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DC Press Corpse

You are here: Home / Archives for DC Press Corpse

Opinions Differ

by Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix|  April 24, 20208:11 am| 309 Comments

This post is in: Media, DC Press Corpse, Our Failed Media Experiment

At a White House briefing, President Trump theorized — dangerously, in the view of some experts — about the powers of sunlight, ultraviolet light and household disinfectants to kill the coronavirus https://t.co/cm6fyxqQ0O

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 24, 2020

Here’s how a real newspaper writes a headline: Trump asked if disinfectants could be injected to kill the coronavirus inside the body. Doctors answered: ‘People will die.’ See how they did that? First, they quote him accurately (he talked about injecting disinfectant — how fucking dumb do you have to be to think that Lysol in the vein is a solution to anything but your continued presence on the planet?) Second, when the preponderance of Doctors say that something will kill you, it’s OK to write “this will kill you”, even if Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil and Dr. Dolittle disagree.

It’s 8 AM on a Friday, and I’m already feeling like there’s not enough gin in the fucking world.

Opinions DifferPost + Comments (309)

Consider This – The Hint of the Century

by Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix|  February 19, 20208:19 am| 68 Comments

This post is in: Media, DC Press Corpse

I hope all none of the Bill Barr fans in the audience are sitting down, because there was a WaPo news alert last night that you might have missed:

Attorney General William P. Barr has told people close to President Trump — both inside and outside the White House — that he is considering quitting over Trump’s tweets about Justice Department investigations, three administration officials said, foreshadowing a possible confrontation between the president and his attorney general over the independence of the Justice Department.

Almost every word of this is bullshit:

  • Nobody is “close to” President Trump. He has no close advisors – he just have people who do his bidding, try to manipulate him, or try to curry his favor.
  • There’s no “administration” – there is no “White House” as it was conceived by journalists in the past, something Jay Rosen is constantly pointing out.
  • Barr is considering quitting in the same way that I’m considering flying to the moon on a spaceship made of spun unicorn hair and hobbit spit.
  • A “confrontation” between Trump and Barr over the “independence” of the Justice Department is impossible, because you need to have a disagreement to have a confrontation, and both of those guys are in violent agreement about the role of Justice in enabling Trump to do whatever the fuck he wants.

This is just noise, but every day the noise is different. The four (!) reporters bylined on this story just live in a box that won’t allow them to admit the obvious truth that Barr is fully on board with whatever Trump wants. So, we have this “breaking” news that just shows us that the DC media is broken.

Consider This – The Hint of the CenturyPost + Comments (68)

Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: “How did the Republican party arrive at this place?”

by Anne Laurie|  December 9, 201911:06 pm| 80 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Don't Mourn, Organize, Impeachment Inquiry, Media, Open Threads, All Too Normal, DC Press Corpse

People are asking me what I thought of this. I read it as a confession: We're out of ideas. "Both sides" and "so divided" is all we got. https://t.co/u6gvIB0ZdE

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) December 8, 2019

Sigh.

Again: the faux-naive stance of the paper’s national-politics framing is at odds w (a) the reality of this moment and (b) the sophistication of their coverage of nearly everything else.

No story about biz, arts, science, climate, books etc would be framed this way.

— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) December 8, 2019

Jesus H. Christ on deadline, the lede may be the worst thing I ever read. The WH is engaged in obstruction of a) justice and b) Congress, and it’s being defended in the latter by a collection of bums, yahoos, and tobacco auctioneers. But the D’s are abandoning “lofty traditions."

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) December 9, 2019

Which is why the watchword(s) of every Liberal must be…#BothSidesDont pic.twitter.com/nul6kBkyky

— driftglass (@Mr_Electrico) December 8, 2019

Good day to repeat my current rule of press criticism: News stories currently framed as "we're so divided," and "can't agree on a common set of facts" should instead be cast as "how did the Republican party arrive at this place?"

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) December 8, 2019

Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: <em>“How did the Republican party arrive at this place?”</em>Post + Comments (80)

Trumpschemes 2020 Open Thread: Normal Parscale Grandiosity, or Fear of A Breaking Story?

by Anne Laurie|  December 2, 20196:30 pm| 172 Comments

This post is in: Election 2020, Free Markets Solve Everything, Open Threads, Trumpery, DC Press Corpse

Trump campaign says it will no longer credential @business reporters to campaign events pic.twitter.com/BpfDqZUUSL

— Justin Sink (@justinsink) December 2, 2019

On the one hand, it’s extremely in character for Brad Parscale, drunk on his self-perceived “power” to announce that You guys don’t get to sit at our table so there!!!, should make an outsized fuss about the media outlet owned by a real billionaire who is now challenging Brad’s boss.

On the other hand, it’s extremely in character for Brad Parscale, strip mall PC specialist turned campaign ‘data expert’ by the grace of the GRU, to try and preempt a(nother) breaking-news investigation by a major media outlet that will (further) damage Parscale’s direct report. Per Politico:

News organizations reacted warily to the Trump campaign’s announcement Monday that it will no longer credential Bloomberg News reporters for campaign events in response to the outlet’s decision not to investigate its owner, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or his Democratic rivals for president.

Trump Campaign manager Brad Parscale said the move, which Bloomberg News said would ensure equal footing for each Democratic candidate, indicated a bias against Trump because the outlet would continue to cover him critically while going easy on his Democratic rivals…

The move is reminiscent of the 2016 election, when the Trump team denied press credentials to numerous outlets, including POLITICO, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed News, because of coverage the campaign considered biased or unfair.

The 2020 campaign’s policy may extend beyond Trump’s rallies, with Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican Party, announcing that the GOP will “no longer credential” Bloomberg representatives. It could also affect White House coverage, given that Bloomberg reporters regularly travel with the president to events as part of the White House pool…

Bloomberg News, a global news organization of 2,700 journalists and analysts, has long had a policy of not initiating investigations into the billionaire businessman, his family or his foundation, and announced last week it would extend that practice to his 2020 Democratic rivals, in the wake of Bloomberg’s entry into the race.

Bloomberg News will continue to investigate the Trump administration, though it plans to reassess its policy if Michael Bloomberg becomes the Democratic nominee…

Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, took issue with the move against Bloomberg News. “We condemn any action that keeps quality news media from reporting fairly and accurately on the presidency and the leadership of the country,” he said in a statement.

But Bloomberg’s policy of not covering its owner has also drawn criticism from journalists for departing from how news organizations typically handle such situations. The Washington Post, for one, doesn’t restrict reporters from digging into its billionaire owner, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos…

Trumpschemes 2020 Open Thread: Normal Parscale Grandiosity, or Fear of A Breaking Story?Post + Comments (172)

Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Florida (Thanksgiving) Man

by Anne Laurie|  November 29, 201912:27 am| 67 Comments

This post is in: Election 2020, Military, Open Threads, Trumpery, All Too Normal, Assholes, DC Press Corpse, Decline and Fall

“A thing called space. You know about that right? Space. We’re going to have space covered very well. We’re covering it now but we have to cover it to a much greater extent” pic.twitter.com/FYq1JQ36C7

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) November 28, 2019

Cranky grandpa, like others of his ilk, gets hauled away from his comfort zone for the big media-friendly “family” holiday. (Hey, it’s not like anyone in his biological family was gonna miss him.) Kudos to his handlers, who seem to have succeeded in readjusting his meds to the point where he can, however briefly, perform well enough to excite the Media Village Idiots. Such as Politico, back to d/b/a Mr. Pierce’s Tiger Beat on the Potomac:

… It was a journey shrouded in more secrecy than usual even for a presidential trip into a war zone. And it merged the made-for-TV drama Trump savors with a military display he loves: the U.S. commander-in-chief on Thanksgiving, less than a year from the next election, surrounded by cheering troops in Afghanistan.

For a president who at times seems to be at war with his own military leaders, it was a celebration of America’s troops that a small circle of White House aides planned carefully for weeks to prevent leaks that could scuttle the trip…

This time, 12 of the 13 journalists who traveled with Trump — representing news wires, print and broadcast outlets — were picked up on the roof of a public parking garage near Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington and not even told where they were traveling until just before they arrived in Afghanistan. Cell phones, hotspots and any other devices emitting a signal were confiscated from everyone traveling on Air Force One — yes, even the president himself…

The president moved through the sprawling base in a 15-vehicle motorcade that included tan Toyotas with soldiers standing in the truck beds holding combat rifles. Trump was followed into each location by teams of heavily armed combat troops in fatigues, helmets and night-vision goggles.

[Just like a Tom Clancy movie, if Tom Clancy’s hero was a fat old man who can barely strut from his motorcade to his golf cart.]

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Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Florida (Thanksgiving) ManPost + Comments (67)

Friday Evening Open Thread: All Too True

by Anne Laurie|  September 27, 20196:10 pm| 69 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Trumpery, All Too Normal, DC Press Corpse, Decline and Fall, Let A Thousand Watergates Bloom

I salute Politico for running one of 2019's greatest headlines – it has since been changed, tragically, but it lives on as a URL https://t.co/9kv3ga3oir pic.twitter.com/rKvdjXJg2j

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) September 27, 2019

Here. pic.twitter.com/3GVnlsEmHA

— Jeremy Binckes (@jbinckes) September 27, 2019


Urban Dictionary attributes the original usage to Rahm Emmanuel in 2009.

The article, by “founding editor of POLITICO” John F. Harris, absolutely lives down to its original title:

… It is too early to tell what will come of House Democrats’ decision to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, but not too early to conclude that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has failed to revive the concept of solemnity in American politics.

That was the obvious intent Tuesday, when she stood in front of a bank of flags, invoking the Founding Fathers and Constitutional Convention of 1787, as she announced the impeachment inquiry.

But the reaction, underway even before she started speaking, made clear that for much of the country, it was just another day in what Rahm Emanuel, when he was Barack Obama’s chief of staff, called the metropolis of “Fucknutsville.” The news may be important, it may be swerving wildly in surprising ways, but never these days is it something that commands reverent attention.

People below a certain age may not have firsthand experience with news events that did indeed command that reaction — and impeachment proceedings against a president unambiguously would have been one of them…

He blames — you will no doubt be shocked! — what he calls ‘the Lewinsky Affair.’ The beclownification of which, of course, was very much a boon for the men who would later found Politico, but then irony is dead and therefore cannot sue for libel.

Because this remains the internet:

This inspired me, so I made a thing.https://t.co/wHv082EKEC

— Mike Kunkel (@M_Kunkel) September 27, 2019

Friday Evening Open Thread: All Too TruePost + Comments (69)

DC Press Corpse Open Thread: President As CEO vs. President As Cultural Phenom

by Anne Laurie|  September 2, 201910:07 pm| 130 Comments

This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Open Threads, All Too Normal, DC Press Corpse

Journalists on here: We are the guardians of democracy. We alone hold the torch of truth to shine a light on the powerful.

Same journalists: I wish I could write about how Trump is bad but Democrats aren't emailing me any talking points I like.

— Bret "Gregor Samsa" Stephens (@agraybee) September 3, 2019

This piece is a good example of why I and most of the people I know in journalism believe — by a very wide margin — that the Washington Post has surpassed the New York Times in reporting on the president of the United States. https://t.co/jBo2uLNPgo

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 2, 2019

Many years ago, when I subscribed to a dead-tree Washington Post weekly, a friend who’d grown up in the area explained that Washington DC is a company town where the monopoly industry is national politics. Which means that the Post treats every President as a CEO analogue — someone responsible for keeping the local industry running on an even keel, so that government workers and the hundreds of thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on those workers prosper.

The NYTimes considers itself as the national financial capitol; what interests them about any President is how he’s perceived by global business interests. The current Oval Office Occupant, however disastrous for individual Americans and the larger world, has *so far* been satisfactory as a novelty performer whose directors have not, to date, interfered in the ever-burgeoning prosperity of the oligarchs who support the NYTimes…

How it happened is not easy to explain. A key factor is that Dean Baquet, compared to Marty Baron, is far more concerned with how the Times coverage is — key word coming up — perceived by the White House and Republicans who support Trump. I wrote about it: https://t.co/VrTcZDUM4W

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) September 2, 2019

Thing is… when the profit-taking fails, the performer’s zany antics no longer disguise the smash’n’grab, there’s nothing left to loot… what becomes of the NYTimes? Or at least its most public face?

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DC Press Corpse Open Thread: President As CEO vs. President As Cultural PhenomPost + Comments (130)

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