Posted on 11/19/2015 10:02:16 AM PST by MichCapCon
“Sound bites usually aren’t very sound.†— Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
In the current election cycle, there are signs that a long-standing dynamic might be starting to collapse. Candidates within the large Republican presidential field appear far more willing to defy and unmask the tactics of the national mainstream news media than in previous years.
It is unclear whether this dynamic is developing intentionally or if it was thrust upon the candidates out of necessity. Nor is it clear that it will endure throughout the entire nomination process. But for the time being it is worth watching.
Over the past quarter century, Republicans have allowed the MSM to wield inordinate influence over their presidential nominating process. As a consequence, the contests have been tilted in favor of candidates said to be not too far outside the mainstream. Meanwhile, what passes as the mainstream represents a worldview that continually drifts further to the left.
Typically, while the Republican race plays out, the MSM displays a marked deference to moderate candidates and barely concealed hostility toward their more right-leaning rivals. This inclination toward moderation isn’t limited to positions on issues but also includes a candidate’s campaign style. The MSM prefers GOP candidates who avoid confrontation, considering rhetorical slugfests distasteful.
The more moderate candidates gain further favor with analysis after analysis that claims they are the only Republicans who would have a chance of winning the general election. There is a word that describes all who doubt the sincerity of these efforts by the MSM to guide the GOP to a possible victory. That word is “realists.â€
After its nearly cherry-picked GOP candidate wins the nomination, the MSM discovers all their previously hidden faults, including several they don’t really possess. Suddenly the same candidate they were practically rooting for in the primaries is portrayed as a puppet of the rich and a mean-spirited stooge for exploitive corporations.
But now a new pattern may be emerging. A number of the candidates are refusing to be cowed into submission when the MSM repeats their comments out of context or twists them into falsified meanings. Rather than panicking and retreating behind retractions or clarifying statements, candidates are becoming more likely to call out the offending reporters and news sources to expose their misdeeds.
The political barometers of the 2016 race are displaying readings that are quite out of the ordinary. Candidates who have never held office lead the polls, as voters consistently identify a corrupt bipartisan government class as the chief cause of the nation’s woes. Perhaps these peculiar elements are leading to an awakening.
A significant percentage of those who vote in Republican primaries do not share many of the viewpoints the MSM consistently reflects. When a candidate defends himself or herself against treatment by an institution that the voter perceives as obviously unfair, it is likely that that voter will instinctively side with the candidate — and in so doing might develop an affinity for that candidate as well.
Some candidates may be starting to realize that fighting back against the MSM’s politically motivated rascality is something major segments of the Republican base have been longing for. In other words, they could be discovering that openly challenging the MSM offers more than just a chance to set the record straight; it is could be a way of attracting voters.
“Sound bites usually aren’t very sound.â€
Ain’t that the truth.............unless your joe biden, in which case they’re probably pretty accurate.
I think it's a combination of necessity and choice. For years, the narrative has been that the republican nominee was stupid. Romney was stupid and out of touch. McCain was stupid and unsympathetic. George W. Bush was stupid and spoiled. George H. W. Bush was stupid and mean-spirited. Ford was stupid and clumsy (odd for an athlete, but that was how he was described). Dole was stupid and mean. Reagan was stupid and unprepared. Nixon was the last exception; Richard Nixon was brilliant but corrupt and evil.
Once Governor Palin started calling out the media, and conservatives saw that it worked, at least with conservative voters, that necessary strategy was inevitable. It's working for Trump, Cruz, and Carson. Rubio, Christie, and others have followed because they saw what worked.
It's clear that most are copycatting Donald Trump's calling out the media.
It's clear that Donald Trump was copycatting Governor Palin. As far as I can tell, she was the first politician on a national stage to do it (ignoring single issue "bias" such as Agnew's claim of a media bias against Nixon's Vietnam strategy), but I could be mistaken. In any case, learning from what works is a good trait, and I applaud all candidates who challenge the media when their extreme bias shows.
“Candidates within the large Republican presidential field appear far more willing to defy and unmask the tactics of the national mainstream news media than in previous years.
It is unclear whether this dynamic is developing intentionally or if it was thrust upon the candidates out of necessity.”
We can absolutely thank Donald Trump for this.
He has single-handedly been the one that has done this.
And it opened the door for all the other republican candidates to tell the msm to ..
And it is for this reason that we now have one of the strongest looking republican fields maybe ever! The dems don’t stand a change in next years election. It will be how long are the coattails of the repub nominee, I believe it will be real long!
{unless somehow jebbie actually makes it to the nominee, I don’t put it past the totally corrupt GOPe to finagle a jebbie nominee somehow}
Oh, and “media bias” works whenever Obola’s slavishly-loving national press corpse leads off THEIR headline stories with 36 “innocent women and children immigrant refugee” stories just “guaranteed” to tug at the cruel heartstrings of AMerica’s racist,, bigoted white christian heartstrings ... the day after Obola needs them to bring in hundreds of thousands of bitter Muslim males.
Here is where Trump really started it.
Calling Anderson Cooper a liar to his face, and the general msm liars!
A 2 min video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=114cA3Bm1SA
Donald Trump told him, “The people don’t trust you, and the people don’t trust the media.”
Trump said that the media used to cover him “accurately,” but now he’s discovered that most of the political media “is really, really dishonest.”
There are all sorts of subtle ways.
It shows up in story selection. Stories that make conservatives look bad get more coverage than stories that make liberals look bad. (they may report the latter once or twice at a time when they know no one is tuned in so you can’t accuse them of not reporting it.)
It shows up in the language used. not only are conservatives always identified as such while liberals never are, but look at the way tehy describe people on issues. (”Abortion rights activist”, “environmental supporter”, etc.)
Further, look at the way they phrase things. “Conservative presidential candidate Ted Cruz today called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...”) And there are even subtle ways of being “objective”. There is a difference between “he said” and “he asserted” or “he claimed” or any of a number of other phrases that one can use for “he said”.
It shows up in the raised eyebrow, the turned lip, the facial expression.
It shows up in myriad other ways. Watch the subtleties.
And watch the way they change the terms of discussion when events contradict their narrative. Years ago, there was a guy named Dewey Bartlett who was Governor of Oklahoma and was running for Senator.
We wer eout driving around with the radio on and they were doing a pre-election analysis the day before. They said it looked like a bad day for conservatives such as Gov. Bartlett.
Well, Bartlett was one of those who won, and the day after the election, the same people told us it was a bad day for conservatives but a good day for moderates such as Dewey Bartlett.
If he’s going to lose, he’s a conservative; if he wins, he’s suddenly a “moderate”. Amazing how he changed in just two days!
” look at the way tehy describe people on issues.”
This isn’t always a matter of MSM. The language people use to describe themselves morphs to fit and defend their stances. For example, anti-abortion became pro-life to escape the negative connotation of “anti-” and pro-abortion became pro-choice to lessen the focus on what was being defended.
“It shows up in myriad other ways. Watch the subtleties.”
If you take away their adjectives, the news would be fifty per cent less manipulative. Make them stop using verbs and it drops in half again.
With time overt bias becomes easy to spot. But the problem of what they choose to leave out, the covert bias of selective coverage, will always be there. And it’s just as manipulative coming from the right as from the left.
Bflr.
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