The Media's Urge to Be "Fair" to Trump Is Killing the Republic

[Celerity]

Seventy percent of Republicans understand that Trump’s tariffs will raise prices. Why is the press acting like they’re a huge success?

https://newrepublic.com/article/198756/media-fair-trump-killing-republic-tariffs-economy

https://archive.ph/mjBNx


Win McNamee/Getty Images

The New York Times remains, by any measure, our greatest newspaper. As much as liberals complain about the way it covers Donald Trump—which I did pretty aggressively during last year’s campaign—it still behooves us to remember that a lot of what we know about the bad stuff Trump has done, we know from the Times. So the scoops division of the paper is working more or less as it should, and we should all be glad for that.

However, it’s in the way the paper chooses to explain and interpret our nation’s politics that it so often falters. The excess of caution, the relentless urge to be “fair,” the no-doubt painstaking search for the perfect headline word that will appear objective.… Oy, those headlines. “Trump, Claiming Weak Jobs Numbers Were ‘Rigged,’ Fires Labor Official.” Really? “Claiming”? Without mentioning that Trump offered no evidence to support this “claim”? I suppose it may be too much to ask the Times’ editors to emphasize what a brazenly corrupt move this was (although it shouldn’t be!), but surely they could at least sneak in the fact that Trump’s claim was backed by no evidence whatsoever.

All of which brings me to a piece of “news analysis” that ran Sunday about tariffs. The headline was “Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Money. That May Make Them Hard to Quit.” Under it, Andrew Duehren reported that tariffs “have already started to generate a significant amount of money for the federal government, a new source of revenue for a heavily indebted nation that American policymakers may start to rely on.” Hmm. OK. Interesting, maybe. But what are the numbers? Well, it turns out that so far this year, through July, customs duties and excise taxes have brought in $152 billion, roughly double the $78 billion during the same period last year.

Double! That’s a lot! It seems to lend credence to Trump’s claims that his tariffs will generate so much revenue that we won’t know what to do with the money, and he’ll be able to eliminate the IRS, a claim he’s made many times. So gosh, maybe Trump really was right about this. Uh, no. Here are a few facts and figures, none of which appear in the article. Federal revenue from all sources in recent years has been around $4.7 trillion (it varies from year to year depending on the strength of the economy). Typically, customs fees account for about 2 percent of that revenue. Commit that to memory, please: 2 percent. So that even if tariff revenue doubles, it will account for 4 percent of all federal revenue. It could double again—which, incidentally, would mean tariffs so high as to stifle much international trade—and still account for only 8 percent of all federal revenue.

snip

[pfitz59]

1. When will a reporter tell him to 'fuck off'

when Trump denigrates the profession and calls him 'fake'. Access my ass! Tell him to his fat ugly face.

[unblock]

3. Another sign of non-journalism -- access to lies is more important than the truth.

[unblock]

2. "Taxing billionaires is making money, that may make it hard to quit!"

Obviously, that logic is utter b.s.

The NYT, among other major media outlets, are always on the lookout for a pretense to amplify and spin stories in favor of the right wing.

They will often omit, bury, or downplay the left side; but the right wing side is always present and almost always given equal, superior, or even sole footing.

Remover how they framed the Hillary email nonsense as a freeroll smear on Hillary -- either she did something criminal and disqualifying or she didn't. Republicans couldn't lose with this framing, and democrats couldn't win. At best we could escape. Even when the scandal was proven to amount to nothing, she was still smeared enough to lose the election.

How often did the Times or anyone else in the media frame it as a partisan smear campaign, an illegal abuse of congressional investigatory powers, a baseless investigation that never should have taken place, that was highly unlikely to ever result in any criminal charges or legislative changes, that there was no probable cause of any crime, and no evidence of any leak or compromise of anything classified?

Even liberal commentators felt forced into the no-win defense against accusations mode most of the time.


Our media has gone vastly downhill. This has been a long-term project of the right, and they've been spending billions over decades to do so, and liberals have simply not responded in kind. There is still no apparent effort to raise the billions needed to restore genuine journalism.

[dalton99a]

4. They are his eager and willing accomplices.

[yardwork]

5. The press doesn't seem motivated to be fair to Democrats.

They weren't fair to Biden, or to Hillary Clinton.

I think it's worse than an overzealous desire to be "fair." I think their owners want Republicans to win.

[wiggs]

6. So why not call this a civil war? On one side is TSF and his enablers (includes oligarchs, CEOs, captured

institutions, cultists, corporate media, top .1%, etc) against the rest of us (which includes clueless TSF voters who aren't paying attention but who are also about to be robbed and threatened).

[raccoon]

13. You sure got that right!

[Blue Owl]

7. Covering up crimes and sweeping unpleasant truths under the rug isn't "fair"

It's called being a criminal accomplice

[Ping Tung]

8. I wonder if the dummy realizes that his clenched fist is the anti-fascist salute from the Spanish civle war.

Robert Capa. Farewell ceremony of the International Brigades – October 1938

[BaronChocula]

11. Guaranteed he's unaware there was a Spanish Civil War n/t

[uponit7771]

9. Yep, US M$M choose to be fair to face eating aliens

[Johnny2X2X]

10. My local social media sites

NextDoor and my city's Reddit page are filled with businesses closing right now. Often the CEOs or owners are citing tariffs. The response from the MAGA is without fail, "Not true, these businesses were going to fail regardless..." As if they know that business's cost structure.

We've had breweries close citing the cost of cans for their process. We've had clock and furniture manufacturers close citing tariffs. We are doing real damage to the economy that won't fully be realized for several months yet.

[Mblaze]

12. The "refs" that the GOP worked for years, claiming that the media has a "left wing bias",

Are all dead. This is a new breed of capitulators.

[Hope22]

14. ....to be fair! Seriously?

To shield him with lies…let’s try that!

[harumph]

15. The media sucks - but the folks that support Trump don't care about the facts anyway,

So it really doesn't matter what the media exposes about him. He's against the Democrats and the Woke people and they
know they're against that stuff too. They're the kind of people that instead of improving a broken system, want to eliminate it -
because "That'll show em!" They're not long term thinkers. They will not be moved by any reporting of bad things that
Trump has said or done. They do not exercise free will except to pursue their main fetish which is punching down. They "trust" the system as
long as the system = Trump. Smug bullies lacking any kind of self reflection much less remorse, they are the definition hopeless reprobates.

[ffr]

16. That last paragraph should be in bold, both here and in the article

Playing the public for fools by placating a liar's claims will end badly, I think.