E. J. Says Enough Is Enough With Fake ‘News’

July 27, 2010 by PaulM Posted in Current Events, Election 2010, History, Lowell, Politics 6 Comments

E. J. Dionne says the Shirley Sherrod civic car wreck should be enough to wake up the liberals and progressives to the in-your-face tactics of political extremists who are bent on bringing down the Obama administration. No more fake news, no more unfair and unbalanced, no more manufactured conflicts.  And if the other side tries to sell it, call it for what it is, and be as loud and stubbornly repetitive in the truth-setting as the other side is in spinning its views. Read E. J.’s column here, which I picked up from truth-out.org.

6 Responses to E. J. Says Enough Is Enough With Fake ‘News’

  4. PaulM says:

    True, there was a listserv, although there are differing views about its purpose. Any legitimate journalist, with an “a”, should be dealing with facts in as accurate a way as possible. Pundits work the levers of opinion, so that’s a different mission. Dishonest presentation by reporters or bloggers of things said or things done is unacceptable no matter what party or persuasion.

  5. Andrew says:

    I have little faith in taking on false news doing much to change minds, though it’ll certainly energize Democrats to see their leaders putting up a fight.

    People are going to believe what they want to believe. The Globe had a nice summary of recent research on this subject two weekends ago. Scientists have discovered that there’s actually a blowback effect: when presented with facts that contradict their view of the world, liberals didn’t change their opinion at all and conservatives actually became more convinced that they were right.

    Substance seems to matter little; rhetoric is far more effective. Democrats: tens of thousands of Americans die every year because of lack of healthcare. Republicans: the Democrats want to establish death panels. Who won that public relations campaign? (Though opinion has shifted fairly heavily since). I’m certainly not suggesting that rhetoric is better. It’s not. But we as a society seem to only respond to it. I don’t really understand why facts matter so little.

  6. The Mark says:

    Paul I don’t give a sh*t about the purpose, what I do care about is when people in the media who tell me as a viewer what is going on in the world behind closed doors or in this case talking about killing the Jeremiah Wright thing because it makes a candidate look bad. Moreover picking a conservative out of a hat to paint as a racist but then not doing it because it could back fire- not because it’s wrong. Your job is to report the news- not be the news. For years people on the left in my life have told me there is no media bias at all and it’s all in my head. They wouldn’t allow Tucker Carlson admission onto the serv- their reasoning was he may print things to be used against them? What happened to shine a little sunlight?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList

    Grain of salt and all but take a look.

    This proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt- for someone to deny that is either a) stoopid or b) intellectually dishonest. I can afford neither with my time.