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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT mag - "How the Trump Era Broke the Sunday-Morning News Show"
Any number of hallowed political and media institutions fell apart. So why should the most hallowed political-media institution of them all escape unscathed?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/magazine/how-the-trump-era-broke-the-sunday-morning-news-show.html
(newsflash to the NYT - the Sunday morning news shows were broken long before trump - bothsideserism drove me to turning them off 11 years ago - the bush era did them in, in my view)
By Jason Zengerle
Feb. 11, 2021
On the Sunday after Joe Bidens inauguration, Rand Paul appeared on ABCs This Week With George Stephanopoulos to make baseless claims of election fraud and to lecture the host on how to do his job. Hey, George, George, George! the Republican senator from Kentucky sputtered at Stephanopoulos, who had repeatedly tried and failed to get Paul to acknowledge that Biden had not stolen Novembers election. Where you make a mistake, Paul continued, is that people coming from the liberal side like you, you immediately say everythings a lie instead of saying there are two sides to everything. Historically what would happen is if I said that I thought that there was fraud, you would interview someone else who said there wasnt. But now you insert yourself in the middle and say that the absolute fact is that everything that Im saying is a lie.
Paul was not necessarily wrong in his criticism. Ever since Tim Russert became the host of NBCs Meet the Press in 1991 and began subjecting Democrats and Republicans to his tough but fair questions, the contemporary Sunday-morning public-affairs show anchors have cast themselves as facilitators of a point-counterpoint format. Its not my job to express my opinions, Stephanopoulos told The Hartford Courant upon being handed the reins of This Week in 2002. Its my job to ask the right questions, to make sure that people learn something from the program, to present all sides of the story and let people make up their own minds.
But nearly two decades later, Stephanopouloss approach was untenable. Senator Paul, let me begin with a threshold question for you, he said at the interviews outset. This election was not stolen, do you accept that fact? Paul dodged the question to claim that there were people who voted twice and dead people who voted and illegal aliens who voted. Stephanopoulos repeated, Cant you just say the words The election was not stolen? Paul could not; instead he gave Stephanopoulos his history lesson about Sunday shows. Youre forgetting who you are as a journalist if you think theres only one side, Paul taunted.
The interview was barely an hour old before Paul posted a link on Twitter. Partisan Democrats in the media think they can get away with just calling Republicans liars because they dont agree with us, he wrote. Watch me stand up to one here. Three days later, The Federalist ran a story headlined: Rand Pauls Cage Match With George Stephanopoulos Is a Pattern Everyone on the Right Should Follow.
The Donald Trump years have broken any number of hallowed political and media institutions, so why should the most hallowed political-media institution of them all, the Sunday show, escape unscathed? Yes, those self-important shows with their self-important anchors have never been as crucial to our constitutional system as they like to imagine. But they have at least provided a refuge from the soft-focused fecklessness of the networks evening news and the shrieking of the prime-time carnival barkers on cable.
snip
sorry about the paywall.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Republicans create a second side out of thin air and try to claim it's a valid argument.
No rational reasonable person claims this election was fraudulent. Republicans claim it is in bad faith, to create an argument where there is none. They want to create their own reality that things are as they want them to be. You can see that on the left sometimes, but not nearly to the extent the Republicans do. On the left it is just from people or bloggers or writers, but on the right it is from elected officials.
dalton99a
(81,578 posts)Even worse, the shows became platforms for disinformation. In October 2019, Chuck Todd invited Ron Johnson, a Republican senator from Wisconsin, on Meet the Press to discuss the revelation that Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine unless the countrys president agreed to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden. Johnson previously told The Wall Street Journal that he winced when he learned those two issues were connected. But when Todd asked about that report What made you wince? Johnson launched into a conspiracy theory about the origins of Robert Muellers Russia investigation. I have no idea why were going here, Todd complained. ...
Last month, more than three dozen progressive groups wrote an open letter to members of the media calling on them to interview only those elected officials who publicly concede that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair, and that claims to the contrary are false. In other words, the groups wanted journalists to give Republicans who lie about election fraud the same treatment Twitter and Facebook gave Trump: deplatforming them. ...
Todd again hosted Ron Johnson, who again used the opportunity to spew nonsense, boasting about a recent hearing he had held to look into allegations of voter fraud. The fact of the matter is that we have an unsustainable state of affairs in this country where we have tens of millions of people that do not view this election result as legitimate, Johnson said at one point.
Then why dont you hold hearings about the 9/11 truthers? Todd asked. How about the moon landing? Are you going to hold hearings on that?
It was a good line, and Todd seemed pleased with himself. It did not occur to Todd, however, that the same question could be asked of him. If Meet the Press is going to have guests like Johnson, why doesnt it host 9/11 truthers and moon-landing conspiracists as well?
NRaleighLiberal
(60,019 posts)did 95% of the mag crossword in half an hour - stuck on half a dozen clues!
have a great day...
Cosmocat
(14,572 posts)they were the same as all the other media in doing the democrats bad / republicans are the GREATEST coin flip bullshit and Russert was one of the best at it ...
Dude drilled Ds relentlessly while giving Rs one or two modestly challenging questions then easing off the gas.
And, they never really hid their bias - going back to the Bushco years the ratio of Rs to Ds was always in the 60-40 at best range.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,019 posts)Wednesdays
(17,408 posts)After all, look at their commercial sponsors to see who was their core audience. I remember back in the day, the shows were littered with ads by Merryl Lynch, E.F. Hutton, Alcoa, and other corporate giants.
niyad
(113,556 posts)NRaleighLiberal
(60,019 posts)niyad
(113,556 posts)Zen". And have not even watched that in ages.