Commander in Chief Forum: Why NBC Let Trump Lies Slide

My sister asked me what I thought about Hillary’s performance last night. I didn’t watch it nor have I read anything about it because I already knew what was going to happen. Here’s what I think happened:

Hillary won the night, but the next day the big media reports (there is no such thing as mainstream media) will say that it was very close, or that the other guy outperformed, while the blogosphere will claim that Hillary was the winner.

Hillary made numerous factually correct assertions. The other person made numerous unfounded accusations. Hillary specified plans for dealing with specific issues. The other guy said that he had a plan but didn’t actually say what it was. Hillary looked cool, calm and collected. The other guy looked like an evil clown in the middle of a meth rage. (Yes, the other guy is speed freak. It will come out after the election, but he exhibits all of the symptoms of a speak freak. (I meant speed freak, but speak freak works too.)

The moderator will turn out to be a fool, but the moderator isn’t really the moderator. The moderator has a plug in his ear, and there’s an executive producer in the control room connected to that plug, telling the moderator what to say., Behind the moderator, there is a team of researchers and policy wonks, with some from either camp, suggesting questions and responses, but the ED decides what the moderator is going to say.

I don’t think Matt is the smartest guy in the room, He wasn’t when I knew him in Boston, way back in the day, and he’s still a talking head. He was once a real journalist, but today the real journalists, with very few exceptions are actually the executive producers, and that’s true for every news outlet except Fox, where they really do make it up as they go along and we have all seen how that has turned out.

Stop and think about this for a minute. Consider the enormous power at the fingertips of an anchor person or a field reporter on a live feed. There’s a three-second time delay, but that can only be used in cases of accidental profanity. You can’t bleep out a reporter’s entire report, or even a significant segment of it, without attracting attention and controversy. It would also undermine the fantasy of the reporter as a knowledgeable person.

Media outlets have to maintain control over their broadcasts, and this is how they do it – by force feeding the on air talent with questions and responses that control the dialogue. And all this time you thought you were watching intelligent people in the middle of a serious discourse. What you have been watching is pre-scripted on-demand edited officially sanctioned dialogues.

My point is that Lauer is, quite literally, a dummy, a full-sized marionette. The real reporters – the people who really create the news – are the executive producers and their associate producers. 60 Minutes is the only television news organization that ever attributes specific news stories to specific producers. Other news programs list the Executive Producers and Associate Producers at the end of the program, in the closing crawl. They never tell you who was responsible for each story…..but rest assured that there is an associate producer who is directly responsible for every news story that you see.

So, if you are wondering why television news coverage in particular is unfair and one-sided and appears to be favoring the other guy, consider this: In the division of powers between the on-air talent and the producers, the on-air talent are the workers; the producers are the decision makers, and they are management not staff.

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