What does the white working class want?

[JCanete]

40. But you can't say that when it counts, those lauded journalistic institutions haven't let us down.

Focusing on Trump's failings and promoting Clinton as a good choice, does not equate to good journalism by the way. It is at least sane journalism and editorial, I'll give it that, but it doesn't automatically make the paper's overall contributions to public awareness excellent.

Good journalism would be giving the proper attention to the things that ail us, like hey, corporate media ownership. Also, calling "fantasy" on Sanders platforms, you will be surprised to learn, comes across to me as your standard corporate take-down. I know that calls into question whether I would accept any criticism of Sanders platforms from any source. I would. I actually think they are worth serious discussion ...serious discussion...not dismissal out of hand...which has tended to be the journalism I've seen from papers like WaPo. The lack of depth and implicit biases in the framing has not exactly renewed my faith in the media's role as our watchdog. And frankly, any time the person or institution promoting something has a vested interest in that thing, (granted this is most of the time) we should probably pause and give that work extra scrutiny to pinpoint the unexamined assumptions and blindspots..those statements that are proffered off like "everybody knows blah blah blah" without a hint of irony.

And lets not forget, the New York Times, as one shining example of a "truly independent" fourth estate, helped to sell us the Iraq War. An absolute boondoggle, and the evidence was there to report on.

As to whether or not profits or ratings are important, news used to be a public service that if I'm not mistaken, networks had to provide, as loss-leaders, not profit-makers. NOTHING about adding profit into the equation is good for journalism, because the biggest profit an institution can make is through advertisers. These advertisers may be buying more than product exposure. Sometimes they're just buying a friend in the media. as far as it goes, I wonder how often CNN goes after GE or Comcast in its stories, or MSNBC after Time Warner, or Disney, or anybody else. I wonder what their anti-monopolization coverage looks like. Nobody in their right minds would start a blood-bath with each other. Its not like all these places are Fox and literally get their marching orders, but what producers are promoted, and what those producers and editors, and by extension their bosses want, is not just reflected in who they hire to anchor their shows and write their columns, but what they expect of those people. Some may have more rope than others because they have a name for themselves, but more often than not, they already fit the mold enough anyway.

The fact that these same institutions can excuse their lazy-ass reporting and diminishing journalistic departments on needing to grab the viewers with pop-culture, sensationalism and human interest stories does not make the profit motive any more convincing as a generator of good product. Its just a convenient scapegoat they point to any time somebody calls them out for the horrible job they do at the thing they pretend to be. And for that horrible job, their bottom line, and more importantly, the bottom line of their parent company, still gets met. And lets face it, the actual scandals are way better than the ones they peddle. They are far more juicy, but the media barely touches them. It's not because they don't get traction. It's just not. The media determines in large part, what gets traction. People clearly don't make up their own minds about what's important in this nation. They let somebody tell them. How many times have you heard about Bengazi or the emails from people you know? Well, the media kind of decided where to focus.

As to trade deals, there are good things in them no doubt. I got the impression Sanders took issue with the things that were not good, and asserted that as written, they did more harm than good. As somebody who believes that anything that transfers more wealth to the top than it does to people at the bottom(and where the hell does it come from anyway--it has to come from somewhere) is ultimately not in our best interest as a nation or world, I'm inclined to agree. The pie is not expanding. It isn't dark energy. It has a direct correlation to physical resources, whether they be people, land area, sea, animal life, minerals, etc. Exploiting more out of the earth or getting more efficient with those resources, doesn't alter that fact. If more is going to the top, even if it came from what was previously untapped, less remains for the rest of this dramatically increasing world population going forward, and more is leveraged for political influence, destroying smaller competition, influencing education and media, etc. etc. all of which contributes to this cascading effect that further enriches the top tier of our population at great cost.