Today was a day off for me, so I’ll leave you all with this video on how right-wing media uses obvious bullshit to obfuscate, and how liberal media tends to enable that. The fact that the bullshit is so obvious is a part of the strategy.
Right-wing news media invents a story about a liberal politician. Mainstream media debunks it. Liberal media uses the invented story to defend the liberal politician from legitimate criticism and from the left. It happened during the Barack Obama administration, and it is happening under the Joe Biden administration already. This is not just about hamburgers.
Meh, the rightwing are going to pitch a fit no matter what. For example, about during Bush’s reign, the cost of gas was never an issue. “GAS COSTS WHAT IT COSTS, nobody can help that!”
In contrast, one summer my area was under severe drought and we had a Democratic Governor who called for people to hold off from filling up swimming pools because it was draining the county water supply and the fire trucks couldn’t pull enough water in case of a fire (and there had been several fires that summer). Oh, the whining and carrying on! Had the MAH FREEDUMBS wail been invented, it would have been invoked everywhere.
News stations have the option of saying nothing (thus affirming the misinformation) or countering it with, you know, facts.
Another example; during the 2008 political race, the rightwing had the story out that anyone who voted for Obama, should he win, their insurance would send them before a medical “deal panel”, where doctors would decide if they lived or died.
While the rightwing were in the midst of getting the low-info people all riled up, a desperately ill man in the neighborhood–who didn’t even have health insurance–shot himself in the head. Immediately, the low-info people in the neighborhood began screaming that “Obama did this to him with the death panels!”
I pointed out that 1) Bush was still president, 2) there was no such thing as “death panels”, so 3) if any president had killed our neighor, it was Bush (who they loved). The low-info people were angriest that their fantasy was spoiled.
This isn’t about trying to avoid a right wing shit-fit. It’s about expecting it, and expecting that the so-called liberal media will fall for it, rather than focusing on what is meaningful.
Which means important things will get neglected except where people make a point of bringing it up.
There’s also the issue of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
I remember one “Politics Monday” segment on the PBS Newshour, back when Bernie Sanders was a viable candidate for the Democratic nomination, in which Amy Walter could hardly construct a simple declarative sentence without some version of “electable” in it. It wasn’t even subtle. Indeed, I’d describe it as shameless.
I think that’s an example of “mainstream media” bias against anything remotely progressive.
Yeah, the way the media treated Sanders was off the fucking chain. We had people being unchallenged just talking about how he gave them the creeps, how if he got his way it’d be executions in central park…
Huh–I had the opposite experience regarding both of Bernie’s attempts. I was surrounded by media proudly proclaiming that he was both a floor coating *and* a desert topping. He could never fail, he could only BE failed! He single-handedly saved the world!