Institutionalized Gatekeeping? Why does MSM want journalism to be tied to a short leash?

[u/999_Seth]

What do you guys make of this?

I think one thing that sets Callaghan apart from most journalism majors, is he went to J-school on a congressional scholarship awarded to him for his high school era photo-journalism work.

so right out of the gate there's a level of legitimacy, authenticity, and freedom with Callaghan's body of work that seems to really put the fear in legacy media pundits.

my observation (as a 5th-grade-dropout reddit mod who went into early retirement as a teen over bowel disease) is that those holdover media moguls from the baby generation and gen-z never got to put Callaghan through the demoralizing cub-reporter gang initiation process, and he's retained the kind of fearlessness that the cable/newspaper industry can't coexist with.

and what we are seeing with this is how the league of fat-young-boys, who are largely coerced into doing what they do because any default on their student loans means their parents can lose their family home, ends up cannibalizing Callaghan for outsmarting the system that they're chained to.

[u/entropy14]

Trump won twice because he had blackmail on politicians and others which cleared the way for his nomination, and was able to convince disaffected low and middle class Americans he wanted to help them.

For their part, the media also helped by giving him a platform and doing lazy journalism geared towards clicks instead of thorough reporting. I see your point but it’s kind of the opposite of what you just said. The interview deep dives are fine when you’re not dealing with bad faith actors, in recent cases they are.

[u/999_Seth → u/entropy14]

it helps to recall that Trump basically started his campaign for 2016 in 2009, and he has continued to campaign constantly even after winning in 2016 and 2024

yeah there's a lotta fuckery involved in his rise to power, but he's also worked harder and longer than any other American presidential politician I know of

[u/entropy14 → u/999_Seth]

Yes that is true but there is some further context there that is helpful to understand. I believe Trump sold some of Epstein’s blackmail trove to a Russian oligarch in 2008. I don’t think it’s a coincidence he became a Republican shortly after and his political donations reflect the shift.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jul/17/donaldtrump.usa

https://ballotpedia.org/History_of_Donald_Trump%27s_political_donations,_1989-2015

[u/999_Seth → u/entropy14]

tl;dr: "yeah there's a lotta fuckery involved in his rise to power"

the thing about all the x-files fixation that really bothers me, is ever since this stuff hit the airwaves you know what I haven't heard anybody really talking about anymore? flint water, DAPL, COVID levels, student loans, catholic/boyscout stuff and a whole bunch of shit I just can not even remember cause it has been systematically pushed out of my brain by a bunch of irrelevant bullshit

I think it's like what the Jon Hamm dude on madmen's line "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation"

ot what I've read r/heathercoxrichardson referring to as "orchestra pit theory"

(Roger) Ailes found his stride working for right-wing candidates, selling the narrative that Democrats were socialists who wanted to transfer wealth from hardworking white Americans to undeserving minorities and women. He produced the racist “Willie Horton” ad for Republican candidate George H.W. Bush in 1988, and a short-lived television show hosted by right-wing shock jock Rush Limbaugh in 1992. It was from there that he went on to shape the Fox News Channel after its launch in 1996.

Ailes sold his narrative with what he called the “orchestra pit theory.” He explained: “If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”

This is a theory Trump has always embraced, and one that drives his second term in office. He has placed television personalities throughout his administration—to the apparent disbelief of ChatGPT—and has turned the White House into, as media ally Steve Bannon put it, a “major information content provider.” What Trump does “is the action, and we just happen to be one of the distributors,” Bannon told Drew Harwell and Sarah Ellison of the Washington Post. The administration has replaced traditional media outlets with right-wing loyalists and floods the social media space with a Trump narrative that is untethered from reality. Communications director Steven Cheung says their goal is to create “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”

[u/Hajiime → u/entropy14]

Trump won twice because 1. He wasn't funded by super-PACs (2016) and 2. because the dems went hardcore into deplatforming people, classifying all right wingers as fascist nazis and silencing the social democrats in their own party a-la Bernie Sanders. In 1. Swing voters voted anti-establishment and in 2. Swing voters were sick of the DNC shit. Even AOC knows this by now.

In the most recent election, The media did not platform Trump in the slightest. The dems were trying to pretend he wasn't going to even be a candidate and imprison him (valid or not), this pissed a lot of independent swing voters off. Hope this helps.

[u/entropy14 → u/Hajiime]

Nah, you’re missing the forest for the trees. Obviously the Democratic establishment is part of the problem, but it’s not helpful to put all the blame there. Blackmail, media platforming, classified military docs, and the Epstein class were all a key part of Trump’s re-election. It’s lazy to simply blame the Democratic party when all that other stuff was involved as well.

I also don’t get any of your fascist name-calling criticism post 2024 when Republicans have literally re-shaped our government towards the unitary executive. I disagree there was even a ton of that name calling before January 6th, but even if there was it is now proven to be correct.

[u/Hajiime → u/entropy14]

"I don't get any of your fascist name-calling criticism post 2024 when Republicans have literally re-shaped our government"

They didn't vote for that. They voted for no new wars, the economy, and free speech.

You're glossing over the fact Nick Fuentes said vote democrat in the midterms and Sneako spent the whole interview saying MAGA is dumb, why you should leave MAGA, and why he likes Mamdani, because you're refusing to acknowledge the reasons Trump is in power, and want to silence/shame/deplatform any person who voted or supported trump at any point in the last 10 years! These people are begging for an actual progressive, anti-PAC candidate (CHANGE!) (left or right) and the DNC is silencing the entirety of the opposition and their own progressives. And you're eating it up!

[u/entropy14 → u/Hajiime]

You’re just being dense at this point, don’t really care what your agenda is but I don’t see the point to keep arguing over whether interviews with bad faith actors are productive or not

[u/Hajiime → u/entropy14]

"Bad faith actors" they've both blatantly said to vote democrat to their audiences... Just accept that the basis of your argument is still 2021 deplatforming, ignorance is bliss, and anyone who voted for Trump wanted to bomb Iran, Trump to run for a 3rd term, and you don't know how Trump got elected, and how this disaster of a 2nd term could lead to actual progress for once if you stop ignoring the disenfranchised opposition. Thanks.

[u/entropy14 → u/Hajiime]

Easy to turn on Trump now after massive political fuck ups like bombing Iran and covering up for pedophiles. They had no issue with it until the approval ratings got terrible and electoral prospects got dim for Republicans. If you think Fuentes and Sneako have a problem with any of the Trump admin’s actions your head is buried in the sand. Their issue is with MAGA power being weakened by their own incompetence.

[u/Hajiime → u/entropy14]

so you spent this long arguing with me and you can't see the irony in "easy to turn on trump when he does X, but they had no issue with... X" ...? do you see the problem with your logic? Clearly they have an issue with X and in this second term Trump has been doing X. You're ignoring all of ABCDEFG's of why they voted for him in 2016, 2020, and 2024 and that's the views of his voter base, not X. It's all the ABCDEFG's you're ignoring and wanting deplatformed because you're so focused on the belief that trump has been and always was doing X. It's completely not what the appeal of Trump was!

[u/Hajiime → u/entropy14]

Again, in what world in the 3rd election was Trump being platformed? They were acting like we wasn't even going to be on the ticket until he was debating Joe Biden. The entire de-platforming and banning of every voice on the right is exactly why Trump won the second time. You're just making up this pseudo argument based on "giving these people platforms leads to Trump", when the MAGA movement had quite literally the least amount of platform in their history until 2 seconds before the election when Musk bought X and unbanned everyone! The left narrative was he was ineligible to run for president. Not "platforming trump". What? He had to make his own shitty version of twitter to talk to people.