The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, as conflicts rage across the globe and the U.S. presidential election looms just three weeks away, trust in mass media is plummeting to new lows. A recent Gallup survey reveals that only 31% of U.S. adults say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media to report news fully, fairly, and accurately—a record low since the survey began in 1972.
Continue reading Trust in the Media Hits Record Low, Especially Among Younger Americans
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, as the presidential election season enters its final ten weeks, many voters are skeptical of whether public polling accurately reflects the state of the campaign.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, a new study from Gallup and the Knight Foundation shows that a whopping 86 percent of Americans believe media outlets lean one way or another politically, with 49 percent saying there’s “a great deal” of bias while 37 percent say “a fair amount.”
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, difficult weekend for the mainstream or fake media , first Special Counsel Robert Mueller rebukes a buzz feed article the whole emdia ran with and was using to predict the iminent impeachment of the President . Buss fedd of coarse was where the whole Russian hoax started with the report of the debunked Steel dossie as fact.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has denied the veracity of BuzzFeed News’ incredible claims.”BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” a spokesperson for Mueller’s office said late Friday evening.
Continue reading One Fake News Story Too Many for the Mainstream Media
February 13,2018
Department of Homeland Security
WASHINGTON DC, Today, Jeanette Manfra, National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) Assistant Secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications, released the following statement regarding the recent NBC news coverage on the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to combat election hacking.
“Recent NBC reporting has misrepresented facts and confused the public with regard to Department of Homeland Security and state and local government efforts to combat election hacking. First off, let me be clear: we have no evidence – old or new – that any votes in the 2016 elections were manipulated by Russian hackers. NBC News continues to falsely report my recent comments on attempted election hacking – which clearly mirror my testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last summer – as some kind of “breaking news,” incorrectly claiming a shift in the administration’s position on cyber threats. As I said eight months ago, a number of states were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure. In the majority of cases, only preparatory activity like scanning was observed, while in a small number of cases, actors were able to access the system but we have no evidence votes were changed or otherwise impacted.
“NBC’s irresponsible reporting, which is being roundly criticized elsewhere in the media and by security experts alike, undermines the ability of the Department of Homeland Security, our partners at the Election Assistance Commission, and state and local officials across the nation to do our incredibly important jobs. While we’ll continue our part to educate NBC and others on the threat, more importantly, the Department of Homeland Security and our state and local partners will continue our mission to secure the nation’s election systems.
“To our state and local partners in the election community: there’s no question we’re making real and meaningful progress together. States will do their part in how they responsibly manage and implement secure voting processes. For our part, we’re going to continue to support with risk and vulnerability assessments, offer cyber hygiene scans, provide real-time threat intel feeds, issue security clearances to state officials, partner on incident response planning, and deliver cybersecurity training. The list goes on of how we’re leaning forward and helping our partners in the election community. We will not stop, and will stand by our partners to protect our nation’s election infrastructure and ensure that all Americans can have confidence in our democratic elections.”
February 7,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, you may have noticed yesterday that News 12 New Jersey was spoofed by a fake tweet of President Trump . When challenged by the lack of skepticism and fact checking ‘reporter” Kurt Siegelin responded on Facebook to our query by attempting to justify his biased faux pas , “Have you read some of the President’s tweets? It’s not hard to believe he actually would have tweeted something like a couple years ago.”
We countered “Ever watched 12 news? Biased much ??” , after all it was News 12 that called Ridgewood a town of bigots because so many were skeptical of Aronsohn’s stupid make work ADA ramp at Graydon pool when far better alternatives existed . The doubters were proved correct when the fiasco ran well over budget and is basically unusable because it gets slippery when wet (duh) . The far better alternative the “mobi chair” used at Allendale’s pool was passed on because it did not cost enough .
Kurt Siegelin ended the conversation, ” Dude, whatever. I can only tell you people here are earnest in trying to present unfiltered truth. If you don’t believe it, I can’t help you.” Translation News 12 New Jersey will remain smug and content in its biased , ignorant and bigoted point of view .
A post from Kurt Siegelin(FACEBOOK)
“A few words (maybe more than a few) about this fake tweet…
I saw this on my timeline this morning and immediately thought ‘Man, he’s going to have to explain this!’ And then? Then I read a little more and find out President Trump never tweeted this. It’s Photoshop, or whatever-fakes-a-tweet-shop. Never happened. The guy responsible even admits he did it as a joke and he realizes it’s going around twitter, Facebook and the internet LIKE IT DID HAPPEN and he’s sorry for that. Oopsie. Buddy, in short, too late. This fake tweet is now being shared and re-shared like it DID happen by anyone who hates the President and would like to further undermine him. People are seeing this and believing it did happen.
So what can you believe anymore? If some yahoo on twitter can create something which looks so authentic, is anything legit? Is anything not fake-able? And how do you know? Honestly, I don’t have an answer for that. And really, I don’t blame this idiot. People do stupid stuff. They aren’t “journalists”, trying to be careful with the truth in every post. No, they’re just looking for some shares. And this guy is having his moment. As of this writing, this fake tweet has over 27,000 retweets and 59,000 likes. The likes? They could be people who like the sentiment, hate Trump, whatever. It’s the retweets which are the concern. That’s the virus spreading. Leading to more people actually believing a lie. My question, how many who saw this know it’s fake? You’d have to do some clicking to see the author’s contrition — which people typically don’t do — so yeah, this is out there tonight and I think people believe it. But again, I don’t blame this guy. He was just looking for a reaction.
I actually blame Facebook and twitter for allowing this be disseminated. Both have made some very public statements in the last months about trying to stop fake news from being spread on their sites. They claim to now actively censor material. I haven’t seen that in action, but I guess this one got past both their censors. Hey twitter and Facebook! You know what? Do more. And do it better. The people who run these social media platforms need to realize they are the new newspapers. They are what America reads. They shape what America thinks. Any self-respecting newspaper editor of the past 100 years would never have printed this fake tweet, so why are Facebook and twitter allowed to? There’s no oversight. No ethical standard they’re trying to adhere to (at least none I know of). So understand, always, reader beware. Be suspicious of it all. In the meantime, I’d like to give twitter and Facebook execs a lecture on journalism. They could use a good talking-to right now.”
BY JONATHAN EASLEY – 05/24/17 10:10 AM EDT
Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the mainstream press is full of fake news, a sentiment that is held by a majority of voters across the ideological spectrum.
According to data from the latest Harvard-Harris poll, which was provided exclusively to The Hill, 65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media.
That number includes 80 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats. Eighty-four percent of voters said it is hard to know what news to believe online.
“Much of the media is now just another part of the partisan divide in the country with Republicans not trusting the ‘mainstream’ media and Democrats seeing them as reflecting their beliefs,” said Harvard-Harris co-director Mark Penn. “Every major institution from the presidency to the courts is now seen as operating in a partisan fashion in one direction or the other.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/334897-poll-majority-says-mainstream-media-publishes-fake-news
By Stephen Miller|3:57 pm, May 5, 2017
Apparently we’re all going to die. We’re all going to die here in short order and we’ll all have Republicans, who were elected to Congress in record majorities, to blame. Good job everyone.
That’s the message coming out of Democrats and duly picked up by national media after yesterday’s House passage of the amended American Health Care Act. “Families will go bankrupt. People will die,” Chief Elizabeth Warren signaled on Twitter. ““This will cost American lives if it ever becomes law,” claimed Cory Booker on MSNBC. “This will mean death, pain, and suffering to people’s families.” Chris Murphy, never one to be outdone in using death to exploit, tweeted: “House GOP, I hope you slept well last night. Because after this vote, you will have the death of thousands of your conscience forever.”
The Daily Kos shouted: “House Republicans vote to sentence millions of Americans to death!” The newly ‘elected’ head of the DNC, Tom Perez said: “Trump and Republicans will own every preventable death.”. Perez is somehow allowed to go unchallenged on what constitutes a preventable death.
He’s not unprecedented. He’s not going to change. And 11 other lessons the media still haven’t learned about the president.
By POLITICO MAGAZINE
May/June 2017
There was lots of hand-wringing after the election about how the media had messed up. Were we too quick to believe the polls? Did we have any idea what real Americans actually thought? Did we give Donald Trump too much attention—or not enough? Now that journalists have spent a few months covering President Trump, we asked a range of media critics, political operatives, historians and more: What does the press still get wrong about Trump, and what do we just not get at all?
Political Media Earns Poor Marks From Americans
CAMERON EASLEY | APRIL 28, 2017 | 12:00 AM
As political journalists prepare to gather at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday to celebrate their work, a new Morning Consult poll is likely to make many of them cringe.
In the new poll, roughly half (51 percent) of Americans said the national political media “is out of touch with everyday Americans,” compared with 28 percent who said it “understand the issues everyday Americans are facing.”
President Donald Trump, a frequent public antagonist of the press and the first president in 36 years to skip the confab, is also slightly more trusted than the national political media. Thirty-seven percent of Americans said they trusted Trump’s White House to tell the truth, while 29 percent opted for the media.
https://morningconsult.com/2017/04/28/political-media-earns-poor-marks-americans/
Editors note CNN tries the same tactic as the Bergen Record when they came to Ridgewood and told residents its not news till they tell you it is and you have no right to question anything.
‘We will not aid and abet the people trying to misinform you’
Apr 4, 2017
Since news broke Monday that the Obama Administration’s National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, directed the “unmasking” of NSA intercepts of Trump associates, CNN has raced to shoot down the blockbuster report.
CNN Tonight’s Don Lemon went so far as to announce he would ignore the news at all costs.
While interviewing a Democratic congressman, CNN’s Chris Cuomo claimed it was “demonstrably untrue” Rice sought surveillance of the Trump team, even as that’s exactly what yesterday’s reports prove.
Over the last 24 hours, the network has also repeatedly called on its chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, to dismiss the reports as a non-story; Sciutto has even excused Rice claiming ignorance of the unmasking scandal two weeks ago, arguing Rice “wasn’t aware” what unmasking Rep. Devin Nunes (D-Calif.) was referring to.
And on Tuesday’s “New Day,” anchor Alisyn Camerota openly pleaded with Sen. John McCain to write-off the news as unimportant.
Last night, Lemon began “CNN Tonight” with an announcement that the Rice report a “fake scandal ginned up by right-wing media and Trump” that he would not be baited into justifying with coverage.
“On this program tonight, we will not insult your intelligence by pretending,” it’s legitimate, he said. “Nor will we aid and abet the people trying to misinform you, the American people, by creating a diversion. Not going to do it.”
https://news.grabien.com/story-cnn-goes-rampage-against-susan-rice-bombshell-instructs-view
March 14,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, In a fascinating exchange French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen tells a reporter that no one trusts the media and highlights how incredibly disconnected dishonest the mainstream media really is.
The reporter tells Le Pen her advice that people “turn away from the traditional media, (and) go and find news on the Internet” is “dangerous”, Le Pen responds, “why?”.
“Madame, French people have no confidence in the media whatsoever, are you aware of that, or not?” asks Le Pen.
Le Pen then goes on detailing what she considers the media’s deficiencies .
The same people who got it spectacularly wrong on Brexit and Trump are the same people who think the mainstream media is still trustworthy.
Why do my fellow journalists praise that anti-media prosecutor Donald Trump fired? | Mulshine
Posted on March 14, 2017 at 6:26 AM
BY PAUL MULSHINE
There is one phenomenon that I have never understood in the many years I have been in the news racket: the adulation many of my colleagues have for crusading prosecutors.
Am I the only one who’s noticed that these guys rarely return the favor?
A case in point is outgoing U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. When his name appeared on the list of U.S. Attorneys who were asked to resign by President Trump last week, a great wave of keening and wailing went up from the press.
Typical was the New York Times, which ran this headline on a supposedly objective news article: “With Bharara’s Dismissal, Storied New York Office Loses Its Top Fighter.”
Storied?
Groupthink produced a failure of the “wisdom of crowds” and an underestimate of Trump’s chances.
By Nate Silver
Filed under The Real Story Of 2016
Published Mar. 10, 2017
This is the ninth article in a series that reviews news coverage of the 2016 general election, explores how Donald Trump won and why his chances were underrated by most of the American media.
Last summer, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in what bettors, financial markets and the London-based media regarded as a colossal upset. Reporters and pundits were quick to blame the polls for the unexpected result. But the polls had been fine, more or less: In the closing days of the Brexit campaign, they’d shown an almost-even race, and Leave’s narrow victory (by a margin just under 4 percentage points) was about as consistent with them as it was with anything else. The failure was not so much with the polls but with the people who were analyzing them.
The U.S. presidential election, as I’ve argued, was something of a similar case. No, the polls didn’t show a toss-up, as they had in Brexit. But the reporting was much more certain of Clinton’s chances than it should have been based on the polls. Much of The New York Times’s coverage, for instance, implied that Clinton’s odds were close to 100 percent. In an article on Oct. 17 — more than three weeks before Election Day — they portrayed the race as being effectively over, the only question being whether Clinton should seek a landslide or instead assist down-ballot Democrats:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-really-was-a-liberal-media-bubble/
Only 39 percent call media “truthful” in Emerson College survey, compared to 49 percent for new White House
Brian Flood | February 9, 2017 @ 8:37 AM
at the Trump administration is “truthful,” while only 39 percent feel that way about the news media. Worse, for the so-called “opposition party,” 53 percent of those surveyed described the media as “untruthful.”
The poll, released on Tuesday, also showed that Americans are divided on Trump’s performance so far — 48 percent of registered voters approve of the job that Trump is doing, compared to 47 percent who disapprove.
https://www.thewrap.com/new-poll-says-president-trump-is-more-trusted-than-untruthful-news-media/
