Freedom of the Press???

[KeithE]

[Haruo]

The presence or absence of a comma can make all the difference between diametrically opposed assertions, and yet almost no one proofreads his or her punctuation well enough to guard against misinterpretation. Stress patterns, too, which are rarely visible yet define the audible.

[William Thornton]

She screwed up and later corrected and clarified her statement, as she should have, but not before it made a couple of trips around the world.

[Sandy]

If you'd been watching the program, and paying attention, you'd have understood the context and got what she meant immediately. This is an example of the kind of thing that the extremist right wing media does, picking out sound bytes because they have no facts or evidence on which to base an argument, and they are pretty sure that most of the people who listen to them are far too lazy and stupid to do any checking on their own.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

I watch that program every morning while I'm getting ready for work, and even with interruptions, it wasn't hard to determine that she was saying that she believed it was their job to correct "alternate facts" from the Trump administration. Like any statement, it had a context related to the discussion in which it was made.

The definition of "fair and balanced" by most of the MSNBC commentators, and particularly the ones on that program, is quite different from that of most conservatives and extremist right wingers, who think that anything which doesn't cast them or their position in a favorable light is biased, even if it is true. Most conservatives, and most Trump supporters aren't interested in fair and balanced news, though, they want propaganda that always casts their position in a favorable way, and always bashes "liberals." Generally, while the "liberals" gather and report facts, the extremist right wingers and conservatives are picking out sound bytes and reporting fiction.

[William Thornton]

[Stephen Fox]

Did anybody beside me listen to the NPR interview yesterday on Fresh Air? With the nybooks.com piece on What Trump can do, gets to the guts of the matter.