The "press"

Faisal Bashir/SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP Images

Yours truly's take on the "press" is somewhat biased due to the fact I worked as one of the lead artists at Satellite News Channel, the 24/7 precursor to Turner, CNBC and CNN. News back then required in depth expertise and resources to cover a story including a film crew to go on location, a reporter to describe the event in question and a team of artists, writers and video editors to do the necessary edit prior  to airing the news item as soon as possible. Now, we either have gossip in the guise of covering just one story for one hour discussed by "pundits" rather than describing what happened at that particular moment in time without spin or ... delivering "safe" commentary on ongoing humanitarian disasters like Gaza, Lebanon or Ukraine. If one actually reads articles by the Washington Post or the NYTimes, self censorship and timidity come to mind, especially when dealing with the rather questionable Trump campaign where Agent Orange showed the world just how truly unfit he is for office in ways boggling the mind.

More to the point, Donald Trump ran the single worst campaign I have ever seen, and possibly the worst in American history. He constantly insulted huge swaths of voters. He outsourced his ground game to Elon Musk, who by all accounts wasted much of the money. He held a huge rally in direct echo of the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden that might have been even more racist than the original. He was visibly decompensating on stage several times. He spent the last week of the campaign pretending to fellate a microphone and whipping up a completely incomprehensible panic about some porn star’s squirrel.

And that was in addition to the fact that he has been convicted of 34 felonies, held legally liable for sexual abuse, and attempted to overthrow the government.

None of it mattered. Trump won, and he won by a lot. Why?

Again, I’d look skeptically at any pat explanations. But the information environment—the combination of traditional journalism, social media, party propaganda, and so on—is preposterously biased and inadequate. Trump brushed aside any of about a thousand scandals that would have sunk any previous politician. Democrats need to take a long, hard look at what their information strategy should be, and more importantly, how their messaging can be reliably and consistently put in front of voters.

Factoid: Dems don't know how to campaign, period.  As per James Caravelle, It's the economy, stupid along with immigration and women's rights, not Trump. In essence, the voters's concerns were not being listened to, that's why Trump won.

Another question to ask as to why coverage was so timid and biased relates to who owns the media as the coverage on Trump was pretty consistent because the power elite, who own the media, are in the business of making money and fear mongering and Trump do just that along with the additional bon bon ... facts don's matter, do they?

In the very, very old days, TV was simple. There were three channels, you sat on your couch, and you watched whatever they showed you.

That’s all different now, and much more complicated. Also more complicated: Figuring out which media or tech conglomerate owns the rights to the shows and movies you want to watch. We write about this stuff for a living, and we still get confused about it.

Which is why we’ve produced the map below, which sketches out the relative size, power, and relationships between the companies that make, own, and distribute the stuff we watch at home, on our phones, and even sometimes in a theater.

We’ve been making this one for four years. And each time we’ve created a new edition, we’ve promised that the map would continue changing, and it certainly has this time around.

Any questions?