I draw your attention to this essay by Eric Boehlert, (you may have to click through a subscription solicitation but you can read it) which makes the cogent but obvious point that the corporate media, for the duration of the recent Residency, refused to use the word "lie" or "liar" with respect to Mr. Trump. He focuses particularly on an interview given by WaPo editor Marty Baron, who seems to regret this failure but weasels out of taking real responsibility. One of his weasel points is that deference must be paid to the president but of course this began before the 2016 election, during the campaign.
Another weasel point is that they couldn't know his state of mind, maybe he was misinformed, but of course this is also ridiculous because he often repeated the same lie more than 100 times even after it had been repeatedly debunked. Baron also weasels that it wouldn't have mattered anyway. I agree that most MAGAts don't read the WaPo or the New York Times but this also applies to the major TV news operations that more people are exposed to and in any case, if your excuse is that your publication isn't very influential you should probably be looking for another job.
Granted many of them did start calling the claim of a stolen election a lie, but I actually think that helped. Yes, a lot of Republicans believe the lie but IIRC (not bothering to look for polls right now) it's something like 60%, which also means a lot of them don't and many people are leaving the party. Faux News doesn't 100% determine the beliefs of some of them, and it's the responsibility of ethical journalists to tell the truth, and that includes calling a lie a lie. I hope they're starting to learn.
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Yes, by all means we need to start calling things what they truly are--in addition to suing the purveyors of lies (Fox, NewsMax, etc.) to make it easier for people to have access to factual information instead of propaganda.
The right wing has been winning the propaganda war for at least twenty years. After all, they started it. Our government and media have not always been honest, but the manufacturing of outrageous lies and invidious slander is a right wing project.
Jung said, "A lie would make no sense unless the truth unless the truth was felt to be dangerous." That about sums up the position of entitled Caucasian folk. They fear losing what they never had: superiority. They don't WANT to learn to play well with others; it's not in line with the false narrative of their "pedigree."
If people need to be shown scientifically that we're ALL 99.9% identical genetically, so be it. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/opinion/23andme-ancestry-race.html
Everybody will be happier when we can all join in the reindeer games. Just gonna have to drag a lot of people onto the playing field.
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