MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell tore into the major cable news networks, including MSNBC, on Thursday after they aired former President Donald Trump’s press conference live and didn’t “fact-check every lie” he told.
O’Donnell then complained that “to make a bad news coverage situation worse, none of the networks – none of them – carried Kamala Harris’ speech live after the Trump appearance. None of them.”
O’Donnell concluded, “It’s 2016 all over again. The same mistakes are being made. I have never seen an industry slower at learning from its own stupid mistakes than the American news business, and you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven’t been able to figure out in nine years: how to cover a Trump for president campaign.”
I watched both the Trump conference and O’Donnell’s take live and, yeah, he has a point.
The feed I had, you couldn’t hear the reporters questions at all. So all you could hear was Trump and there was no way to know what the actual question was based on his answers.
But nobody follows up on ANY politician and it’s been that way for a couple of decades now.
The classic example I always cite is one that happens all the time:
“Well, we’re going to get rid of job-killing regulations.”
The logical follow up question would be:
“Can you cite an example of a regulation you’d get rid of and in what way it’s a job killer?”
But nobody ever asks that question.
I think the more egregious part is that all of the networks covered Trump’s press conference, then failed to cover Harris’ speech. Giving air time to one candidate and not the other is not balanced reporting. It is giving free publicity to one candidate over the other. They went to Trump’s house on short notice rather than cover Harris’ public speech with plenty of notice.
Yup. Same as 2016…
“We’re live outside the venue where Trump is about to speak in just 7 short hours…”
Bernie Sanders hosts 30,000 people? Crickets.
The feed I had, you couldn’t hear the reporters questions at all.
That is true so often, even when it’s a non-crazy press conference. It would be so easy to just stick an omnidirectional mic in the press gaggle.
Right? That’s how we get grilled in interviews. We can’t get away with general statements without answering the question, but somehow no one asks a presidential candidate the same follow-up questions.
deleted by creator
He’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take this anymore.
There are many news segments with high degree of truth. Each and every journalist that makes a such a stand risks their career and often their life and the lives of their family to bring us the truth.
I’d never really thought about a journalist as a human being before I watched the movie Network (1976): Howard Beale, a prominent newscaster, perceives that he’s nothing to lose. Harrison’s Flowers (2000) does a great job depicting the risks associated with reporting a war and likely is the reason Adrien Brody was cast in The Pianist.
He’s mad as hell and he’s not going to take this anymore.
Great scene from a great movie!
Corporate media are doing everything they can to usher in a dictatorship that will see the end of freedom of the press. And if Trump wins in November, they will deserve it. The problem, of course, is they’re going to drag all of us along with them.
Pretty sure most of them gave up on freedom of the press a long time ago… Now they’re just pr for the oligarchy
Mistakes? I mean, if it’s deliberately done to drive views or a deeper, more nefarious agenda by right-wing billionaire media empire owners…is that a mistake?
Trump brings in viewers because he constantly says dumb shit. He’s a cash cow for networks.
Which is mind boggling to me because I would literally pay to never have to hear a word from him ever again.
Trump gets rating. MSNBC is a corporation. The primary objective of corporations is to raise shareholder value. They have no requirements to tell the truth or do what’s best for Americans. They will do whatever helps their shareholders and if that is ushering in a second trump presidency, they will do it.
His rant legitimizes everything I’ve said since 2016.
Broadcast Media is complicit in the right, and in Trump.
During the election they gave him tens of millions of dollars of free coverage/advertising that no other candidate got.
They have always treated him with soft hands, never pushing or fact checking like they would anyone else.
Miss democratic events to attend Trumps bullshit, then claim democrats don’t hold enough events… That they actively don’t cover and report on.
It has a vested financial interest in the right wing, and in Trumps presidency, because they constantly create controversy which drives viewership.
How many times did you hear about what Biden had done outside of Republican false hysteria? About his policies? About the good his policies could do, or did do, for the American people? About the support his policies, and he himself had? I bet you dont even need a full hand to count the times.
How many times has Trump been in the news? Republicans? How many times do they just let them come on, spout their raw, bullshit propaganda and lies completely unchallenged? Treating them like their disgusting, immoral bullshit is just as valid and just as important as any actual crisis facing the actual, everyday American public? Almost every time they are on Camera.
Broadcast media in America has betrayed the people, betrayed the country, and betrayed their duty to their journalistic ethics. And for what? Ratings. Ratings. Ratings and corporate access/power. The journalists on the street, and in the studios, Sold their integrity for the benefit of the powers above them rather than investigating it and revealing it.
Mediaite - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Mediaite:
MBFC: Left - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
