Here's a good piece by Matt Yglesias on the "hack gap", which is related to what I was talking about
:
Why Clinton's emails, Benghazi, and other conservative nonsense dominate news - Vox
A relevant quote to discussions we've had about the EMAILS!!1! here:
Quote:
The argument around this score became in most respects circular. As a CNN explainer on the controversy concluded, the scandal mattered politically because “among Clinton’s biggest challenges in the presidential race is demonstrating her authenticity — and part of that is showing voters she’s trustworthy. Increasingly, though, voters say they distrust Clinton. The numbers have shifted dramatically since news of her private email server was first reported in March.”
But, of course, the only reason the email controversy so thoroughly dominated perceptions of Clinton was it dominated coverage of Clinton — coverage that was justified with reference to its importance in driving perception.
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And here's another example:
The
New York Times knows that Trump is just lying about this "caravan", claiming there are Middle Eastern terrorists in it when there aren't, implying that Democrats had something to do with its organization, acting as if refugees are planning to storm the fence rather than reach a port of entry and apply for asylum (which is the proper legal procedure), etc.
And most importantly: portraying it as far more consequential than it is. It is not a big number of people in relation to immigration to the US in general. And this is tiny in scale compared to the refugee crisis from Syria in Europe. We could let every single one of them in and settle them in the US, and most Americans would notice no difference.
They know this. Which is why the NYT is running stories about how it's a cynical ploy.
And yet, they are
also running a big picture of it in the same issue with a related story more centrally located than the one about how Trump is just making a ploy. And they ran an
even bigger picture of the "migrant caravan" front and center the day before. And another one last Friday. They know Trump is just making shit up and exaggerating to manipulate the media. Yet their response is to treat it as if it
is the top story.
But hey, they ran some negative editorials back in the op-ed section, which totally cancels out what runs page 1, above the fold, in the news section rather than the opinion section, so therefore these criticisms are invalid.
Also, davidm will later claim that I argued that the NYT
shouldn't even report the news, that they should
never have covered this caravan
at all, and they should instead spread an
empire of lies 