Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
In Russiagate, as Taibbi details, the biggest mainstream media outlets (save Fox, which is a Trump propaganda machine) pushed forth the narrative that there must have been collusion. Every time a story about Russiagate suggested to prove collusion was later found to be either embellished or false (Taibbi notes something like 50 instances of this), the media responded by either:
1. Burying that finding; or,
2. Putting out a new salacious story linking Trump to Russia to cover up the fact that a previous story was found to be false.
All efforts were directed toward one aim: Retaining at all costs the appearance that Mueller was sitting on bombshells, and Trump was not only guilty, but guilty as hell, of collusion.
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Two things, each worthy of its own thread:
1) What you describe is exactly the Chinese robber fallacy. The media ran sensational stories designed to excite people rather than to inform. Um, duh. Consider two possible explanations for this. One is that "the media" (excluding Fox) had "one aim" because of a huge conspiracy to get Trump. The other is that the media ran stories that they thought people wanted to see, because by and large they operate on business models that require advertisers and eyeballs. You go with your tinfoil-hat-everyone-is-out-to-get-Trump explanation, and I will go with the the-free-market-isn't-ideal-but-we-haven't-figured-out-a-better-way-to-do-it explanation. My explanation doesn't run into trouble with the fact that the same people who you think conspired to get Trump were fresh of wrecking Hillary's campaign with the email nonsense.
2) There absolutely was collusion between the Trump campaign and key Russians. No question. Your beef with the media here is like apologizing for the Titanic's captain by complaining that no one talks about all the icebergs in the North Atlantic that he successfully avoided.
