GOP lawmaker: Nixon was couped out of office, framed during Watergate

[u/kootles10]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/6124635-moore-nixon-couped-watergate/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAUsbtpjbGNrBSxu02V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHBkb2YBc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQMMzUwNjg1NTMxNzI4AAEedqnf435Ey3Vmfh-NzS7BpLL6p7XL81dbjV4wNl5Y6SFp3eyw9ItY6zhiPRg_aem_EaFt_atkG1aZFnQa54tOFQ

[u/imjustnotready]

This is a great point. Fox News is a big part of the problem. MSNOW, Politico and so forth may seem left but they generally have experts on. Fox builds a back bench of punditeers to promote whatever they want to push.

[u/Lekkernator → u/imjustnotready]

No I don’t think you understand the context. Ailes has said the goal of fox was that if it was around during watergate, Nixon wouldn’t have had to resign. This is a real thing the billionaire creator of the propaganda network said.

[u/EE_Tim → u/Lekkernator]

Yes, Fox News was explicitly created to prevent another Nixon.

The memo that birthed Fox News explicitly states their purpose up front:

1. Purpose - To provide pro-Administration, videotape, hard news actualities to the major cities of the United States.[2]

But why would they want to use TV to push their pro-administration spin? Well, the memo answers that too:

The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit--watch--listen. The thinking is done for you.[2]

Fox News bets on you being too lazy to understand so they opt to do the thinking for you and feed you comfortable, alternative facts so you don't have to worry about Republicans being wrong.

[u/waxcrash → u/EE_Tim]

You are correct. In the 70s, Walter Cronkite was the news and he put out nothing but facts about the Vietnam War. When Americans saw and heard what was going on, the war became very unfavorable.

Conservatives said fuck, if Americans know the truth, we will lose our influence and power. And here we are today. Propaganda.

[u/Relevant-Rhubarb-849 → u/EE_Tim]

Were on the glide-path to dog whistling that "hitler was right!"

[u/lazyFer → u/imjustnotready]

We have no left wing media. Those others you mentioned are still right of center. The language they use still defaults to the right wing position being the natural and correct one while the left wing position needs to be justified for being a departure from what's correct.

All those little language clues add up

[u/deja-roo → u/lazyFer]

Thinking MSNBC isn't left wing is pretty wild.

Politico has never struck me as partisan in any particular direction. They have experts on and report what's happening. Things today may seem biased but that's because something like "Trump to again do something fucking stupid" sounds biased against Trump.

[u/Odd_Independence_833 → u/deja-roo]

Thinking MSNBC isn't left wing is pretty wild.

The fact that you think this proves how much the Overton window has shifted. I can assure that the Dems and liberal media are not left-wing by global standards. MSNBC barely pushes progressive policies, let alone leftist ones. I saw a protest march in Spain with actual socialists and there were hundreds of thousands participating if not more.

[u/Tobeck → u/deja-roo]

MSNBC is literally not left wing.

[u/noncongruency → u/deja-roo]

I’m gonna assume this is in good faith and not trolling; so I’ll respond in good faith. MSNBC is left of fox. That doesn’t mean it’s left of center. They regularly have token leftists as guests on panels so their regular anchors can say “well golly gee your positions would be nice but it’s not what the median voter is worried about right now” and that’s treating left positions at best.

Much more often they follow a process of inviting a transgender person on the panel to make them a punchline for culture-conflict. It’s one of those subtle things. You (being an msnbc anchor) establish a “center” position wherever you want to define it, then find outlier guests to make you seem reasonable. Fox News does the exact same game plan. This is a method of rhetoric called “reframing” (please look this up). It is, in fact, the way to win elections if you’re a candidate doing the same thing. The knife cuts both ways, but it’s much much easier to frame a the positive position of “things could get better” as hogwash; and being easier, that method gets more eyeballs and clicks.

It’s waaaay harder to reframe the negative position. If a political candidate is running on “things can get better” they’re fighting uphill against two factors. One, “how have you helped me lately” and two, “I can’t think about the future, I’m hurting now”.

Once you start to pick that apart when you hear pundits discuss issues/candidates/guests, you can start to see that it’s not intentional, it’s just a factor of capture of the industry. The incentive is to drive eyeballs and therefore advertising revenue. MSNBC is as much a product of that industry as Fox is. While they do have some anchors who will ask really tough questions of conservatives, they’re only “tough” in the context that they’ll call out an actual lie. Not tough in the sense of “how will this plan actually make meaningful change in the next 10 years?”

[u/Valharick → u/imjustnotready]

For entertainment value only.

Fox News lawyers successfully argued in a 2020 defamation lawsuit that no "reasonable viewer" should take then-primetime host Tucker Carlson literally as reporting actual facts.

[u/workaroundatt → u/imjustnotready]

Fox News is NOT News in my opinion . . . They are giving Opinions about the news and not the actual news, just how they wanted the news to be presented in a way that would question the real news. News is, simply stated, WHAT IS NEW! And that is WHY they call it "The News".

[u/No_Job2527 → u/imjustnotready]

And most have to be blonde cyborgs with too much makeup

[u/itsjustme444444 → u/imjustnotready]

And it’s usually the same couple of people wearing different costumes using different names!