I’m leaving today for a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, so I will not be having much BA time for about two weeks; however, I just wanted to make one comment, which I hope all will find interesting. Back in the 1970s, when I was teaching journalism at Marshall University, I taught a class entitlted “Mass Media and Society.” One of the scholars we studied in that class was Marshall McLuhan. Based on his media theoreis, which were themselves based on a specific strain of Canadian economic theory, he postulated that electronic media were transforming us from a society that processed information in a linear and sequential manner to one that processed information in a multidemensional and holistic manner. From this he further postulated that we would begin to relate to each other in a tribalistic global village manner. This lead to the concusion that we were headed for a return to the 19th Century norm of media that made no attempt to be objective but simply interacted with their part of the global village in manner not too dissimilar to a story teller sitting around the tribal council circle. I believe we have now essentially arrived at that point.

It might be instructive for some here to read up on the history of the Associated Press, and why the concept of “objective journalism” was developed in the first place. This is part of journalism history that’s often overlooked and is very interesting. The rationale for “objective reporting” you’ll discover was not what you probably think it was.

Found some different things on the rationale for objective reporting. I’m not sure I understand it completely. Would be nice if you elaborated on it.

Agreed. I think the more telling statement he keeps making is about his ability to pardon himself, which there doesn't seem to be a legal argument supporting.

P.S. You should be floating in the Mediterranean right now, not talking to us idiots.

I’ll yell fake news when someone falsely points out that Elon Musk is against science and is to blame because some of his followers are assholes.

Man is your reading comprehension terrible.

But you've really staked some impressively non-sensical moral high ground here. You've decided that it's the media's fault we elected a terrible President and therefore you're going to use said terrible President's rallying cry of "fake news" to show your displeasure with the media in the exact way the President wants you to. Strong reasoning there.

It should be super clear by now to anybody reading this why the problem is less with the media and more with the populace. You're exhibit A.

Hey man, your new poll just further indicated that you can't read. You don't even understand the conversation that's being had here. As soon as anybody introduces any nuance to the discussion, you immediately revert back to a simplified, black and white bad vs. good, true vs. fake narrative because you get confused. Now we're grading the media, even though the conversation here's been about the extent to which the media's to blame and what solutions there are to offer.

So in sum: your reading comprehension's really bad. I especially liked the time you didn't realize that you copy and pasted a link to another article and yelled "Fake News!!!!!!!!" at the WaPo author for bringing up Colin Kaepernick in an article about tax policy. A+ reading there, man.

It's not really worth saying it again, but that's not at all what the author wrote.

This is just one section of the article that is fake.

The article writes “With every critism lobbed at a journalist(or scientist), Musk reinforces the growing public mistrust of essiential institutions seeded by the Donald Trump wing of the GOP.

That’s fake news. How does his critism of a science article reinforce that? He is a scientist, isn’t he qualified to criticize science. What if he just had issue with the science in the article and disagreed with it? How does doing that equate to enforcing the growing public mistrust of essiential institutions seeded by Donald Trump.

It doesn’t at all. It’s qualified critism. I guess only journalist now are allowed to criticize people.

My point is really simple. You keep avoiding it. That the economy now has structural issues and the potential to collapse does not make it worse than an economy which is collapsed. You said you could argue that the economy in 2008 was better than it is right now. You haven't made that argument. You haven't even tried. You're welcome to. Knock yourself out.

And it was a really good point. I totally agree with it. It's just that the author never mentioned Kaepernick in the article you "destroyed."

You accidentally copy and pasted an unrelated link and mistook it for part of the article you understood super well and destroyed. Always a sign of strong reading comprehension when you can't recognize that an unrelated headline is out of place. And that's been explained to you twice and you still don't understand.

Presumably because your reading comprehension is. . .bad.

The poll was taken down. There were two votes. An A and a B. I gave them the B.

Also, I provided a few things that I think contributed to Trump. I think there are literally thousands of causes, as I've said. I don't think you can narrow in on any one factor. The media played a role -- you and I just disagree on the extent of it. We also disagree on how much personal responsibility people have to identify strong sources of news to help inform their opinions.

This is fair. You're right -- grading the media would be a good way to take the pulse here. But I think the poll accepts as true your assertion that the media's the main culprit and there needs to be a solution specific to the media. I don't think you've done anything to prove that's the case, outside of valid critiques of cable news. But as I demonstrated, cable news is a relatively small medium.

The overarching point I'm making is pretty simple, honestly. If you want the media to improve, you shouldn't align yourself (even unintentionally) with the President who is attacking credible sources and stories specifically to avoid reckoning with proven facts. You are part of the problem. Your actions are working against the solution you're hoping for. It's a super simple, non-controversial point that nobody here but you has disagreed with.

You really want me to be making the point that the media's perfect and deserve no criticism. I haven't made that point. That you think I have is, I think, because you have. . .poor reading comprehension.