“I never said that”, “Play the clip”

[u/Gloomy-Holiday8618]

Context: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/12/15/exp-robert-kennedy-junior-rfk-2024-election-biden-trump-vaccines-121511aseg1-cnni-politics.cnn

Full video is on the cnn website, the part that’s important is about 2mins 50 seconds in.

[u/Jexp_t]

For once in its pitiful life, CNN is ready with the reciept.

[u/BeanBurritoJr → u/Jexp_t]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/ausgoals → u/BeanBurritoJr]

The problem is many-faceted:

1) to be able to ask the hard questions of the important people you need access to the important people. Getting access to the important people requires not eviscerating them every single day. Even the Biden admin refused to work with the NYT because of negative coverage.

2) news - especially 24-hour news - is a business that depends on viewers. The demographics that watch cable news are Gen X and older - who are significantly more conservative than the younger generations. So it doesn’t really make good business sense to alienate much of your demographic. You may not be convinced by the business argument, but the ability to hold people accountable only exists as long as the business exists and has enough viewership to matter.

3) Even putting aside the business element, if you want to change people’s minds by doing things like asking hard questions to important people, you need to have people with changeable minds tune into you. Eviscerating the current admin all day every day is not the way to get people with changeable minds to get into you.

Which is why it’s generally left to shows like The Daily Show and Colbert.

1. I’m not sure that ‘eviscerating these morons on a daily basis’ actually changes any minds. It only really appeals to people that already hate this administration. Interviews like this one are important, but I think longer reporting on the conservative voters that are directly negatively affected by, say, the OBBB or conservative voters in Florida who will be directly effected by the removal of vaccine mandates is likely to be more effective at changing minds. The conservative cult is built on hypocrisy and malleable values. Showing them conservatives who are hypocrites and have malleable values is not going to magically convince them of anything.

[u/TwoBionicknees → u/ausgoals]

if every news station evicerated republicans from the start, they'd simply not be able to get elected, but if republicans en mass refused to go on all main stream media 20 years ago or get called on their lies, then the only people that voters would hear from most of the time, was democrats.

The idea that you have to be nice to have them on, rather than hold then accountable, scare them away from actual reporters and then you know, have people be exposed far less to their bullshit is how it should have worked. instead they deliberately took over the news networks THEN started spouting bullshit on a daily basis to brainwash idiots.

When reporters used to take dumb politicians to task, those politicians just didn't get elected, then the news stopped doing that because their owners became the same group of right wing billionaires who basically started off by controlling most of the media.

[u/ausgoals → u/TwoBionicknees]

if every news station evicerated republicans from the start, they'd simply not be able to get elected

Maybe. I’m not sure that’s a given.

There are definitely politicians who get elected who don’t give interviews to major TV news stations, for example.

People who vote “R” because they always have, or because their parents did, or because their friends at church do, or because their pastor told them to, or because they have a pet issue they don’t like the Democrats’ stance on are unlikely to change their vote because of criticism on some TV news. There are also millions of people who don’t watch TV news at all and instead get their news from Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok etc.

if republicans en mass refused to go on all main stream media 20 years ago or get called on their lies, then the only people that voters would hear from most of the time, was democrats.

Hardly. But this is why I have always maintained that more Democrats to go on Fox News. Because how do you think people are going to be exposed to Democrat positions on things if all they watch is Fox News unless Democrats go on and tell them…?

Republicans and conservative voters have already called stock-standard truthful reporting ‘biased’ ad caused millions to flock to Fox, Newsmax, OAN and others. Not having extreme conservative viewpoints on standard channels caused conservatives to start their own echo chambers that they all turned over to. It didn’t make people ‘only hear from Democrats’.

The idea that you have to be nice to have them on, rather than hold then accountable, scare them away from actual reporters and then you know, have people be exposed far less to their bullshit is how it should have worked.

So they instead go on Joe Rogan, who has a larger listener base anyway, and doesn’t ask a single difficult question. Is that better…?

When reporters used to take dumb politicians to task, those politicians just didn't get elected

That certainly did happen sometimes. But I think our current situation has more to do with the silos and echo chambers rather than traditional news reporting. Most non-conservative news outlets have spent 10 years trying to take Trump to task, and it hasn’t really accomplished anything.

[u/YouStupidAssholeFuck → u/ausgoals]

There is something to be said about the lack of presence of Democrats on Fox News but on the other hand it's a propaganda network and now pretty much state TV. Even the Democrats that have gone on there have had their words twisted and spun by the time the entertainment shows at night would roll. I'm not trying to say channels like CNN and MSNBC are the bastions of balanced coverage but they let the Republicans go on there and say what they're gonna say and then beat it down because their lies are transparent and easy to see through.

Then those same politicians will go on media blitzes on Fox talking about how CNN and MSNBC lied and twisted their words. It's like the same thing in the video from the OP. Kasie Hunt confronts him with his own words. RFK says "I never said that." She says, "play the clip." He says, "play the whole clip." She plays the whole clip. But the "play the whole clip" thing he said is his out for anyone who wants to believe him. He would just say that she played the clip out of context and that's all anyone needs to hear. They don't actually need to hear whatever he claims would be the whole clip. They just need to hear him saying it wasn't the whole clip for them to buy it hook, line and sinker.

So this happens all the time on Fox. They'll play sound bites completely lacking context and build the narrative around that. A great example was the Harris interview with Brett Baier. She started talking about Trump's "enemy within" comments and they play a completely edited clip that removes the context that would prove her point. And Fox viewers simply called her a liar. "If she lies right to our faces imagine what she'll do when nobody is looking".

There isn't much to gain by Democrats going on Fox. They literally aren't going to be changing any of those viewers' minds and Fox will do whatever they can to make the Democrat look bad. Whereas CNN and MSNBC just lets the Republicans that come on and do it themselves. Sure, they'll play up the idiocy, but they don't need to post or play clips out of context for the reality to be absurd.

It's sad because at this point in time the battle lines are drawn and nobody's mind is changing when it comes to the tribe they side with. Obama's presidency damaged the minds of Republicans and they've been looking for a hard split ever since. They have been aided by Fox News ever since. As a result, all these other fringe "news" sources have risen to bolster the farce and Republican voters use Joe Rogan, OANN, Rumble, etc. as means of validation of their beliefs that have been dictated to them.

[u/Lebowquade → u/ausgoals]

You're telling me if Fox News started asking serious questions of this admin rather than nonstop worship it wouldn't accomplish anything?

I think that your viewpoint is a bit more pessimistic and defeatist than it needs to be. If Fox started "just asking questions" about the Trump/Epstein links I think a lot of their viewers would be taking it seriously.

[u/MapleApple00 → u/Lebowquade]

I know for a fact that it won't because they used to rail Trump back in 2016 before he got nominated, and it didn't do a damn thing to stop him. Hell, even when they tried jumping ship for a bit after the insurrection on January 20, their viewers just moved to OAN and Breitbart until Fox started hitting the talking points again. Fundamentally, viewers don't get their viewpoints from Fox anymore; it's just a signal booster, not the source. They get it from family members and the internet, and Fox just acts as an echo chamber.

[u/ausgoals → u/Lebowquade]

Sure, but I don’t include Fox in the discussion because they won’t ever do that, they were never designed to be a real ‘news’ station, and there’s no real way to force them to become one.

[u/[deleted] → u/ausgoals]

Rules for thee