Our New President - President Donald Trump

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i could ask you the same of your views. no one is entirely objective. i have, however, taken the mmpi. i am honest, modest, reality-based, and willing to look at my own faults. i think that's fairly objective.

My therory is that people who are staunchly anti-trump disregard anything positive he might tweet and just look for something that could be construed as negative. Since I have no feelings about him one way or the other, I pretty much take in the entire package with neutrality.

describe some of these positive tweets ( aside from the obligatory, inane "thoughts and prayers"). you don't come across as neutral.

I said anything positive he might tweet. Your question to me indicates you don't believe such a thing is possible. As far as neutrality goes, to my recollection I've never praised or condemned Trump.

it's possible, but i would like some examples. you seem awfully ready to let trump off the hook, taking his tack of blaming the media instead of himself for his low approval ratings.

I look at it as stating the likelihood that the massive saturation of trump trashing by partisan media, is going to sway approval ratings. That's the whole idea isn't it? As far as examples of positive tweets, probably the best way to illustrate that would be to take a hundred starting from the most recent and rating them individually. However it's late and I'm in bed on my phone at the moment.

msnbc is partisan. fox is partisan. thinking that most other news media is partisan puts you on the right-wing side of any US debate. the "liberal media" is far from proven and is mostly an attack on the free press.

The characterization of mainstream media newsrooms as left-leaning hives indeed has documentary backing. Some of the research is narrow and entertaining: In 1990, for example, Washington City Paper — then under the leadership of current Politico media critic Jack Shafer — found that Tony Kornheiser, then a sports columnist for The Washington Post, was the only registered Republican among a sampling of 49 top editors, reporters and columnists at the newspaper. And Kornheiser was a RINO. “I don’t think the Republican Party would claim me,” Kornheiser told reporter Christy Wise, adding that he and his wife had registered with different parties so that they could receive mailings from both sides. Upon further reflection, he deemed his party affiliation a “mistake.”

The Pew Research Center in 2004 undertook a nationwide survey of 547 local and national reporters, editors and executives. The result? Thirty-four percent of national press identified as liberal, as opposed to 7 percent conservative (“moderate” was the largest category). Liberal identification among national press types had shot up from 22 percent in 1995.

The granddaddy of research on this topic is “The American Journalist,” a series of studies that dates to the 1970s. In 2006, the series found that journalists had edged a bit to the right over the preceding decade but that newsrooms still skewed more lefty than the U.S. population at large

A 2014 study under the “American Journalist” banner found that 28 percent of 1,080 surveyed U.S. journalists claimed to be Democrats, as opposed to 7 percent for Republicans. The numbers reflected a desertion of both parties toward a self-identification as independent, which clocked in at 50 percent of the surveyed population. Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, concludes, “Actually the numbers say newsrooms tilt independent.” That shift is consistent with a movement among the general public toward independent (non) affiliation, notes Rosenstiel, who argues that it reflects a “sense that both parties have become more polarized.”

Tim Graham, executive editor of NewsBusters, has a different take: “Journalists have gotten incredibly reluctant to identify with a party. I suspect liberals check the ‘independent’ box to avoid being properly identified.”

That collective lean is the obsession of Graham’s group, which dedicates itself to highlighting instances of bias in the mainstream media — if you’re Dan Rather or Andrea Mitchell, you’re likely familiar with its work. Its parent organization, the Media Research Center, has published a massive roundup of research on the political leanings of U.S. newsrooms. As Graham sees it, the data in some cases understates the tilt in mainstream media newsrooms, with significant ramifications for governance. “Conservatives and Republicans know this: It’s a lot easier for a Democrat to go out and face a room of 96 percent Democrats than it is for a Republican president to go out and face a room of 96 percent Democrats,” he says.

Though the Grahams and the Rosenstiels may dispute emphases, data over the years confirms the contentions of American conservatives that the workplaces of the mainstream media err on the liberal/Democratic side of the ideological/partisan divide. “I think over the years that we’ve done these studies, it’s clear that more journalists tend to lean to the left politically than to the right,” says retired Indiana University journalism professor David H. Weaver. How’d that happen?

) The geographical explanation. The hulking organs of the mainstream media reside in New York, Washington and other metropolises, where liberals live on top of other liberals. The residency pattern of these big-time reporters and editors quite consistently overlaps with the blue-coded areas of the country that voted for Hillary Clinton, who won the District of Columbia with 91 percent of the vote.

A July 2004 column by then-New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent conveys the best articulation of this concept: “Today, only 50 percent of The Times’s readership resides in metropolitan New York, but the paper’s heart, mind and habits remain embedded here. You can take the paper out of the city, but without an effort to take the city and all its attendant provocations, experiments and attitudes out of the paper, readers with a different worldview will find The Times an alien beast,” wrote Okrent in a story titled, “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” The answer from Okrent: “Of course it is.”

Cosmopolitan influences even seep into a fortress like right-leaning Fox News, according to Joe Muto, the onetime “Fox News mole” who wrote a book — “An Atheist in the Foxhole” — about his attempts to leak insider-y scoops from the network. Though the upper ranks of Fox News management were filled with committed conservatives, there was no uniformity down low. “People outside of Fox tended to assume that the whole building was filled with lockstep conservatives, but at a certain point, it was simply impossible to staff a business based in New York City, and consisting of people who were attracted to the field of journalism, without letting at least a few pinkos in,” wrote Muto in his book.

The crusader explanation. Tracy Grant, deputy managing editor of The Washington Post, is familiar with criticisms about the composition of newsrooms — she handles recruitment and diversity at the newspaper. Asked about studies showing a lefty tilt, she tells this blog: “I think people are called to this profession sometimes have a sense of mission about shining light in dark places,” she says. “I think there is a sensibility among people who feel that calling and if there is a commonality of people who go into journalism, it is people inspired by things like Watergate or ‘Spotlight’ — that idea of telling stories that need to be told and so that does represent a little bit of rooting for the underdog mentality, but I also think that anybody who thinks that the mainstream media — the Washington Post — didn’t make Hillary Clinton’s life miserable or Barack Obama’s life miserable by holding them the accountable is just not looking at the record.”

Bernard Goldberg, author of the 2001 book “Bias” and a Fox News contributor,“This is a takeoff on the old journalistic mantra that our job is to — to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Well, it isn’t. That’s the job of a social worker or a priest or somebody like that but not a journalist.”

he school-tie explanation. The pipeline for hiring decisions at big media outlets files through elite colleges that crank out lefty students, maintains NewsBusters’ Graham.

Matt Lewis, a former columnist at the conservative Daily Caller, sums up: “I do think it’s a problem, but I don’t think that there is a conspiracy to bias the news,” says Lewis, who recently jumped to the more mainstream Daily Beast. “But I do think that the kinds of people who go into journalism and where journalism outlets tend to be based has the inevitable outcome of slanting it not even just leftward but in a cosmopolitan, secular way.”

The mainstream agenda-setting media is left of center.
Dear Mainstream Media: Why so liberal?


On a purely numerical basis, there are more conservative media because there is more small town, small to medium size city media. But The New York Times, Washington Post, the big 3 networks set the agenda and get read by decision makers in business, government, and entertainment. So Conservatives are basically right about the liberal media. Where they are wrong in fearing them. Trump won, Nixon won despite the efforts and wishes of the mainstream media. The Republicans control every branch of government. The overemphasis on mainstream media is dated, it is social media that arguably pushed the millennial generation way left.

The mainstream agenda-setting media is left of center.
Dear Mainstream Media: Why so liberal?


On a purely numerical basis, there are more conservative media because there is more small town, small to medium size city media. But The New York Times, Washington Post, the big 3 networks set the agenda and get read by decision makers in business, government, and entertainment. So Conservatives are basically right about the liberal media. Where they are wrong in fearing them. Trump won, Nixon won despite the efforts and wishes of the mainstream media. The Republicans control every branch of government. The overemphasis on mainstream media is dated, it is social media that arguably pushed the millennial generation way left.

msnbc is partisan. fox is partisan. thinking that most other news media is partisan puts you on the right-wing side of any US debate. the "liberal media" is far from proven and is mostly an attack on the free press.

i got off on the wrong track. trump's racist and impulsive tweets can't be balanced by good tweets just as killing your neighbor because their leaves got in your yard can't be balanced by numerous charitable donations.

What I think is that most people steer towards partisan media making it the most popular. It tells them what they want to hear. And media isn't just restricted to news. Late night tv (Meyers, Colbert, Noah, Bee, Oliver etc) is extremely partisan.



Well I figured ahead of time that you would come up with something like that, so it a good thing that I didn't waste my time.

yes, i can be counted on to be logical.

describe some of these positive tweets ( aside from the obligatory, inane "thoughts and prayers"). you don't come across as neutral.