Journalism is a Business ...

[Chester32141]

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/06/okeefe-undercover-bombshell-cnn-producer-admits-trump-russia-story-bullsht-video/

Bonifield laughed off the notion that the media has an ethical responsibility and said ‘it’s a business’ and ‘they gotta do what they gotta do to make money’.

I feel naïve for having thought otherwise ...  

[Fly320s]

Is that the guy that just got fired from CNN for his fake story?

Nope, different guys, but probably involved somehow.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/26/media/cnn-announcement-retracted-article/index.html

[RoadKingLarry]

Ben that way for pretty much the entire existence of "journalism".
The goal is to SELL something in order to make a profit.

[Scout26]

I sense more resignations coming from CNN in the near future.

[RevDisk]

I mean, he's right and this has nearly always been the case. There have been yellow journalism 'ages' in the past. Spanish American war is a famous example, where the media essentially started the war without a shred of proof.

But normally journalists hide behind some degree of deniability and professionalism put limits on how far they would corrupt the news for a specific agenda. Good business reasons as well. If your brand is considered junk, it is priced accordingly. Less ad money. It gets harder to get more respectable people to do interviews. People refuse to talk to you.

I'm far from any sort of Trump supporter. Minus Mattis, I'm not impressed by any of his decisions so far. That might change, especially if suppressors are deregulated. But it is blatantly obvious the media flat out hates the guy. They're far worse than they even were during the Bush years, and it was embarrassing back then.

[AJ Dual]

They're far worse than they even were during the Bush years, and it was embarrassing back then.

Hmmm... there's this thing we've been doing that's been costing almost our entire industry customers/consumers and we're all in decline. The few exceptions like Fox and the WSJ at least to some extent are doing the opposite...

I KNOW! LET'S DO WHAT WE'VE BEEN DOING HARDER!

 

[HankB]

. . . But normally journalists hide behind some degree of deniability . . .

The movie Absence of Malice (1981, Paul Newman, Sally Field) does not paint journalists in a very flattering light, and it was released 36 years ago.

More people should see it.

[Pb]

Hmmm... there's this thing we've been doing that's been costing almost our entire industry customers/consumers and we're all in decline. The few exceptions like Fox and the WSJ at least to some extent are doing the opposite...

I KNOW! LET'S DO WHAT WE'VE BEEN DOING HARDER!

 

I hope so, but the guy at CNN said Trump bashing was really good for their ratings.

[AJ Dual]

I hope so, but the guy at CNN said Trump bashing was really good for their ratings.

Oh I know. MSNBC has shot to the top of the ratings because all the distraught Democrats and Leftists are tuning in.

Thing is, it's not sustainable. Best case scenario, they get 7 1/2 years of a boost out of this because Trump becomes a two-term president, and the Left can maintain the energy needed for this much agitation/hate. Meanwhile the Internet, Streaming video, tablets smartphones, the DVR, the proliferation of narrowcasting cable/satellite TV channels... all the usual suspects are still eroding the fundamental viewership base and profit model of the MSM.

Fox's long-term bump from being the sole conservative/centrist outlet in the entire media-scape isn't really reproduceable long-term by the likes of MSNBC and CNN.

[Ben]

Hmmm... there's this thing we've been doing that's been costing almost our entire industry customers/consumers and we're all in decline. The few exceptions like Fox and the WSJ at least to some extent are doing the opposite...

I KNOW! LET'S DO WHAT WE'VE BEEN DOING HARDER!

 

I just read that Greta Van Sustren was fired without notice from MSNBC today. According to the article at CNN, it was because she was not being confrontational enough, which I think is the reporter equivalent  of antifas throwing urine bombs.

While certainly Fox has bomb throwers like Hannity, they have way more people like Brit Hume, who actually do the "who what why where" thing. MSNBC seems to be predominately bomb throwers, and I saw their audience was mad that they were going another route in a few instances and hiring actual reporters. I guess they're lstening to their audience. Van Sustren was there barely 6 months.

[RevDisk]

Hmmm... there's this thing we've been doing that's been costing almost our entire industry customers/consumers and we're all in decline. The few exceptions like Fox and the WSJ at least to some extent are doing the opposite...

I KNOW! LET'S DO WHAT WE'VE BEEN DOING HARDER!

 

The media on both sides are businesses. Honest, well reasoned, non-inflammatory content does not generate views, clicks and eyeballs. The modern business environment is driving more and more inflammatory content and conduct. Fox has LONG had a low reputation for accurate news. Even most Rightists would admit that, they just don't see that part as important as it not being so over the top Leftist as most other services. Substantially more Leftists than Rightists go into journalism, often ones that are pretty far left. Give it a couple decades, and you have our current ecosystem.

A lot of people believe Fox is ueber wonderful and that's why it's successful. Which isn't the case. Fox News is pretty junk stuff, but they're not facing any substantial opposition. If you had a half dozen major competitors, they'd be in the middle of the pack at best. The more numerous Leftist networks have a much more competitive environment. They're fighting for the attention in a field with a lot of competition. Hence why you will continue to see their journalists do weirder and wackier stuff. There's a half dozen times as much pressure as Rightist journalists are facing. Both sides have around 40% of the country that would maybe voluntarily watch their services. The rightists are slicing up that pie into much fewer portions.


An interesting exercise for folks here...

What can mainstream Leftist news entities DO with the eroding industry due to economic pressures and competition with the internet? (Skip the standard "they can join the correct side, by which I mean my own" answer)

[TommyGunn]

If Fox News is "pretty junk stuff," then  what is  MSNBC,  NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN?   Fox sure ain't perfect,  but it's  a sight better than the competition.

[Perd Hapley]

An interesting exercise for folks here...

What can mainstream Leftist news entities DO with the eroding industry due to economic pressures and competition with the internet? (Skip the standard "they can join the correct side, by which I mean my own" answer)

That seems like an exercise for our friends in the establishment press. If they want clicks and eyeballs, why not troll the left-wing base with tales of scandal on the left? They don't even have to be real scandals, given the mileage they get from non-troversies occuring on the right. Surely, they could have found more to talk about with the shooting of Scalise, et al.

[AJ Dual]

An interesting exercise for folks here...

What can mainstream Leftist news entities DO with the eroding industry due to economic pressures and competition with the internet? (Skip the standard "they can join the correct side, by which I mean my own" answer)

They can die. 

And they can be replaced by RSS feeds and small shell scripts. I'm sort of coming around to the conclusion that journalism is an inherently flawed endeavor, and as strange as it may seem, a free society and western civ in general may do no better or worse with journalism whittled down to whatever bare minimum the Darwnistic free market and technological forces sees fit.

Because even when journalism is "accurate" and largely non-partisan, due to the limitations of the mediums... any of them, it's still embedded within a greater context of falsity.

Falsehood through semantics. Falsehood through how much or how little something is presented. Falsehood through omission. Falsehood through the premise of the questions asked.

And when you see how often they're just plain wrong on any particular technical subject when you're something of an expert on it, firearms, science, aviation whatever.. even when such errors are devoid of any intentional bias, you've got to wonder if they're that wrong about everything?

[RevDisk]

If Fox News is "pretty junk stuff," then  what is  MSNBC,  NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN?   Fox sure ain't perfect,  but it's  a sight better than the competition.

I have no ideology loyalty to either. I'm not a strict Rightist or Leftist so I have no particular brand loyalty. I'm free to saying both can be junk. MSNBC is absolutely the worst dreck outside of HuffPo regardless of ideology. What you mean to say is that Fox is a friendlier network to your ideology. Which is not a terrible or judgmental thing. I regularly skip media that makes my head hurt. Even folks I enjoy listening to about certain things give me blinding headaches on others.

My own personal thing is to rely on bias and indifference. Reuters is probably the sole best single source or for regional overviews. AP wire is hit or miss on what agenda is being pushed. Fox or CNN are decent, not great but decent, on things they don't care about. Asia, South America, etc. I go to BBC and other foreign news for domestic US stuff. al Jazeera for anything outside the ME. Fox/MSNBC/CNN 'care' about the US and follow their ideological political correctness for the US. BBC is a bad source for domestic UK news, because they're biased as hell about UK politics. al Jazeera is politically correct for anything about the ME. RT is good for checking the official political correctness of the Kremlin.

That seems like an exercise for our friends in the establishment press. If they want clicks and eyeballs, why not troll the left-wing base with tales of scandal on the left? They don't even have to be real scandals, given the mileage they get from non-troversies occuring on the right. Surely, they could have found more to talk about with the shooting of Scalise, et al.

Which would stop leftists from talking and cooperating with said news organizations. Tis why why you see more Leftists on MSNBC and more Rightists on Fox. Generally speaking. If you slam someone, they're not inclined to show up for interviews they expect to be hostile. Which is fine, if you can get by without them. But investigative journalism is far more difficult than "if it bleeds, it leads" and angry rhetoric normally practiced by all the major mainstream news types.

[MechAg94]

Which would stop leftists from talking and cooperating with said news organizations. Tis why why you see more Leftists on MSNBC and more Rightists on Fox. Generally speaking. If you slam someone, they're not inclined to show up for interviews they expect to be hostile. Which is fine, if you can get by without them. But investigative journalism is far more difficult than "if it bleeds, it leads" and angry rhetoric normally practiced by all the major mainstream news types.

But the interviews they get are boring, softball events where they say absolutely nothing.  

There are multiple competing priorities pushing on these news groups and almost none of them have anything to do with good reporting.  

[makattak]

The media on both sides are businesses. Honest, well reasoned, non-inflammatory content does not generate views, clicks and eyeballs. The modern business environment is driving more and more inflammatory content and conduct. Fox has LONG had a low reputation for accurate news. Even most Rightists would admit that, they just don't see that part as important as it not being so over the top Leftist as most other services. Substantially more Leftists than Rightists go into journalism, often ones that are pretty far left. Give it a couple decades, and you have our current ecosystem.

A lot of people believe Fox is ueber wonderful and that's why it's successful. Which isn't the case. Fox News is pretty junk stuff, but they're not facing any substantial opposition. If you had a half dozen major competitors, they'd be in the middle of the pack at best. The more numerous Leftist networks have a much more competitive environment. They're fighting for the attention in a field with a lot of competition. Hence why you will continue to see their journalists do weirder and wackier stuff. There's a half dozen times as much pressure as Rightist journalists are facing. Both sides have around 40% of the country that would maybe voluntarily watch their services. The rightists are slicing up that pie into much fewer portions.


An interesting exercise for folks here...

What can mainstream Leftist news entities DO with the eroding industry due to economic pressures and competition with the internet? (Skip the standard "they can join the correct side, by which I mean my own" answer)

You ought to know very well that the "If if bleeds, it leads" crap is a secondary consideration.

The press has sat on scandalous information several times (that is publicly known) because it would hurt the liberal cause.

If the "If it bleeds, it leads" were truly the case, why did Representative Scalise vanish from their reporting within hours of an attempted assassination?

Why the "Yawn, local news" to what was likely the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States?

Oh, right. Because those stories are detrimental to liberal causes. So they get ignored, buried, or given minimal attention.

[Monkeyleg]

Religion is a business, too, at least to the extent that some people have to be paid. But we all feel safe knowing that we're not being told blatant lies by our ministers and priests.