Democratic institutions, as currently structured, require a semi-monopoly over political information. To organize the application of power, democratic governments, parties, and politicians must retain some control over the story told about them by the public. The elite fixation with “fake news,” like the demand that Trump drop out of Twitter, are both a function of the fact that institutional politics live and die by gatekeeping.
Read the entire post. I am skipping the WaPo watch this week–busy with other things. But one way to interpret the WaPo’s behavior is that it is reacting to its loss of gatekeeper function by trying to exert even more control over the narrative. Neither Gurri nor I think that it is likely to succeed.
I am sorry but WaPo lost the gatekeeper years ago and most cable news is Dear Leader Trump is AWESOME and liberals are losers. And I sure the citizens who don’t read WaPo won’t care.
On the other hand the liberal blogs haven’t been this good since 2006 and hopefully they learn to break a few rules as well. Additionally, I suspect a lot non-Putin wanna-be government start pushing back on the alt-right more. Notice the German Breihart headlining Muslims starting huge fires.
And conservatives have to realize Trump is mainstream and in charge. So in reality Breibart is actually more mainstream than WaPo.
Collin, when you write things like this, you simply make yourself look foolish or dishonest, or both, none of which lends you any credibility:
I guess “most” is FoxNews, and even that cable outlet is only reluctantly pro-Trump since he clinched the nomination. Really, you should have just lumped the NYTimes and WaPo into the mix.
The prevailing narrative among all traditiknal media was that a non-politician/general could not be taken seriously.
Last week Breibart had more US internet traffic than WaPo so maybe it is time to include them as Mainstream Press. I know most conservative intellectuals don’t traffic Breibart a lot but they probably should visit to understand Trump better.
My wife didn’t even know what the fake news narrative was, but NPR did assure her Trump didn’t have a chance to win.
Under this model, Trump is the gatekeeper. He is the one trying to exercise a monopoly on the narrative, and the media are complaining about it. It is generally understood to be their job.
When we look at mainstream media and point out their biases and mistakes, that’s both fair and necessary, but the implication seems to be increasingly that these mistakes invalidate the role of the press overall. The Washington Post shouldn’t be a gatekeeper, but it is supposed to critically assess the political narrative forwarded by our politicians.
It isn’t good for anyone if politicians can dictate their political narrative and have that go unchallenged. Fake news really does suck.
Trump can’t stop people from believing Russians hacked our elections. All they have to do is release some evidence. But they are used to not having to do so.
My current assumption, because they won’t release any evidence, is that Russian tools were used and that the narrative was,that Trump was cozy with Putin he must have preferred Trump (and had legitimate beef with Clinton). But the idea that the best the ex-klGB could do would be to get Podesta to click on a phishinge-mail is ludicrous.
The irony is amazing, btw. We are just supposed to never mention the part where Hillary could possibly off Putin (by interfering with his governin) causing him to hold such a grudge without even being president.
But Trump, yeah Trump is the dangerous one. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
” The Washington Post shouldn’t be a gatekeeper, but it is supposed to critically assess the political narrative forwarded by our politicians.”
They’d have more credibility in that regard if they hadn’t taken an eight year hiatus from critical assessments.
Re: Gurri
The best the KGB could do is expose actual DNC wrongdoing?
In modern Soviet Russia, propaganda is truth!
Amazing, ain’t it? I’m so confused! The Commies are exposing the seamy underbelly of a major US political party by apparently telling the truth — albeit with purloined documents. The world is upside down!
One could say “they tried to do actual hacking but only the low level stuff worked” but then proving they didn’t try to do the same to the Republicans becomes more problematic.
Eric Weinstein’s most recent answer to the Edge question deals with this in the context of Russell conjugation.
He also provides a good explanation to Dave Rubin on YouTube
Arnold, you failed to mention the truly positive possible note:
“Since we dwell in separate valleys of culture and politics, we should empower these to the fullest extent consistent with national unity. In one possible future, all democratic countries will be Switzerland.”
<<
YES.
If Europe became a European Confederation of (city-state) Cantons, it would be a better Europe, a richer Europe, and a more peaceful Europe.
Of course, maybe nobody would know the EU President's name (who IS Pres. of CH? Who cares!).
It's never too late to evolve into a a more decentralized set of Canton-states, with some unifying Self Defense treaty to reduce the Empires from taking over.