Years of Smears. I like that, Sort of like, rhymes with Times(New York).
Politicians are given the same media treatment as are popular
entertainers. By the time the Media is done, we feel that we really
know the person they have turned their evil eye upon. I hear people
in the grocery line discussing some outrageous exposé of some current
film star as if it was their sister or brother. They call them by
first name, or by favorite nicknames. But in truth, they have no idea
of the person.
I feel the same regarding Hillary Clinton, or even Donald Trump. I
have never met them or their family or friends. No one who might
really have insight into the actual person. But what I can try to do
is to follow their actions. And what I usually find, going back to my
first attempt to create a better government with my vote for Adlai
Stevenson(1956), is that I am an outsider, trying to impact a System
that really barely tolerates me and my People, while I peer through
smoke blurred glasses, seeing only the reflection allowed me by the
mass media.
It is a deliberate effort by the Ruling Class to make the gathering of
real facts and information as difficult and confusing as possible. We
are forced to discuss the short comings of the person, because we have
so difficult a time finding out the real facts about what they will do
when in office. Even when I think I have a handle on the truth
regarding a candidate, the confusion from the PR folks and the Media
muddy the water to the point that only allows me to retreat to the
discussion about the make believe person.
So my bottom line is that I can't vote for the Lesser of Two Evils,
since I really don't know them. And if I vote for the less disruptive
of two platforms, then I'm back in the middle of the muddle of not
knowing which pack of liars to believe.
Carl Jarvis
on,
On 9/7/16, S. Kashdan <skashdan@scn.org> wrote:
> Years of Media Smears Have Created a Fictional Version of Hillary Clinton
> That Millions Have Bought Into
>
>
>
> By Heather Digby Parton [1]
>
>
>
> Salon [2], September 6, 2016
>
>
>
> http://www.alternet.org/print/election-2016/media-lies-about-hillary-clinton
>
>
>
> This election is about voters choosing the least worst candidate. That's
> where we are in our politics.
>
>
>
> -- Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) September 4, 2016 [3]
>
>
>
> That tweet from Chris Cilizza of The Washington Post's The Fix blog is
> cleverly framed to be about the voters' view of this campaign. Both
> candidates do have high unfavorable ratings among the public (as does the
> Congress and pretty much every other institution, including the press.) That
>
> jaded comment by a member of the media, however, illustrates something
> important. Some members of the press are not just commenting on a reality;
> they are pushing the theme of two equally unpalatable candidates and it just
>
> isn't true.
>
>
>
> The main problem for Clinton is that people think she is a congenital liar.
>
> When asked what it is she lied about, most people can't point to anything
> specific; they just know she's dishonest and corrupt. The fact that she's
> been dogged by political enemies and investigated by special prosecutors,
> the media and Congress with unlimited budgets and every possible means of
> getting to the truth and has been exonerated doesn't seem to register.
> Indeed, the fact-checkers all find her to be more honest [4] than virtually
>
> anyone in politics [5] while Donald Trump, by contrast, lies more than he
> tells the truth. [6]
>
>
>
> To understand how this came to be, go back to a column from 1996 in The New
>
> York Times by vicious right-wing columnist William Safire [7] who first
> dubbed her a "congenital liar. [8]" All the crimes that he accused her of
> committing and lies he insisted that she had told later proved him to be the
>
> liar (or badly misinformed), but it didn't matter. For many reasons, not the
>
> least of which was simple sexism, it was set in stone that this feminist,
> lawyer first lady was devious, calculating and power mad--Madame Defarge and
>
> Evita rolled into one. The political press has filtered its coverage of her
>
> through that lens ever since.
>
>
>
> As Amanda Marcotte has documented [9], the current "lock her up!" fever,
> that burning desire to see her her humiliated and imprisoned (or in some
> cases executed for treason [10]) goes back to the 1990s as well. And it's no
>
> less disturbing now than it was then. It's fed by the press' insatiable
> appetite for juicy tidbits doled out piece by piece by right-wing
> operatives, each story building on itself to create a narrative of crisis
> and criminality despite there being no evidence of it being true.
>
>
>
> The assumption behind the "Clinton Foundation scandal" is that the mere
> possibility of "impropriety" is a form of corruption despite there being
> absolutely no proof that any favoritism or transaction actually took place.
>
> (The fact that all politicians in Washington from President Barack Obama to
>
> lowly congresspeople have contacts every day with people who give them money
>
> for their campaigns directly doesn't put any of that in perspective for some
>
> reason.) She alone is being held liable for the big money problem that
> infects our system from top to bottom.
>
>
>
> Recently, there has been some pushback coming from several journalistic
> quarters, which is new. The erroneous AP report that Clinton had pretty much
>
> given exclusive access to Clinton Foundation donors was ably dispatched by
> Matthew Yglesias of Vox [11]. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has
> challenged [12] several stories, including the breathless "expose" [13]
> about a Clinton associate asking for diplomatic passports to rescue two
> journalists in North Korea. James Fallows in The Atlantic [14] revisited his
>
> book from 20 years ago called "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine
> American Democracy" and lamented how current coverage shows little
> improvement since then.
>
>
>
> Paul Waldman in The Washington Post took on [15] the two competing
> "foundation" scandals, Trump's being an actual case of flat-out bribery and
>
> Clinton's being nothing. And The New York Times' Paul Krugman devoted a
> column [16] to a scathing critique of the press, comparing its coverage to
> the treatment of Al Gore in 2000, when a fake "liar" meme circulated,
> propagated by right-wing opposition organizations to tar him as dishonest
> and mentally unstable [17]. We all know how well that turned out.
>
>
>
> I had to laugh at Sunday's silly New York Times story about Hillary Clinton
>
> hobnobbing with wealthy donors [18] as if that were a shocking display of
> arrogant elitism. Compare and contrast that with this story from 2012 about
>
> President Obama hobnobbing with wealthy donors [19] portrayed as an
> unpleasant but necessary duty in a time of big money dominance. One cannot
> escape the fact that Clinton is being held to a different standard.
>
>
>
> Much of the criticism in general is focused on The New York Times which
> seems to have a strange institutional vendetta against both Clintons. It's
> hard to understand why this would be true over so many years but perhaps
> Jonathan Allen explained it best in this brutally honest piece called
> "Confessions of a Clinton reporter: The media's 5 unspoken rules for
> covering Hillary." [20] This, I think, can fairly be said to apply across
> the board not just to the Times:
>
>
>
> The Clinton rules are driven by reporters' and editors' desire to score the
>
> ultimate prize in contemporary journalism: the scoop that brings down
> Hillary Clinton and her family's political empire. At least in that way,
> Republicans and the media have a common interest.
>
>
>
> This problem has deep roots in our political culture and it's potentially
> creating a serious crisis in 2016. If Donald Trump were to pull out a win,
> the ramifications would be extreme. And he could. Nate Silver and the 538
> gang of statisticians don't give him good odds but they do not believe it's
>
> impossible: [21]
>
>
>
> [Our model] shows Trump as having gained about 2 points over two weeks. If
> Trump keeps gaining 1 percentage point a week, he'll beat Clinton by a
> couple of percentage points on Nov. 8. Hence, Clinton should probably not be
>
> picking out the White House drapes just yet.
>
>
>
> People who are sanguine about Trump's losing needs to rethink their
> position. And members of the press need to do a serious gut check about how
>
> they're conducting their campaign coverage. As Paul Krugman wrote in his
> Monday column, "America and the world can't afford another election tipped
> by innuendo."
>
>
>
>
>
> Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby [22]," is a contributing writer
> to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and
> Analysis Journalism.
>
>
>
> Share on Facebook Share
>
>
>
> Share on Twitter Tweet
>
>
>
> mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Years of Media Smears Have
> Created a Fictional Version of Hillary Clinton That Millions Have Bought
> Into [23]
>
>
>
> [24]
>
>
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/media-lies-about-hillary-clinton
>
>
>
> Links:
>
>
>
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/heather-digby-parton
>
>
>
> [2] http://www.salon.com
>
>
>
> [3] https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/772460105774292992
>
>
>
> [4]
> http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/08/hillary-clinton-one-americas-most-honest-politicians
>
>
>
> [5]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/campaign-stops/all-politicians-lie-some-lie-more-than-others.html
>
>
>
> [6]
> http://www.salon.com/2016/05/15/donald_trump_is_a_serial_liar_more_upsetting_is_that_no_one_seems_to_care_partner/
>
>
>
> [7] http://www.salon.com/2004/11/22/safire_7/
>
>
>
> [8] http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/08/opinion/essay-blizzard-of-lies.html
>
>
>
> [9]
> http://www.salon.com/2016/08/29/the-clinton-bs-files-lock-her-up-isnt-really-about-emails-the-rights-been-accusing-the-clintons-of-murder-for-decades/
>
>
>
> [10]
> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/al-baldasaro-clinton-should-be-executed-not-assassinated
>
>
>
> [11] http://www.vox.com/2016/8/24/12618446/ap-clinton-foundation-meeting
>
>
>
> [12] http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/about-as-clear-cut-as-they-get
>
>
>
> [13] http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-failed-chumps
>
>
>
> [14]
> http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/09/trump-time-capsule-92-how-the-media-undermine-american-democracy/498461/
>
>
>
> [15]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/?utm_term=.54e7b65f5aaf
>
>
>
> [16]
> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/opinion/hillary-clinton-gets-gored.html
>
>
>
> [17]
> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/06/playing-dirty/302960/
>
>
>
> [18]
> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/us/politics/hillary-clinton-fundraising.html
>
>
>
> [19]
> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/obama-is-spending-an-unprecedented-amount-of-time-fundraising-scandal/258526/
>
>
>
> [20] http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8900143/hillary-clinton-reporting-rules
>
>
>
> [21]
> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-its-too-soon-for-clinton-to-run-out-the-clock/
>
>
>
> [22] http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
> [23] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Years of Media Smears
> Have Created a Fictional Version of Hillary Clinton That Millions Have
> Bought Into
>
>
>
> [24] http://www.alternet.org/
>
>
>
> [25] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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