MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell laid into news outlets on his show Thursday night, comparing their collective failure to call out Donald Trump’s falsehoods to 2016.
“It was 2016 all over again, today,” he told his viewers. “Donald Trump spoke at his home in Florida for over an hour and all the major cable news networks, including this one, carried it live. Just like they all did repeatedly in 2016. It would be hard to find a sentence that Donald Trump said today that did not include at least one lie.”
O’Donnell acknowledged that some networks attempted to fact-check the MAGA leader, but only after he finished his speech.
“That of course is way too late and utterly useless,” he said. “No network tried to fact-check every lie Donald Trump told.”
Serious question, but couldn’t you get more ratings for being the aggressive and combative fact checker when addressing Trump vs the soft ball question lobber?
Is this just a matter of demographics watching and giving more advertising money to traditional media and therefore doing so is less profitable?
I would definitely put my eyeballs more towards any organization that would challenge all politicians vs those who are basically allowing them to advertise their talking points.
I’m ignorant on media and looking at this simply, if it isn’t obvious.
I think the unfortunate answer is you are in the minority. people watch what makes them feel good, not what challenges their beliefs. that’s why we end up with highly partisan news outlets like Fox.
also, it’s hard to fact check in real time (especially Gish galloping trump). of course it could be done by large media organizations but it would cost more money to do.
Yeah I hate read Fox News (webpage, there’s no way I could actually watch) every day for this very reason. What might I be missing? Honestly it’s more of a bad habit now than actually netting any honest insights, although I admit I do see stories/opinions not mentioned on other news sites. Even aggregators. I do enjoy challenging my own beliefs though. It’s a fun exercise.
Most reporters are afraid they will lose their access if they ask Traitorapist Trump real questions at his “news conferences”.