Brooks reveals what’s really going on inside legacy media? (DIY stating the obvious)

[C C]

AFTER PARTY (with Emily Jashinsky)
https://youtu.be/9c2uU_GDuV4

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Let's go to this clip of David Brooks of the New York Times and on his PBS show. [...] Let's roll David Brooks.

>> But if I could vent one pet peeve about us... Starting in 2015, we in the mainstream media learned that if you bash Donald Trump, the the clicks go up, the ratings go up. It became the business model. And I'm not saying we're you know, we played it straight, we do our job, but it's become the business model. And we go to dinners, sometimes off-the-record dinners between journalists, columnists, and politicians.

It used to be when you were at an off-the-record dinner with a Democratic politician, there was distance between the journalists and the Democrats because they're politicians. Our job is to keep some distance.

But in my view, at many places and many of the dinners I've been to, there's no longer distance anymore. And that is a problem for the media. That is our problem. We've got to reestablish some distance from the Democratic Party.

These are people we cover. They are not people we root for. They're not people we are spin-doctors for. They are people we cover. And I do think we have done a not ultimately excellent job at maintaining as much distance from the Democrats as we keep from the Republicans.

>> So, he just explained that really well.

What happened during the Trump period is that because journalists felt like Trump was such an egregious figure. It meant they could dispense with the pretense of neutrality and objectivity which journalists should support. [...] I've said many times I think the corporate press could fix its reputation with the American public basically overnight by dispensing with the pretense. There are a few people, like I can count them on one hand, knowing a lot of journalists, who can generally report neutrally and objectively. To the extent that's actually even possible...

Brooks announces the Titanic has been found 41 years after the fact ... https://youtu.be/9c2uU_GDuV4

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9c2uU_GDuV4

[Syne]

It's a lie that this started in 2015. Maybe it wasn't apparent at dinner parties, but the slanted narrative has been apparent most my lifetime.

[Magical Realist]

It's always the job of the press to take an adversarial position with the State. The State is in the business of propaganda and control and covering up and spinning. The press is in the business of the truth and freedom of information and the questioning of institutional narratives.

"Adversarial press—often called adversarial journalism—is a style of reporting that adopts an oppositional and confrontational approach to hold government officials and institutions accountable.

Definition and Core Characteristics

• Skepticism toward authority: Reporters actively question official narratives rather than passively transcribing statements.
• Investigative focus: The style prioritizes uncovering political corruption, abuse of power, and hidden or classified information.
• Rejection of neutral bothsidesism: Proponents argue that strict neutrality can lead to false equivalence, and that journalists must actively scrutinize power imbalances.

History and Evolution

• Early roots: Traces back to Revolutionary War-era pamphlets, late-19th-century yellow journalism, and early-20th-century muckrakers who exposed corporate and political malfeasance.
• Post-1960s resurgence: Accelerated following major political and governmental scandals (such as the Watergate investigation by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein).
• Contemporary dynamic: News organizations frequently interact with administrations in tense or combative exchanges, as seen in ongoing legal battles over White House press access."

[Syne]

Not when Democrats are in power.

[Magical Realist]

"..the press and the Obama administration had an adversarial relationship regarding transparency, government secrecy, and the prosecution of media sources.

Key Aspects of the Relationship

• Aggressive Prosecution of Leakers: The Obama administration aggressively used the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute government whistleblowers and leakers of national security information more than all previous U.S. administrations combined.
• Surveillance of Reporters: The Justice Department secretly tracked the phone records of nearly 100 Associated Press reporters and editors, and monitored the phone and email records of Fox News journalist James Rosen, labeling him a possible "co-conspirator" in a leak investigation.
• Criticism from Major Outlets: Prominent media organizations and watchdogs—including The New York Times Editorial Board and the Committee to Protect Journalists—publicly condemned the administration for threatening the free gathering of news and failing to deliver on campaign promises of unprecedented transparency.
• Presidential Stance: President Barack Obama maintained publicly that the press should act as skeptics and ask tough questions to hold power accountable, even while defending his administration's national security and anti-leak actions."

[Syne]

The Vetting of Barack Obama (2008): Critics argue that during the 2008 election cycle, major media outlets focused heavily on Obama's inspirational rhetoric and historic candidacy, while providing less aggressive scrutiny of his legislative record, executive experience, or controversial past associations compared to his opponents. A Pew Research study from that era indicated his early coverage skewed notably more positive than that of John McCain.

Journalism of Omission regarding Joe Biden: A prominent point of criticism involves the delayed reporting on Joe Biden’s visible age and cognitive decline. Critics and independent media analysts argue that major outlets practiced a prolonged "journalism of omission" by downplaying early signs of physical frailty—such as restricted press access or the specific details of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents report. The full extent of his decline was largely unaddressed by the mainstream press until it became undeniable during the June 2024 presidential debate.

Handling of Controversies: Critics point out that substantial controversies—such as the 2012 Benghazi attack under Obama, the initial handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, or record inflation spikes under Biden—received a more defensive framing from mainstream commentators, who frequently treated these stories as politically motivated attacks rather than conducting aggressive, objective investigations.

[C C]

NEXT UP (with Mark Halperin)
https://youtu.be/IkKeCrK1pGw

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Media bias is something you've heard me talk about before. I don't like to do it every episode, but every so often I'm moved to remind people, particularly my colleagues in the dominant media, that this is a real issue. It's an important thing to have front and center.

[...] It's a complex topic. It always comes up at the end of campaigns because Republicans always feel like not just the national media but a lot of the state media in a lot of states, including some red states, that it tilts towards the Democrats, and it's a real factor at the end.

[...] My high school basketball coach would tell me if you make a mistake in the fourth quarter, it's worse than a mistake in the second quarter because there's less time to correct for it. And media bias at the end of a campaign is even more nefarious because the Democrats get an advantage and the Republicans don't always have time to catch up.

Now, some of you listening will say, "Oh, Mark, this is overblown. There's no bias. You got a president who's lost his mind. That doesn't get covered every day." They'll say, "Trump violates norms every day. Uh Trump doesn't get covered hard enough." And you've heard me say it. There's some truth to that. There's some truth to the notion.

I don't think the president lost his mind. And I think he's always been like this. There's some truth to it. We've defined deviancy down due to some of the things the president does. We've defined norm violation down. It's not covered as hard. All presidents should be covered hard regardless of party. All powerful interests should be held accountable. These are my normal caveats. They're not throwaway lines. They're true.

But trust me as someone who's worked in old media, dominant media newsrooms, and seen it and watches it every day. And if you don't believe it, know that half the country thinks it's true. Half the country sees the bias and they can see it every day in a lot of examples.

So again, why am I talking about this now? One, I mentioned it's the end of the campaign. It's good to try to remind people of this unfairness and hopefully maybe uplift some people and raise some consciousness. There are two examples that Republicans pointed me to this week when I asked them...

[...] And again, it's not just against Donald Trump. It's against Republicans generally. ... If these things were done by a Democratic president, you would be seeing them being supported by Democrats in Congress. You'd see profiles of people who've benefited from these programs, and yet the media ignores it.

[...] Second, when there's a Republican on the far right who says things that are deeply unpopular, every Republican, including the leadership, gets asked about it. DSA candidates on the ballot that are nominees of the Democratic Party are saying all sorts of fringe things ... Do you hear Democratic leaders and other Democrats being hounded for their position on that? Almost never.

Same with Democratic flip-flops. You see Democrats in Texas, in other races, changing their positions from long-held positions they took recently, and they're changing them. Now, everybody in public life should be able to change their mind about something. But if Republicans were changing these positions, going from an extreme position to a more centrist moderate position in the final days of a campaign, there'd be a lot of questions to them, a lot of stories about here's what they used to say.

Now, when the Democrats do it, like James Talarico in Texas, if the press covers it at all, the dominant media, they'll cover it as a good tactic, a smart thing to do rather than trying to hold them accountable....

What the media is actually hiding about Donald Trump ... https://youtu.be/IkKeCrK1pGw

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/IkKeCrK1pGw