When I say "all" in the subject line, I mean a great deal (just not enough room to write complete thoughts in that space)
"NBC’s Chuck Todd: Media knew how ‘hated’ Hillary was in heartland and we ‘underplayed’ it"
http://tinyurl.com/jmvefqo
I don't agree with Todd's view of why he feels he and the MSM "underplayed" it, I think he was trying to give himself an out. I think that their "underplaying" of it helped to create this idea that Trump's victory should be considered suspect at best and illegitimate at worst. The vast majority of the media was in the tank for Hillary and, I believe, that when they saw that people were so upset and that they felt "robbed", or something close to it, they continued to hide just how unpopular Hillary really was while continuing to drum up the anti-Trump rhetoric.
The MSM also downplayed what was in the actual leaked emails from the DNC as well as the proof that a lot of the violence at the Trump rallies were the result of Democratic or progressive plants, not the Trump supporters as many of them continue even today to suggest. Those types of actions, along with the obvious bias for Hillary and the refusal to report honestly has helped to create this deeply divided culture we now see.
Let's face it, Trump was not anyone's "dream candidate" and hasn't been anyone's "dream President"; that said, he isn't the worst thing since Eve was tricked either. The fact is that we, the voters, have not held our elected officials (or the two major political parties) accountable for decades and Hillary & Trump becoming the ultimate candidates for the two parties was just the latest results of that apathy. Personally, I happen to believe that Trump was, and still is, a better choice than Hillary; however, in all honesty, the bar in that race was really so low that even an ant would have difficulty if asked to limbo dance under it.
Had the Chuck Todd and the MSM been honest and actually reported the true facts during the campaign last year, we would still be a divided country, but imo, not to the degree we are today. We might have been divided, but some civility might still be around; strained, but still around. This division didn't start with Trump or even Obama. Obama played into it and helped divide us even more for his own political goals, but we have been moving in this direction for a while now; Obama's actions may have fast-forwarded the division by a decade or more, but I think we were headed to where we are today regardless.
Besides the outright negativity from most of the media (80-90+% negative coverage) http://tinyurl.com/km5yaod the other truly sad change that I have noticed since Trump was elected is just how much Fox News has actually become the equivalent of MSNBC under the Obama administration but for Trump and the right. Even though most liberals and progressives never saw Fox as even somewhat balanced when Obama was in office, multiple studies showed that they actually were more balanced than just about any other media outlet. Today, all that balance is gone as Fox seems to have become, as MSNBC was under Obama, the mouthpiece for the GOP and the Trump administration. Not just "Hannity" but it seems that the vast majority of the opinion shows as well as a lot of the "news" segments now lean so far right that they tip over and are going in circles to try to say nothing negative about Trump or some of his truly stupid actions. |
