Whereupon We Pontificate About Poor Media Outlet Choices

Krugman doesn’t know what that means.

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Petition to change thread title to “in which” so I don’t get mildly tilted every time I read it.

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MSNBC talent and staffers are bracing for a major 2020 shakeup amid discussion of moving ratings-challenged Chuck Todd to a morning slot and execs talking with Fox News escapee Shepard Smith.

With the lackluster performance of Todd’s MTP Daily at 5 p.m.—“a hammock,” as one insider put it, between the robust ratings of Nicolle Wallace’s 4 p.m. show and Ari Melber’s 6 p.m. show—there has been talk of switching Todd to 9 a.m., as Page Six first reported.

heh

However, Todd is said to be resisting such a move. Several sources inside NBC cited the perception that his new slot would hurt him with an even bigger dip for any program that airs after the successful Morning Joe franchise.

It’s time for Claire McCasket to hang 'em up.

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Wherein

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Wherein is accurate yeah, but as long as we’re changing it I feel like in which sounds better.

Krugman deleted the tweet where he said he was a pedophile.

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This…is CNN

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Anybody want to dispute my take from months ago that all the different TV news channels are Fox News, but less competent, less shameless, and targeting different demographics?

This whole advertising funded 24/7 TV model is incredibly dangerous to our Democracy, and it has to go. I’m not sure how, but it absolutely must go.

It isn’t going to lower news access because it isn’t news. It’s reality TV. The news is the footage they chop up to make their stories out of… and when that isn’t compelling enough to get your eyeballs (so that their sponsors can sell you stuff) they’ll manufacture some drama MTV style.

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Likewise, I wish we could stop it and simultaneously don’t know how. I fear humans, by nature, prefer being entertained and outraged to being informed.

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As far as CNN goes, judging from their ratings most people solve the problem by simply not watching it. Deepest sympathies to thousands of people trapped in airports across the country forced to listen to Don Lemon or Fredo talk. Horrifying.

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I blame the left somewhat for not figuring out how to exploit this model.

We are in a post-modern, post-Enlightenment world where democracy must find a way to survive without the people being united by a sense of universal reason.

The solution, really, is to encourage more and more people to move off of watching television and embracing a diversity of news sources. That has the problem of amplifying the power of social media, as people find it much easier to find someone who tells them what they want to hear, crafted to appeal to someone like them by validating what they already believe, so there is a trade-off.

In general, I think it begins by changing your expectations of what is possible and what you can hope to accomplish.

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I’m gonna defend the NYT on that one. Kammer is a respected journalist who did important work on the Savings & Loans scandal and won a Pulitzer for an expose on how a Congressman used his position on a defense committee for corrupt dealings. The SPLC’s evidence that CIS is a hate group, while there is some bad stuff in there, it’s pretty thin on the ground for a group with as much output as the CIS. The argument amounts to “Person X has written for the CIS and he’s a racist, Kammer has also written for the CIS, therefore Kammer is guilty by association”. You can pull the same stunt with literally any black advocacy group you can name and Louis Farrakhan etc etc. In fact, the NYT has published some reprehensible pieces over the years, so you might as well just condemn Kammer for writing a piece for them.

Edit: I’m not defending the CIS here btw, they are a malevolent force for sure, I’m just not a fan of using “hate group” designations to tar everyone associated with an organization with the same brush, because like I said, you can do that with groups like black advocacy groups as well. It’s in the nature of being on certain sides of certain arguments that you’re going to rub shoulders with shady people.

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let’s agree to disagree

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Imagine writing this last sentence. Yeah, some report by some office that isn’t well known by even most politically aware people is surely going to be the thing that does him in!

The GAO ruling will also force the White House further into crisis mode. It is difficult to keep count of the number of times that many among us assumed there was enough solid evidence to turn the legal and political tide against Trump. But each time it looked like the administration was pushed to the edge of the cliff, it has managed to slip away in the court of public opinion.

But we may be getting to the point where even the Teflon President can’t wriggle free.

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https://twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks/status/1218158331791134720

Damn, I was hoping the tweet would embed his shitty article:

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Reuters’ current main page:

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Did we ever get an update on Paul Krugman’s kiddie porn fiasco?

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