From: Ben Tasker <ben@bentasker.co.uk>

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 10:48 PM, jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:

I have to chuckle about these people complaining about fake news. Let's say there are two problems:
1. People promoting fake news.
2. People FAILING to promote GENUINE news.

The MSM (mainstream media) just spent about a year avoiding telling the truth about Hillary Clinton, and her corruption. (I won't list the details; no point). It misled the public enormously. Why, then, should we pay attention to its complaints (and those of others) who are claiming that false facts are being pushed?

Further, I should point out that "fake" news would tend to not exist in an environment in which the MSM actually covered such negative news. The problem, as I see it, is that UNLIKE previous election cycles, and non-election coverage, in 2015-2016 the MSM took a very biased position, and avoided covering embarrassing and incriminating facts. This was especially true in the last few months of the campaign.

>Which (IMO) is part of what screwed Clinton over.

You say that as if she's a victim. Instead, she is a major victimizer. I think that if the MSM had actually covered these scandals to the extent they should have, she wouldn't have won, either. They did everything they could to conceal these facts from the public. If the media had done that in 1972-74, the American public would never have heard the term, "Watergate".

" If you look at the stuff that came up in the final months, whilst damaging, it was all stuff that she could probably have recovered from (the public being fairly fickle and forgetting things quite quickly) had it come up earlier on."

Sure about that? I think the statistic was that about 55% of the polled public thought her to be "corrupt", not merely "dishonest". And the figure for "dishonest" was about 60% http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/11/60-percent-of-voters-think-clinton-is-corrupt/ So, the public didn't forget: After all, she lost. But if the MSM had raised these issues, giving them the equal time how could she have won? They tended to minimize every negative story, wherever they could do so.

"Had the media broached it further on rather than trying to ignore it, they could have helped the candidate they wanted to win to actually do so. Instead they buried their heads in the sand and pretended there was nothing to see, even as it became clearer and clearer that there was quite a lot more to be told."

In other words, they screwed up! What else is new? I think the current scandal concerning "fake news" was triggered by a person who was actually a Hillary supporter. I guess his theory was he could discredit the various stories about her by inventing a phony story, one that would be quickly exposed, which I suppose (arguendo) would make people think that every story against her was equally phony. Didn't quite work as expected, huh? If anything, people understood that the MSM was covering up this stuff, so it became quite plausible that there were yet more stories that needed airing.

"Whether you're happy or sad about Trump, I think it's fair to say the media had quite a hand in putting him where he is today, even if that's the opposite effect to the one they intended."

I'm overjoyed that Hillary LOST. She would probably have been stuck, for the first year, defending herself (unsuccessfully) against corruption charges. At that point, I think she should have had to resign: Even her fellow Democrats (especially them!) would have wanted her to resign, especially coming up to the 2018 election. Kaine, at least, would have been free of the scandal.

The fact that Hillary's loss meant that Trump won is a small price to pay. I feel certain that if Trump screws up, he will be effectively opposed not merely by the (large) Democrat minority, but also a substantial number of majority Republicans. Trump won't have the blind loyalty W Bush commanded. And the Republicans will have to police Trump, to ensure they do well in 2018.

Jim Bell