This is an opinion column, not news.
I say that, in part, because of the following, which a conservative follower posted to my Facebook page the other day: “The author of this article is bias and only tells the small part of the whole story that tries to persuade her point of view. Every day it becomes more evident that the liberal news media are no longer simply a megaphone for liberals in Washington, New York, and Hollywood. The media are now leading the radical Left and using their platform to push a socialist agenda.”
He wasn’t referring to me. He was referring to the reporter of a Newsweek story that I had posted with the headline, “Trump administration argues detained migrant children don’t need toothbrush, soap.”
There is no debate that the story was accurate. It merely reported what happened in a 9th District Court hearing. Administration lawyers did, in fact, argue that rules requiring migrants to be held in “safe and sanitary” conditions didn’t include toothbrushes and soap because they weren’t specifically listed as requirements. They also argued that requiring kids to sleep on cold concrete floors did meet the safe and sanitary standard.
Those interpretations clearly weren’t shared by the judges on the panel.
“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked Justice Department lawyer Sarah Fabian.
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
I agree with the judges, obviously. Safe and sanitary in my book would certainly include toothbrushes, soap and something other than a concrete floor to sleep on. And if you don’t think so, where is your heart? These are little kids, in strange land, who have been separated from their parents.
I think the only reason the government is making such a dumb, hard-hearted argument in the first place is because Trump is trying to deter other immigrants and he doesn’t care what happens to these kids as long as he gets his way.
I disagree with him on his approach to the immigration issue. But my opinion – or yours – isn’t the point here. The point here is this brief news story simply reported the facts of a court hearing, which is what a news story is supposed to do. It didn’t include any commentary or opinion.
So, why was my conservative poster so upset? And why are so many people like him upset these days?
One reason (my opinion) is an inability or unwillingness to distinguish news from opinion. In the past, this wasn’t hard. Seemingly everyone understood that a news story was a news story, in other words a recitation of the facts, and that an opinion was just that, someone’s opinion on the news whether it was an editorial (which, to remind you, is the opinion of the editorial board of a newspaper or TV station), an opinion column or an editorial cartoon. We’ve always argued about what’s in the news, but these days we argue about whether the news IS opinion.
I’ll settle that one right now: It’s not. Mainstream media outlets report the news straight up, regardless of the howling you hear from the far left or far right.
What’s changed is the proliferation of websites and TV programs that blur the line – usually intentionally – between news and opinion. An example on the left is CNN. An example on the right is Fox News. Both report political news with a clear slant. That’s wrong. News reported with a slant isn’t the news at all, it’s analysis, at best, altered reality, at worst. I encourage you not to consume it.
That’s not to say CNN and Fox don’t produce real news. They do in some cases, although usually only on topics far, far from politics. But they also follow any political news with panels of “experts” who invariably lean the way they’re supposed to.
I recognize these panels for what they are: talking head babble, in other words, opinion. But a lot of people aren’t able to or don’t want to make that distinction. They seem to think or want to believe that opinion panels are part of the news coverage itself, which isn’t the case.
Fact is fact, opinion is opinion.
CNN, Fox and others could fix this problem overnight by labeling these segments as opinion and the news as news but they won’t, of course. It’s part of their business model now.
Even if they did, that alone wouldn’t fix the larger problem. We’d still have hundreds of websites that purport to cover the news but instead offer up partisan tripe, including but certainly not limited to Huffington Post, The Hill, Red State, The Daily Beast and National Review. We’d also still have people like Hannity and Limbaugh, who enrich themselves by making bogeymen out of the mainstream media.
No one should listen to these con artists. They and the conservative party have damaged the nation by sowing false and unwarranted distrust of the mainstream media. In fact, if you really want just straight ahead news, the mainstream media is precisely what you should be relying on, not run away from, AP and Reuters in particular.
In other words, we need more, not less, of the kind of reporting my conservative follower railed against. What I suspect upset him most wasn’t the news. It’s that the news wasn’t reported in a way that matched his political beliefs.
Ironic, huh?
Photo by Bank Phrom on Unsplash
A-plus! Mr. Heller, on your outstanding clarification of reporting or relaying something.
There is the announcement, the communication, the dispatch, gossip, scoop, the rumor, the tale and last but not least, the lie.
All are neatly bundled in an opinion with great examples.
Blessed are they who know what (and who) they are listening to.
Good Column today!
The vast majority of mainstream, liberal media is total bullshit. The reason so many of these organizations are failing in the free market is because they offer nothing of value. No matter how much you cry, these facts will not change. The fact that we have multiple sources available 24/7, right on our phones and computers to dispute bullshit liberal claims is a good thing. I look forward to far more liberal liars being unemployed in the “news” industry. Let them fail and suffer for their bullshit. I don’t need Andy to tell me what sources to trust. I’ll make my own decisions.
***This part of the comment is NEWS, not opinion. ***
Today Donald Trump made is clear that if Saudi Arabia wants to murder American journalists, it’s cool with him, because Saudi Arabia is a “big buyer” of American products.
***End of news****
Trump won the election and for the first two years Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. Yet, Trump supporters are still angry about everything. Why? Because on a subconscious level they know that they are angry, heartless racist people for supporting this administration. It is not us Leftists they hate so much. We are just the targets of their projection. It is themselves they hate.
To be clear, I am not speaking of conservatives in general. I do not consider Trump supporters to be conservatives. They are right wingers or part of the alt. right. They do not care about the well being of the country. They care about sticking it to the liberals and nothing else. They are obsessed with this. It does not matter what Trump does or says, even if it causes difficultly for themselves. As long as the liberals are unhappy, they are good.
These are the people who are cheering on state legislators in Oregon for refusing to do their job and the militia who promised to “protect” them (from what ? I don’t know). They are also perfectly fine, as Trump is, with seeing our journalists murdered by foreign governments, provided that person is a Muslim or a liberal. And, they call themselves “Christians”….. Please one of our Trump supporters here, tell me I am wrong.
I doubt any of your right winger followers read your post past the 4th paragraph. They are too easily triggered to stay calm enough to finish it.
Mainstream media is what ever the the person consuming it thinks it is.
You can report a true happening and it will be distorted into whatever the reader wants to believe.
Pick out what you want and run with it…………….. sad that we have come to this point in life.
Let’s see, A year or so ago the left leaning news media was running stories of children being held
in “dog cages” along with photographic proof. The left leaning media was screaming that President Trump was cruel and heartless. Then the facts came to light. It turned out that the photos were taken in 2014 when obamma was the president.
The photos and stories disappeared real quick. No mention by the media that they were wrong.
The children who are being detained should have cots to sleep on, toothpaste, toothbrushes and other basics of life. CONgress are the ones to budget the above needed items. But, CONgress is not doing that. The democrats in the House of Representatives have been stonewalling on such funding. A bureau of the Federal government is not to go over their budget allocated to them. If they do someone can be in a lot of federal trouble.
The journalist that was murdered by the corrupt Saudi government was not an American citizen.
He was a Saudi citizen who was legally here in the United States. He made the mistake of going to a Saudi consulate to get permission to return to Saudi Arabia to take care of some legal matters in Saudi Arabia. He was most definitely on a Saudi hit list. He was often very critical of the ruling class in Saudi Arabia.
The other thing that gets me is when the left leaning starts calling those who identify as being right wing. That you call us nazi’s. The Nazi’s were left leaning in nature.. They were and are slightly to the right of communists/liberals.
If Andrew Heller was honest and were he and the others on this site would take a honest look at what hitler wrote and how his goons acted they would find that the left has more in line with the nazi’s than what they want to admit.
Mr. Heller, Thank you. There are those of us out here who are more concerned with the truth than with the skewed pronouncements of either extreme. I sincerely hope that true reporters, editors, and others concerned will continue to dig for, and give us the facts. It is only when we have true and accurate information that we can make logical decisions.
Yep, Abner, If there is anyone who should be able to recognize “bullshit” it would be you. In fact you have spread so much around I am surprised there is any left for those “News Media” you worship.
Right on, Andrew. It distresses me to read what people such as Abner and Jimmie the Third write, because they seem just to accept the preposterous right-wing generalizations and lies, without giving anything any actual personal thought.
For example, apparently Abner believes it is okay for little kids to sleep on bare hard cold concrete floors, with only aluminum-foil blankets. Gracious! Yikes! Where do his kids sleep?
I am astonished that, in the 21st century, we need to fight these battles about what is fundamentally true, versus silly nasty political baloney.
Mathew do yoyu not have the intelligence to what I wrote the same conditions that the illegal children are facing are the same type of conditions that existed when obamma was president?
CONgress did not authorize the funds then and still does provide the money to ease the situation that those children are in.
Today it is the democrats who refuse to allocate the necessary funding to properly to take care of those children. The pictures that are being presented are from when obamma was president.
The problem would largely go away if the parents were to do the right thing and enter the country legally.
Since you are a liberal why do you and the others like put together care packages and send them down there.
Oh, wait. You are liberal/socialist you someone else to pay for such, not yourselves.
Liberals/democrats give the least amount to charity than republicans.
Opinions should be supported by facts. Anything else are just personal feelings or outright lies. I have yet to read a comment from a Trump fan that was factually accurate. They lie. A LOT. Or, they express their “personal feelings” about people who don’t look, behave or worship like them and how they feel they should be able to assert their will over these individuals, because they are uncomfortable with them. It’s a real shame that private entities allow them easy access to platforms where they can spread so much misinformation to the gullible. Before you start howling about the 1st Amendment (Freedom of Speech), that rule applies to the government. The government cannot punish you for speaking your mind or deny you the right to do so. The rest of us don’t need to listen to your bull or give you a platform spread it if we don’t want to.
An opinion based on facts looks like this:
“Let’s be clear: President Trump and his evangelical fan base have never been interested in religious freedom, but rather in domination of their own religious beliefs. One cannot favor the Muslim travel ban, suggest Muslims cannot be members of Congress and continue to blame Muslims for terrorist attacks in the United States when, in fact, all terrorist-related deaths in 2018 came at the hands of right-wing extremists and white supremacists. When the president tells the country there were some “very fine” people on both sides in Charlottesville, he empowers racists.
Trump has referred to immigrants fleeing violence in their home country as “animals,” likening their arrival to an “infestation.” No wonder the administration’s lawyers feel entitled to argue in court that children in their custody don’t need basic necessities. Once you dehumanize a group, you give license to abuse and mistreat them.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/25/americans-age-trump-less-tolerant/?utm_term=.0a0eec2c7f12&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
I have these ideas, speculations, opinions: Right-wingers seem to believe that the ability to write coherently and logically, the ability to punctuate, good grammar… They seem to believe these things are “liberal” attributes. Preposterous!
They seem to believe the difference between truth and untruth is an unnecessary “liberal” thing.
Right-wingers, please start thinking for yourselves, and judging based on decency, rather than trying to defend your nasty leaders.
And the dumb ass trump can’t even get the right Ayatollah to impose sanctions on. Khomeini died In 1989. I can’t for the life of me can understand how anybody in his right mind can support this dumbass. I don’t care what party he is. If we had a Democrat in office this stupid I sure in the hell wouldn’t support that.
Iran’s current supreme leader is named Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is 80 years old and did not die in 1989.
Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989.
Ayatollah Khamenei is the present leader in Iran.
DNA tests will prove they are two different humans.
Confusion is rampant on the Trump train.
Right-wingers do not trust DNA tests. They do not even believe in the value of Pi.
The irony of it all is that Pi is an irrational number.
Ignorant and oblivious individuals do not “read” rationally, and for them the alphabet is best when found in soup.
Hey abner check the spelling you idiot. The guy trump referred to died in 1989.