Althouse: The problem with anti-Trump bias is that the media are so "ham-handed about it... that it won't work."

September 12, 2016

The problem with anti-Trump bias is that the media are so "ham-handed about it... that it won't work."

Says Bob Wright (talking with me):

57 comments:

David Begley said...: Try outright advocates and shills. See, e.g., refusal to even discuss serious and obvious health issues.; 9/12/16, 9:17 AM
campy said...: Good plan. If Wright can convince the swing voters that the media wouldn't push anti-Trump bias because it wouldn't work, then they'll be able to push anti-Trump bias and have it work.; 9/12/16, 9:20 AM
Curious George said...: I thought "okay, I can handle 23 seconds."

Barely made it to the end.; 9/12/16, 9:21 AM
rehajm said...: Media says, "Did you see what we got away with in the last presidential election? Did you see how easy it was for us?"

Not having to be subtle and nuanced is easily mistaken for ham-handedness.; 9/12/16, 9:21 AM
Nonapod said...: The problem with media bias is that there's media bias.; 9/12/16, 9:22 AM
Curious George said...: This issue isn't of fairness or factual accuracy. Nope, it's about agenda and the effectiveness of pushing it. Wright is living proof that the left has no problem with that.

You see these slips all the time. Hell, Andrea Mitchell has referred to the MSM as "our side"; 9/12/16, 9:26 AM
Roughcoat said...: It WILL work.; 9/12/16, 9:26 AM
Ann Althouse said...: I'll try to find the shortest good clip.

Meade wanted me to do the one second where I say "behooves" in a funny voice.; 9/12/16, 9:27 AM
Nonapod said...: Naturally the media always tries their best to hide their leftward bias. Trump, by just being Trump, exposes media bias like a blacklight in a seedy motel room.

By challenging so many assumptions and breaking so many unwritten rules it's possible that Trump may have done more unintentional good for the state of political discourse in this country than people currently realize.; 9/12/16, 9:31 AM
khesanh0802 said...: I am glad you posted this. Where would we be without independent sources and social media? We would be at the mercy of Clinton's campaign and they haven't told the truth since the Ark. It's very clear from yesterday's events that it is very difficult to spin what we can see with our own eyes. It makes the lies so obvious. Can you imagine if someone had videoed and released Clinton's FBI session?

Also people keep asking "Where's Bill?". So far no answer.; 9/12/16, 9:33 AM
Curious George said...: "Ann Althouse said...
I'll try to find the shortest good clip.

Meade wanted me to do the one second where I say "behooves" in a funny voice."

I'd watch that. Twice.; 9/12/16, 9:37 AM
khesanh0802 said...: Have to agree with Nonapod @9:31. Trump has conditioned those who can be conditioned to doubt everything the MSM says; because it's rigged. The MSM is beginning to chew on their own tails. Cillizza had to change his "health reporting" tune yesterday after watching the tape of Clinton's collapse (call it what it was!). Although most of the MSM seems immune to embarrassment - or self-awareness- it will only take a few and the dam will break.; 9/12/16, 9:38 AM
dreams said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/12/16, 9:40 AM
dreams said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/12/16, 9:41 AM
CWJ said...: I suspect that Wright has it exactly backwards. It's because it is not working, or not working as well as he'd like, that he considers it ham-handed.; 9/12/16, 9:56 AM
rhhardin said...: It's not supposed to work. It's supposed to keep the audience unconfused, lest they tune away.

Ratings are everything.; 9/12/16, 9:57 AM
traditionalguy said...: The poor media slugs are up against the Master Presuader in Citizen Trump. He always calls the tune with a cogent explanation of reality pronounced into the air a few days before the Media Experts have to spout off some inane myth as a well known fact to explain away something.

But how does The Donald know what is coming around the corner? Is he psychic?

Call for Scott Adams. Call for Scott Adams.; 9/12/16, 10:00 AM
Brando said...: There's a few elements to why the media cannot take down Trump:

1) Cry Wolf Syndrome. Almost everything that they say about Trump they've hyperventilated about with previous GOP nominees. Remember what a selfish, rapacious businessman Romney was? (With an assist from his douchebag primary opponents) Remember McCain's "bad temperament"? Remember "mental lightweight" George W Bush? Voters are used to this, and they realize the media goes overboard (and of course is often slanted against the GOP) so it doesn't register much when they hear the media say the same about Trump--even when they say "Trump is in a class by himself". Why should people believe them now?

2) Constant Trump access. For decades, the same media outlets (from late night talk show hosts, to SNL, to newscasters) that say Trump is the embodiment of evil had no problem welcoming him on their shows with softball questions and joking around with him, ultimately with NBC giving him a several-season reality show where he could pretend to be a brilliant business mandarin. That image that they helped promote does not jibe well with him being the next Hitler. (It also extends to Hillary going to Trump's wedding, and the Clintons palling around with him over the years--if he's so evil, why did you associate with him so much?)

3) Nobody trusts the media much these days. How many scandals over the years (from sitting on the John Edwards story to "fake but accurate" to "journalist") have whittled down not just any credibility conservatives give to those sources but moderates as well? (And actually, I doubt liberals have much faith in the media either) As a shattered institution, it's ill suited for taking down Trump.; 9/12/16, 10:05 AM
MadisonMan said...: "Where's Bill?"

I assume out campaigning. Hob-nobbing with the rich.

It is odd he hasn't surfaced.; 9/12/16, 10:11 AM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Media has now awoken and says health issue is valid to discuss. So they then shriek in the next breath "so where is Trump's physical report?" as if it was Trump who passed out and could stand on his own two feet.; 9/12/16, 10:18 AM
traditionalguy said...: And Trump does it all with small hands. Once more it is quickness over size that matters.

Seriously, with a few exceptions the media are hired and trained to look slow and inept at communications so that we will see a reason to trust them as being too dumb to trick us.

And Trump pleasantly speaks brilliant points at a 5th grade level that all Deplorables can understand; which makes the the elites' heads blow up, while Putin listening
carefully in translations says that Trump is brilliant.; 9/12/16, 10:18 AM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Speaking of videos, here a black guy breaks up a fight between crazy violent white people.; 9/12/16, 10:19 AM
Big Mike said...: I can picture a deceased and decomposing Hillary Clinton propped up at a lectern while the the media enthuse over how healthy and vital she is.; 9/12/16, 10:35 AM
tcrosse said...: 'If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.' - Mark Twain; 9/12/16, 10:37 AM
tcrosse said...: Back in the very dawn of TV Ernie Kovacs had a morning show. A regular character was a puppet named Albumin the Horse. Albumin said 'It behooves me...' a lot. I was a little kid so I didn't get it until much later.; 9/12/16, 10:41 AM
Comanche Voter said...: My good progressive friends (or even folks who think of themselves as simply center left)deny that there is any media bias at all. I sort of think of them as suffering from Clinton Derangement Syndrome, where the fact that the queen has no honest clothes is simply not noticed. Nothing to see here, move on, and so there is nothing for the press to report. OTOH, Trump is loud uncouth boor, and a danger to the foundations of the republic---or so they tell me.; 9/12/16, 10:48 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: I like the new Trump ad.

I like that he left the part where Hillary yammers on and on with the standard lefty line that anyone who dare not support the queen corruptocrat is a racist homophobic islamophobe. & she does it with such robotic finesse.; 9/12/16, 10:49 AM
Brando said...: "My good progressive friends (or even folks who think of themselves as simply center left)deny that there is any media bias at all."

A lot of them think there is bias, but that it's rightward bias (and we're talking mainstream media, like the Washington Post, not Fox News). They'll claim "false equivalence" when a story also mentions Democratic scandals when they're talking about Republican scandals (because of course Democratic scandals are never of the equivalence to what the Republicans get away with) and you can see their comments in message boards about the "liberal" press (with "liberal" in sarcastic quotes).; 9/12/16, 10:56 AM
dreams said...: "I like the new Trump ad."

As to the deplorables, here is what David P Goldman thinks.

"The presidential election was over the moment the word “deplorable” made its run out of Hillary Clinton’s unguarded mouth. As the whole world now knows, Clinton told a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender fundraiser Sept. 10, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”

Hillary is road kill."

http://atimes.com/2016/09/deplorably-trump-is-going-to-win/; 9/12/16, 11:04 AM
khesanh0802 said...: Thank you, April Apple. OUCH!!!; 9/12/16, 11:08 AM
Michael said...: ARM

Not sure you posted what you meant to post. Nobody "breaks up" the fight in the linked video. Appears to be a fraternity party in Texas. Integrated. Like much of the flyover country.; 9/12/16, 11:12 AM
mikee said...: I learned a long time ago that my tolerant, open-minded friends of leftist persuasion were more intolerant and closed minded than their own worst caricatures of Southern Baptist Bible-thumping evangelicals in sheets & hoods at a KKK rally.

And, come to think of it, in the last century, socialist paradises have killed many, many more of their own citizenry at the hands of government, for the good of all, of course, than the KKK or bible thumpers managed to eradicate with all their hatred.; 9/12/16, 11:18 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: >But Wright still meditates and thinks deeply about morals and ethics, doesn't he?
So it can't be the case that he's so transparently unethical as he seems--to complain only that the ridiculous bias is bad because it's so obvious it won't work as intended and not to complain about the bias itself (as unethtical), right?
See, I simply MUST be missing something, because a gentleman and scholar like Wright seems to be implicitly arguing that it's ok to act unethically when the target is the Right, but Robert Wright is an honorable man.; 9/12/16, 11:20 AM
Rusty said...: AReasonableMan said...
Speaking of videos, here a black guy breaks up a fight between crazy violent white people.

Did you see the one of the 16 year old black kid with brass knuckles as he sucker punches a 12 year old white kid on a skate board. Black kid is going to be doing 20 years.
I suppose if you can't get reparations then the beating of random white people is acceptable.; 9/12/16, 11:36 AM
Gahrie said...: So the problem with anti-Trump bias in the media isn't that it exists a all....it is that it isn't working?; 9/12/16, 11:51 AM
Sam L. said...: It's ham-underhanded, with flashing lights and horns blaring to announce its presence.; 9/12/16, 11:54 AM
Sam L. said...: No moderator will prevent the calumny that was heaped upon Matt Lauer.; 9/12/16, 11:57 AM
Moneyrunner said...: For some reason I read Wright's comment as regret that media bias is not as effective as it should be.; 9/12/16, 12:00 PM
Steve M. Galbraith said...: "It won't work."

Wright's objection apparently (I want to be fair) is not that biased coverage is wrong, unethical, unprofessional. It's that "it won't work."

If it worked, it'd be fine?

I don't want to grab a offhand comment and run with it. But it sure sounds like that's what he means.; 9/12/16, 12:04 PM
Yancey Ward said...: It has become ham-handed because it is being explicitly encouraged by the media itself. Wright is actually a part of this in that he seems to be OK with the bias as long as it "works". He is one reason it is ham-handed.; 9/12/16, 12:37 PM
dreams said...: "So the problem with anti-Trump bias in the media isn't that it exists a all....it is that it isn't working?"

Yeah, and they thought had found the template with Bush.; 9/12/16, 1:23 PM
PackerBronco said...: "The problem with anti-Trump bias is that the media are so "ham-handed about it... that it won't work.""

... so if it does work, no problem?; 9/12/16, 2:02 PM
harrogate said...: ARM,

That video is a real redneck clusterfuck.; 9/12/16, 5:05 PM
Jon Ericson said...: Trump, by just being Trump, exposes media bias like a blacklight in a seedy motel room.
Choke, Gasp!; 9/12/16, 6:00 PM
Sam L. said...: "Blogger khesanh0802 said...

Have to agree with Nonapod @9:31. Trump has conditioned those who can be conditioned to doubt everything the MSM says; because it's rigged."

It ain't conditioning by Trump. It's what the media has been hitting us over the heads with for years. It doesn't come close to resembling the reality on the ground where we are. The stitching does not hold it together.; 9/12/16, 6:22 PM
Wilbur said...: At another (supposedly non-political) site I frequent, there was a discussion of the role of moderators in the upcoming presidential debates.

Some liberals brought the subject up (they can't help themselves) and argued strenuously that the role of a moderator included correcting obviously unfounded statements made by the candidates, defending the Candy Crowley style of moderation, and attacking Matt Lauer for not jumping all over Trump. The site host allows it, somewhat to my chagrin. That's not why I go there, but my objection was overruled.

As others have noted above, it seems the end justifies the means when you're battling deplorable opponents.; 9/12/16, 6:25 PM
Wilbur said...: Maybe that's will be the name for the party that rises from the ashes of the GOP: The Deplorable Party. Just consciously hijack the word and change the meaning of it.

Like "gay". Not that there's anything wrong with that.; 9/12/16, 6:29 PM
Wilbur said...: Doesn't it seem that liberals suffer from their own version of White Privilege, except it's Liberal Privilege, where they can't recognize their own overweening biases and prejudices against their conservative brothers, and the burdens set against conservatives by the liberal power structure in this country?

Wouldn't it be nice if there were seminars about this at colleges around the country?; 9/12/16, 6:43 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: "The problem with anti-Trump bias is that the media are so "ham-handed about it... that it won't work.""

What? The problem is that they shouldn't be biased. Or if they are biased, they shouldn't use it in the service of a coded agenda to influence the election. Admit your fucking biases, assholes. Come clean. That's why this whole election may very well go to Trump. People are just sick and tired of lies and secrets.; 9/12/16, 7:07 PM
Jupiter said...: AReasonableMan said...
"Speaking of videos, here a black guy breaks up a fight between crazy violent white people."

Yeah, look at all those crazy crackers shooting each other. This is why we can't have nice things. Somebody got dissed, and out come the guns. Of course, they'd be a lot more lethal if they didn't hold 'em sideways like that.; 9/12/16, 9:08 PM
Drago said...: R&B's: "What? The problem is that they shouldn't be biased. Or if they are biased, they shouldn't use it in the service of a coded agenda to influence the election. Admit your fucking biases, assholes. Come clean. That's why this whole election may very well go to Trump. People are just sick and tired of lies and secrets."

Agreed.; 9/12/16, 10:26 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Well stated R&B. However, I think we may well have reached the point that whether or not they admit it openly, it is now an open secret and people can read and act appropriately. The internet has changed journalism forever.; 9/12/16, 10:58 PM
Rusty said...: Swimming in a Bahamian grotto with prepubescent children.; 9/13/16, 5:58 AM
damikesc said...: The problem with the media bias is that the press has ADMITTED they are biased against Trump.

Let's say Trump wins --- which seems like way less of a longshot than a month ago.

How can anybody believe a word the press says about him for the next 4 years? They've admitted they want to see him defeated. They've stated clearly that they aren't impartial.; 9/13/16, 6:51 AM
damikesc said...: This will also kill dead any desire for a "media shield" law. There is no need to protect the media from being forced to reveal sources when they are just political activists anyway. It might be time to reconsider their legal treatment. If CU is overturned, the media should be hit like a ton of bricks.; 9/13/16, 6:52 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: I think that we are already seeing that dynamic with press shield laws. The issue is now politicized, and Republicans are going to be loathe to vote for it. Why vote to protect Dem political operatives with bylines? The other thing Implied is some sort of gate keeping, where the govt gets to define journalism, and that inevitably doesn't include any media or people more sympathetic to Republicans.; 9/13/16, 8:46 AM
damikesc said...: think that we are already seeing that dynamic with press shield laws. The issue is now politicized, and Republicans are going to be loathe to vote for it. Why vote to protect Dem political operatives with bylines? The other thing Implied is some sort of gate keeping, where the govt gets to define journalism, and that inevitably doesn't include any media or people more sympathetic to Republicans.

...but imagine if a Republican with some balls was in office and that nonsense passed.

"Well, pursuant to the new Shield Law, I would now insist that NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NYT, etc all leave this briefing. It is for the media and you do not qualify any longer".; 9/13/16, 9:58 AM