The first was in response to one of Trump's tirades about the biased media.
The second was a post that would look line by line at what Kellyanne Conway says to figure out exactly what and how she does that. Fortunately, someone else has already done that and you can see it at the bottom of this post.
1. Trump's anti media campaign
As with all his tweets, Trump uses a disparaging descriptor before the person or organization name he's talking about. Here, it's 'fake news' media.
The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017
Who exactly is this evil media Trump complains about. It seemed pretty clear that they are all corporations or very rich individuals. But maybe I was wrong. (I wasn't.)
I thought it would be useful to look at the top 20 newspapers in the US and see who owns them, because, it's the owners who ultimately matter. And if they are conservatives and/or billionaires, it tells you something about Trump's charges. (OK, I understand that Trump, on good days, has a nugget of truth in each panful of tweet, and that tracking down his lies is a trap for the media. Instead of dealing with real news, they are off proving that Trump is a habitual liar which everyone except Trump seems to acknowledge.)
Rank | Paper | Owned By | Comment |
---|---|---|---|
1 |
USA Today
|
Largest US newspaper publisher by total daily circulation |
|
2 | Wall Street Journal | Rupert Murdoch | An Australian description and a 2008 Vanity Fair, personal bio with names you'll recognize |
3 | New York Times | New York Times Company | Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim is biggest NYT investor* |
4 | Los Angeles Times | Tronc (Tribune Publishing) | |
5 | The Washington Post | Jeff Bezos | Billionaire, Founder of Amazon |
6 | Chicago Tribune | Tribune Publishing | |
7 | New York Daily | Mortimer Zuckerman | |
8 | The Dallas Morning News |
A.H. Belo Corp | CEO Jim Moroney Board Vice Chairman and Belo Heir Robert Decherd |
9 | Denver Post/Rocky Mountain News |
MediaNews Group | * |
10 | Philadelphia Inquirer | Philadelphia Media Network | PMN is owned by the community philanthropic Philadelphia Foundation. |
11 | Houston Chronicle | Hearst Corporation | |
12 | Detroit News/Free Press |
MediaNews Group/Gannett | |
13 | Boston Globe | John W. Henry | Also owns the Red Sox. |
14 | (Long Island) Newsday | Dolan Family and Altice | |
15 | Minneapolis Star Tribune |
Glen Taylor | Minnesota billionaire |
16 | New York Post | Rupert Murdoch | |
17 | Atlanta Journal- Constitution |
Cox Enterprises | |
18 | The Newark Star- Ledger |
Advance Publications | Also own Vogue, New Yorker, and Vanity Fair |
19 | San Francisco Chronicle | Hearst Corp | |
20 | The Arizona Republic | Gannett |
*Notes:
The intricacies here are fairly new to me. But there were some interesting notes here and there.
Wikipedia noted that as the largest shareholder in the NY Times he
They also noted that MediaNewsGroup borrowed money from the Gates Foundation, mainly to buy papers in the San Jose and San Francisco areas. Is that a coincidence or does Seattle-based Gates get something from this leverage in Silicon Valley? They also noted that Hearst owns 31% of MediaNewsGroup outside the San Francisco area.
More than one-third of the top 20 are owned by billionaires: Minneapolis Star, Washington Post, Newsday, New York Daily, New York Post, Newark Star Ledger, and the Wall Street Journal.
Trump has more in common with the owners and CEOs of the newspapers than he has with the average American. While economic class is just one factor, it's important. At the very least, these people understand the world Trump lives in and can judge him as a peer. If they oppose him, that says a lot. It's not because they are unfamiliar with the economic world he lives in.
--------------------------
2. How Does Kellyanne Conway Do That?
The second was an attempt to transcribe the Kellyanne Conway interview with Chris Cuomo about Russian hacking, which you can see here. Like others, I'm astounded by how she is able to not answer questions. I thought if I wrote out the transcript, I could see how she does it. And from the few minutes I did write down, I saw some patterns.
1. Take a word or two from the questions and use them to attack someone else.
2. Quibble about words
3. Challenge the assumptions in the question
I never got it done and now someone - Carlos Mazo - has done it much better than I would have anyway. This is the content I would have eventually gotten to.
I'd add one more conclusion about what Kellyanne Conway does: She eats up airtime so that nothing substantive can be discussed. She pollutes the public airways so everything is doubted. Nasty, democracy destroying work.
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