PostHeaderIcon More Wolf Cries

I am loving the rare brave journalists, who are speaking up to call out their profession. This one even made Drudge. Kyle Smith is brutal in the New York Post: “Keep crying wolf about Trump, and no one will listen when there’s a real crisis.”

It’s contrary to the laws of nature for a tabloid writer to tell the gentry media not to go berserk. It’s like a cat telling his owner to stop coughing up hairballs or Iron Man asking Captain America to be less arrogant. Here at The Post, our mission statement does not include understatement. We provide journalistic Red Bull, not Sominex.

Nevertheless, a word of neighborly advice to our more genteel media friends, the ones who sit at the high table in their pristine white dinner jackets and ball gowns. You’ve been barfing all over yourselves for a week and a half, and it’s revolting to watch.

For your own sake, and that of the republic for which you allegedly work, wipe off your chins and regain your composure. I didn’t vote for him either, but Trump won. Pull yourselves together and deal with it, if you ever want to be taken seriously again.

What kind of president will Trump be? It’s a tad too early to say, isn’t it? The media are supposed to tell us what happened, not speculate on the future. But its incessant scaremongering, the utter lack of proportionality and the shameless use of double standards are an embarrassment, one that is demeaning the value of the institution. The press’ frantic need to keep the outrage meter dialed up to 11 at all times creates the risk that a desensitized populace will simply shrug off any genuine White House scandals that may lie in the future (or may not).  [Emphasis mine]

…and he is just getting wound up. 😀

Once, hard-nosed city editors told cub reporters, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Nowadays, all that really matters is whether your mother advances what longtime New York Times editor Michael Cieply, a 12-year veteran of that institution, called “the narrative” — the predetermined party line that Times reporters are expected to rigorously adhere to and find evidence for. It’s what social scientists call “confirmation bias,” and if the Times actually cared about being seen as impartial, it would have fired executive editor Dean Baquet in the wake of Cieply’s revelations on Nov. 10. It didn’t.

If anyone should be looking at the man in the mirror, it’s the media. The media’s approval rating hit an all-time low of 32 percent this cycle, according to a Gallup poll in September, meaning the fourth estate are even less loved than Trump, their favorite punching bag — who, by the way, has 51 percent of Americans feeling more confident, against 40 percent feeling less confident, about him than they did before the election. The past week of post-election media hysteria is apparently being heavily discounted by the public.

Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds’ characterization of reporters as “Democratic operatives with bylines” is taking root in the American mind. Among independents, according to Gallup in September, the media had an approval rating of 30 percent; among Republicans 14. Almost everyone but Democrats think the media are biased, and support for that view goes way back.  [Emphasis Mine]

Glenn Reynolds nailed it! Finally:

Should the media be antagonistic to Trump? Yes, they should be antagonistic to all public officials. Their job is to expose bad judgment and wrongdoing, not to fawn and mewl.

That the media chose to be blasé about Obama overriding the Constitution and making law via fiat was reprehensible. It doesn’t mean the media are under any obligation whatsoever to show deference to Trump should he do the same.

For the good of us all, though, and in the interest of rebuilding the wreckage of its reputation, the media should go back to having gradations of outrage. Switching transition chairmen isn’t the Saturday Night Massacre, and going out for a steak without telling the hacks isn’t on a par with, say, deleting 33,000 e-mails.

The Trump Era hasn’t even started yet. The media should wait for something to actually happen before it declares the end of the world.

Agreed. Good stuff! 😀 â—„Daveâ–º

20 Responses to “More Wolf Cries”

  • It was indeed a good rant.
    Unfortunately those he is preaching too will ignore him and those who would benefit from reading it will leave after the first 4 paragraphs maybe before.

    I continue to wade through stuff because somehow I actually developed an attention span longer than 5 minutes if I believe there might be benefit to the time outlay.

    We now live in a pretty shallow swamp. 🙂

  • OPPS!!! this comment was suppose to go to the first guy that you posted about “cry wolf”.

    I have not read this one yet.
    At first glance looks like this one might be better suited to the mission they hope to accomplish.

  • WOW!! Kyle Smith’s piece was excellent.

    Not so sure any of these fools will listen since 1. They appear to have the intellect of a door knob. 2. They somehow think they still have control of something.

    By the time it sinks in they will be history and like the GOP a new media will emerge.

    If Trump has done nothing else he has spearheaded the rally cry of ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

    Now the people kick in and get it done by backing his moves or they lose and deserve it.

    Hopefully the Kyle Smith’s will emerge as part of those who actually choose to present a “FAIR AND BALANCED” report agenda.

  • Chris says:

    The media are supposed to tell us what happened, not speculate on the future.

    I think I mentioned this somewhere else. Commenting on what could happen or should happen or won’t happen is exactly that. Commentary. News is about what has happened. It gives facts and time lines of when something happened. The headline “Trump may usher in a new era of national pride” is not news. In two years the headline “Trump has ushered in a new era of national pride” is news.

    They are so afraid to get “scooped” on a story that they report it ahead of time. Then if it happens they get to say “see we were right”. The 80% that turns out to be BS is as forgotten as Hillarys concession speech.

    About now I yearn for a just real news outlet. As Joe Friday said. “Just the facts ma’am” With those I’m capable of drawing my own conclusions.

    • News outlets have just slid down the slope from having news, to having analysis, to commentary, to opinion, to having sponsored opinions, to dividing up viewership into groups that became echo chambers. They’ve got their hooks deep enough in the some people that I expect the trend will continue to radicalize them until they become a threat to their neighbors.

      On the other side, now that any of us can seek or distribute information online, there are also increasing pockets of awareness and sanity. I’ve got an approach to staying informed that I’m pretty happy with.

      Headline news still has a place in just letting us know that something has occurred, but the headlines themselves are even out of control. I like memeorandum.com because they are a really full spectrum aggregator of US political news. Once you’ve been made aware of an event and seen headlines coming at it from a few angles, Wikipedia is about the only place worth considering as a source of facts, and they generally have them, even if it’s just about a single incident that just happened.

      Facts aren’t really enough to stay informed. If you want to understand things like context, motive, and significance, you really need some well informed opinions. At this point, you really need to go to individual writers rather than media empires. They can be as opinionated as you like, but they need to value truth above winning. As you get to know their biases, and read from many ideologies, it gets far easier to see where the boundaries of truth must exist. I like people like Pat Buchanan, Juan Cole, Steve Sailer, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul.

      About the only thing better than that is a rare combination of civil and well informed individuals arguing in a well moderated environment. It sounds like the McGlaughlin group is trying to get back together, but until then, about the best I’ve got is Hacker News commentary.

      • Great comment, Steel. Agreed, after Drudge, Memeorandum is my second most often checked news site. Third is BadBlue, which includes a lot of well known blogs.

        I am not familiar with Juan Cole or Steve Sailer. Thanks for the tip, I will look them up. Neither had I thought to expect recent news to already be included in Wikipedia. I will check that out too, although there is good reason to believe they too censor with a Leftward bent. Are you familiar with Infogalactic yet? It is a fork from Wikipedia, by the same forces that are offering Gab as a replacement for Twitter. Supposedly, everything available on Wikipedia is also there underneath their additions. I will now check that out with your breaking news idea, because I like their agenda, and trust VoxDay, who seems to be heading up the project.

        Now, I have to go find Hacker News. As for the Mclaughlin group, or anything else on TV, I have not turned the infernal babble box on since Election night. I would rather invest the time in watching a YouTube discussion by Stefan Molyneux, et al. 😉 â—„Daveâ–º

        • I can’t blame anyone for skipping television. I only watch while I’m eating dinner, because what else am I going to? I never understood the concept of talking to the family while I’m eating. I see them all day, why would I strike up a conversation with my mouth full?

          I’ll check out your links as well. I’d’ve put links to everything in my post, but I’ve found that tends to send the comment to the great spam bin in the sky.

          Steve Sailer is someone that sends up massive racist trigger warnings for the social justice warriors, but it’s mostly undeserved. He does a fantastic job of unraveling their nonsense. You can find his column on the UNZ Review. If you check out who else is there, you’ll see he’s in good company. http://www.unz.com/isteve/

          Juan Cole is a left wing blogger who is at his best covering middle eastern related stuff. His Wikipedia bio is worth a read, even if just for the story on how the US govt tried to take him down. He’s still a bit bent out of shape over the election, but he was one of the few lefty sources that didn’t just start hiding all the dirty laundry as soon as Obama was elected.

          Hacker news is a well moderated community of tech people, focusing on topics that interest them. They try to avoid politics, but generally fail. The stories they link to are generally high quality sources, and the commentary is top notch.

          I trust Wikipedia as well as anywhere. Some bias sneaks in here or there, but facts tend to win out over opinions.

        • If you go to Voxday and look on the upper right, you’ll see they have a link to Steve Sailer.

  • As Joe Friday said. “Just the facts ma’am” With those I’m capable of drawing my own conclusions.

    I could not agree more Chris.
    OH MY what would we do without someone telling us what to think? …. LOL 😉

    • what would we do without someone telling us what to think?

      Undoubtedly, folks would find it necessary to learn how to think… critically (or if you prefer, clinically) for themselves. 😉 â—„Daveâ–º

      • YA THINK?

        Did it cross your mind that some have such an atrophied brain that is no longer possible?

        I watched 3 videos today on youtube the comments on all 3 were so brain dead … I COULD NOT FIND THE WILL to respond … LOL

  • Chris says:

    I find particularly amusing all the “MSM” reporting on the fake news sites. Demanding something be done about them. If I could pass a law it would be a full length mirror in every news room.

  • ‘Media Crying Wolf’ is becoming a meme. Here is another good article:
    The New York Times, other outlets crying ‘wolf’ over Trump” â—„Daveâ–º

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