EAllusion wrote:Thanks for the news Mayan, but back in the real world, the relentless coverage of Clinton's emails scandal cost her at least several points in an election that was on the razor's edge. It arguably cost her a landslide victory and definitely cost her a victory at all. The Comey letter alone, which is just a capstone on that story, likely cost around 1-3 points. Mind you, she lost WI, MI, PA by under a point. The problem wasn't that it was covered, but that it was covered with an intensity and lack of context that distorted people's perceptions of what it meant relative to the stakes with Trump. Pretty much everyone who doesn't have a head under a rock recognizes this, which has led to some autopsies on just what the hell happened that created this mess. One common picture is the version I offered in this thread: that media sources obsession with tabloid stories, false balance, and horserace journalism led to his screw-up in coverage choices. Those same media sources, feeling defensive, have opted to blame the Clinton campaign for this. When I pointed this dynamic out, you opted to argue that the media is trying to pin Clinton's loss on the media. Idk, that seems wrong when the opposite is happening.
no. i am not arguing that the media is trying to pin this loss on the media. i am arguing that the media was complicit with the dnc and the clinton campaign in the primary process, resulting in a the anointing of a horrible candidate. and i am arguing that the media made themselves too much the center of their own reporting (including their advocacy for clinton and their hurt feelings) and failed to report effectively. further, i am arguing that the void of an issue-based campaign left the media in a pickle. they opted to report those sorry polls, ignore the voters, and were complicit in the name-calling.
EAllusion wrote:Your view seems to be that this just arose out of a vacuum and the Clinton story wrote itself because everyone recognized her being just so dishonest. That Trump is about as dishonest a candidate that has ever existed still hasn't been placed into this story yet, but I'm sure you'll get around to it at some point.
nope. i am not saying that. what i am saying is that the email story had legs, and became a bigger issue, because hillary was already a candidate with trust issues among voters. i am saying that if hillary had integrity in the process (specifically the primary process) and in her 25 year history, that the email story would not have become what it did.
in some ways i am agreeing with you on this. the new york times and Washington Post could not ignore the issue because every rag in the country was running with it. they were trapped by their own shenanigans. perhaps this is the race to which you refer. the reported on comey and others, because other rags were scooping them. though, again, if bubba had not met lynch on the tarmac, a lot of this could have and would have been out of comey's hands. you cannot blame the press or comey for this mess. the clintons made it. they need to own it.
Trump and Bannon went plowing right through the media straight to the voters and that hurt the media's feelings.
EAllusion wrote:How did they do that without the media? Go ahead and explain how Trump got his message to large amounts of people with no media involved.
a couple ways come to mind, though i am not an expert on this.
trumps rallys, in comparison to clinton's, were larger. that is one direct way. there were more, and they were bigger. while that may not amount to a contact for every vote, you can bet that it got the word out. in degrees of separation, it touched more people.
nefarious or notorious or famous or whatever - trump made himself the story. when the media reported about him, generally, it was about him. he went to the people through the media, and made the story about him. like it or not, he made the story about the wall (stupid, but he owned it) and illegal immigration and trade and the economy. his ideas, his way. the media, if they were to tell the story, were telling a story about him. he went through them, i did not say he circumvented the media, he went right through the media to the voters with a story about him. (i am not endorsing his story or ideas.) in short, trump had his ideas he wanted the voters to hear and he got it to enough of them by hook or by crook.
hillary on the other hand, was telling a story about how awful trump was. or stories about her were about comey and whether he was super awesome one day and super not awesome the next. she was relying on the media to tell the world that trump was awful and anyone who disagrees was racist or sexist. and, she was NOT dealing with the foundation and emails head on, she relied on the media to address these arguments.
here is another example. i do not think Benghazi was an issue for hillary. it came up. and people tried. but i never thought that stuck. and it certainly is not a topic post-election. the difference, she faced that much more directly. we never really got that with the emails. in fact, if anything, wikileaks did a helluva lot more to address those issues than hillary ever did. and that left the media to flounder with the subject.
"Rocks don't speak for themselves" is an unfortunate phrase to use in defense of a book produced by a rock actually 'speaking' for itself... (I have a Question, 5.15.15)