February 18, 2017

It depends on what the meaning of "the very same thing" is.

"If Hillary Clinton were in the White House, we would be doing the very same thing," said Marty Baron, the editor of the Washington Post.

IN THE COMMENTS: Diogenes of Sinope asks:
Do fish know they're wet? Do the media know their biases?
I think they know and simultaneously do not know. If they stepped outside of the ongoing process of running their business, pursuing their careers, and they had something to gain by utter truthtelling, they would admit that they have a liberal bias. But that's not where they are, and they must keep going. I don't know these people, but I would guess that their day-to-day level of self-awareness — their working mindset — really is that they are doing the very same thing, applying a methodology to whatever raw material comes their way. If the end result looks different, it is only because the raw material was different.

Another way to put that is the familiar quip: Reality has a liberal bias.

79 comments:

Anonymous said...

bs:

They would be doing thousands of "Historic" event stories. And how Chelsea was going to be "First Lady" and coming out with her own Clothing line

CJ said...

Althouse wins the thread in the headline. No fair!

Michael K said...

The tone might be slightly different.

Maybe 180 degrees or so.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

Do fish know they're wet? Do the media know their biases?

Vet66 said...

Does Nordstrom's make North Korean pant suits with just a hint of Mao for flair?

traditionalguy said...

The so called Press really thinks fake reality is working on people. But they have zero talent. And DJT keeps on stacking them up. It's like he's shooting fish in a barrel.

Goldenpause said...

Yeah, the media would be doing the same thing: they would be Democratic operatives with bylines.

Diogenes of Sinope said...

Of course the claim "If Hillary Clinton were in the White House, we would be doing the very same thing," is a lie. Lying like this further deteriorates the little credibility the media have.

Original Mike said...

"If Hillary Clinton were in the White House, we would be doing the very same thing," said Marty Baron, the editor of the Washington Post.

Of course this is beyond absurd, but what intrigues me is if he actually believes it. If he doesn't he is simply a liar, but if he does, that's truely disqualifying.

Big Mike said...

The scary thing is that he probably actually believes what he said. The 21st century press reminds me of the Southern segregationists of fifty years ago. So deeply immersed in their biases and bigotry that they can't detect it anymore. So caught up in an untrue belief system that reality ceased to register on their brains long ago.

wendybar said...

Bahahahahahahahhahahha...The media really believes this dribble??? bahahahahahahhahah!! Thanks for the morning belly laugh!!!

tim maguire said...

Blogger Diogenes of Sinope said...Do fish know they're wet? Do the media know their biases?

I know enough journalists, I know enough liberals, and I know enough psychology to believe that Baron is not lying, not even the Clintonian lie the professor emeritus alludes to in her headline. Liberal journalists fully believe their hype. They fully believe that they call them as they see them without fear or favor.

Karen of Texas said...

Perhaps by "exactly the same thing" he believes the media would be covering and reporting on all the protesting and rioting that the losing Trump half of the country would be doing. Oh, and also reporting on how the Republican politicians were performing their jobs by blocking Hillary at every turn.

The "we" are the plebs in the country, behaving the same only the tribes are flipped. "They" aren't part of the "we". They are simply observers, journalists reporting on and explaining what "we" are doing.

Idiot.

Michael K said...

the media would be covering and reporting on all the protesting and rioting that the losing Trump half of the country would be doing.

You mean like the riots at Obama's inauguration ?

damikesc said...

We can refer back to press conference questions asked of Obama and realize it is total bullshit. They've loved Clinton for way more time than they loved Obama.

dreams said...

Yeah, because they covered them the same in the campaign, yeah.

Tommy Duncan said...

So Marty Baron would have us believe the talking heads would have cried on election night if Donald Trump had lost?

Like all serial liars, Marty lies about his lying.

rehajm said...

There's not enough Pinocchios to bother.

Tommy Duncan said...

“Pauline Kael famously commented, after the 1972 Presidential election, ‘I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.'”

The media folks live in an insulated world. They don't know any plumbers. They don't know any coal miners. They've never met a farmer or spent a day doing farm work. They don't know what a foundry is. They don;t associate with conservatives and can't grasp the conservative mindset.

Original Mike said...

With all due respect, Althouse, if you integrate over the entire added paragraph, you get zero.

Quayle said...

Gate keeping middlemen gonna keep gates in the middle!

(or something like that, anyway.)

Unknown said...

In this thought experiment, HRC would have come into the White House having behaved quite differently. DRT is reaping what he sowed through his brutal campaign and on to today. Surprise!

Quayle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Karen of Texas said...

Yes, Mickael K, exactly like all the riots that occurred when Obama was elected. Twice!! Those Tea Partiers - such racists rioters. Do you remember the awful condition in which they left their riot gathering grounds? Deplorable.

Quayle said...

"The media folks live in an insulated world. They don't know any plumbers. They don't know any coal miners. They've never met a farmer or spent a day doing farm work. They don't know what a foundry is."

In other words, they don't deal in tangible things. It's all just invisible gasses to them.

Woody Allen had these folks pegged quite some time ago [paraphrasing from Annie Hall] 'biting satire is always better than the physical world.'

LakeLevel said...

" HRC would have come into the White House having behaved quite differently."

It is of course the WP et. al. that are defining the lefty reality of what that "behavior" is. These people are not smart enough to step outside their own paradigm. He was not lying. He is deluded. So is "unknown".

Michael K said...

I really do think reporters and media people have a hive mind.

In the old days, which we can still read about, mostly in fiction, reporters started as copy boys or at small weekly papers and worked their way up covering the police beat or sports or women's fashions.

Eventually, they got better at writing and some, like Margaret Bourke White, began as a photographer. She became a rare female war correspondent.

Mary Welsh, began working at the Chicago Daily News and eventually became a war correspondent. She met Hemingway in Paris, I think, when it was liberated. He had arrived before the allies came and was living in his old room in the Ritz Hotel where she met him.

Hemingway was a high school graduate who got a job at the Kansas City Star before going to France as an ambulance driver.

These people had real lives. Now they go to J school and think they will save the world. No experience with life at all.

It's not just journalism. I used to interview medical school applicants. I always looked for real life experience, especially hardship or challenges. I still remember one Vietnamese girl who had a Masters in biology and was applying to UCI. She told me she was 9 when her father picked her up from her bed and took her to a canoe which they paddled miles offshore to meet a fishing boat. They spent a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines.

The Admissions office secretaries told me I was the only faculty member who did that. Most were interested in stuff like being a candy striper or a volunteer in an ER.

My older son was applying to college,. He was supposed to write an essay on his most significant life experience. He wrote it on sailing to Hawaii when he was 16 on my boat. The school counsellor asked him if he really wants to go to college.He should write about a peace march.

It's very common in this society now.

Tank said...

And this is why they are the enemy of the American people.

Quayle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quayle said...

Now they go to J school and think they will save the world. No experience with life at all.

Parfaitement!

They're glorified English majors and somehow we're supposed to bow and scrape and doff our hats every time they utter or write a word.

Being a Washington or White House reporter is like being a valet at a top restaurant in Los Angeles. Sure you're associated with big and famous people, close to very sought after seats at the table, and handling the most intricately designed and constructed vehicles ever. But in the end you're just a punk in a vest who knows how push a few levers and turn a steering wheel. You didn't create any of it.

Bruce Hayden said...

Is it "professor emeritus"? I would think "professor emerita". Like we use "alumna" for a known female "alumnus". Still, if Ann want so go by "emeritus", I will respect zer wishes. (And, yes, the "zer" was intentional).

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Roughly half of Atlhouse's topical posts are devoted to whining about the media. It's a marketplace, everyone is free to pick and choose whatever they want. No one makes anyone consume anything they do not want to consume. Either she likes whining or she doesn't understand how market places work.


Triangle Man said...

How is the media supposed to relate to people or ideas that have are fundamentally different in their belief about what constitutes truth, or the value of evidence in making policy decisions, or for that matter, how cause and effect work?

Michael K said...

No one makes anyone consume anything they do not want to consume.

That's why the press is whining about being ignored. Leftists are 23% of the population. Probably less if they were paying attention.

Tommy Duncan said...

ARM said: "No one makes anyone consume anything they do not want to consume. "

Are you not familiar with Obamacare?

CWJ said...

Familiar quip?

Maybe in Madison or the newsroom, but elsewhere?

Phil 314 said...

If its a "relationship" with the press then by definition it would have been different. Trump invites the conflict. It's good for him and it's good for the press. Clinton would have had a more quietly suspicious distant relationship, similar to her relationship with Bill.

Which would you rather watch, Martha and George from "Who's afraid of Virginia Wolff" or Victor and Ilsa from "Casablanca"?

Bob Boyd said...

Baron is right. They'd still be preaching the Prog gospel, carrying water for the Democratic party, lying for the greater good, fighting the evil straw bigots who roam the hinterlands in search of blacks and women to enslave and immigrants and gays to pummel, in general, crusading for social, economic and climate justice.
It's good work if you can get it.

mockturtle said...

ARM fatuously bleats: It's a marketplace, everyone is free to pick and choose whatever they want.

Oh, yes! There is an abundance of unbiased news sources out there. We only need to pick and choose between CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, CBS, NBC and ABC. No bias there!

Marty Keller said...

Reading ARM's latest "fish/water"-filtered comment suddenly made it clear: his is a pseudonym for "Marty Baron." It all makes sense now.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

mockturtle said...
No bias there!


No one said there were not biases in the various media sources, but you are free to pick and choose among them. You could wake up and listen to right wing radio all day, Laura Ingraham, Rush, Hannity, Mark Levin and Michael Savage. Or you could read Breitbart, Drudge and NRO on the web or watch Fox News all day if you preferred. You could pick up the WSJ, it's sold everywhere. And there are endless books by right wing news celebrities that you could read: "In Trump we Trust" or "Adios America!" or "Treason: Liberal Treachery". It's a marketplace, if some sources are more popular than others that reflects the market.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Marty Keller said...
It all makes sense now.


Apparently not, since you still fail to understand how market places work.

exhelodrvr1 said...

"That reflects the market" - and what we're seeing now is the market correction, now that there is no longer a monopoly. And hopefully something similar will occur in public schools, although it likely won't be as dramatic.

cubanbob said...

It's a marketplace, if some sources are more popular than others that reflects the market."

Yes indeed. You should consider your point more in depth.

Original Mike said...

ARM said: "No one makes anyone consume anything they do not want to consume. "
Blogger Tommy Duncan replied..."Are you not familiar with Obamacare?"


I'm sure ARM would say, "that's why it's failing!"

Right, ARM?

Guildofcannonballs said...

"Being a Washington or White House reporter is like being a valet at a top restaurant in Los Angeles. Sure you're associated with big and famous people, close to very sought after seats at the table, and handling the most intricately designed and constructed vehicles ever. But in the end you're just a punk in a vest who knows how push a few levers and turn a steering wheel. You didn't create any of it."

Who thinks you're a punk who didn't accomplish shit? Zuckerberg? Bezos? Beyoncé? Obama?

Who does the punk valet think is an underaccomplished punk? Felons? Rapists? Hipsters? Fat people?

Don't allow yourself to conclude it's punks all the way down, as I can attest to being the very bottom punk, at times at least.

damikesc said...

In this thought experiment, HRC would have come into the White House having behaved quite differently.

Lying to the press constantly. Corraling them in ropes. Insulting half of the country.

What, PRECISELY, is different except that they really, really like her?

I can write Obama's press conference questions if you want to see a difference.

tim in vermont said...

Saying that reality has a liberal bias is to declare the depth of one's lack of self awareness. If it were true, Venezuela would be thriving right now, and Cuba would not be a prison island where only one family is rich and that family is rich beyond conception. Everybody else gets to share equality of poverty.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Original Mike said...
Right, ARM?


Anyone who thinks that the markets for non-essential media and essential healthcare are identical probably shouldn't play a role in household budgeting.

Fernandinande said...

"Marty Baron" -> Man Bray Rot

"Washington Post" -> Wasting Photons

tim in vermont said...

in ARM's world critical analysis = whining.

That's why he is just one more purblind liberal.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

tim in vermont said...
critical analysis


Give me a break. At a minimum, critical analysis would involve analysis of a range of different news sources, not just the right wing's favorite whipping boys.

tim in vermont said...

If reality had a liberal bias, Europe would not have fallen apart when Merkel invited in a million refugees who did not believe in women's rights, equality, or even democracy.

WWI would really have ended all wars, the Ukraine genocide, which was so horrific that the Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators, would never have happened. Neville Chamberlin wuold really have achieved "Peace in our time."

Obama would have balanced the budget by spending a trillion dollars a year more...

Lots of things that aren't true would be true.

tim in vermont said...

I don't get why you come back so much if that is what you think is happening. Obviously you don't understand what is being written.

tim in vermont said...

I still can't get over a commenter who has managed to associate simple mindedness with a picture of Aristotle.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

When you lack a rational argument this is all you've got? Sad.

viator said...

Reality has a liberal bias.

Absolutely not true which why the left drifts further and further in neurosis, psychosis, and irrelevancy. How many more US counties can the left lose from it present level of 20%? Another 10 or 15%?

Where does Limbaugh live? Realville.

Maybe reality has had a liberal bias lately, with the help of Rousseau, Marx and friends. But as you can see by observing the world liberal reality is past it's sell by date.

How is the liberal project going in Europe? What is the future of Keynesian-ism?

Anonymous said...

ARM: No one said there were not biases in the various media sources, but you are free to pick and choose among them.

Non sequitur. Why should one not discuss the defects of the competing sources offered in the marketplace, whatever one buys? Or just point and laugh at the self-serving delusions of shit sellers pompously insisting that their product is the finest of pure premium ice-cream?

Same goes for comments, ARM. If the "whining" about the press bothers you, you have a huge choice of other reading material online. So by your own logic you obviously don't understand how free choice in comment-reading works.

Original Mike said...

"Anyone who thinks that the markets for non-essential media and essential healthcare are identical probably shouldn't play a role in household budgeting."

My personal finances are in fine shape.

ARM, you said: "No one makes anyone consume anything they do not want to consume. ". Now that Tommy has pointed out the case of ObamaCare, I'm sure you would agree that you are in error.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Angel-Dyne said...
If the "whining" about the press bothers you, you have a huge choice of other reading material online. So by your own logic you obviously don't understand how free choice in comment-reading works.


Althouse is a media source, I am performing 'critical analysis'. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Maybe we could get a few Mexican immigrants in here to do the 'critical analysis', it seems to be relatively unskilled work.

Sebastian said...

"I think they know and simultaneously do not know. If they stepped outside of the ongoing process of running their business, pursuing their careers, and they had something to gain by utter truthtelling, they would admit that they have a liberal bias." Maybe they would, or maybe they wouldn't. Hard to see under what conditions progs have anything to gain by "utter truthtelling," and even then they'd still have more to gain by peddling the party line, promoting the Narrative, using all tools available to pursue power--and not running afoul of fellow progs who don't take kindly to deviance.

But the know-and-do-not-know seems right.

Strictly speaking, Baron isn't lying: if Hill had been president, they'd be promoting the lefty line just as much.

Anonymous said...

ARM: Althouse is a media source, I am performing 'critical analysis'. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

By your own lights, no. From my point of view, yes. Persuading you to come around to my why of thinking on this was easy.


(You're lame at deflection, ARM. Not your métier, really.)

Yancey Ward said...

Ann, that title of the blog post is simply brilliant. Bravo!

Mark said...

Marty Baron is a self-inflated activist with agendas who thinks that he is the second-coming of Woodward and Bernstein perpetually reliving his glory days with the Boston Globe "groundbreaking" investigative series exposing a story that had been out there for a decade or more (Catholic clergy sex abuse), while simultaneously ignoring the same kind of misdeeds in other places.

Mark said...

"If Hillary Clinton were in the White House, we would be doing the very same thing,"

On any given day, the Post website has on its front page six or seven anti-Trump hit pieces. It probably would still attack him that often if she were president.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Republicans are ascendant in every political arena yet they are still whining about the press. I don't get it. The press is apparently not that important, or the winning would be impossible. Constant whining about the press inflates their importance. Isn't this self-defeating? Alternatively Republicans are whining unreasonably, because there is already a diverse marketplace for political orientated opinion. Either way it doesn't make a lot of sense.

mockturtle said...

ARM asks, rhetorically: Constant whining about the press inflates their importance. Isn't this self-defeating?

Didn't you read Althouse's recent post about this very question? The 'whining' [we could call it criticism--or even 'critical analysis'] baits the press into more and more idiocy, proving the very point Trump is making.

Yancey Ward said...

ARM,

Yours is just another manifestation of the following argument the press has pushed since Trump became the nominee- "Trump needs to shut up and let the press criticize him without rebuttal."

Trump won the election by not playing the game the way Romney played it in 2012.

I agree with you that the press isn't as important to electoral success any longer, but a part of that is that Trump and increasingly more Republicans understand that you can't take it without reply. Trump has shown how you speak over the press' heads and get the message heard. You can call it whining if you want, but it is how he is winning the battle for the minds of those who actually matter. Most of the media is now preaching to a smaller choir to even pays attention to them in any way that isn't just to disparage them- a healthy development.

wildswan said...

At the top of this blog by the time I came to it was a great video of some women driving a rat out of a bathroom, tumbling it down the stairs and deflecting it out of the house with a series of strategically arranged brooms. So that is how I imagine the Wapo dealing with facts under Trump and under Clinton. Under Trump, facts are rats to the media and they crouch up on the toilet seat and on stools and cast the fact out, tumbling it down the stairs and sweeping it out of the doors lest it spoil the narrative or begin a plague of doubt. Under Clinton, rats would have been poorly dressed facts to the media and its members would have reversed the process, gathering up rats, tumbling them up the stairs and deflecting them behind a protective curtain (from whence they might emerge anywhere at any time as the next progressive change.) Mathematically the pattern is the same and so the Wapo would "do the same" under Trump or Hillary.

Then there was a short video of Milo and Maher. Free minds, not coerced agreement - the only answer.

This is the inner scene in which Trump's last press conference resides for me today. This is how I imagine the differences between myself and the media over what happened at an event which we both saw and do not agree on. But tomorrow I might imagine it all differently but my principles would not change and I would still "see" it all "the same way", i.e. picking other images which together amount to the same observed, remembered, reasoned upon and then, last of all, imagined news event.

They, sweeping out of the house, Hillary's approval of the sale of American uranium to the Russian; they, sweeping into the house and up the stairs the fact that she sold this kind of uranium, not that kind of uranium and Trump did not distinguish and hence (sweep up the stairs) Trump is wrong, crazy, chaotic and hence (sweep hard, my hearties) we need another coup like Watergate by an intelligence agency.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

mockturtle said...
The 'whining' [we could call it criticism--or even 'critical analysis'] baits the press into more and more idiocy, proving the very point Trump is making.


OK, let's say this is the strategy. I don't see the press being baited. They say stupid stuff at a fairly constant rate, with or without Trump.

RichardJohnson said...

ARM: No one said there were not biases in the various media sources, but you are free to pick and choose among them.

This thread is about a WaPo article which claims that the WaPo is not biased.

Jupiter said...

"If they stepped outside of the ongoing process of running their business, pursuing their careers, and they had something to gain by utter truthtelling, they would admit that they have a liberal bias."

Well, they certainly don't deny that they are liberals. So I guess the question is, what do you mean by "bias"? They would claim that they vote for candidates who advocate policies which they know are objectively preferable, but they are willing to document the absurd inanities spouted by Republicans. No bias there. What do you want them to do, pretend that they don't think it will be a great thing when the Muslims blow up the Eiffel Tower and rape the last ethnic Frenchwoman? They learned in school that those are good things, and they desire them. But they are willing to objectively report that the entitled nativist bitch didn't seem to enjoy it as much as the teen-aged Muslim refugees did. They cover both sides of the story.

Bob R said...

I think that what he says is clearly true: they'd be spinning the news to help the Democrats.

Jeff said...

Of course they'd be doing the very same thing: Criticizing Republicans.

Marty Keller said...

ARM said,

Marty Keller said...
It all makes sense now.

Apparently not, since you still fail to understand how market places work.


LOL! I will not be instructed by you!

TennLion said...

Well, in one sense they would be doing exactly the same thing, if by "thing" you mean covering for Hillary and trashing Trump and all Republicans.

Ann Althouse said...

If you don't like my media critiques, don't read them. Why tell me what to read? Seems like you're prescribing a remedy of a kind you yourself won't take.

M15ery said...

Roughly half of Atlhouse's topical posts are devoted to whining about the media. It's a marketplace, everyone is free to pick and choose whatever they want. No one makes anyone consume anything they do not want to consume. Either she likes whining or she doesn't understand how market places work.

So...

Why are you whining about Althouse's posts? It's a marketplace, everyone is free to pick and choose whatever they want. No one makes anyone consume anything they do not want to consume. Either you like to whine or you don't understand how market places work.

/drops mic