The Trump Show
The real media bias.
Via The Atlantic: Did Media Learn Nothing From 2016?
The Trump Show is back. The former president’s arrest on felony charges of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels inspired cable-news networks to return to wall-to-wall Trump coverage, once a staple of their programming.
But the answer to the headline question is that the media learned the following:
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” the network’s former CEO Les Moonves said of Trump in a moment of candor in 2016. “I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
I often like to point out that the main media bias, especially on cable news, is for cheap, easy-to-produce stories. The ability to go wall-to-wall on Trump’s arraignment was simply free programming that was guaranteed to attract eyeballs. Ditto his Mar-a-Lago speech. The exact news value of showing a motorcade driving to court is minimal, but it was cheap and easy to produce and it brought in the viewers.
We need to remind ourselves that news in the US is, with some exceptions, a business. And, moreover, they are mainly an entertainment business. Mass media makes its money by entertaining people, not by informing them. Indeed, Serwer notes this in his piece, but it is worth constantly remembering.
The day that Bret Favre signed with the Vikings and travelled to their camp, we happened to be in a “sports bar” kind of restaurant for lunch. The TVs were tuned to coverage of this momentous event, even though, well, the footage wasn’t inspiring.
We mocked it – we still do – with the phrase “Bret Favre is on a plane”, which might have been an actual caption of one of the chyrons.
I was thinking of this when somewhere I saw footage of the motorcade, which seemed frankly ridiculous.
Dominick Dunne once told me that an event that you knew ahead of time would be dull was always worth covering because…something…might…happen.
Maybe cable news was hoping, in this case, for a nice car bomb or two. Talk about must-see t.v.
I was looking up stories on how Trump saved NYC in the ’90s and came across this from a 2018 article on Trump
@JKB:..the show is Trump…
As long as there are lap dogs like you Trumps ego will never fail him.
Well, yeah, of course.
Just look at the emails and texts presented in multiple court filings for the Dominion v. Fox News lawsuit.
They make explicitly clear that Fox Hosts and Executives were not in any way concerned with informing people of the facts, but only with providing their viewers the alternative facts that they wanted to hear.
As the Judge stated in his ruling;
and granted Dominion a win on Falsity.
Why people watch Fox news is beyond me…but I don’t get why people watch professional wrestling, either.
@JKB:
For your sake I hope you meant that as a joke
@MarkedMan:
Nah, you go back and read articles from the early 1990s, and even some begrudgingly up to 2018, Trump is only one who built in NYC with a look to the future. There were nondescript buildings being built, but Trump revived Manhattan with several big private and public projects.
Go watch the first couple seasons of ‘Law and Order’, NYC crime and trash was a supporting actor. When they said, “Ripped from the Headlines” they meant the NY Times.
@JKB:
Apparently JKB has neither been to NYC nor seen a Trump building which are universally trash.
@JKB: “Nah, you go back and read articles from the early 1990s, and even some begrudgingly up to 2018, Trump is only one who built in NYC with a look to the future. ”
Speaking as the only one here, I assume, who actually lives in a Trump building, you have no idea what you’re talking about. There is not a single building erected by Trump that has any significant architectural, historical or innovative value at all. In fact, his most famous feature as a builder was knocking down truly significant buildings to erect bland pieces of crap. The famed Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue, for instance, designed by the architects of Grand Central Terminal, was replaced by the hideous black glass tedium that is Trump Tower.
Oh, and the Bonwit Teller building was topped with a pair of art deco freezes that the Metropolitan Museum wanted, and that Trump promised to them. And which he had destroyed (by his illegal alien Polish construction crew) because it turned out to save him a couple of nickels.
So no, Trump did not save New York. But go ahead, tell us how he saved Atlantic City… and Eastern Airlines.
@JKB:
Trump also walked across the Hudson, healed all the sick kids in the Children’s hospital and filled Madison Square Garden with food for the homeless.
How are you this credulous?
@wr:
Well he was very innovative in creating an actual 10,000sf apartment that he claimed was 30,000sf.
:/snark
@JKB:
What articles? Because as someone who grew up around NYC (and visited the City regularly) this is news to me. The biggest “public project” he was involved in that I can think of was the renovation of the Central Park’s Wollman Ice Rink. And the truth about Trump’s role in that project has been a bit exaggerated:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-09-29/a-1980s-new-york-city-battle-explains-donald-trump-s-candidacy
I suspect that JKB may be referring to this article from the New York Post:
https://nypost.com/2016/02/07/how-donald-trump-helped-save-new-york-city/
The author, Steve Cuozzo, is a restaurant critic and real estate writer for the Post. YMWIMV.
Generally speaking, as with all things media, Trump has been far better at taking credit for saving NYC than actually delivering said salvation. And when he gets bored of a project or it isn’t bringing him publicity any more, well… https://www.fastcompany.com/90696000/trump-let-this-beloved-ice-rink-fall-to-pieces-a-new-partnership-is-bringing-it-back-to-life
According to the NYPD, Judge Merchan has received dozens of threats in the past few days: emailed death threats and harassing phone calls.
@mattbernius:
This tracks with JKB’s past behavior. He ‘cites’ something without ever providing the link, asserts the thing he won’t show you is widely accepted by most people, and when you find the source of his bs its just some editorial that confirms his priors.
I believe a few weeks ago he cited “studies” (plural) about youth gender surgeries and when I googled the phrases he was passing off on his own it was all from the Bari Weiss article.
In another age he’d be drinking weak coffee at a donut shop warning his fellow grey haired prediabetics about what “scientists are doing.”
@JKB: Hoo boy… TV shows are accurate reflections of reality. You’ll believe anything, won’t you? trump saw you coming miles away.
By the way I’ve got some beach front Florida property I can sell to you very reasonably.
@Neil Hudelson:
Yes, but this TRIGGERS. THE. LIBS.
And isn’t this what living is really all about?
@Neil Hudelson:
This made me laugh. Probably not the intended punchline. But I give credit for happy accidents.
@wr:
I remember visiting Trump Tower on one of my early trips to NYC in the 80s and wondering why the building deserved any notoriety whatsoever. It’s classic Trump, a yokel’s idea of big-city glamour and sophistication.
@JKB:
OK, this clinched it. JKB is actually a LLM generative AI. The stigmata could not be more obvious.
@JKB:
This is so ludicrous I don’t even know what to say. Trump was literally going bankrupt in all of his businesses throughout the 90’s. He was a nothing in Manhattan, with most of his businesses focused on NJ. I don’t know who is feeding this horseshit but once Trump burned through his fathers fortune and sold off the (Queens, not Manhattan) based real estate empire that the father had so meticulously built up over decades, he never built anything of significance in NY again. The examples you give are of Trump as a character in movies and television shows! Even during the 80’s, but even moreso in the 90’s, Trump was a literal joke amongst those that covered NYC real estate, and wasn’t even discussed in Manhattan Real Estate. It was an easy story to fill in a dead week for a business journalist to interview Trump and let him make a fool of himself. Trump never seemed to care that these guys were making fun of him, and was just happy to have attention focused on him.
I don’t know why I bother, but FWIW:
Jon Stewart nails it here.
Oh well, since there seems to be confusion as to how to use Google here.
Here is a 2016 New York Mag article where they culled their archives for Trump stories
The city cut Trump out of the deal, but he prevailed over those city leaders who weren’t hot for investing in NYC at the time.
@Michael Reynolds:
What do you expect from someone who thinks Law & Order was a documentary and not copganda
@Stormy Dragon:
Well, if you bothered to actually WATCH THE SHOW, you would remember Briscoe and Logan talking about how Trump saved NYC while they were on a stakeout. Season 3, episode 6 – “The Savior”.
Do you expect JKB to do ALL OF YOUR RESEARCH for you?
@Stormy Dragon:..L&O…
I do not deny that I am a Law & Order junkie. One of the things I like about the show is the New York City backdrop. Not that I recognize all the landmarks but since I am not likely to make the trip anytime soon it’s as good a travelogue as any. (I’ve seen Manhattan. I like it too.)
As for “Ripped From the Headlines” be it Law and Order, Columbo or Car 54, Where Are You it’s not real life. It’s all TV fiction!
@JKB: Oh, sweetie, your sarcasm detector really needs a tune up.
@anjin-san: The “Trump Saved NYC” myth is a little overblown in my mind. I recall reading an article about the “development deal” back in the day and IIRC, the deal was tilted in favor of the developer in that if the plan worked, the developer could keep the profits but if the plan failed, he could walk away from the loans without going banko. It was essentially a no risk proposition for the “savior.”
@Just nutha ignint crackerd: There are people who scan the internet to learn, but there are a hell of lot more people that scan the internet looking for confirmation of what they want to believe. The latter, in this case, can find one article that seems to imply Trump had some business acumen, but be completely oblivious to thousands more that mention Trump’s multiple and serial bankruptcies as he squandered his inherited wealth, his incredibly stupid business deals and the fact that we now know he wasn’t a self made man but took over his father’s real estate holdings and personal fortune when the elder Trump succumbed to dementia. One article versus a thousand. But such numbers don’t matter when you are literally incapable of registering anything that goes against what you want to believe.
@anjin-san: That response was the Chef’s Kiss for my night. Thank you for that. 😛 😛
Speaking of research, I watched a lot of Letterman back in the day and Trump was a frequent guest. He was treated a lot more like a novelty/joke than he was a savior.
Now, granted, that’s not as good as watching Law and Order, but so it goes.
(I remember an ongoing segment called “Trump or Monkey” in which photos of tops of heads were visible and people guessed if it was Trump or a monkey under the covered part of the photo–it was a lot harder than you might think. One night it was “Trump or Wookie” wherein the photos were either Trump or Chewbacca–you know, as most saviors are treated).
@JKB:
Serious question, can you walk us through that entire article… not just the one selective quote, and show us how it actually supports your thesis? I also note that from the same article, you managed not to cite any of the counterfactuals (like the losses he took from projects like The Plaza or his failure to fund a number of projects like the World’s Tallest Skyscraper).
In fact the only two major successes the article covers are the one from 1976 (which you linked to) and Trump Tower. Those two alone done really match the claim you made above.
Perhaps I’m reading it wrong. Or maybe you were thinking of another article.
Heck the NY Post article I linked to made a stronger argument for Trump