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Why won't "the media" change its own culture and respond responsibly? Why won't "the media" stop treating lies as if they are truth? I watch MSNBC for hours every evening and see this pattern repeated regularly. I read the Washington Post, NY Times, Sacramento Bee, and LA Times every single day. They often treat the lies as if they are truth. "The press" has adopted a binary, win/lose, sports competition model instead of the "seeking the truth" commitment that is at the heart of press freedom in the United States. As my press consumption illustrates, I always thought the press was the arbiter of truth, not the amplifier of lies. Coverage of democracy has truly become like watching sports with play-by-play and color commentary. You are on Team Red or Team Blue. This is going to destroy democracy.

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Yes, there's a problem, but it stems from the dawn of Fox News 25 years ago, which defined itself by being the voice of conservatism on TV, that is, filtering "news" purposefully to provide a contrarian narrative for the sake of being contrarian. Talk radio already had the model down, but wasn't reaching the masses. Like the frog who doesn't realize he's cooking in the pot, they were able to creep into the public conscious by straying from the facts a little bit at a time.

While newspapers had tended to take a left-leaning (NY Times) or right-leaning (Wall Street Journal) view, TV news once seemed to rise above the fray. Remember Walter Cronkite? Besides, the FCC required them to be "honest, equitable, and *balanced*" though something called the Fairness Doctrine, which was abolished in 1987 and never applied to cable news.

Once Fox came along, the rest of the media doubled down on the journalistic ethic we have held to for at least a century: Show that you are "impartial" by giving both sides of the argument. So, it's even harder now for them to abandon both-sides-ism, although they've gotten better "thanks" to Trump's constant lies--but that does not make most journalistic organizations "blue."

Once again, we can thank RW media for spreading that narrative--and doing it effectively because the stupid "legitimate" media distributes the message following their call to be "balanced."

On the one hand, I wish MSNBC was a true counterweight to Fox, because a full-time network is required to counteract the screams from Fox, but they can't bring themselves to throw out journalistic norms the way Fox does.

Since Newsmax and OAN News have taken TV commentary further into crazy (not right in the political sense), Fox has gone there, too. Brian Stelter of CNN did reporting that backs that up in the newly released paperback version of his book "Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth."

I'm nauseous now after writing this because our democracy is already on life support, and there's no end in sight. (A pox on Joe Manchin.)

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Times like these I really miss Cronkite. It can be argued he single handedly ended the Vietnam war, simply by virtue of reporting the truth.

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Nearly everything now is framed in right wing talking points. Remember when the press kept asking if the Biden administration was going to pack the court? Republicans packed the court. Why would any news agency use the Republican frame when they knew it wasn't true? Our local news reported that Congress was stalled on the Jan. 6 commission. Not Republicans but a deliberate effort to cast all congress as nonfunctional. They followed up with this little gem: "Republicans believe the commission will be partisan." They didn't follow that up with the two Michigan Republicans who voted for the commission. They didn't think it was partisan. Honestly, I'm sick of calling editors and news producers about this. It's like racism, it's so ingrained in the press now many don't even know they're doing it. Someone referred to the way the media gets sucked into Republican false narrative as a self licking ice cream cone.

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Pickup trucks full of flags. Welcome to life under The American Taliban. And they're fast becoming just as deadly too.

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Great points. The culture wars of my youth were put on my radar by the "moral majority" attacking music and art. Those attacks were all based on dishonest and incurious interpretations of content - just like the "lies" you describe above. Only back then, storming our capitol would have sounded like madness to everyone on both sides.

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