by William Skink

Do corporate media outlets like CNN report on news, or do they obsess over everything Trump? According to Larry King, his former employers, CNN, “stopped doing news a long time ago“. From the link:

“CNN stopped doing news a long time ago,” King said while being interviewed by another former CNN anchor, Rick Sanchez. “They do Trump. Fox is Trump TV and MSNBC is anti-Trump all the time.”

“You don’t see a story — there was vicious winds and storms in the Northeast the other day — not covered on any of the three cable networks, not covered,” King noted. “So when CNN started covering Trump — they were the first — they covered every speech he made and then they made Trump the story. So, Trump is the story in America.”

Why care what Larry King thinks? He’s old, probably senile. Maybe he’s already dead and RT is just spoofing his likeness? I dunno.

What I do know is going after the media is what Trump does. And anything Trump does is bad, per the resistance. This overly simplistic dynamic puts local media scold, Don Pogreba, in a difficult position.

When Don Pogreba was called out by actual journalists on Montana Public radio’s campaign beat, and his partisan blog referred to as not a credible source by professor Rob Saldin, a sorta mea culpa was triggered. Here’s Don acknowledging the limits of being a Twitter scold while also scapegoating his stable of jackasses for failures in being factual:

This past cycle, my frustration over what I perceived to be failures in their coverage crossed the line from pointed criticism to hectoring and nagging that only probably served to make any press who wandered by this site or my Twitter feed even less interested in what I had to say. I’m not sure that I can repair some of those relationships—and I’m not sure that reporters in the state will ever see the value of a blog covering political and government issues—but I do understand that tone matters. I’m still furious that Matt Rosendale’s connection to militia groups wasn’t covered and Pearl Jam’s concert poster was, but moving forward, my goal will be to make my case for coverage and hope for the best.
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We’ve also made mistakes in our pieces, and I want to put in place more stringent checks to make sure that what we write is backed by facts. As the site quickly expanded to include more voices than my own, I never really grasped my role other than as the tech guy behind the site who did the lion’s share of the writing. While our reporting and commentary is certainly partisan, I’ve always taken pride in the accuracy of the work here and there were a few lapses this cycle I regret.

Regarding the accuracy of MP’s reporting and commentary, I do appreciate the recent changes made to the solicitation for donations at MP. The original ask referred to their content as “journalism” which it clearly is not.

So this:

If you appreciate our efforts to hold Montana Republicans accountable and the independent journalism here at The Montana Post, please consider supporting our work with a small pledge.

Is now this:

If you appreciate an independent voice holding Montana politicians accountable and informing voters, and you can throw a few dollars a month our way, we\’d certainly appreciate it.

The problem with corporate media goes far beyond how local races are covered. The alarm over the dreaded immigrant caravan has seemingly evaporated now that the election is over, just like the outrage over Saudi Arabia’s brazen killing of Khoshoggi disappeared when whatever big bribes were made to the right people took effect.

Corporate media companies don’t actually care if a journalist is killed, as evidenced by the near total lack of outrage over another dead Saudi journalist. The killing of this journalist was apparently enabled by Twitter. From the link:

Another Saudi journalist was reported tortured and killed at the hands of Saudi authorities last week, but this time the Saudis may have actually had assistance from Twitter in uncovering the identity behind a controversial account which led to the detention of the journalist.

Arabic news source The New Khaleej was the first to report that Saudi journalist and writer Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser died after being tortured while in detention after his initial arrest last March. According to the report his arrest came after it was learned that he administered the Twitter account Kashkool — which was known for highlighting human rights violations and crimes committed by the royal family and government officials.

If we, as Americans, asked more questions of corporate media, like why this journalist’s murder isn’t as newsworthy as Khoshoggi’s murder, maybe we would get some isight into the mechanisms of manipulation and control employed by corporate media.

Unfortunately I don’t think Americans want to know the extent they are being manipulated by the media they consume. And that’s a much bigger problem than how local media covers local elections.