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forgotmylogin

(7,530 posts)
Thu Oct 20, 2016, 11:08 AM Oct 2016

A "Fair and Balanced" discussion of the media from Quora

I thought this was an interesting discussion by someone who has worked for the media for a long time.

Is the mainstream media colluding with the Clinton campaign?

The current presidential campaign isn’t a good litmus test for whether the MSM is fair and balanced, though, because Trump is uniquely unfit to be President, and is seen as an actual danger to the Republican by educated people—Republican and Democrat and Independent.

It would be fairer to compare, say, the campaign between Obama and Romney in 2012. Romney may be a stiff and not my choice, but he was certainly competent, had a stable temperament, and of course deserves great credit for being the father of the Affordable Care Act.

So…was the press in the tank for Obama? Did it report surrilous scandals and rumors about Romney as if they were fact? Did it give Obama a pass on everything? I don’t think so, though of course to a right wing ideologue it may seem biased to not have given the story about him being a Kenyan Muslim mole as much play as some would have liked. However, the fact of it all being a total fabrication might have influenced it not getting as much play as needed.

Which brings us to the current election. See, here the problem with “fair and balanced” treatment of the two candidates is that one is a valid candidate, much like Romney was—intelligent, knowledgeable about governance and politics, charisma-impaired, but obviously able to do the job. While the other candidate is a con artist denounced by a truly remarkable number of Republican foreign policy experts, Republican economics mavens, and Republican politicians like Jeff Flake who have a record of personal integrity. Not to mention the rejection of the Republican candidate by over half of white male college degreed Republican voters.


https://www.quora.com/Is-the-mainstream-media-colluding-with-the-Clinton-campaign
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