Another from the “I didn’t expect that” list. The written news media is reporting reasonably effectively, we just don’t use old media any more.
The two most newsworthy things that Donald Trump did in the last two days were these:
- He gave a major economic policy speech in Detroit which he laid out his tax policy, for example.
- He suggested in North Carolina that “Second Amendment people†could somehow take care of the gun-control favoring judges Hillary Clinton would appoint — words that are easy to interpret as an incitement to violence.
If you judge by the echo chamber of your own Facebook feed, the ambiguous but shocking assassination suggestion is ubiquitous, and the economic policy speech is barely present. Is this the media’s fault?
Source: Blame yourself, not the media, for salacious Trump coverage – without bullshit
I don’t really get this, Tom. A Presidential candidate giving a major speech laying out his economic platform is moderately newsworthy and entirely predictable. A Presidential candidate hinting at the assassination of his rival is an unprecedented, dangerous and historically significant event. If anything, I think it’s been underplayed, especially given that the US has seen plenty of political assassinations.
Agree. After giving this manifestly obnoxious twat a free pass for most of the primaries in the name of entertainment, it’s about time the bullshit finally gets called. This is not about “balance”. Watch out for the hybrid warfare tricks (obfuscating moral equivalence to persuade people who actually have values to doubt those values, plus perpetrator blaming victims for things perp knows perfectly well they are guilty of…).
And frankly – the “major economic policy speech” is absurdly generous. It was just a rehashing of nonsense Ryan has been peddling for years: unfunded tax cuts for the rich that will balloon the deficit. Plus some anti trade shite. So it’s not like anybody missed anything on “content”.
Agreed the gun comment was horrific (but probably protected?). The point I saw is that it’s far too easy to fall into a (social) media hole and form views based on that. I wouldn’t have known that his economic speech had even happened so couldn’t start to form an opinion on its tosh-ness or not (see Nick’s comment).
100% agreed on “balance” / the voice from nowhere. It’s a horrible distortion of journalism that the media has fallen for.
Also agreed with the hybrid warfare aspect (and liking the coinage of stochastic terrorism for the specific second amendment comments) .
I guess this campaign (plus brexit) has pushed the boundaries of what is reasonable to say so far into lunacy that it’s hard to find any view on any of the comments anyone makes.
And yes, the economic stuff was essentially “make America awesome”.
Well, sure, there’s a risk of forming a view of him based on the gun comment alone. But the gun comment is, after all, overwhelmingly more significant than the economic policy because it is so far outside the norms of discourse and gives insight into the main risk Trump poses: demagogic violence. (FWIW, the first article on this speech that popped into my feed pointed out that the economics policy was plagiarised from Ryan).
It should be Make “Team America” Great Again.
How I would love if the rest of the campaign were performed by a bewigged wooden string puppet as a musical. This is a golden opportunity for Trey Parker and Matt Stone.