On Tuesday, they used a news story on the Japanese Prime Minister’s visit to Pearl Harbor to remind readers that Donald Trump is going to be dangerous and divisive in the world.
Not in the WaPo, but in the Washington Times, Newt Gingrich wrote,
Unfortunately, The New York Times is trapped within the obsolete establishment mindset which was wrong about Trump throughout the primaries, then was wrong about Trump throughout the general election, then was wrong about who would win. This elite mindset has learned nothing. It is now enthusiastically being wrong about the transition. All of this is great practice for the paper to be wrong about the new administration.
You would think that at some point the NYT and the Wapo would want to write stories about what Mr. Trump is attempting to accomplish and how he is attempting to accomplish it. It is certainly important to write stories about his flaws, but by limiting themselves to that, the papers are giving their readers a very stunted understanding of their world.
I wonder which came first, the chicken or the egg? I have many liberal friends and family, all Times readers, and the Times is just catering to their prejudices. It’s good business to give your customers what they want.
“You would think that at some point the NYT and the Wapo would want to write stories about what Mr. Trump is attempting to accomplish and how he is attempting to accomplish it.”
And exactly where are there any examples of what he is attempting to do?
It seems, for example, that Trump is looking to strengthen commitments and ties to long-time associated nations such as Taiwan, Israel, and the UK; over the objections of China, the Arabs, and …
He is also looking to reduce the power of certain regulatory agencies and segments of the intelligence community.
Trump’s cabinet picks are loaded with people with well known policy positions and agendas. For example, Education pick Betsy DeVos is a champion of school choice aka charter schools.
Most conservative pundits are loudly cheering almost all of Trump’s cabinet picks so far. The one pick that stands out to me as a complete raving nut job is Peter Navarro, author of the “Death by China” documentary series.
honestly this whole project is close to ending our 13yr writer/reader relationship. such a waste of time. DT is quite clearly mentally ill. it’s hard for me to even imagine someone giving him a “fair” shake here, given all that he has proved over the past year. he can barely open his mouth without proving his own inability to think clearly or care about the truth. the WP and NYT are giving him too much respect at the moment, not too little. this is just making me lose more and more respect for you each time you post one of these.
Putting blatant off topic op-ed rants on Trump into unrelated news on Pearl Harbor will rightfully degrade the reputation of WaPo. WaPo is free to throw their reputation down the drain. But when people look for sane rational evaluation of Trump, they now have justification to dismiss WaPo’s writing.
After 9/11, there were a number of people asking, “Why do they hate us? What could cause people to do such a thing?” I thought those were proper (and necessary!) questions but a lot of people on the right thought it was wrong to even ask. Obviously, it’s because we’re great and they suck.
It sounds like you may be doing something similar. “I’m great and DT sucks.” But even if that’s true, it helps to know exactly what he is trying to do and why.
You are biased. Trump is going to break the gridlock of the current 2-party regime. Either just watch and learn or ask.
OTOH, this is another good reason to focus on the bias itself, and not the partisanship. You are going to tick off at leas half your audience.
Do you mean they should just make shit up like the right, or repeat what some barely affiliated hack wants him to do or would do if they were in charge, or use divination to know what is in his mind? It is unclear if even he knows but will rattle to and fro as whim spurs him.
This why they fail.
One other thought. Why in the world would anyone ever listen to a single think Newt Gingrich says?
There are intelligent people out there on the right, he ain’t it.
Bias.
Because Newt has ears to the ground. I have no trouble dismissing anything he says that doesn’t make sense.
I am with you on the visit to Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Prime Minister as Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. He did not join and made no comment. So WaPo is putting news into the story here.
Of course, fair and balanced Fox News and other conservative wrote the basic Obama tribal speech warring speech (which he has given 100 times) that he somehow disrepected the WW2 veterans was way over the top ridiculous stuff here. And at an event in which Abe was the first Japanese PM to visit and he made apologies for the bombing. Pearl Harbor and was a gesture after Obama visit Hiroshima a year ago.
Abe made “sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls”, but did not apologize as Obama did not apologize at Hiroshima.
“It is certainly important to write stories about his flaws, but by limiting themselves to that, the papers are giving their readers a very stunted understanding of their world.”
This is just naïve, Arnold.
What makes you think that the papers want to give their readers anything other than “a very stunted understanding of their world”?
What makes you think that the papers’ readers want anything from the papers other than reinforcement of their preexisting “very stunted understanding of their world”?
As for Trump, it may well be that he has nothing in particular in mind to accomplish as president, other than maintaining his popularity among his worshippers. That, however, would be an improvement over the outgoing president, who set out to accomplish much, all of it bad.
“”What makes you think that the papers’ readers want anything from the papers other than reinforcement of their preexisting “very stunted understanding of their world”?””
This is why you have to raise your awareness to extremely weak signals that the paper might be opening their mind. If and when they do, they will have to bring the readersip along slowly.
So how is WAPO any different than say Fox News? If more people get their news from cable news than newspaper, than why do we call WAPO and NYT the mainstream media?
They are the same on that dimension.
And people can’t believe it, but FOX NEWS really does do a better job of airing opposing views, I wish they would do even better. But that isn’t what I’m referring to.
When determining if it is a supply side or demand side you must acknowledge that they can’t really be disaggregated.
What might well be added to the errors of the NYT and the WaPo is the conclusion that their writers and staffs are now part of “The Elite,” which, of course, has been the ambition directing the re-formulation of the “Media.”
At this point, talking about Trump in any depth is like talking about Climate Change. We have some good indications and a lot of hunches. There’s just too much we don’t know yet.
Like trying to figure out what was in the Obamacare bill, we’ll just have to wait and see what Trump actually does.
So, instead of saying, “here’s what we know and here’s what we don’t know”, most people, including the newspapers, just state their hunches as fact.
A voice of sanity!
I have rather appalled by the outpouring of media speculation (including Fox and online dribs like NRO) on what Trump & his cabinet picks will [almost certainly] do — all of which seemingly will lead to devastation for America, education, environment, minorities, poor people, etc.
It’s not like there’s a dearth of global news that the media could be writing about….
I’d like them all to take a step or two back, and wait at least until the guy is sworn in (and is it too much to ask them to wait, like, a hundred days or so?) before they write their critical op/eds.
*have BEEN rather appalled*