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Friday, November 23, 2018

Media Madness!

I may have alienated a media outlet today.  Just one, you may be asking?  I was asked to be on a radio station to discuss some of Trump's statements, and I agreed although I was not sure what I wanted to say.  Well, it turns out I had something I wanted to get off my chest: that perhaps the media should not chase for comments and coverage every time the President talks about stuff.

That is, I was questioning why they were talking to me about this stuff.  The "story" du jour was Trump raising the possibility of closing the border with Mexico.  I argued that the media paid way too much attention to the caravan of refugees before the midterms, playing into Trump's hands, not unlike how they spent heaps of time on HRC's emails (I will attack HRC's tragically awful comments about populism another time) rather than focus on how corrupt Trump was.  

The radio guy said that I was asking for the media to edit the President, that they should doing more than covering the president but editorializing him.  No, I said, every media outlet is constantly editing--choosing what to cover, what not to cover, what to spend a lot of effort on, what to spend a little effort on, what to put on the front page or the top of the show, etc.  I was just asking them to:
EDIT RESPONSIBLY.

Rather than just chase ratings and clicks.  Please?  I didn't even get into the false equivalence machines that much of the media has become.  Sure, it was idealistic.  But it felt good.  Don't know if it will mean fewer media opportunities down the road--either because I pissed them off or because they reduce how often they seek comments on Trump's tweets/rants.

Anyhow, maybe I will stop agreeing to comment on Trump's comments... tis hte very least I can do.  How about you?

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