'2016 all over again': MSNBC host unloads on media for failing to fact-check Trump

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 406 points – '2016 all over again': MSNBC host unloads on media for failing to fact-check Trump
rawstory.com

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell laid into news outlets on his show Thursday night, comparing their collective failure to call out Donald Trump's falsehoods to 2016.

"It was 2016 all over again, today," he told his viewers. "Donald Trump spoke at his home in Florida for over an hour and all the major cable news networks, including this one, carried it live. Just like they all did repeatedly in 2016. It would be hard to find a sentence that Donald Trump said today that did not include at least one lie."

O'Donnell acknowledged that some networks attempted to fact-check the MAGA leader, but only after he finished his speech.

"That of course is way too late and utterly useless," he said. "No network tried to fact-check every lie Donald Trump told."

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I watched both the Trump conference and O'Donnell's take live and, yeah, he has a point.

The feed I had, you couldn't hear the reporters questions at all. So all you could hear was Trump and there was no way to know what the actual question was based on his answers.

But nobody follows up on ANY politician and it's been that way for a couple of decades now.

The classic example I always cite is one that happens all the time:

"Well, we're going to get rid of job-killing regulations."

The logical follow up question would be:

"Can you cite an example of a regulation you'd get rid of and in what way it's a job killer?"

But nobody ever asks that question.

I was initially disappointed in NABJ's decision to host drumpf, but happy to be wrong when I witnessed him facing a serious interview for the first fucking time. Massive respect to NABJ and the interviewers for tactfully exposing him publicly.

And even then they could (and arguably should) have pushed back way harder. Even in the NABJ interview he got to bulldoze the hosts with "nasty woman" rants and spew his usual tirade of bullshit lies unchallenged.

The right has its persecution complex narrative. Better to not play into that and just get him unlimited rope to hang himself with. Which he promptly did and has continued to do. Republicans have been trying to crack the Black vote for decades and Trump lost any hope of that this cycle.

But nobody follows up on ANY politician and it’s been that way for a couple of decades now.

Exactly. There was a time over the Obama years where PolitiFact and WaPo's Fact Checker were pretty popular. I'd frequent them often and they'd be in Digg and Reddit aggregators. I practically forgot about them in the last decade. I hate to say it but we are in the Post-truth era of fact-checking because it's all about what narrative everyone wants. People who care about truth versus falsehoods already know Trump is full of shit. Everyone else is largely convinced the fact-checkers themselves are lying or at least distorting reality.

Serious question, but couldn’t you get more ratings for being the aggressive and combative fact checker when addressing Trump vs the soft ball question lobber?

Is this just a matter of demographics watching and giving more advertising money to traditional media and therefore doing so is less profitable?

I would definitely put my eyeballs more towards any organization that would challenge all politicians vs those who are basically allowing them to advertise their talking points.

I’m ignorant on media and looking at this simply, if it isn’t obvious.

I think the unfortunate answer is you are in the minority. people watch what makes them feel good, not what challenges their beliefs. that's why we end up with highly partisan news outlets like Fox.

also, it's hard to fact check in real time (especially Gish galloping trump). of course it could be done by large media organizations but it would cost more money to do.

Yeah I hate read Fox News (webpage, there’s no way I could actually watch) every day for this very reason. What might I be missing? Honestly it’s more of a bad habit now than actually netting any honest insights, although I admit I do see stories/opinions not mentioned on other news sites. Even aggregators. I do enjoy challenging my own beliefs though. It’s a fun exercise.

Most reporters are afraid they will lose their access if they ask Traitorapist Trump real questions at his "news conferences".

Who wants to risk offending the ratings bonanza.

Journalistic integrity doesn't pay the yacht club dues, Lawrence.

Don't these networks have AI? Voice to text from the feed, send it through ChatGPT to summarize fact check, quickly verify the stats and add the result to graphics overlay.

I'm surprised a streamer hasn't done this yet.

Great idea, validate bullshit with the bullshit generator.

I did a quick sampling with copilot, it seems to lie less than trump. Good enough for me!

Copilot appears to even refuses to tell me that these are true, either when I encourage it by telling me to "correct thr statement" on the true statement, or when I explicitly tell it to tell me otherwise.

you could tell an LLM to specifically lie and it would probably lie less than him. everything would be trustworthy if compared to the bullshit man

Large language models (chatgpt etc, basically any of the AIs you've seen recent headlines about) aren't especially good at distinguishing true from false claims. It's one of the biggest weaknesses that AI researchers are actively trying to find solutions for.

I knew that I didn't like Ed OKeefe of CBS news but after watching O'Donnell's footage of him at Biden's news conference I now can't stand the guy.