The New York Times is really losing it here! Like so many media outlets, they appear to be in the bag for the obscenely wealthy's plan to destroy our democracy, create an autocracy and get their serfs back!! After all, they like so much of the media, are owned by the wealthy. It's like they have instructed their reporters to make it look like both sides are too blame and that the GOP isn't a looney bin, hell-bent on destroying our democracy, and fresh off an insurrection attempt! With reporting like this, who needs Fox News propaganda!

The New York Times is bad for America https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/20/2148287/-The-New-York-Times-is-bad-for-America

#BothSiderism
#NYTNotJournalism
#GOPFascists
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#MediaByAnd4TheRich
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#NotNewsButDisinfo

"What happens when journalists walk through the doors at 620 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan? Are they forced to check their rationality at the door? Made to wear some kind of perception-altering goggles that prevent them from seeing reality and then telling the readers of The New York Times about it? Because here’s how they explain the debt ceiling crisis in their “Morning Newsletter,” with German Lopez in the byline:

The bad news: Democrats and Republicans are divided. House Republicans say they want to use a debt-limit increase—and the threat of default—as leverage to cut government spending. Top Democrats have likened the Republican stance to a hostage-taking situation. The sides can’t agree even on whether to negotiate.
QAnon has seized the House of Representatives, and for Lopez and New York Times editors, it’s a “Routine crisis.” That’s how they titled this piece, with “A political fight is again putting the economy at risk.” There is one small concession in the rampant both-sidesing in the piece: “But the willingness of some Republicans to risk going into default poses potentially dire consequences.”

“Some Republicans” being the ones who control the House of Representatives, and they aren’t “risking” going into default, they are planning to go into default. How extreme is this? Donald Trump—yes, that Donald Trump—is warning them that attempting to force cuts to Social Security and Medicare with the debt ceiling is bad. “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” he tells them in a new video.

Why does what the Times says even matter? It matters because a lot of smart people who don’t follow politics like the readers of Daily Kos follow politics come away assured that everything is perfectly normal in this fight. That it’s the same old partisan warfare they’ve been reading about for years and that it’s basically playacting. It not only generates cynicism from a public that thinks “if it’s in the Times, it must be right,” it gives them the impression that a) this is just how it works nowadays, and b) the Democrats are as responsible for this with their crazy spending ways as the GOP, which wants to blow the system to smithereens.

That’s the same GOP that tried to overthrow the government just two years ago. Speaking of, 11 of the 17 Republicans tapped to head up House committees voted on Jan. 6 to reject the 2020 presidential election results. After Trump’s violent mob ransacked the place. The all-important House Oversight Committee now features “13 election deniers, 10 impeach-Biden-world advocates, and 3 congressional subpoena dodgers.”

There really isn’t anything that the GOP can do that the Times will condemn as extreme and un-American, including creating a constitutional crisis over the debt limit. Because that’s what it ultimately is. The Constitution says, in a number of provisions, that the executive branch pays the nation’s debts and maintains a functional government. It also says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” Period.

More than that, though, what the GOP is threatening could amount to a global financial meltdown. Just one side in this fight thinks that’s a thing that could/should be allowed to happen. Just one side is clutching that hand grenade, ready to pull the pin.

And the Democrats are to be equally blamed for taking a firm stance against negotiating with these economic terrorists? Only if you get your news from the Times."

Too much of the media is owned by wealthy people who use it to control the discourse and shape it in ways that benefit themselves. Should media be a capitalist enterprise if it is an integral part of ensuring the life of our democracy?!

Opinion | The Corporate Media's Commitment to 'Both Sides' Coverage Is Dangerous | Common Dreams https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/corporate-media-both-sides

#Journalism
#BothSidesism
#GOPKills
#GOPGreed
#GreedKills
#MediaByAnd4TheRich

"You know what would actually benefit politics in the United States? A media system that was willing to point out who was causing demonstrable problems, rather than pretending that "both sides" are always to blame.

The Washington Post (12/16/22) had a recent headline: “Can Politics Kill You? Research Says the Answer Increasingly Is Yes.” And the lead of the article, by Akilah Johnson, told readers of two studies that reveal what it calls “an uncomfortable truth”:

The toxicity of partisan politics is fueling an overall increase in mortality rates for working-age Americans.
But when you read further into the article, you find that politics is not really the problem here. One of the studies, the Post reported, found that “people living in more conservative parts of the United States disproportionately bore the burden of illness and death linked to Covid-19.” The other found that “the more conservative a state’s policies, the shorter the lives of working-age people.”

So the problem is not so much “politics” as it is conservatism. Indeed, the article noted that one of the reports found “if all states implemented liberal policies” on the environment, guns, tobacco, and other health-related policies, 170,000 lives would be saved a year.

Still, the analysis in the piece centered around the idea that it is not right-wing ideology, but lack of bipartisanship, that is to blame—as in, “The division in American politics has grown increasingly caustic and polarized.”

You know what would actually benefit politics in the United States? A media system that was willing to point out who was causing demonstrable problems, rather than pretending that “both sides” are always to blame.

Reporting like that could actually save lives."