Fake News Is Not the Real Media Threat We’re Facing

This article in The Nation is well worth reading. It discusses the relentless three-decade-long right-wing campaign to delegitimize and demonize both liberalism and the media. (Of course, the war on the media has been justified by its supposed liberal bias.) Not by coincidence, that war has been paralleled by a relentless press for one-party rule -- gerrymandering, vote suppression, and now outright power-grabbing. And lo and behold, we are about to crown a nationalistic demagogue who brazenly lies to exploit fear, bigotry and hate, knowing full well that his supporters will not believe what the media says about it or him. Now he can stand in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and burn the Constitution and he won't lose any support. And he's supported by a Congressional GOP that has suddenly traded in their "conservative values" for nihilism. Happy New Year.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by TheNation Anyone masochistic enough to tune into Rush Limbaugh regularly will soon recognize a strange pattern in his rants. Limbaugh has an extremely long list of enemies, all of whom he paints as mortal threats to the American republic. But there is one absolutely constant enemy, whom he mentions in every single broadcast, without fail. It is not Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama. It is not the “Democrat party.” It is not even the federal government. It is the mainstream news media, whom he accuses of extreme liberal bias and hatred of America. In every single show, contempt oozing out of his voice, he flagellates mainstream media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, or the major broadcast networks. He collectively labels them “drive-bys,” comparing them to drive-by shooters. And his strategy has been followed by virtually the whole of the conservative media machine, from fellow radio hosts like Mark Levin and Michael Savage, to television personalities like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, to pundits like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. If some hapless liberal caller to a conservative radio show, or some hapless liberal guest on a Fox News program, dares to support an argument by invoking a story from The New York Times, he or she is likely to be met with contemptuous laughter. In this milieu, the Times has no more credibility than The National Enquirer at a scientific conference on extraterrestrial life. A conservative radio talk-show host, Charlie Sykes, who opposed Trump in the election, puts it this way: “We have spent 20 years demonizing the liberal mainstream media…. At a certain point you wake up and you realize you have destroyed the credibility of any credible outlet out there.”

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2hhLLDe