Outstanding analysis. I was already pretty much divorced from mainstream media when its use of deceptive euphemisms for conflict became overwhelmingly obvious, but my 30-year career therein had begun with sports-writing, and sometime in the last two decades of the 20th Century -- probably the early '80s -- I realized political strife was being covered as if it were an athletic event.
Raised on the principle it is economics that determines our politics and politics that determines our fate, I remember concluding the coverage of pivotal news as if it were no more than football was undoubtedly the result of managerial focus-groping for greater profits. (Pun intended.) The resultant stylistic transformation was most likely peddled as a circulation-booster to make reading more palatable to the Moronic Majority, this by replacing solemn reportage with journalistic sis-boom-bah. (Here again we see MacLuhan's recognition of the medium as part of its message.)
The resultant subliminal assertion -- that political warfare is no more meaningful than gridiron rivalry -- reinforced both the voter indifference and the non-voter surrender that enabled Führer Trump and his Techno-Übermenschen puppeteers to herd the nation's murderously xenophobic, anti-intellectual, pridefully ignorant, white-male-supremacist Moronic Majority to Christonazi triumph. Thus We the Remaining Humans are indeed at war -- literally for our own survival -- and the only mindset truly applicable to our circumstances is that of the warrior.
Meanwhile, as I have said so many many many times before, we must recognize that the U.S. mainstream media machine is the world's first monopoly owned, for-maximum-profit version of Josef Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the infamous Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, its direct U.S. descendant as carefully moderated by the CIA as the original version was by the Gestapo.
I am so sick and F'ing tired of "sane washing" "grifting" "hush money" "proposals to annex" "change in past policy" "help the American people" this last being the sickest and most foul...I'll stop because the narratives get into the words and the descriptions of the topic/crime/violation/obstruction/defiance as entire crimes being said to be "Trump's vision". That may be but it is criminal nonetheless.
I read the Vance interview today on the SCOTUS and he is a teletubby with a law degree saying they are trying to overturn the will of the people. WTAF. He has no mandate, he isn't operating on what was voted on, with a couple of small exceptions, truly, and is this 1/6/21?
It is all spun like silk out a venomous spider's ass and I wholly know how damaging this court has been.
I'm glad he hosted his crypto dinner using the podium and seal as that is not a covered act.
The worst has been Peter Baker, in the more decent camp, as one knows FOX already paid nearly 800M for lying so one expects that, who is the WH "loser" correspondent for the Times which I'm no fan of.
I don't care what or who one watches but it all comes down to saying the damn right thing without lying or half-truthing which is hard when one could just lie back but to tell the truth or show the fact GD do it and do it right.
On Memorial Day, his rant on TS, just added to his gracious style while claiming Biden let in 21M migrants into the country in 2024. Since 1965 there has been a total of 75M. Just like those 287M saved, in 100 days, MEDIA, cuz of his fentanyl recovery. RFK, Jr should focus on Narcan not vaccines.
I never want to see K. Welker interview anyone ever again. She just doesn't have the skill set needed. Fair Enough?
Trump is sane, he is taking bribes, stealing, violating, embezzling, laundering, and pardoning using the stolen taxes/deferralments and lost restitution revenue which is really adding up, when one thinks of Musk alone, etc. All now that white collar crime is open for everyone!! HAHA.
Crime-ing in politics isn't new but this is new to the detriment of the entire country, her laws, her role in the world, her reputation, and now the trust in her.
Lastly, the hush money was in furtherance of felony charges and that one just digs at me. 34 of them to be exact. Love the recent pardons.
Thanks for this post. Sorry about my rant but I had to. They do need to stop. NOW.
Reporters, editors, and other folks who work today for mainstream media need to ask themselves whether they should continue to give their labor to companies that are working hand in hand with this fascist regime.
That's bullshit. The MAGA morons were watching FOX and fascist, white Christian nationalist podcasters and assorted insane libertarians and Nazis. MSNBC was and is the only cable news source that has consistently and relentlessly exposed Trump & Co. for what they are. It's absurd to blame MSNBC for the failure of the rest of the networks and cable news stations, or for the ignorance and stupidity of the great mass of our fellow citizens who fell for the greatest con since Hitler. Trump won because stupid, racist, illiterate people voted for him in huge numbers. No one can seriously claim that MSNBC caused that.
With all due respect, Mr. Burnham, the vast and detailed coverage given Trump and the Christonazi onslaught by MSNBC and its (allegedly) pro-democracy ilk is as indicative of ruling-class support for the slaying of the Republic as is the more obvious Christonazi propagation by Fox ad nauseam.
When the ruling class wants something defeated, ignored or forgotten, its mainstream media machine either suppresses it, as it did for many years the outcry against the Warren Commission, or it trivializes it as "conspiracy theory," as it later did with the Warren-Commission controversy and now does with the infinitely terrible truth the Trumpite triumph leaves us once again at that "rude bridge that arched the flood."
Thus the coverage herein properly deplored is obviously a devious expression of the ruling class terror We the Remaining Humans might at last recognize that if we fail to muster appropriate resistance, the democratic experiment begun with our ancestors' blood spilled at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge on 18 April 1775 is slain forever.
Lovely idealism. While revolution is certainly an option, and while MSNBC is certainy not perfect, the coverage of this debacle by MSNBC has provided constant exposure of malfeasance perpetrated at a scale that still cannot be quantified. That of course could change with corporate caving by its parent NBC. And I would love to see Jim Stewartson's work appear on MSNBC and other major outlets and newspapers. But the ultimate failure lies with the people who, in an actual democracy, voted for this madness with 40% of the electorate staying home. The success lies in the propaganda and predation of truly evil people. For a great survey of the our legal demise since the Warren Court, see Leah Litman's excellent discussion in her book Lawless. I stand by my original comment.
I agree with you, James. MSNBC is far from perfect—they should never have fired Joy Reid. That and some other programming decisions will, I think, not serve them well. But Chris Hayes and Rachel continue to fight the good fight.
Outstanding analysis. I was already pretty much divorced from mainstream media when its use of deceptive euphemisms for conflict became overwhelmingly obvious, but my 30-year career therein had begun with sports-writing, and sometime in the last two decades of the 20th Century -- probably the early '80s -- I realized political strife was being covered as if it were an athletic event.
Raised on the principle it is economics that determines our politics and politics that determines our fate, I remember concluding the coverage of pivotal news as if it were no more than football was undoubtedly the result of managerial focus-groping for greater profits. (Pun intended.) The resultant stylistic transformation was most likely peddled as a circulation-booster to make reading more palatable to the Moronic Majority, this by replacing solemn reportage with journalistic sis-boom-bah. (Here again we see MacLuhan's recognition of the medium as part of its message.)
The resultant subliminal assertion -- that political warfare is no more meaningful than gridiron rivalry -- reinforced both the voter indifference and the non-voter surrender that enabled Führer Trump and his Techno-Übermenschen puppeteers to herd the nation's murderously xenophobic, anti-intellectual, pridefully ignorant, white-male-supremacist Moronic Majority to Christonazi triumph. Thus We the Remaining Humans are indeed at war -- literally for our own survival -- and the only mindset truly applicable to our circumstances is that of the warrior.
Meanwhile, as I have said so many many many times before, we must recognize that the U.S. mainstream media machine is the world's first monopoly owned, for-maximum-profit version of Josef Goebbels' Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the infamous Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, its direct U.S. descendant as carefully moderated by the CIA as the original version was by the Gestapo.
Jim, I couldn't agree more.
I am so sick and F'ing tired of "sane washing" "grifting" "hush money" "proposals to annex" "change in past policy" "help the American people" this last being the sickest and most foul...I'll stop because the narratives get into the words and the descriptions of the topic/crime/violation/obstruction/defiance as entire crimes being said to be "Trump's vision". That may be but it is criminal nonetheless.
I read the Vance interview today on the SCOTUS and he is a teletubby with a law degree saying they are trying to overturn the will of the people. WTAF. He has no mandate, he isn't operating on what was voted on, with a couple of small exceptions, truly, and is this 1/6/21?
It is all spun like silk out a venomous spider's ass and I wholly know how damaging this court has been.
I'm glad he hosted his crypto dinner using the podium and seal as that is not a covered act.
The worst has been Peter Baker, in the more decent camp, as one knows FOX already paid nearly 800M for lying so one expects that, who is the WH "loser" correspondent for the Times which I'm no fan of.
I don't care what or who one watches but it all comes down to saying the damn right thing without lying or half-truthing which is hard when one could just lie back but to tell the truth or show the fact GD do it and do it right.
On Memorial Day, his rant on TS, just added to his gracious style while claiming Biden let in 21M migrants into the country in 2024. Since 1965 there has been a total of 75M. Just like those 287M saved, in 100 days, MEDIA, cuz of his fentanyl recovery. RFK, Jr should focus on Narcan not vaccines.
I never want to see K. Welker interview anyone ever again. She just doesn't have the skill set needed. Fair Enough?
Trump is sane, he is taking bribes, stealing, violating, embezzling, laundering, and pardoning using the stolen taxes/deferralments and lost restitution revenue which is really adding up, when one thinks of Musk alone, etc. All now that white collar crime is open for everyone!! HAHA.
Crime-ing in politics isn't new but this is new to the detriment of the entire country, her laws, her role in the world, her reputation, and now the trust in her.
Lastly, the hush money was in furtherance of felony charges and that one just digs at me. 34 of them to be exact. Love the recent pardons.
Thanks for this post. Sorry about my rant but I had to. They do need to stop. NOW.
Rant anytime. Very, very well said.
Glad to get your permission! Thanks for your reply, Jim!
🙏 it’s inaccurate and poor writing.
I can’t see corporate media making any changes. I think we can just call them state media at this point
Reporters, editors, and other folks who work today for mainstream media need to ask themselves whether they should continue to give their labor to companies that are working hand in hand with this fascist regime.
Omg this
Trump probably wouldn’t have been elected in 2016 without the support of MSNBC who covered his antics 24/7.
That's bullshit. The MAGA morons were watching FOX and fascist, white Christian nationalist podcasters and assorted insane libertarians and Nazis. MSNBC was and is the only cable news source that has consistently and relentlessly exposed Trump & Co. for what they are. It's absurd to blame MSNBC for the failure of the rest of the networks and cable news stations, or for the ignorance and stupidity of the great mass of our fellow citizens who fell for the greatest con since Hitler. Trump won because stupid, racist, illiterate people voted for him in huge numbers. No one can seriously claim that MSNBC caused that.
With all due respect, Mr. Burnham, the vast and detailed coverage given Trump and the Christonazi onslaught by MSNBC and its (allegedly) pro-democracy ilk is as indicative of ruling-class support for the slaying of the Republic as is the more obvious Christonazi propagation by Fox ad nauseam.
When the ruling class wants something defeated, ignored or forgotten, its mainstream media machine either suppresses it, as it did for many years the outcry against the Warren Commission, or it trivializes it as "conspiracy theory," as it later did with the Warren-Commission controversy and now does with the infinitely terrible truth the Trumpite triumph leaves us once again at that "rude bridge that arched the flood."
Thus the coverage herein properly deplored is obviously a devious expression of the ruling class terror We the Remaining Humans might at last recognize that if we fail to muster appropriate resistance, the democratic experiment begun with our ancestors' blood spilled at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge on 18 April 1775 is slain forever.
Lovely idealism. While revolution is certainly an option, and while MSNBC is certainy not perfect, the coverage of this debacle by MSNBC has provided constant exposure of malfeasance perpetrated at a scale that still cannot be quantified. That of course could change with corporate caving by its parent NBC. And I would love to see Jim Stewartson's work appear on MSNBC and other major outlets and newspapers. But the ultimate failure lies with the people who, in an actual democracy, voted for this madness with 40% of the electorate staying home. The success lies in the propaganda and predation of truly evil people. For a great survey of the our legal demise since the Warren Court, see Leah Litman's excellent discussion in her book Lawless. I stand by my original comment.
I agree with you, James. MSNBC is far from perfect—they should never have fired Joy Reid. That and some other programming decisions will, I think, not serve them well. But Chris Hayes and Rachel continue to fight the good fight.
Not to mention Lawrence, who is out for blood every night.