Also, does this seem like normal journalism?: We just watched the Biden-Harris event. After that, we watched the entirety of Donald J. Trump's astounding press event.
Equally astounding was the press corps' reliable, astounding incompetence. Tomorrow, we'll show you some of the questions they asked.
For now, let's go with two peculiar behaviors:
At roughly 4:53 PM, right before Biden and Harris appeared, Maria Teresa Kumar made this comment on MSNBC. She was describing press corps behavior in the run-up to the selection of Harris:
"The press corps was trying to tell Kamala Harris that she was too ambitious."
As you can see from the many links in this morning's report, that's an astonishing statement. It does help illustrate one of our most basic findings, derived from twenty-two years at this task:
Almost everything said by upper-end pundits comes live and direct from Script.From there, we turn to a simple question about this morning's New York Times:
Among this morning's letters to the editor, the Times included a very peculiar request.
In print editions, it was a boxed item. Hard-copy headline included, the boxed item read like this:
Your Advice for a No. 2The New York Times is asking its readers to compose advice for Harris!
Former Vice President Joe Biden has finally announced his choice of running mate: Senator Kamala Harris of California. What advice would you give her for the campaign—and beyond, if the ticket is elected?
Please submit no more than 150 words. We plan to publish a sampling later.
Email: letters@nytimes.com
Include your name, city, state and contact information, and put “veep” in the subject line.
Does that seem like a normal journalistic request? To our ear, the answer is no.
If Somerby is going to assert that this is an example of script, he needs to provide more context (e.g., what was said before and after this remark), not just excerpt something and characterize it without letting us judge for ourselves what it means:
ReplyDelete"The press corps was trying to tell Kamala Harris that she was too ambitious."
Given Somerby's own list of articles about ambition and Kamala Harris summarized earlier today, it does seem plausible that there is too much focus on ambition with respect to this new VP pick. But it is not possible to tell what Kumar meant without more info. The unfairness of that has been bothering me because Somerby has been doing this more frequently lately, as if he no longer cares about convincing his readers but just wants to tell us what's what in his opinion. If you don't let your readers participate in the judgment process, you aren't going to convince anyone, Somerby.
That contest to submit advice strikes me as similar to a "Pick your favorite Beatle" contest. It is PR hype to get people to send in letters to the editor, to be involved with the paper, which is good for their circulation. Yes, it is stupid, but if you ask people to think, they won't participate. You need something easy, such as "Are dogs better than cats? Send us your opinion!"
ReplyDeleteNo, Kamala Harris doesn't need that advice. Yes, it is somewhat demeaning to imply that she does. But it also seems fairly harmless and it won't shed light on social issues because the letter-writing is self-selected and not random, plus the NY Times will be selecting which letters to print. Note that they are asking for location data, so perhaps it is a marketing project to find out how widely read the paper is now that it is mostly online.
Maybe Somerby is hoping that someone will call this sexist so that he can mock the concept of sexism again. Not biting.
Famous interview question: "What's your biggest fault?"
ReplyDeleteFamous answer; "I work too hard."
Being too ambitious isn't as positive as working too hard, but it's close. There are many harsher things a critic could say.
You never say that you are "too ambitious" to a prospective supervisor or manager. The last thing a manager wants to do is hire a subordinate who will push them out and take their position or be angling to undermine them all the time.
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When did the press say that?
ReplyDeleteThe conservatives have apparently decided to attack Harris with racist not sexist tropes. They are busy saying that she is not black enough, that her parents owned plantations instead of working on them. This is a misguided approach because attacking Harris racially isn't going to shift any black voters to Trump and her appeal to immigrants isn't going to be swayed by that argument at all. And the whole racist approach will appeal to Trump's bigoted base.
ReplyDelete“It does help illustrate one of our most basic findings, derived from twenty-two years at this task: Almost everything said by upper-end pundits comes live and direct from Script.”
ReplyDeleteA quick and rough estimate by yours truly is that TDH posts about 600 items a year. Multiplying by 22 years, that's about 13,000 posts. Today's two posts combined are 2,300 words, so let’s go with 1,250 words as an average TDH post. This puts the TDH's total 22-year output at about 1,650,000 words. For comparison, there are 783,137 words in The King James Authorized Bible and a mere 77,430 words in the Quran.
“Almost everything said by upper-end pundits comes live and direct from Script.”
This is a TDH most basic finding, so let’s rephrase it as a commandment:
Thou shall Not work from Scripts.
Really? Doesn't everyone work from scripts based on their favored beliefs, stories, and ideology? Bob is working from a script of what he thinks good journalistic behavior should be, but sadly, the high-end journos won’t follow it. What is to be done?
How about we stop reading them, and start posting and promoting examples of good journalism from any source. Those 1.6M words could have gone a long way towards promoting the right kind of journalism.
The media is the propaganda arm of global corporations.
DeleteDone in 9 words, what Somerby couldn't do in 1.6 million words.
yep
DeleteBiden: “The President is sabotaging a basic service, cutting a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely.”
ReplyDeleteHe is talking about the postal service.
From Democratic Underground:
ReplyDelete"Records for “antifa.com” in the domain name database Whoisology.com show the site was registered in the Russian Federation from 2013 through last July. Starting last November, the site’s registration was moved to Panama, The website has always been anonymously registered and its owners could not be reached for comment.
After briefly redirecting to Biden’s page on Wednesday, the site went dark. Based on copies of the site on the Internet Archive, it was blank from 2013 until June of this year when it began to feature a message in support of the protests that erupted around the U.S. following the killing of George Floyd. The page declared, “we are actively increasing Membership” but provided no contact information for anyone interested in joining."
From Palmer Report:
ReplyDelete"Bernie Sanders tweeted this in response to this evening’s news: “Congratulations to Kamala Harris, who will make history as our next Vice President. She understands what it takes to stand up for working people, fight for health care for all, and take down the most corrupt administration in history. Let’s get to work and win.”
Maybe now Somerby will follow suit? He has criticized both Biden and Harris (one of his favorite targets, for saying that women are underpaid compared to men).
It is imperative that anyone who wishes to see Trump out of office support Biden/Harris. Voting for Kanye isn't going to do it. This will be the test of whether Somerby is a Republican at heart or can actually get behind the left's candidates.
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