Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Trump States the Obvious about the Press

"YOU ARE AN OBNOXIOUS BLOWHARD"

From Roger Simon at PJM:
Oh, the vapors, the vapors... Donald Trump, while detailing his veteran donations at a news conference, thoroughly dissed the press and called a reporter "sleazy." (Hillary Clinton, it's worth noting, doesn't do that. She can't because, although running for president, she hasn't had a news conference in 2016.) 
Well, of course Donald did because they are mostly sleazy, all of them, including me. I'm particularly sleazy when I'm reporting, slightly less so when I'm writing an opinion piece. And that's the point — it's all opinion when you examine it closely, reporting not so much. Nothing is really objective. It can't be. We're all biased for one obvious reason — we're human. Ever meet an unbiased human? It was probably a corpse. An old one. 
And as for journalists as a class, Joan Didion put it best in her introduction to her classic Slouching toward Bethlehem: "writers are always selling somebody out.” 
Reporters are most sleazy when they pretend to be objective, following diligently in the footsteps of the Grey Lady herself and her onetime motto "All the news that's fit to print." 
Only the Times chose what news fit, not to mention what news "fit" on the front page and what on page twenty-four. Bias anyone? (It took years for the Times to put Auschwitz on the front page.)
GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

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