Sunday, January 22, 2017

Scammed Again

The news media got hoodwinked again this weekend.

The REAL story Saturday was millions of people turning out to advocate against promised policy initiatives of the Trump Administration.

The Trump Administration successfully turned the news cycle around to be about accuracy in media reporting.


It didn't completely divert attention from the Women's Marches around the globe, but it effectively squelched actual presentation of the issues in the media.

News media coverage quickly became about one incorrect statement in one news story, which the reporter himself discovered and corrected, and about whether a few photographs were deliberately misleading.  It was reinforced by inaccurate statistics cited by the new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer (either accidentally or deliberately).

It is a logical fallacy to draw conclusions about the world based on isolated examples, yet that is exactly what Spicer did -- lambasted the entire news media based on one inaccuracy statement and a few photographs he didn't like.

The size of the inaugural crowd is really a non-issue, except that all through the campaign, Trump used crowd size as an indicator of success. Therefore it WAS a legitimate part of the story, because Trump MADE crowd size part of the story.

When a government or an individual attempts to intimidate the news media, in order to make journalists reluctant to tackle controversy or corruption, it is called "The Chilling Effect."

The Trump Administration has launched its Chilling Effect campaign, and the media fell for it, hook, line and sinker.


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