Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at unity rally in July 2016.
“Hillary Clinton is in trouble.” “The race is close.” Those are the types of statements we heard from the news media during the Democratic Party primaries between Clinton and Bernie Sanders earlier this year. In truth, the Democratic primary race wasn’t that close. Clinton won by hundreds of delegates and millions of votes, and her victory arguably came as early as the New York primary on April 19, followed the next week by the Connecticut/Pennsylvania/Maryland/Delaware/Rhode Island primaries, when Sanders lost by many delegates, which he failed to gain back thereafter.
Yet the mainstream corporate media did everything they could to create an artificially close horse race between Clinton and Sanders. One key tactic the media employed was to play up phony scandals against Clinton, play down similar stories against Sanders (his illegitimate son, he and his wife’s possible financial shenanigans, his failure to show his tax returns as his campaign had repeatedly promised, etc). Now that Clinton is battling Donald Trump in the general election, the national press are doing the same thing to make for a phony horse race between them.
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Republican Presidential Primary debate, September 16, 2015
If you are trying to decode the rather bizarre mainstream media coverage of the 2016 election, it’s pretty simple: The corporate mainstream media are reverse engineering the election to suit their profit motives, and maybe their political biases as well. Take a look at what they’re doing, after the jump:
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 election, Bridgegate, cable news, Carly Fiorina, CNN, Donald Trump, Fox News, GOP debates, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush. Chris Christie, media, Planned Parenthood, Republican Party, TV networks
Dick Cheney, CNN’s go-to right wing apologist
In 2015, the traditional news media — what we call the Corporate Mainstream Media — have continued to move to the right, in some cases sharply so. These television and newspaper media outlets are no longer reliable conveyors of facts that Americans need to make decisions at the voting booth and elsewhere. We should ditch these corporate mainstream media. Instead, we need to become our own news aggregators.
Here are some of the many examples of the mainstream news media’s rightward drift:
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Protesters disrupt Bernie Sanders event in Seattle, WA
Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton. A presidential race between two dynastic candidates, focused on sharp policy differences. That’s the campaign we were supposed to get. Instead, as of August 2015, we are getting the Entertainment Campaign featuring sideshow issues involving Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Maybe it’s the presidential campaign we should have expected.
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Leave a comment! Tags: 2016 Elections, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, cable news, CNN, Donald Trump, Fox News, GOP, GOP debate, Jon Stewart, media, Megyn Kelly, Republican Party, Republican primaries
Kenyan ambassador Amina Mohamed, July 24, 2015
Fresh off its “dildo flag” fiasco, CNN once again has lost its journalistic marbles. Once again, the subject is terrorism, and once again CNN has made a wild, unfounded claim on air, this time regarding President Barack Obama‘s trip to Kenya. And once again, CNN’s terrorism frenzy involves anchor Suzanne (pronounced SuzONNE) Malveaux.
This time, as President Obama was embarking on his historical trip to Kenya, CNN went with hysterical rather than historical, calling Kenya “a hotbed of terror.” CNN even had former Obama Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow on to state:
People have been anticipating this trip since the day that he [Obama] was first elected. So the people that want to hurt the president, you know, have been planning for the last seven years for this trip.
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Leave a comment! Tags: Barack Obama, cable news, CNN, Fox News, guns, Kenya, media, social media, television, terrorism, TV, Twitter
Donald Trump with his version of the White House
The Huffington Post published a notice last Friday stating that, from now on, it will cover Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign under its Entertainment section rather than under Politics or News. According to the notice from Huffington Post Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim and its Editorial Director Danny Shea:
Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s campaign fired back at the Huffington Post, saying:
The only clown show in this scenario is the Huffington Post pretending to be a legitimate news source. Mr. Trump is not focused on being covered by a glorified blog. He is focused on Making America Great Again.
In fact, the Huffington Post’s decision to dump Trump from its political coverage is completely arbitrary, and is a huge mistake.
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Occupy Wall Street 2011
At Messaging Matters, we have spent more than four years trying to help people engage in and win political arguments and policy battles, for example, by identifying loaded talking points and phony phrases used by conservatives. However, we keep hearing from friends who have seen relationships, friendships and even family ties come to an unpleasant end due to political arguments. Often, these arguments take place in social media like Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes, the argument and subsequent ending of the relationship happens in just a few minutes, after several angry message exchanges. But what if you value your friendships and relationships, and don’t want to lose them over political differences? Here are several tips that you can use to preserve your relationships — and your sanity — in these politically charged, social media-fed times:
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Tim Corrimal posing with a D.C. Democrat
The Tim Corrimal Show is a unique progressive political podcast that airs every Sunday evening at timcorrimal.com, as well as at other outlets listed below. Tim’s show distinguishes itself by (a) using plenty of humor; (b) shifting from topic to topic often at breakneck speed; and (c) inviting a stream of guests from social media. We caught up with Tim to ask him about his show, progressive media, the 2016 elections and more:
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The New York Times Building
Like it or not, the 2016 election cycle is in full swing. Numerous media outlets are well into covering the campaigns and candidates. These media organizations are also giving early clues as to the quality of their election coverage. If the last week is any indication, the New York Times has distinguished itself both for bias and inanity.
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Famed Hispanic Lucille Ball
Among the many incorrect or inane items from the U.S. media is the contention that, because white guy, Phillips Academy, grandson of a Nazi-loving Senator John Ellis (“Jeb”) Bush is married to a Mexican woman, Jeb himself is somehow “Hispanic” or part of the Hispanic culture. After all, Bush even listed himself as Hispanic on his voter registration form. If Jeb Bush is Hispanic because of his wife, then the following stereotypes about famous people and their spouses or former spouses would also be true:
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