{"id":47477,"date":"2019-03-26T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T07:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=47477"},"modified":"2019-03-25T14:53:02","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T18:53:02","slug":"matt-taibbi-on-a-death-blow-for-the-reputation-of-the-american-news-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/03\/26\/matt-taibbi-on-a-death-blow-for-the-reputation-of-the-american-news-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Taibbi on &#8220;a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A revised and updated chapter from his <a href=\"https:\/\/taibbi.substack.com\/p\/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-million\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Hate, Inc.<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Note to readers: in light of news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation is complete, I\u2019m releasing this chapter of Hate Inc. early, with a few new details added up top.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Over the weekend, the <em>Times<\/em> tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions of Americans trained in these years to place hopes for the overturn of the Trump presidency in Mueller. As with most press coverage, there was little pretense that the Mueller probe was supposed to be a neutral fact-finding mission, as apposed to religious allegory, with Mueller cast as the hero sent to slay the monster.<\/p>\n<p>The Special Prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years, with votive candles sold in his image and <em>Saturday Night Live<\/em> cast members singing \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You\u201d to him featuring the rhymey line: \u201cMueller please come through, because the only option is a coup.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Times<\/em> story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller\u2019s reputation, noting Trump\u2019s Attorney General William Barr\u2019s reaction was an \u201cendorsement\u201d of the fineness of Mueller\u2019s work:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a \u201cwitch hunt,\u201d Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep Mr. Mueller from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Mueller, in other words, never stepped out of the bounds of his job description. But could the same be said for the news media?<\/p>\n<p>For those anxious to keep the dream alive, the <em>Times<\/em> published its usual graphic of Trump-Russia \u201ccontacts,\u201d inviting readers to keep making connections. But in a separate piece by Peter Baker, the paper noted the Mueller news had dire consequences for the press:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>It will be a reckoning for President Trump, to be sure, but also for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for Congress, for Democrats, for Republicans, for the news media and, yes, for the system as a whole\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a damning page one admission by the <em>Times<\/em>. Despite the connect-the-dots graphic in its other story, and despite the astonishing, emotion-laden editorial the paper also ran suggesting \u201cWe don\u2019t need to read the Mueller report\u201d because we know Trump is guilty, Baker at least began the work of preparing <em>Times<\/em> readers for a hard question: \u201cHave journalists connected too many dots that do not really add up?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The paper was signaling it understood there would now be questions about whether or not news outlets like itself made galactic errors by betting heavily on a new, politicized approach, trying to be true to \u201chistory\u2019s judgment\u201d on top of the hard-enough job of just being true. Worse, in a brutal irony everyone should have seen coming, the press has now handed Trump the mother of campaign issues heading into 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing Trump is accused of from now on by the press will be believed by huge chunks of the population, a group that (perhaps thanks to this story) is now larger than his original base. As Baker notes, a full 50.3% of respondents in a poll conducted this month said they agree with Trump the Mueller probe is a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A revised and updated chapter from his Hate, Inc.: Note to readers: in light of news that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation is complete, I\u2019m releasing this chapter of Hate Inc. early, with a few new details added up top. [&#8230;] Over the weekend, the Times tried to soften the emotional blow for the millions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28,53,13],"tags":[1037,213,289,101],"class_list":["post-47477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-donaldtrump","tag-newspapers","tag-polls","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-clL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47478,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47477\/revisions\/47478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}