Chris Hayes: "The biggest sin in 2016 was proportionality"

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/2020-election-media-journalism.php

Chris Hayes, host of “All In with Chris Hayes,” MSNBC: To me, the biggest sin of 2016 was proportionality. Particularly vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton and the email story, and then the Wikileaks story. When you look at the word cloud of what people heard from the news, there’s one huge word in the middle and that’s (Hillary Clinton’s) emails. There’s no justification whatsoever for the proportion of coverage devoted to that story. And sometimes I think people want to defend the coverage by using the strawman of, it was news. Yeah, it was news. It was a news story when it turned out Ivanka Trump was using unsecured communications at the White House, it was a news story when it turned out Nikki Haley was using unsecured communications as UN Ambassador, in some senses. The president uses unsecured communications. Those have all been news stories. Then everyone moves on to something else because it’s not that big of a story. The proportionality is one of the key challenges here.

Extremely well said!

[rampartc]

1. free coverage of trump's every insane utterance did not help

if that trump is selling papers they must be really bad papers.

[tblue37]

3. Remember the camera on the empty podium waiting for Trump, while a speech by a Dem

candidate was ignored?

[rampartc]

8. heaven forbid! we might miss an idiot bragging about his penis!

[bearsfootball516]

10. Sure do. They had that camera on an empty podium for like, 2 hours

[ProfessorGAC]

23. That Speech You're Mentioning...

...was HRC's economic platform speech!
Then when DOLTUS finally showed up, after 16 minutes of empty podium, HRC's speech had been over for 3 minutes.
IOW, they could have (should have) covered her entire speech and showed an empty podium (awaiting the empty suit) anyway.
Journalism at its worst!

[JHB]

24. "free coverage of trump's every insane utterance"? Hells bells, they covered...

...empty podiums some 10-15 minutes before he would get around to showing up.

They cut away from other peoples' very-much-not-insane utterances to cover those empty podiums!

[tblue37]

2. K&R for visibility. nt

[NewJeffCT]

4. Part of the problem is focus

the media was able to FOCUS on the fake Hillary email scandal as one big issue. (really two issues - the DNC server hack and emails and Clinton using a private server that the media conflated as one)

With Trump in 2015 and 2016, there was a scandal or two every day that was bigger than the Hillary email scandal. Every single day. However, because there were so many, there was no one big thing for the media and the people to FOCUS on. Focus on an issue on Monday, and then it was drowned out by Tuesday's scandal(s), and scandals from Sunday were old news and scandals from the previous Monday were ancient history.

In 2020, make everything about Trump's racism, sexism and unfitness for office. Keep it all focused on 1 or 2 or 3 topics.

[yonder]

5. Great illustration of the selected news coverage we see

because of special interest corporate influence.

[bdamomma]

6. K&R

nt

[Cosmocat]

7. What this illustrates is two things

1) That as usual the democrat had very little substantive issues.
2) The media's KNOWING complicity in by relentlessly churning this and Benghazi to handicap the democratic candidate to level the playing field for the republican. It is affirmative action to keep morally and ethically deranged republicans in a "level" playing field.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

20. K&R. True, but..........

Rethug talking points on HRC emails and Benghazi had no substance from day one. They learned many years ago they can just make shit up, repeat it 10,000 times and in their listener's minds it becomes fact. In their own words, "we create our own reality". They also pump every made-up tidbit with tremendous sensationalism. Number one offenders are Faux News and Rush Limbaugh.

It's pure fascist and Russian propaganda methods used every day on our public airways and cable channels.

Sometimes I wonder if ABC, CBS and NBC have guys that watch Fox, note the content and then they cover the made-up stories so they don't appear to be "missing the story".

KY............

[yaesu]

9. tRump got double the network airtime that HRC did and that was no mistake. nt

[crickets]

11. Chris Hayes is quite good, isn't he?

He got to the point without injecting himself or a personal connection to his job as a 'craft' or some sort of apologism into the issue being discussed. It a bit shocking how many quotes on the page were from journalists incapable of rising to that level of professionalism.

[PRETZEL]

12. I like Chris Hayes alot, but I'm not buying today

someone yesterday made a comment that, for me, is the truest comment on the state of the media,

And paraphrasing "the media is only as liberal as their conservatie owners allow them to be."

No one network wanted to be labeled the "Anti-Fox" of the cable news channels.

That was the problem as far as I could see. It wasn't so much proportionality of coverage, it was the content of the coverage.

[SunSeeker]

13. Hayes himself perpetuates a false equivalence.

Hillary's use of a secured private email server broke no law or policy at the time, and did not endanger our national security. She did NOT use it for classified communications.

Trump talking to his EU ambassador in Ukraine on an unsecured cell phone, Ivanka Trump using unsecured communications at the White House, Nikki Haley using unsecured communications as UN Ambassador, all broke laws and/or federal policies.

The two are simply not equivalent. There was literally nothing wrong with what Hillary did, unlike what the Trumps did and are doing.

When Colin Powell did what Hillary did, IT WAS NOT EVEN A NEWS STORY. That is why Colin Powell recommended to Hillary that she do that, when she asked him for advice on doing the Secretary of State job.

https://www.vox.com/2016/9/8/12846988/colin-powell-hillary-clinton-email

[PatSeg]

14. K&R

[angrychair]

15. Chris has been on point this cycle

He has been genuinely impressive and unapologetic in his approach.

Props for sure.

[edhopper]

16. It was the only real "negative" story about her

there were so many bad stories about Trump that the Media felt to be "fair" they had to also report bad stories about her. Since that was the only one, they went to it over and over again, making it so much bigger than it was. And since they didn't concentrate on any of the very serious stories about Trump, they all looked more trivial, when in fact they were so much worse than the Emails story.

[LiberalLovinLug]

18. Bingo.

Sports fans reffing analogy, its called "game management". At least for hockey. No one will admit it in the league, but if one team is getting too many penalties, EVEN IF IT IS THEIR OWN FAULT BECAUSE THEY ARE UNDISIPLINED, you will see the other team "catch up" in calls, sometimes very weak calls, in the latter half, and the first team NOT be called for legitimate penalites.

US media is the same. They don't want to actually admit that one side actually DESERVES more penalties, more negative stories. More time devoted to those infractions than the other teams infractions.

[Lonestarblue]

17. And the media has not changed.

WaPo has been attacking Warren (but not Bernie so much) and questioning Biden’s fitness because of his gaffes and age. The NYT is beyond hope, refusing even to call Trump’s lies out. They will be trying their best to keep a horse race going this year, even if it means four more years of Donnie the Destroyer.

[Karadeniz]

19. He's smart and usually makes good points.

[Nitram]

21. It pisses me off!

[Pepsidog]

22. We know what the problem was, what I would like to hear are possible solutions.

[Steelrolled]

25. Give the people want they want.

It's the way news works, especially on TV, especially on cable TV. That why I didn't subscribed to cable news channels.

[Initech]

26. This is 40 years of anti-Dem abuse by AM radio talk show hosts coming to a head.

And yes I use the word "abuse" very liberally. Because if you look at the rhetoric that's been going around, that's been getting increasingly more violent and harsh by the day (offset by a hilariously ironic anti-bullying program), it's akin to abuse. And that's what happens when you have a serial abuser as Commander In Chief, it sets an example that should not have been set.

[still_one]

27. and a lot of that lack of proportionality can be laid at the feet of the MSM

[radical noodle]

28. I'd like to know how much time HE spent

talking about Hillary's emails on his show.

[Upthevibe]

29. Excellent assessment and

perfectly articulated by a young man, Chris Hayes, who's turned out to be one of my very favorite journalist....

[Prof.Higgins]

30. Same disproportionate coverage of Trump's distraction attack on Iran, including MSNBC tonight

with Rachel Maddow interviewing 3 MSNBC journalists who added nothing to what Rachel had already reported in her introduction segment. Now she's interviewing a former military colonel who has merely reiterated speculations made by Rachel and the journalists. At least the brief Rep. Tammy Duckworth interview added some perspective and mentioned impeachment issues with Mitch Mcclelland's latest statement of his intentions.

Alas, the start of Lawrence O'Donnell program is also interviews with NBC Iran Bureau Chief. and Richard Engel.

Thanks MSNBC for accomplishing Trump's mission to wag the dumbass dog when impeachment is at a critical impasse between the House and Senate. Will the USA mainstream media ever learn from its egregious failure of proportionality, not to mention a woeful lack of perspicacity? Not freaking likely.