Ted Kopple tells Hannity that Hannity is bad for America

[Deletedaccount1]

And like I just said, wondering how a president's supporters got him elected is a weird fucking sticking point.

I mean you're completely ignoring what Koppel and Hannity's influence on their viewers engenders in the way of belief. Koppel is a somewhat right of center individual with reasonably solid journalistic ethics. People who get news from Koppel will be reasonably well informed. Hannity routinely leaves his viewers believing in the most absurd lies imaginable.

Your complaint seems to boil down to Koppel is a hypocrite because he doesn't meet some impossible definition of impartiality.

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Again, this seems to require having spent the last 8 years in a coma to believe.

His supporters help him get elected but what pushed Trump over the edge to win a landslide electoral college victory was his support for populist policies in key swing states which are things that Hannity doesn't endorse over traditional conservative policies. If the coalition that got Trump elected was a solid conservative one in states that are usually conservative then maybe conservatives like Hannity might have played a larger role but Trump appealed to people beyond that and won because of it.

You are ignoring what I've been writing so I'll quote it from Manufacturing Consent itself.

As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit-indeed, encourage-spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness.

Koppel ran a show for over 20 years that was guilty of this. Nightline and shows like it functioned to support the partisan consensus in the country and manipulated people into buying into it without thinking there might be something outside of it. Hannity doesn't brand himself as anything other than what he is, a conservative commentator.

You are ignoring other key factors. Hannity's numbers are much lower than what Koppel pulled as relative to the total population of the country. For the large reason that there are more than 3 news channels in 2017 compared to the 80s and people don't watch cable TV as much anymore. People aren't drooling buffoons who sit on the couch and believe whatever they see is attempting to be impartial and all inclusive unless they are told otherwise and can't get information in any other way so they assume it doesn't exist. Hannity's show appeals to people who already agree with him before they watch it. The "lies" (I put that in quotes because I don't watch Hannity so I don't know what he tells them) are not objectively more harmful simply because they are more extreme, the issue is more complicated than you are making it seem.

[Wells]

His supporters help him get elected but what pushed Trump over the edge to win a landslide electoral college victory was his support for populist policies in key swing states which are things that Hannity doesn't endorse over traditional conservative policies. If the coalition that got Trump elected was a solid conservative one in states that are usually conservative then maybe conservatives like Hannity might have played a larger role but Trump appealed to people beyond that and won because of it.

What's your definition of "landslide"?

Koppel ran a show for over 20 years that was guilty of this. Nightline and shows like it functioned to support the partisan consensus in the country and manipulated people into buying into it without thinking there might be something outside of it. Hannity doesn't brand himself as anything other than what he is, a conservative commentator.

Yes, Koppel worked on a show that operated within the standard paradigm of the time. Is this bad? Arguably. You haven't presented any argument as to why its worse though, instead just noting that its subtle, which is very different.

You are ignoring other key factors. Hannity's numbers are much lower than what Koppel pulled as relative to the total population of the country. For the large reason that there are more than 3 news channels in 2017 compared to the 80s and people don't watch cable TV as much anymore. People aren't drooling buffoons who sit on the couch and believe whatever they see is attempting to be impartial. Hannity's show appeals to people who already agree with him before they watch it. The "lies" (I put that in quotes because I don't watch Hannity so I don't know what he tells them) are objectively more harmful simply because they are more extreme, the issue is more complicated than you are making it seem.

"they watch because they agree with him" rings sort of hollow after witnessing the right wing in this country moving from weak libertarianism to full on nationalist populism. Seems pretty clear to me that belief follows.

[Felnoire]

Kopple isn't wrong, opinion segments masquerading as news are bad for America. Political Opinion, Affiliation, etc, should have no place on a news channel regardless of which one you want to pick. MSNBC, Fox, and so on and so forth.. they're doing the American people a disservice. They deserve the unbiased truth when they watch the news, or at least as close to it as humanly possible in order to form their own opinions on matters. Not be spoon fed self serving opinions for them to agree with, creating only echo chambers for such people to con the public into following their whims.
Having opinion pieces are not evil in and of themselves, but by broadcasting them alongside actual news you're creating an affiliation that those opinions are factual news pieces. Talk shows shouldn't be part of the news, simple really, let them go compete with whatever replaced Jerry Springer. Rather than have them devalue the actual facts which should make up the news, dunno why anyone could complain about that. Having your news untainted by an agenda is rather awesome, but then people have a habit of having rather odd views on things.

[Deletedaccount1]

What's your definition of "landslide"?


Yes, Koppel worked on a show that operated within the standard paradigm of the time. Is this bad? Arguably. You haven't presented any argument as to why its worse though, instead just noting that its subtle, which is very different.


"they watch because they agree with him" rings sort of hollow after witnessing the right wing in this country moving from weak libertarianism to full on nationalist populism. Seems pretty clear to me that belief follows.

Landslide, as in Trump carried every swing state he needed in order to win.

I did give a reason why it was bad. I recall mentioning it was a major cause of the War on Terror. The media at that time was spoon fed government sources on everything and attempted to show there was a consensus that terrorism was a major problem that deserved a trillion dollar tax payer investment. A show like Nightline which disproportionately featured Beltway insiders caused harmful actions by the government to be ignored by only bringing in people who directly contribute to that harm. Another example would be wasteful spending on the big 3 or the military. It could also rightly be blamed as a cause of prevailing wealth inequality.

The Republican party is still predominately conservative with a now larger wing of populists. You are making it seem like the entire right is 100% united under Trump's vision of America. Look to his health care bill which failed because of a large conservative opposition as evidence that the right is still largely the same as it was before Trump.

[Wells]

Landslide, as in Trump carried every swing state he needed in order to win.

Haven't encountered that definition before.

I did give a reason why it was bad. I recall mentioning it was a major cause of the War on Terror.

Which, if we're trying to determine who was worse, Koppel or Hannity, is a wash of a point given Hannity's full throated bloodlust. Additionally, you're only spelling out why Koppel is bad, not why he's worse.

The Republican party is still predominately conservative with a now larger wing of populists. You are making it seem like the entire right is 100% united under Trump's vision of America.

I was referring to their base voters, not the party as a whole. Probably could have spelled that out more explicitly. Polling is pretty clear that the GOP base has almost entirely abandoned the old conservatism.

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Seems to me you're taking Chomsky/Zinn's reasonable criticism of US media and using it to prop up comparative value judgment they aren't making.

[Deletedaccount1]

Haven't encountered that definition before.

Which, if we're trying to determine who was worse, Koppel or Hannity, is a wash of a point given Hannity's full throated bloodlust.


I was referring to their base voters, not the party as a whole. Probably could have spelled that out more explicitly. Polling is pretty clear that the GOP base has almost entirely abandoned the old conservatism.

I have already said why one of them being more extreme doesn't necessarily make them have a worse influence. Instead of retyping it, I'm just going to quote it.

You are ignoring other key factors. Hannity's numbers are much lower than what Koppel pulled as relative to the total population of the country. For the large reason that there are more than 3 news channels in 2017 compared to the 80s and people don't watch cable TV as much anymore. People aren't drooling buffoons who sit on the couch and believe whatever they see is attempting to be impartial and all inclusive unless they are told otherwise and can't get information in any other way so they assume it doesn't exist. Hannity's show appeals to people who already agree with him before they watch it. The "lies" (I put that in quotes because I don't watch Hannity so I don't know what he tells them) are not objectively more harmful simply because they are more extreme, the issue is more complicated than you are making it seem.

To put it in your own words, I haven't encountered that polling before.

[Wells]

Yeah going in circles is boring.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Hannity 2014: "The president should not use a teleprompter to give a speech, it's lazy, a crutch, and proves the ineptitude of our president."
Hannity 2016, on the campaign trail: "I'm loving Trump's use of the teleprompter to stay on message, it really is a great tool for our future president to use."

You can replace "Hannity" up there with Hannity's loyal followers and Trumpkins. They all said the exact same thing.

I think it's funny how people proclaim themselves to be free thinkers, not like "those sheeple", and then they turn around and all they do is spout stuff they hear from Hannity, Trump, Spicer, etc. It's like "No, I guess you're not a sheeple, you don't blindly follow along going baaaaaaaaaaaaah, you blindly follow along repeating things other people have said that you think are clever, and think that makes you clever."

[Deletedaccount1]

Seems to me you're taking Chomsky/Zinn's reasonable criticism of US media and using it to prop up comparative value judgment they aren't making.

Zinn's critcism is different and I am not using that. Chomsky's criticism (which hasn't aged very well) was, to quote it again:

As we have stressed throughout this book, the U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit-indeed, encourage-spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness.

You are making the value judgement by claiming Hannity's influence is obviously worse because he is obviously more extreme. I am pointing out there are factors that make this untrue, mainly that Hannity already speaks to an audience who agree with him before he starts talking.

[Realtalk]

Kopple isn't wrong, opinion segments masquerading as news are bad for America. Political Opinion, Affiliation, etc, should have no place on a news channel regardless of which one you want to pick. MSNBC, Fox, and so on and so forth.. they're doing the American people a disservice. They deserve the unbiased truth when they watch the news, or at least as close to it as humanly possible in order to form their own opinions on matters. Not be spoon fed self serving opinions for them to agree with, creating only echo chambers for such people to con the public into following their whims.
Having opinion pieces are not evil in and of themselves, but by broadcasting them alongside actual news you're creating an affiliation that those opinions are factual news pieces. Talk shows shouldn't be part of the news, simple really, let them go compete with whatever replaced Jerry Springer. Rather than have them devalue the actual facts which should make up the news, dunno why anyone could complain about that. Having your news untainted by an agenda is rather awesome, but then people have a habit of having rather odd views on things.

These shows weren't available until 1987 when the Federal Communications Commission did away with the so-called Fairness Doctrine. Notice the downward spiral of politics and the increase of echo chambers since.

[Wells]

Zinn's critcism is different and I am not using that. Chomsky's criticism (which hasn't aged very well) was, to quote it again:



You are making the value judgement by claiming Hannity's influence is obviously worse because he is obviously more extreme. I am pointing out there are factors that make this untrue, mainly that Hannity already speaks to an audience who agree with him before he starts talking.

You assume a causational direction here. Given that rabid and head spinning shift in right wing base politics here these last few years it seems pretty likely to me that Hannity, and others, is taking vague dissatisfaction and ramping it up into modern proto-fascism.

To reiterate another point made earlier though, you've cited the Iraq War as an example of Koppel's greater malignancy, but its not like Hannity wasn't cheerleading at exactly the same time.

[Deletedaccount1]

You assume a causational direction here. Given that rabid and head spinning shift in right wing base politics here these last few years it seems pretty likely to me that Hannity, and others, is taking vague dissatisfaction and ramping it up into modern proto-fascism.

To reiterate another point made earlier though, you've cited the Iraq War as an example of Koppel's greater malignancy, but its not like Hannity wasn't cheerleading at exactly the same time.

I don't know what that means. I don't think there has been a head spinning shift in right wing politics, unless that is just code for "Trump won the primaries". Primaries where the amount of votes traditional conservative candidates received split up was greater than the number that Trump received. It seems that Hannity is just appealing to his Republican audience by being overly favorable to the Republican president of the country.

I googled proto-fascism and I don't see what that has to do with Hannity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-fascism

Again, Koppel and other news anchors on ABC, NBC and CBS created decades of a, to quote Chomsky and Herman, "system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus". Hannity in 2003 still branded himself what he is today and his audience is largely unchanged (Republicans).

[atlings]

Zinn's critcism is different and I am not using that. Chomsky's criticism (which hasn't aged very well) was, to quote it again:



You are making the value judgement by claiming Hannity's influence is obviously worse because he is obviously more extreme. I am pointing out there are factors that make this untrue, mainly that Hannity already speaks to an audience who agree with him before he starts talking.

Hannity is as dumb as they come. If you don't see that, I don't know what to tell you. Chomsky's criticism of the media is not that the fakestream media is lying or a corrupting influence, it that they're working from an understanding of what is mainstream, also called cultural bias. If they stray too far from middle America, they lose readers and ratings. This is why you don't see newspaper editorials promoting nazism or nuclear war on Canada. It's also why people don't stand up and tell jokes at a funeral.

[urasim]

Hannity 2014: "The president should not use a teleprompter to give a speech, it's lazy, a crutch, and proves the ineptitude of our president."
Hannity 2016, on the campaign trail: "I'm loving Trump's use of the teleprompter to stay on message, it really is a great tool for our future president to use."

Those sentences don't contradict each other. Trump is lazy, using a crutch, and showing us his ineptitude by using a teleprompter, but Trump is better off using a teleprompter because he's a complete nonsensical retard otherwise.

[Deletedaccount1]

Hannity is as dumb as they come. If you don't see that, I don't know what to tell you. Chomsky's criticism of the media is not that the fakestream media is lying or a corrupting influence, it that they're working from an understanding of what is mainstream. If they stray too far from middle America, they lose readers and ratings. This is why you don't see newspaper editorials promoting nazism or nuclear war on Canada. It's also why people don't stand up and tell jokes at a funeral.

When have I said Hannity isn't dumb? Chomsky's criticism was that the media creates a system of center-right to center-left discourse that caused the rest of the country to fall into place with it. Like I said though, this was in the 70s and 80s and this criticism doesn't hold up well today. It has nothing to do with "losing middle America and ratings", it is about brainwashing middle America by making them think views don't exist outside of what they see on 3 TV channels and a couple of newspapers all of which uses information supplied by corporations and the government.

[breadisfunny]

Not being a viewer of any of these opinion shows, I can see how people get sucked in. Whether it's Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity, having someone argue what you believe with such eloquence and knowledge of background information, it's kind of eye-opening how seductive that can be, and how easily that can lead a person to hunkering down on their position, because the mountain of evidence for their side is so obvious and strong.

There are valid points made on these shows, so I don't think they're bad for America, but I worry that Americans themselves could be sucked into an echo chamber.

sean hannity is dumber than a box of rocks and rachel maddow is so biased she makes ann coulter jealous. the only reason they are still on the air is because of the power of echo chambers and being told what you want to hear.(and because rachel maddow has a certain sex appeal going for her still.)

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been there, didn't see what the big deal was.

i'm calling bullshit.

[atlings]

When have I said Hannity isn't dumb? Chomsky's criticism was that the media creates a system of center-right to center-left discourse that caused the rest of the country to fall into place with it. Like I said though, this was in the 70s and 80s and this criticism doesn't hold up well today. It has nothing to do with "losing middle America and ratings", it is about brainwashing middle America by making them think views don't exist outside of what they see on 3 TV channels and a couple of newspapers all of which uses information supplied by corporations and the government.

Tv is entertainment, not really news. I think the decline started when people started relying on tv for information. These days, ofc, they don't even do that anymore. Now they only believe what the president tells them to believe, which is pretty scary. It seems clear that this time around most of the brainwashing came from the populist wing, helped by their Russian friends. Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytics also helped, apparently.

No, newspapers don't "use information supplied by corporations and the government"... Maybe some small town rags print press releases, but the whole point of journalism is to check the facts and find out what's really going on. One famous quote is: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." I do have a US journalism degree, btw, and I don't remember any classes on brainwashing.

Some things that are different about the US: I do agree that Americans have some form of cultural bias that makes you/them believe things that aren't true. For example the common idea that you have red-blooded patriotic constitutional conservatives in one party, and bleeding heart snowflake liberal traitors in the other party. In reality, seems to me you have two corporate, conservative, right-wing parties with very small differences. This is from a European perspective. You're extremely ideological. You also have this religion of America, where everything is more free, bold, manly and christian than every other place. Kinda hard to explain, but I think it's a real thing.

[dvaz]

Hannity has the most punchable face in TV. Followed closely by Paul Ryan.

[atlings]

You've merely proven that the brainwashing is working.

Checkmate, journalists.

Idiocy in action.

[Flutterguy]

What's funny is the news has never been objective. The difference today is the dominance of the editorial parts of news agencies which Ted is right about, but he should know better than anyone, that there's no such thing as objective reporting. Not all the news gets reported. Someone decides what makes the papers/television and what doesn't.