Kelly describes "corrupt" coverage of Trump!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2016

Mika belts out a warning:
The Washington Post's Eric Wemple has posted an interesting interview with Megyn Kelly. At one point, Kelly describes the thinking behind some of the coverage of Candidate Trump.

Why did people air those uninterrupted Trump rallies? Kelly explains it thusly:
KELLY (12/19/16): I think that in particular in the primary season, very few people were offering any critical Trump coverage, virtually anywhere...And in particular, some of these folks who put on his campaign rallies, Erik. His campaign rallies, not a policy speech, just rallies. Which we never would have done to Scott Walker or Hillary Clinton. Ever. And to me that seemed unfair to the other candidates and wrongheaded journalistically.

WEMPLE: That analysis applies to colleagues at your own network, correct?

KELLY: Well, listen, Fox was not without sin in that department either. I can say that on “The Kelly File,” we did not do that. And listen, it was not the easiest thing to do because Trump rates. You pop up that campaign rally, you could let it roll for an hour and your ratings would shoot through the roof. Easy, done. Huge number. [inaudible] your average for the month.
If you aired an uninterrupted Trump rally, it goosed your ratings for the month. We'll only note that MSNBC did a lot of that too.

In a second part of the interview, Kelly says that certain anchors engaged in a type of "corruption" with respect to the questions they asked Trump. This part of the interview isn't especially clear:
WEMPLE: You mention in the book, and this is an interesting part . . . you say that there were anchors who did this game-out sort of thing with Trump [wherein they rehearse questions for an interview in advance of the interview]. But you don’t name them; who are they?

KELLY: Obviously I’m not going to name them now because I chose not to do so in my book.

[...]

I think people are smart enough to figure out who the likely candidates are. And in any event, this is not a nightly news report on “The Kelly File.” It’s a book, I mean there’s a lot in there that—it’s not something I would report at night on Fox News, but it’s my take on a situation. And I think, again, this is something that people should know took place and you don’t need the names to know that there was corruption in the coverage of this race. That was deeply problematic.

WEMPLE: But everybody’s corrupt now [since Kelly won't name the malefactors].

KELLY: I think any reasonable person knows which reporters to eliminate.
We don't agree with that last statement; overall, the discussion here is pretty fuzzy. Still, it's interesting that Kelly was willing to describe this as "corruption."

Let's throw in a final passage from a recent interview with Mika Brzezinksi. Ben Terris profiled Mika and Joe for the Washington Post. At one point, Mika offered this:
TERRIS (12/13/16): [Brzezinksi] maintains that just because they build sources and conduct interviews with newsmakers doesn’t mean they should be held to the rigid standards of journalism. “If you're going to call us journalists,” said Brzezinski, who came up through the ranks as a CBS reporter before joining the pundit class, “you can take every tenet of journalism and show that we’re breaking it.”
It's hard to know just what that means, but it certainly does feel right. If we might borrow from Norman Chad:

Pay the woman, Shirley!

33 comments:

  1. Clinton's biggest crime may have been that she is a poor entertainer in a world that seems to treat both politics and journalism as entertainment. Is this the result of too much money and too little skin in the game?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Or maybe Hillary was so arrogant and out of touch she thought this was going to be handed to her on a silver platter.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. I think the lesson the die hard Hillary supporters have taken from the election is that next time the Dems should run a flawed candidate- Clinton lost because the voters were not worthy of her.

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    4. Actually she was a good candidate. She just had to deal with more bullshit than any other candidate ever before her. The Benghazi/email bullshit, Donald Trump, Putin and the KGB, James Comey and the FBI, and with all due respect because he is not bullshit, Bernie Sanders, who was a formidable foe who inflicted damage in the primaries and left his followers vulnerable to manipulation by the KGB-hacked emails.
      The Hillary as flawed candidate meme is too easy and not really true. She did many things very well.

      Delete
  2. How to get your Ex Boyfriend back after a breakup, I’m extremely happy that me and my ex-boyfriend are living together again.
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    ReplyDelete
  3. Blondes selling fake books should be thrown in jail.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The media still doesn't get it. Or maybe its just a refusal to face the naked truth. People do not need the media to access information. The media is as out of date as the official town crier. A large part of he reason for this is the lack of trust in the credibility of the media. Traditional media is self destructing.

      Social media is the new norm. It has the immediacy lacking in traditional news media. Why listen to some talking head interpreting info when you can listen to it right from the source in real time?

      Delete
    2. Goji, this is poor reasoning on your part. Social Media has become famous for promoting fake news. Journalism requires expertise. "The media" as you call it has become social media, that is the problem.

      Delete
  4. WEMPLE: But everybody’s corrupt now [since Kelly won't name the malefactors].

    Hey Bob, did you add that bit?- [since Kelly won't name the malefactors]. - Kind of seems like you're participating in the sort of editorial tampering with the words people actually say there, the sort of thing you normally decry.

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    Replies
    1. Brackets [] are universally understood to enclose an editorial addition. The added words are clearly not part of a quote. They add context.

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  5. Here is the idiocy of the past campaign. From Kevin Drum this morning (Wed):

    "Here it is: As near as I can tell, Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong. Period. No shilly shallying, no caveats. It's true that the optics were sometimes bad, and the whole affair showed off Clinton's political instincts at their worst. But that's it. Both legally and ethically, she did nothing wrong. And liberals should have been willing to say so.

    But a lot of them weren't. Both in print and on TV, our defense of Clinton was often tepid and full of qualifications."

    News for Kevin -- the optics were bad only because political opponents raised this as an issue. There is nothing inherently wrong with the optics of using her own server for her personal email (a server that happened to also belong to the former president).

    But Kevin Drum does illustrate the tepid support he blames others for providing. Even when defending Clinton, finally, he cannot resist talking about her supposedly bad political instincts and her bad optics. Once again, Clinton is blamed for the empty attacks against her.

    Clinton was swiftboated. When Kerry was swiftboated, was he blamed for the bad optics of being a war hero, of serving in Vietnam?

    Even when calling for stronger support, Kevin Drum cannot help being as tepid as those he accuses. If she did nothing wrong, how can the optics be wrong or her political instincts be flawed? She would have to be prescient to know that her opponents would choose this to attack her on, and not her choice of car to drive, or her friendship with some staffer, or her choice of Christmas tree decorations, or her stopping to buy a latte on the road, or some other nonsense.

    How about the optics of leasing your campaign space in Trump Tower and then bragging about making money off campaigning? How about them optics! I'll bet Clinton didn't even charge the government for the space she used on her personal server.

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    Replies
    1. Just bad optics? Like the collusion between the DNC and the Clinton campaign? Not just in regards to Bernie, but Brazille providing Clinton with questions to be asked at debates? The optics were OK, it was the candidate that was bad. Hillary's own staff acknowledged she had poor public perception due to her own behavior.

      Trump leased campaign space from himself? He also leased his place to the campaign. Imagine that!!! A candidate following the law. Must seem strange to a liberal. and just to prove how shady it is, Trump somehow managed to get that law passed in 1912. Pretty sharp for a guy you anti Trumpers keep telling us is dumb. He spent half as much as Hillary and still pulled off the win. That should make you really happy. Since liberals have been talking about getting big money out of elections. Trump just showed you how to do that. Feel free to send a thank you card.

      Delete
    2. Goj u what is bad here is your reasoning. Hillary had better public perception, she won the popular vote by a landslide. Trump and the Republicans were able to misinform and con about 78,000 voters in three states, and they were also guilty of a massive voter suppression effort that resulted in Hillary's loss. Also you seem confused about what the DNC is, getting yourself more informed will clarify that issue. In fact Trump had worse perception as shown in polls, even exit polls.

      There is ample demonstration that Trump used his campaign as a money making scheme. Trump Tower is just one example. Trump Tower is also an example of the gaudiness and immorality that Trump represents. When Trump was able to use donor money instead of his own, what he did was jack up the rent 500% purely for his own profit (he was actually using the space less when he grifted his donors).

      Trump, after his con of a campaign, went on fill his administration with rich and powerful Republican insiders. Drain the swamp? Please.

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    3. The election is not decided by the popular vote. Trump won more states. Trump won more counties. So what. Thats not how someone wins the presidency either. You just want to change the rules because your chosen candidate lost. Just sour grapes.

      Voter suppression? Just more BS excuses for losing. Hell, Detroit had more ballots cast than people on the voter registry. Why do the libs always proclaim there is no voter fraud, until they lose an election? Then its loud wails and lamentations about voter suppression.

      Corruption? You had no problem with Hillary and Bill's pay for play Foundation. She told us she would stand up to the big banks - while raking in millions of dollars from those same banks. She approved the sale of US strategic reserves of uranium to Russia after Companies with ties to Russia gave millions to the Foundation. The Russian PM said Russia no longer agrees with 3 nuclear nonproliferation treaties and is going to start upgrading and expanding the Russian nuclear arsenal. Khrushchev was right after all.

      So you have a problem with Trump's cabinet choices? Imagine that. He chooses people who have demonstrated the smarts and discipline to be successful. Haven't seen that approach for the last 8 years. It might be a refreshing change.

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    4. Goj u you are massively misinformed. It is not sour grapes to point out the historic nature of this election where the electoral college winner lost the popular vote in such a landslide. It also puts into perspective the fact that by a large margin most Americans do not support Trump, Republicans, or their policies.

      Liberals have always and continue to correctly claim there is no voter fraud. Voter suppression is a different matter, has been well documented, and has been an issue raised by liberals for decades.

      The issue of Hillary being corrupt has been debunked at this blog thoroughly. Your examples are jokes.

      Trump's cabinet choices go against what he ran on.

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    5. Add in the fact that those 78K victory in three states was led by efforts to not guarantee the results with recounts in MI and PA. It is childish to say "naa naa" Trump won. Shezz ? What do you expect? Shooting and white nationalist actions in the streets? *oh we kinda know who has done that in the past, fascists, brownshirts, nazis, leaders of slavery and Jim crow. The difficulty in governing is obvious... no accountable media and Republicans hair brain ideas are [main streamed] The Republicans can't help themselves because they see the greys of their wars and fights they only an determine if they won or lost the perceived. Now I am just waiting on 5.00 per gallon gas and 500K jobs a month. That is what the crazy leads to.

      Delete
  6. Covering a candidate's speeches during a major campaign is undeniably corruption.

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    Replies
    1. Covering speeches in which new policy is announced is different than covering rallies that are just the same stump speech over again. The new policy is news. The repetitious campaign activities are not news. Putting them on the air constitutes a gift of free broadcast time to the candidate, which is corrupt.

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    2. Covering empty podiums while the candidate's opponent is giving a speech at the same time is corruption.
      http://politicalwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Trump-podium-e1464285863407.png

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    3. Since we were constantly told that Trump changed his policies all the time, the only way to know what his current policies were was to cover the latest rally. Just because you don't think the political rallies are news doesn't mean they are not news. This is just more sour grapes. Trump outplayed Hillary in this aspect of the campaign. That, too, is Hillary's fault. She did a fraction of the rallies Trump did. Her campaign also lacked any real energy. Again, her fault.

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    4. PR is a huge part of any political campaign. Hillary had a large staff of PR (supposedly) experts. Establish your brand, then keep it in front of people. Trump dominated nearly every news cycle. Her staff never came up with a method to counter his campaign. She was a poor candidate. Not even as good as she was in 2008. For me, the biggest question is; what the hell happened to the Clinton machine? It looked inefficient, stale and always a bit out of step. None of which is Trump's fault.

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    5. Nonsense. They covered every Trump rally not because anybody really cared about his positions, but you never knew when he was going to talk about his penis size, and nobody wanted to miss out. Information was never part of the equation, entertainment was, and "news" networks were absolutely complicit in that.

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    6. Justin; Exactly right. Trump kept his name out front and dominated almost every news cycle. He put the "news" media in a position where they all had to cover him. Then he lambasted them, and the people loved it. Hillary and the dems had no clue how to deal with Trump. They were always 3 steps behind. The notion that campaigns are about serious discussions of the issues is a load of horse shit. Its a beauty contest where the winner is whoever sells his or her brand better. Trump outplayed everyone.

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    7. You seem to be missing the point though--which is weird, because this blog is pretty much entirely about this point; since the advent of cable news, it has been about entertaining story-lines at the expense of information. It's less about Trump being a genius than him being far too tempting of a subject for the press to ignore, unfortunately at the expense of our country.

      Delete
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