Winstonm, on 2017-June-02, 16:18, said:
It sounds as if your complaint is that the media cannot be trusted. But let me ask you a question: how does a reporter name his source if that source spoke only on condition of anonymity? The reporter would never again work in news, never get another tip from that source or likely any source, and he might cause the tipster to lose his job, to boot, or face criminal prosecution. And newspapers - any reliable news outlet, for that matter - will not publish information from a single source unless making it totally clear that the allegation is unsubstantiated. In almost all cases, news organizations do not run with a story until it is substatiated or confirmed by at least one other source besides the original.
The other side of this coin is that if the White House and campaign members were cooperating fully it would be possible to hear what was being said on t.v. instead of reading and hearing about it second hand.
Well, the public believes the media is biased. So it would seem like their reporting regarding President Trump needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt.
A recent Harvard study of media coverage in the first 100 days shows major media sources were overwhelming negative about President Trump. CNN and NBC 93% negative, CBS 90% negative, NYTimes 87% negative, WashPost 83% negative, WSJ 70%, and Fox 52% negative. Stories concerning President Trump's fitness for office ran WashPost 96% negative, NYTimes 87% negative, CNN 82% negative, NBC 80% negative, Fox 33% negative.
So it's perfectly fair to question the objectivity of news outlets that are so negative about President Trump.
As a comparison, President Trumps has received overall something like 70% negative reporting, President Obama about 70% positive, President Bush 57% negative, and President Clinton 60% negative.
This is a link to the study
https://shorensteinc...first-100-days/
There are several passages in the summary/conclusions that seem apropos.
"Nonetheless, the sheer level of negative coverage gives weight to Trump's contention, one shared by his core constituency, that the media are hell bent on destroying his Presidency."
"At the same time, the news media need to give Trump credit when his actions warrant it. The public's low level of confidence in the press is the result of several factors, one of which is a belief that journalists are biased. That perception weakens the press's watchdog role. ... The nation's watchdog has lost much of its bite and won't regain it until the public perceives it as an impartial broker, applying the same reporting standards to both parties"
"Journalists would also do well to spend less time in Washington and more time in places where policy intersects with people's lives. If they had done so during the Presidential campaign, they would not have missed the story that keyed Trump's victory -- the fading of the American dream for millions of ordinary people. Nor do all such narratives need to be a tale of woe. America at the moment is a divided society in some respects, but not a broken society and the divisions in Washington are deeper than those outside the Beltway."
But beyond the bias, one has to ask what was the hard information the sources for the story saw that made them make their claims. Was there a verbatim transcript of the meeting or just a summary based on some meeting notes they were basing their comments on? With the American attendees asserting nothing inappropriate was said, anything other than a verbatim transcript would seem pretty iffy for upholding the source's assertions.