SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Just before the dawn of the Trump administration, journalism in Washington, DC, faces an existential crisis -- but virtually no one in the profession is willing to diagnose it.
Here it is: For the first time, words don't matter. In August, as a guest on MSNBC's Meet the Press Daily, I noted that voters take Donald Trump seriously but not literally, while journalists take him literally, but not seriously.
[...] And journalists keep falling for it because they, like politicians, over-value words -- and they are now covering a politician who does not. President-elect Trump still takes the same cavalier approach to verbal description as he would in hawking a condo tower that's yet to be designed. And more than enough voters don't seem to mind. Trump has spent a career interacting with journalists, but as the first president never to serve in the military, the cabinet, or another public office before his election to the White House, he's never been immersed in the word culture that drives political journalism. [...] Most recently, when Trump announced he had chosen South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to be his ambassador to the United Nations, journalists raced to re-tweet a March rant from Trump in which he said the people of South Carolina should be embarrassed by her.
[...] Writing endless columns on this or that flip-flop based on Trump's conflicting rhetoric is wasting the time of the readers and viewers who have decided that's not what matters with this particular President-elect. [...] If the press covers Trump the way it covered prior presidents -- too literally -- it may find its own customers take journalism itself a lot less seriously.
Source: CNN
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @12:47PM
Forget about the fact that the President-elect has paid $0 in Federal taxes for 20 years, by claiming a tax writeoff on other people's lost money that his own lawyers advised him not to take.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @02:40PM
OK, he did pay no taxes. But to compensate, he did it for a very long time. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @04:58PM
Forget about the fact that the President-elect has paid $0 in Federal taxes for 20 years
Unless you work for the IRS or are Trump's accountant, I don't know how you can claim this to be a fact.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01 2016, @05:56PM
He confirmed it during the second debate by replying that he didn't pay any taxes "because I'm smart". And his campaign didn't issue a correction afterwards, as it did on the topic of H1-B for example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 02 2016, @02:39AM
Umm... have you heard of the word "Boasting"?
I'm amused of the cognitive dissonance occuring here. On one hand folks call him a liar, ego-maniac, attention whore, talking out his arse, etc... yet when it is apparent he's doing just that you take it literally...