from the the-idiot-king-is-crying-again dept
With Fox being Fox, and CBS having simply paid Trump a $16 million bribe and now owned by Trump’s pals the Ellison household, there’s little fear that both community will likely be doing critical journalism anytime quickly. So Trump, over the weekend, redirected his ire on the remaining two “massive 4” broadcasters, ABC and NBC, for the sin of doing journalism semi-critical of our fool king. After all, with a couple of months time, if the reminiscence of the bribe fades, whose to say Trump gained’t retarget CBS as properly. In any case, ABC already paid the same tribute to Trump, however that was already 9 months in the past.
Keep in mind: giving in to the bully doesn’t make him go away. It simply makes him notice you’re a straightforward mark.
In a rant at his propaganda social media platform Reality Social, Trump lied, claiming that each ABC and NBC had been unfair to Conservatives and will have their broadcast licenses pulled:
What upset our oafish mad king? Apparently it was a latest research by the best wing “watchdog” group Media Analysis Middle (MRC) that “studied” ABC’s “World Information Tonight,” “NBC Nightly Information” and “CBS Night Information” from Jan. 20 by way of April 9. The research discovered that 92 % of the 899 tales about Trump had been usually adverse. A whole lot of the protection had been of Trump’s ridiculous, dangerous, and unpopular tariffs.
Trump additionally seems to have been upset as a result of ABC interviewed Chris Christie, which itself can barely be construed as any kind of helpful or attention-grabbing journalism. So to be clear: Trump wasn’t upset by journalism, he was upset by a proper wing activist group misrepresenting journalism, and a largely irrelevant former Republican Governor of New Jersey who most likely shouldn’t be on TV within the first place.
Like most issues, Trump doesn’t perceive how something he works. He doesn’t perceive the First Modification. He doesn’t actually perceive that it’s the native associates of those main networks which have native broadcast licenses. Or that randomly revoking them isn’t one thing that’s significantly authorized or simple, even with a sycophantic stooge and anti-free-speech zealot in command of his FCC.
That’s to not say the threats are empty. Former FCC boss Tom Wheeler wrote a bit final yr exploring what Trump can and might’t really do.
As we simply noticed with CBS, Trump’s bobble-headed regulators have had success leveraging the merger approval course of to bully corporations like CBS into feckless compliance in the event that they’re imply to the president or aren’t suitably racist and sexist sufficient for his liking. There are additionally some untapped prospects like leveraging emergency warfare powers embedded within the Communications Act to assault journalism and free speech.
Nervous that they could give the full-diapered child king a tragic, media corporations have been fast to melt their protection of Trump in change for tax breaks and regulatory favors, highlighting, repeatedly, the weak spot of the fashionable fourth property within the on-line, ad-based, infotainment information period. Many of those networks rushed to rent extra proper wingers to appease Trump earlier than he’d even gained re-election.
U.S. company information is a feckless mess that’s usually been shifting its editorial Overton window rightward for many years to appease an more and more radical U.S. proper wing. It’s laborious to think about how authoritarians would reply if the U.S. information had been vibrant and fearless within the first place. That stated, if U.S. media was wholesome, it’s very potential authoritarians would have by no means come to energy within the first place.
However authoritarian disdain for factual actuality and an knowledgeable citizens is bottomless all the identical, and their limitless bullying of U.S. media giants (typically for nonexistent “liberal bias”) has been very clearly and disastrously profitable.
Filed Underneath: 1st modification, bias, broadcast, censorship, donald trump, free speech, journalism, licenses, media
Corporations: abc, nbc
