MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow said it is “irresponsible” of news organizations to carry former President Trump’s remarks when they know he is going to make false statements.

As the network cut away from Trump’s Super Tuesday victory speech, Maddow said whether to provide live continuous coverage of the former president’s public remarks “is a decision that we revisit constantly.”

The balance, she said, is “between allowing somebody to knowingly lie on your air about things they’ve lied about before — and you can predict they are going to lie about.”

“And so, therefore, it is just irresponsible to allow them to do that,” she continued in comments first highlighted by Mediaite.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    74
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Media has a huge part of the responsibility for both Trump and what the Republican party has become.
    It’s like they don’t acknowledge they have a responsibility, as one of the pillars of democracy.
    There’s a difference between reporting, and reporting lies. To report both sides equally, is no longer a responsible balance.

    • Blackbeard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      24
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Not only that, but the clickbait media-sphere has slowly eroded “news” outlets to the point where they no longer cover things like “healthcare”, “taxation”, or “education”. Now they cover polls, donors, polls, primaries, rallies, polls, conventions, polls, elections, exit polls, approval polls, disapproval polls, etc, pretty much non-stop from election to election. The incessant drone of horse race journalism is drowning out any even remotely meaningful coverage of actual things that are happening in people’s lives. Long form and investigative journalism has been displaced by low effort politics-as-sport commentary.

      Is there any wonder, then, how one of the major political parties was completely overtaken by a man who’s singularly obsessed with “winning” against “losers”? We’ve been fed a 20-year diet of who-beats-who monotony, and all the actual issues in the country are glossed over as boring and irrelevant. They fed people non-stop infotainment, and then people fell in line behind a vapid, loud-mouthed reality TV billionaire.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    28
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    I really applaud Maddow’s dedication.

    Watching the Super Tuesday coverage, they were talking about the California Senate race and the control room put up a card calling the race undecided but had big pictures of Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey.

    Maddow put the brakes on the whole thing going “Wait, we’re saying it’s undecided, so why are we showing their pictures?”

    Control room pulled the card and put up a new one showing all the candidates.

    • cmbabul@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      4 months ago

      Rachel isn’t perfect but she’s pretty much the only major news personality I place any trust in at all

  • oxjox@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    4 months ago

    Is it news? Are you a news station?

    Yes, it’s terrible that a remarkable number of our population are a bunch of easily manipulated morons. Let’s also shift our attention towards that while you continue to report the news.

    While you’re at it, stop your ongoing efforts to manipulate an emotionally unstable population who can’t tell the difference between opinions and biased reporting and actual journalism.

    The blog-ification of “news” needs to be addressed. I certainly appreciate the insight of experts and academics but the packaging of personal assessments and opinions by talking heads as News continues to be a disservice to the fourth pillar of democracy.

    • PopcornTin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 months ago

      You can only trust us to tell you what to think. Don’t watch candidates give a speech. We’ll let you know what you need to know. Now go out and vote being fully informed with what we’ve decided.

  • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    Sounds like Trump can barely form a sentence let alone make (coherent) false statements these days.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    4 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow said it is “irresponsible” of news organizations to carry former President Trump’s remarks when they know he is going to make false statements.

    As the network cut away from Trump’s Super Tuesday victory speech, Maddow said whether to provide live continuous coverage of the former president’s public remarks “is a decision that we revisit constantly.”

    Trump, Maddow noted, “the de facto, soon to be de facto nominee of the Republican Party, this is not only the man who is likely to be the Republican candidate for president, but this is the way he’s running.”

    MSNBC has made a somewhat regular practice of cutting away from Trump’s live remarks.

    Other news networks have carried his remarks in full while some have cut away to fact-check the former president and dipped back into his speeches.

    President Biden’s campaign has reportedly urged news organizations and surrogates for the president to do more to highlight the often outlandish, offensive or false things Trump says in public.


    The original article contains 265 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 38%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    4 months ago

    Well she’s right. And the only one saying it. So. You other 11,275 news type people, what’s your excuse.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    4 months ago

    The C-suites of all the media companies simply can’t help themselves, because covering the campaign like this is extremely profitable. And they’re out for profit. And helping to save democracy isn’t something they can easily distill down to a number for their quarterly earnings report, so they don’t bother.