January 10, 2018--Factotum

Late in the day on Sunday I heard from a number of progressive friends who called all excited about what they saw to be a takedown by Jake Tapper of CNN of Stephen Miller, White House senior advisor.

"I missed that," I said.

"It was on Jake's Sunday show, State of the Nation. Watch it on YouTube. You'll love it.

I did watch it and did sort of love it. At least until I gave it more thought.

In case you, like I, missed it, it was an interview largely about Michael Wolff's Trump tell-all, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Miller was clearly offered around to the Sunday talkshows as a counterweight to the Wolff tome. He was the perfect choice to send out on a retaliatory mission since he had been Steve Bannon's protégé; and Bannon, the main source of the most damaging reporting about Trump--how he is like a nine-year-old child and that Donald Jr. committed "treason" when he agreed to talk with the Russians about the "dirt" they claimed to have about Hillary Clinton--needed to be put down.

As my friend surmised, I did love it. To me Trump and everyone he touches are compromised. Very much including Miller. But what I didn't love was how Tapper, in his pose as a journalist, treated Miller who was his guest.  

Here are some selections from what turned out to be a brief interview--

Miller: "The president is a political genius . . . who took down the Bush dynasty, who took down the Clinton dynasty, who took down the entire media complex."

He went on to reup Trump's claim that he is "like, really smart," a veritable "very stable genius." He called Wolff the "garbage author of a garbage book" but Miller's real transgression, was accusing Tapper of being "condescending," and claiming that CNN promulgates "very fake news."

Tapper: Miller's calling him "condescending" clearly got under Tapper's skin--"I get it. There's one viewer that you care about right now, and you're being obsequious [servile, ingratiating], and you're being a factotum [lackey] in order to please him."

With that, he cut Miller off, saying he had nothing worthwhile to say and while Miller continued to rant, Tapper looked into the camera and introduced the next guest. It appears that Miller (off camera now) refused to leave and had to be physically removed by CNN security.

Miller's audience of one tweeted--

Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!

Tapper feigned surprise. But what was he expecting? Rational discourse about the strengths and weaknesses of the Wolff book? He knew in advance what Miller was sent out to do and rather than booking him, saying I don't allow shills and factotums on my show, he signed him up as he knew it would turn out to be a dogfight and go viral in less than a couple of hours. All turned out to be true.

This is not journalism to me but rather talkshow mud wrestling designed to increase ratings, which the struggling Tapper and State of the Union could use.

Monday morning, again on CNN's New Day, cohosts Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo had New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman as a guest. Camerotta pressed her about an interesting subject--

Unlike Michael Wolff who does not have to maintain good relations with the Trump administration--his book is out and he is already making millions in royalties--because she has "to go back to the White House" every day after writing articles that frequently are critical of Trump and his people, does this place her in a compromised position as she needs to remain in the White House's good graces to do her job? Does she have to pull her punches, so to speak, in order to retain access?

Not at all, she in effect said, I report it as I see it. Let the chips fall where they may.

Do you believe that? I'm skeptical.

And then there are my Morning Joe friends, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski who a year and a half ago were cozied up to candidate Donald Trump. When he appeared on their show--it seemed almost daily--their ratings went off the charts. They were even eager to have a close social relationship to their friend "Donald." Wolff reports about their visits, as a closeted couple, to Mar-a-Lago. Apparently during one visit last January, a week after Trump was inaugurated, Jared Kushner and The Donald playfully spatted about who would marry them once they fessed up publicly to their on-going romance.

But things have gone south in their off-camera relationship. Cut off from access, they have been merciless in their attacks on Trump and his inner circle. So much so that Monday morning when Michael Wolff was on their show hustling Fire and Fury, they brought up some of the inaccuracies in his reporting, including those about them! 

But then, rather, than pressing to hold Wolff responsible for his inaccuracies and carelessness, they made excuses for him, saying, the book is less about the accuracy of incidents but about the overall impression that it offers of Trump and his presidency.

In these three examples it is clear why so many Americans are fed up with the media. They see the leading opinion writers and reporters to lack integrity and objectivity. Those who have personal agendas (Joe and Mika) or ideological interests (Tapper and Cuomo) or who are just trying to promote a book (Wolff) or publicize their reporting (Haberman) are most prone to professional self-righteousness and loss of objectivity.  

We progressives, especially, need to clean up our acts since we should not want to give media-bashers additional reasons and evidence with which to attack our credibility. 

May 5, 2104--Confirmation Bias

For years I enjoyed early mornings with Morning Joe. But, since it is beginning to feel predictable, lately I find myself switching back and forth between Joe, CBS This Morning, and even CNN's New Day. Never mind the conservative zombie cyborgs on Fox News' alliterative Fox and Friends.

Charlie Rose on CBS feels about as grumpy as I, like me not entirely happy to be up early. So I can relate to that. New Day, on the other hand, is more or less devoted to news, but it is disconcerting to watch Chris Cuomo on CNN, who looks just like New York governor Andrew Cuomo's twin and sounds just like his father, former New York governor, Mario. Again, not fully clearheaded that early in the morning, this can be confusing.

My drifting from Morning Joe appears not just to be an isolated phenomenon but is reflected in the ratings of these four morning shows, especially the cable networks' three. According to a report in the New York Times, Joe has slipped to third place among the cable shows. F&F continues to be number one with ratings that equal both New Day's, which has taken over second place, and Morning Joe's. Especially among younger viewers who, for some reason, are considered to be the more desirable.

Cantankerous, good-ol-boy, Morning Joe Scarborough, is not being diplomatic in his reactions. He is quoted as saying, "CNN has made itself a punch line on the Daily Show for its phony breaking-news headlines and breathless coverage of random ocean debris." (He failed to mention that Jon Stewart on the Daily Show devoted an entire segment to making fun of . . . Morning Joe, for being so cozy with the powerful.)

But Joe has a point.

New Day, and the rest of CNN, vaulted over Joe and all other MSNBC programs by devoting almost all of its time to a constant stream of alleged breaking-news about Malaysian ill-fated flight 370, with much of this breaking news really a constant rehashing of "news" that "broke" hours or even days before. It seems that on CNN there is no statute of limitations on anything they deem to be new news.

On the other hand, MSNBC itself gleefully devoted dawn-to-dusk coverage for weeks to the political downfall of Chris Christie. And now are spending most of their time expressing outrage about estranged LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling and the botched execution in Oklahoma.

While over at Fox, it has not been all-news-all-the-time or we-report-you-decide: it has been all-Benghazi-all-the time in their attempt to preemptively bring down the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton.

But, in addition to noticing myself drifting away from Morning Joe, I am also finding myself losing interest in Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, late evening hosts of their own shows on MSNBC.

They are feeling to me as doctrinaire and strident coming from the left as the hosts of Fox's evening lineup are from the right. Yes, their views are more fact-based than Fox's and Fox's are more opinion-based, but both are becoming unwatchable because their views are more and more predictable.

In talking with others, liberal as well as conservative friends, they are saying much the same thing; but, for the most part, all are continuing to watch their favorite shows on Fox or MSNBC.

I've been wondering why they, and I, continue to tune in if in fact so much is repetitious and predictable.

I have come to conclude we watch because pretty much everyone on Fox and MSNBC, is predictable. We tune in to have our views confirmed.

In cognitive theory this is called confirmation bias. How we search for new information and interpretations that confirm our perceptions and avoid information and points of view that contradict prior or already formed beliefs.

Since genopolitical research is finding that there may be a genetic basis for our political perspectives and attitudes (see The Righteous Mind), the pull to have these deeply-based views constantly affirmed fits right in with the drumbeat programming on the most ideological TV talk shows.

This is not unlike the need to eat. Feeding the mind a steady diet of ideological views is perhaps not so different from feeding the body.

The body human and the body politics.