After Trump's press-conference, a Russian journalist commiserates with his "doomed" American colleagues

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/12/after-trumps-press-conferenc.html

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One thing I’ve noticed with Russians is that they never lose their fatalism even they live outside Russia for decades.

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What are NYT and WaPo worth without access to anonymous “officials”?

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I mean, he’s not wrong.

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And this is how he gets reelected.

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If he does well, like president Putin, he gets reelected in 2020, 2024 and 2028.

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I can’t bring myself to give you a like.

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They are doomed for an entirely different reason:

When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality,
who is going to believe the people and institutions who have
demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how
factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how
unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?

I think Greenwald is talking about Cory here.

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No sir, I don’t like it either.

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He should be talking about himself.

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I’m not sure “fatalism” Is the right word but I think I know what you mean.

I once hag a night out in Moscow, drank way too much, had a run in with the police who tried to shake me down, staggered off and flagged a lift while they argued amongst themself and got back to my apartment to sleep for 1 hour before getting to work.

At work one of the guys who worked for me asked me how I was. I told him my head hurts, my job sucks, I had no sleep and I hate my fucking life.

He replied.“ah, you have Russian soul!”.

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That’s what comes of reading Dostoyevsky as an adolescent. Scars you for life.

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I’m coming to the conclusion that the only way for reputable mainstream media outlets to cover the White House over the next coming years is to absent their coverage as much as possible from official press conferences, speeches and other undignified circus events.

Perhaps every article about one of those events should start with a brief, high-points summary about what was said (no point in the reporter asking questions himself in an atmosphere so hostile to the truth), ignoring any softballs from outlets like Breitbart. The remaining 80% of the article should be real journalism, a reputable outlet talking to other, more trustworthy sources who in aggregate help the reader determine which parts of the first 20% were BS and which were not.

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Exactly. Send the interns to cover his Tweeterbations and keeps the pros exposing his soiled laundry.

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Very succinct and probably true. However, Trump will probably never hold another press Conference after the bad result of this one.

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See, already a benefit to the Trump presidency. A return to normal standards of journalism rather than just taking notes at WH press conferences. About time too!

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Sorry about my obliviousness, but what bad results have there been to the press conference? Outside of more-liberal voices (which I generally agree with), I don’t know of any major backlash. Then again, I am somewhat disconnected from political media outside of what I happen to stumble across.

I’m not trying to be rhetorical, just honestly don’t know if there have been any negative results outside of views that always (rightfully) see him as net-negative.

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I remember visiting bookstores in the 1980s where a groaning, overburdened shelf entitled “Media Criticism” might be found. The gist of that massive stack of books was that media consolidation, brought about by the then current moves towards deregulation, would be the death of journalism. And it most certainly was.

We ended up with a dead form of journalism where the “neutral” straight news was plainly biased in favor of whatever beast owned the paper. Journalism keeps dying and it appears to be the death of a thousand cuts.

The latest sign that journalism is dead? Right-wingers have finally discovered “Media Criticism” – thirty years after the fact.

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From the article:

Another type of softball questions is hyperlocal issues that a president isn’t even supposed to be dealing with. Mr President, our road is full of potholes and local authorities aren’t doing anything about it. Mr President, our tap is leaking. Mr President, how about a chess club in our village. This is a real opportunity for him to shine. He will scold the local authorities and order to have a new road built. All of this, of course, has been choreographed well in advance.

It worked for Hugo Chavez, for awhile.

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Since you’re disconnected from the political media, you may not understand that a soon-to-be POTUS calling credentialled correspondents from outlets like CNN and the BBC purveyors of “fake news” while his staffers jeer and applaud like boxing-ring hype men establishes a bad precedent for future press briefings in his White House.

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