“Why Don’t Those Pesky Republicans Appreciate Us?!?!?”
It’s that time again: America’s self-proclaimed “Newspaper of Record” is at it once more with another Republican-bashing, fact-free hot take.
We all know that writing about media bias is my forte but, dear readers, have I ever mentioned that I one day hope to not have to?
Alas, even with great leaps in modern medicine, I am not likely to live long enough to see that day. Especially as long as The New York Times is around. If and when honest historians ever get around to assessing the eventual death of old media, it will be found that eighty percent of the nails hammered into its coffin were provided by the Times.
The mainstream media has been at odds with conservatives and Republicans for a very, very long time. It escalated in ways most couldn’t even imagine after the 2016 presidential election. I wrote in a recent column that one of President Trump’s greatest achievements has been to force leftist media hacks to completely expose their horrid, irresponsible bias. They’ve always been awful, of course, but they used to be crafty and coy about it. Trump’s very presence led to millions of unforced errors from the MSM that can never be undone.
An article in Thursday’s New York Times Technology section is sadly indicative of the alternate universe the MSM inhabits whenever confronted with matters of its dwindling relevance or a lack of trust from millions of Americans.
It’s titled “Republican distrust of news may be helping election misinformation spread.” That tees up a host of incoherent and incorrect premises for the author to tackle. Fortunately, tech writers tend not to be as long-winded as most of their colleagues. Kudos to this one though, he manages to pack in a lot of stupid in a very short post.
In looking for reasons behind the misinformation that is casting doubt about last week’s election [of] Joseph R. Biden Jr., some researchers are drawing a link to the growing distrust of the news media among conservatives.
Research from Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has found a long and steady decline in trust in traditional media among more conservative Americans. In its place, they are increasingly relying on right-wing media outlets like Breitbart News and One America News and conservative pundits with a history of spreading falsehoods.
There is absolutely no backup for that last line, by the way. It’s just an opinion thrown out there as fact to assert that conservatives don’t mind getting news from crackpots.
Breitbart is a fave target of the Left media, due in large part to the way Andrew ran roughshod over them when he was alive. It is still a formidable presence on the conservative side to be sure, but — and I’m mentioning this for a reason I’ll get to in a moment — it’s only one of many center-right sites that are getting fantastic traffic.
Here is the part of the Times’ word barf that was so off-base I decided to be amused rather than annoyed:
The divide has created an environment where even basic facts are not agreed upon, making it easier for President Trump and others to spread falsehoods about the election results, said Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the institute. He said right-wing media outlets did not have the same fact-checking rigor and instead served as an echo chamber, helping nurture the belief that the election was rigged despite lack of credible evidence.
The combined Townhall Media Mothership universe (PJ Media, Townhall, HotAir, RedState, Bearing Arms, and Twitchy) is by far one of the largest “right-wing media outlets” in America. We are absolutely crawling with fact-checkers, both internally and externally. We are a for-profit company that very much enjoys those profits. If there is even a hint of anything awry, we can get fact-checked and throttled by more than one of our revenue drivers. Because of that, we rigorously check everything prior to publication.
The notion that we are skipping about the media landscape saying whatever the hell we want to is patently absurd. It’s even more absurd coming from the Times, which spreads misinformation and opinion as fact with impunity. I’m not even a journalist, I’m a comedian who also happens to be a bomb-throwing (RHETORIC ALERT!) conservative opinion writer. Even so, I’m subject to more rules than any Times writer will ever face.
Did you know that we can be accused of spreading misinformation even when everything we’re writing is factually correct? Another tech writer (what is it with these doofuses?) said that earlier in the week and Bryan wrote about it here.
I’m going to boil this down for the Times tech morons: Conservatives don’t trust you because you’re all pathological liars.
Glad we could clear that up.
The New York Times Continues to Pollute What Used to Be Journalism
An Outrageously Honest Assessment of President Trump’s First 4 Years
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PJ Media Senior Columnist and Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.” His columns appear twice a week.
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