. Sure, they go out of their way to set up journalistic standards to let the world know they don’t root for one side or the other, but those standards are ignored more frequently than Hunter Biden ignores drug possession, gun, and tax laws.

Yes, I know I just used a Hunter Biden reference, but it bears repeating. Much like the fact the media lean more to the Left than a runner trying to make it back to first base to avoid a pick-off maneuver. Oh, and on a related note, the Chicago Cubs have not been mathematically eliminated from the post season as of this writing, but give it a week.

The Left’s control over the media lasted over a week and stretched into, oh, decades. You couldn’t swing a dead cat in media circles without hitting a Leftist, although I wouldn’t recommend it because it’s a dead fucking cat. Anyone to the right of Leon Trotsky was kept more in the closet than a gay agoraphobic hermit dodging an IRS audit. That meant only the Left’s position got promoted and anything outside of that was mocked as absurd because, to the ones in power, it was.

Even after conservative voices started being heard through talk radio, Fox News, and the Internet, the Left couldn’t give up the power it had amassed being the only voice in town. Soon, the powers that be decided to no longer hide the fact they were DNC stenographers with bylines, but openly embrace it. And if you thought reporting sucked before then, you were in for an unpleasant surprise, like having several root canals without anesthesia while Dylan Mulvaney recreates every episode of “Days of Girlhood” as it’s happening.

Oh, and your dentist? The Marquis de Sade.

With their grip on the narrative tighter than a little black dress made out of cling wrap, the Left made sure only their side got the prime gigs. And that, boys and girls, is how Taylor Lorenz still has a job in the media. This level of gatekeeping not only created a nearly impregnable echo chamber, but also an environment where they got to call the shots on what is considered “real journalism,” which was filtered down into journalism schools to create a never-ending pipeline of Leftist parrots wiling to squawk back the talking point of the day to fit in and maybe get invited to parties where other Leftists gathered to squawk back the talking point of the day.

It’s like Hell with a cash bar.

The problem with this, aside from having to hang out with Leftists for any length of time, is the gatekeepers strayed too far from what journalism actually is. During my lifetime on this planet, I saw the press go from the Fourth Estate questioning everything and tracking down the truth to being lapdogs for a President whose mental capacity was more diminished than Joe Biden’s. Which is really bad considering the President they were being lapdogs for was Joe Biden.

That’s why the media’s fear of “partisan hacks” taking over newsrooms and cable news outlets rings hollow to me. The partisan hacks were already there, and they lack even a scintilla of self awareness necessary to make the connection. Of course, they’ll come back and talk about journalistic integrity and standards they have to follow, but it’s all an act. If I had to choose between a room full of monkeys with typewriters and the entire MSNOW organization as to who could produce a straight news piece first, I’d go with the monkeys. Not only would they be more likely to accomplish the goal, but the room would be less covered in shit.

That’s not to say some news sources aren’t trying to right the journalistic ship. Prior to the 2024 election, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post both declined to endorse a Presidential candidate, which pissed off a lot of Leftists, partially because they felt the newspapers should have endorsed Queen Kamala the Appointed, and partially because they realized they were still paying for a subscription to the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. More recently, CBS hired Bari Weiss to oversee their news division, which pissed off Leftists even more. Even the Leftist-friendly CNN made editorial changes to try to be closer to the political center, which pissed off Leftists.

Hmmm…there seems to be a pattern forming. First, Leftists getting pissed, although to be fair that’s their natural state. More important is their reaction to even a slight move towards the center (i.e. where journalism should be). This goes back to how Leftists hate to lose control of the narrative. Once you attempt to get a neutral view, the Left loses the power to get you to think the way they do. Then, you might…dare I say it…make up your own mind once you find out how full of shit the Left is!

That’s why the Left is trying so hard to get people to believe any attempt to reestablish journalistic neutrality threatens the profession as a whole. And the best way to do that? Call anyone involved a partisan hack. Well, from where I sit (in my comfy recliner in the living room as it turns out), the real partisan hacks are the ones bitching about partisan hacks taking over newsrooms. To borrow a line from “Send In the Clowns” (as perfect a song as any given the subject matter), “Don’t bother. They’re here.”

Instead of being introspective and realizing the role they’ve had in fostering a healthy distrust of the media, Leftists prefer poisoning the well, posting public temper tantrums that make most toddlers look like Solomon, and cheering when things go south. But let me put a finer point on this. The Left want you to get only one side of any story, even if that side is more out of step with reality than Jasmine Crockett on an acid trip. And they will stop at nothing to prevent you from being fully informed. Instead of doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on their positions, maybe they should look back at what happened with Nick Sandmann when the Left decided to spin a narrative.

And I’m sure he’ll get back to you once he’s done counting the money he got from you motherfuckers.


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Something About Everything
Something About Everything
@somethingabouteverything

a Blog about Faith, Politics, Technology, and everything.

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Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

In the aftermath of President Brick Tamland’s horrible debate performance, Leftists and the media (is there an echo in here?) have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. At least Bill Clinton isn’t involved or else it would be between a rock and a hard-on. Anyway, media types find themselves on the horns of a dilemma: continue to carry water for the Left, or actually do some reporting to confirm what we’ve been seeing for, oh, the past several years.

The latest victim, if you can call him that, of this dilemma is George Stephanopoulos, former White House Communications Director under the aforementioned Commander in Briefs and current lapdog…I mean journalist for ABC News. His crime? Answering a question about whether President Tamland could serve another four years. This got Georgie Boy in some hot water with his bosses, who demanded he clarify what he said and apologize for…and I’m not making this up…jeopardizing his and the network’s objectivity.

I’ll let you stop laughing before I continue.

Anyway, the Left is now concerned with appearing objective after spending decades not giving one tenth of one shit about it. Say, might that be because they’re covering up the fact they’ve been slobbering over President Tamland’s every move until he screwed the pound, let alone the pooch? Naaaaaaaaah!

So, let’s take a deep dive into objectivity and why the Left sucks at it.

objectivity

What the Left thinks it means – balanced reporting of the facts without emotion, which means not feeding the narrative of the Right

What it really means – balanced reporting of the facts without consideration of ideology

Back when I was young and stupid, I wanted to get into the journalism field. Not for the money because, well, there isn’t any in journalism, but because I wanted to be someone who could uncover the hidden truth. And as I went along in my studies, I grew more and more enamored with the romanticized ideal of what a reporter should be.

Then, I got to graduate school and heard an editor from a local paper say it was impossible for reporters to be objective. To say it blew my mind at the time would be an understatement. After years of having objectivity pounded into my young brain, here was someone in the journalism field telling me it was all bullshit (a position this person held years after the initial proclamation).

It was also around this time that a certain popular Democrat President started to wow people in the press, which made it easier to get them to slob on Slick Willie’s knob.

And I hope to all that’s holy it was only figuratively.

Granted, the press wasn’t completely objective in the 1980s. They made subtle (and not-so-subtle) jabs at Ronald Reagan during his tenure. Ironic, given how the press is covering President Tamland, but that’s a blog post for another time. Once the media threw up its collective hands and said “objectivity is impossible,” the blending of political ideologies and hard news was complete.

And journalism went in the shitter.

Then, with the advent of “reporters” like Taylor Lorenz, the shitter is the highest modern journalism can aspire to be.

Fortunately for the media, people let them slide because they still retained at least some credibility from being seen as legitimate news sources. No matter how much they shit on Republicans, conservatives, or anyone who isn’t them, people tended to give the press the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who disagreed with the idea these DNC stenographers were calling balls and strikes was written off as a partisan crank. Even when the alleged crank was an insider.

And guess who came along to fuck it all up. Donald Fucking Trump.

Trump made it possible for people to rip on the lack of objectivity in the media, not to mention the out-and-out partisan lying. From that point on, the Left couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who was calling out their bullshit. Oh, and pissing off PETA.

The problem the media face right now can be traced back to when they decided objectivity was impossible. By choosing sides, they started eroding the veneer of honesty previous generations built, but at least they got to hang out at all the cool kids’ parties. Because that’s far more important than not being lapdogs to people you agree with politically.

By the way Leftists and media folks (there’s that echo again), that was a joke. Much like Taylor Lorenz’s reporting only intentionally funny.

What isn’t so funny is the implications of how media silence or out and out denial of President Tamland’s deteriorating mental condition. The larger scale implications are easy enough to pick out and bad enough as it is (a cardboard cutout of the President would be better suited mentally to be President), but from a journalistic standpoint, it’s pretty bad. If these journalists who are supposed to be reporting the news knew about this and stayed silent, their credibility should be fucked more than a porno star. This is a legitimate news story, but apparently our intellectual betters thought it might worry us too much to think our President has the mental capacity of a turnip, so they kept it to themselves.

At least, that’s the explanation that would make more sense than their sudden realization President Tamland is on the intellectual downside of a hill on the world’s tallest roller coaster and plummeting rapidly. Their feigned surprise only worsens the issue, an issue that would never have happened if they had been…objective.

The thing is objectivity isn’t as impossible as the Left and the media (I must be writing this from the bottom of the Grand Canyon) make it out to be. Yes, we all have biases and perspectives we bring into any situation, but objectivity doesn’t require you to not have them. It requires us to overcome them to provide as many sides of an event as possible. Of course, Leftists have made this impossible in recent years by taking the attitude no one outside of their intellectual gangbang has a valid point of view, so all they hear is what everyone else in their bubble hears: Leftist squawking points. That’s all well and good if you’re at a political rally, but it’s shitty when you’re in the news business.

The sad part is I’m not sure the media are ready to have a conversation about the place objectivity has in modern journalism because newsrooms have become mini political rallies of a sort. There are still a handful of reporters out there calling balls and strikes, but they’re few and far between compared to the multitude of dimwitted half-baked bloggers or social media “influencers” who call themselves reporters. The fact ABC News made George Stephanopoulos retract his statement (made while he was off the clock, by the way) shows how far down this rabbit hole we’ve gone. What ABC News did under the guise of maintaining objectivity is bullshit incarnate. If they were really concerned about objectivity, they would have been out front with the President Tamland story before everyone else, given it a fair treatment, and let the chips fall where they may. You know, like journalists used to do?

But something tells me ABC News was more concerned about getting invited to dinner parties and keeping access to the President than in telling the truth.