Katie Couric Criticizes 'Bothsidesism'

[quintessentone]

  OMG that is perfect! 

Not quite, he forgot to say "Just kidding, because the court transcripts say so." 

[UltraBudgie]

Nobody here wants to bother to listen to her podcasts, so this is all a biased hamster wheel.

[Image: https://media0.giphy.com/media/o9W9ILrxLrHpe/giphy.gif]

Not fair. I listened to most of the podcast in question (albeit at 1.3x speed) to see what the article was about. Anodyne, grifty, and shallow. Totally brain-dead, in that she imagines the "truth" must lie somewhere between the two poles presented by popular American politics. Frilly-dressing on the Overton window. Listening to her leaves one less informed due to her implicit systemic delusions. Part of the problem.

Anyway, I posted the link to the episode upthread, but as far as I can tell no one wanted to engage with it. But that's not something I'd blame people for.

[quintessentone]

Not fair. I listened to most of the podcast in question (albeit at 1.3x speed) to see what the article was about. Anodyne, grifty, and shallow. Totally brain-dead, in that she imagines the "truth" must lie somewhere between the two poles presented by popular American politics. Frilly-dressing on the Overton window. Listening to her leaves one less informed due to her implicit systemic delusions. Part of the problem.

Anyway, I posted the link to the episode upthread, but as far as I can tell no one wanted to engage with it.

So you listened to one cherry picked podcast, hmm? How about the one where she slams Kamala Harris, no?

Hamster wheel fixations.

[UltraBudgie]

 They all grift money from the side, it's a necessity. Even DI has to do it.

Asking for donations (like dropsite news does) is one thing. Pitching a "lifestyle" worldview, where comfortable pablum, nifty kitchen gadgets, and the perfect pair of flats meld together in the "influencer's cauldron" is quite another. She needs vapid followers who will accept things only on her say-so to pull that off. And that's what she provides.

Did you really praise her courage for pointing out—gasp! against party lines!—that Kamala was speaking word-salad? Frankly, anyone who listened to her for 10 minutes knew that. Unless of course they'd been conditioned to never reach their own conclusions without being spoon-fed them. Like she does to her audience. Less courage than desperation in the vein of "it's so bad even the drones will get antsy unless we mention it".

[UltraBudgie]

So you listened to one cherry picked podcast, hmm? How about the one where she slams Kamala Harris, no?

Hamster wheel fixations.

[Image: https://media0.giphy.com/media/lK9FAxyLQ.../giphy.gif]

Uh, this one from the OP:

Katie Couric spoke out against "bothsidesism" in news coverage and insisted people don't want "just the facts" in the current media environment.
Appearing on Tuesday's installment of "The Grill Room" podcast, Couric decried the current backlash against the "expert" class, saying she loves talking to people "with a deep well of knowledge" about specific issues.
"So what I try to do, and what we try to do, is help people stay abreast of everything that's happening, which is increasingly difficult given the velocity of things that are thrown at us primarily by this administration," Couric told host Dylan Byers. "But I try to understand and give them some perspective and context and help explain in some cases why people need to be aware and concerned about some of the things that are happening in this country."
"And I think the era of kind of bothsidesism or just the facts — and by the way, just the facts without context, without examination, I don't think people really want that."

I'm not sure how that's "cherry picked", because it's supposed to be what the thread is about? It's directly referenced.



But okay.

[quintessentone]

Asking for donations (like dropsite news does) is one thing. Pitching a "lifestyle" worldview, where comfortable pablum, nifty kitchen gadgets, and the perfect pair of flats meld together in the "influencer's cauldron" is quite another. She needs vapid followers who will accept things only on her say-so to pull that off. And that's what she provides.

Did you really praise her courage for pointing out—gasp! against party lines!—that Kamala was speaking word-salad? Frankly, anyone who listened to her for 10 minutes knew that. Unless of course they'd been conditioned to never reach their own conclusions without being spoon-fed them. Like she does to her audience. Less courage than desperation in the vein of "it's so bad even the drones will get antsy unless we mention it".

That's your opinion. What I took from it was she was criticizing her party correctly, they were word salading and were on the wrong track. It does not mean they will ever find the right track but that's for the people to decide. They have to choose the lesser of two evils which both morph depending on what sells.

[DontTreadOnMe]

White males still stand at the top of what's desirable -- especially in employment.

Fundamental Christian Nationalism -- women still subservient to men -- and do not support women's autonomy.

LDS -- women not allowed to hold the priesthood.

Catholics -- controlled by celibate male priests.

Science -- Ben Barres (transgender)-- scientist championed for equality for women in science due to his unusual perspective having first been a woman.

It is delusional not to accept reality.

Wow.
Realy?


And that makes the USA like Afghanistan?

Do you realize the Holy Roman Catholic Church is worldwide?   The LDS as well I reckon.

[UltraBudgie]

That's your opinion.

Yes it is. I linked to dropsite because I thought you might want to see what actual reporting from left-wing radicals is. I might not agree with them, but they use facts and aren't caught in a D/R paradigm, so I respect their integrity. Reading their daily newsletter might not leave one as smug or comfortable as reading Courics, but it will make you 50x more informed. And you can bet that none of the groups that give Couric awards would ever give one to dropsite.

And I haven't ever seen what any of them look like on camera. Face it, no one would recognize Couric's name if she were fat or ugly. That's mostly who she is: a photogenic shell.

[quintessentone]

Yes it is. I linked to dropsite because I thought you might want to see what actual reporting from left-wing radicals is. I might not agree with them, but they use facts and aren't caught in a D/R paradigm, so I respect their integrity. Reading their daily newsletter might not leave one as smug or comfortable as reading Courics, but it will make you 50x more informed. And you can bet that none of the groups that give Couric awards would ever give one to dropsite.

And I haven't ever seen what any of them look like on camera. Face it, no one would recognize Couric's name if she were fat or ugly. That's mostly who she is: a photogenic shell.

She so much more, but, hey, if you don't want to know, you don't want to know.

[UltraBudgie]

Please note that I'm not saying she isn't a nice person, or even somewhat intelligent.

But even the Daily Beast think she's a hack:

Katie Couric’s RGB Coverup Shows How We Ended Up With Trump

The mainstream media’s credibility took another big hit this week. Katie Couric, the former co-host of NBC’s Today show, revealed in a new memoir that she chose not to air some controversial comments made to her five years ago by the sainted Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, involving RBG’s criticism of NFL players like Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem.

Couric says she was “conflicted” because she was a “big RBG fan,” so she only aired some of the harsh words RBG had for the football players refusing to stand for the national anthem. According to her story, after talking with New York Times columnist David Brooks, Couric concluded that Ginsburg—who was on the Supreme Court at the time—was “elderly and probably didn’t fully understand the question.” Couric confesses in her book that she “‘wanted to protect’ Ginsburg and felt that the issue of racial justice was a ‘blind spot’ for her.”

Couric’s revelation comes on the heels of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) being forced to apologize for altering a famous RBG quote. During her 1993 confirmation hearings, Ginsburg said, “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity.” In keeping with today’s gender-neutral nomenclature, the group changed “woman” to a bracketed “[person’s]” and swapped the word “her” with a bracketed “[their].”

These back-to-back incidents reveal the degree to which progressives have a vested interest in preserving and protecting RBG’s image, even as what constitutes being politically correct continues to evolve. In the service of some higher cause, they reimagined their hero’s actual words to comport with what, in their minds, she really represents. In other words, to “print the legend.” The inconvenient truth, though, is that RBG had more nuanced beliefs than her fans, many of them probably sipping coffee from RBG coffee mugs as they read this, might realize—including her thoughts on Roe v. Wade.

It’s ironic to see the ACLU, a group once dedicated to free and diverse speech, bowdlerize RBG’s speech, but Couric represents a bigger problem. Pressure groups aren’t held to the same standards as the news media. We hire professional journalists to exercise news judgment, and when their motives are not in the service of the public’s interest, but rather, in the service of something else (even something as arguably noble as protecting a hero’s legacy), they forfeit our trust.

Indeed, according to a Gallup survey out last week, just 7 percent of Americans have a “great deal” of trust in the mainstream media, and 34 percent have “none at all.”

One of the few members of the mainstream media who takes this problem seriously is The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta. “This week alone we had [Katie] Couric showing herself (again) to be a hack; [ESPN NFL reporter Adam] Schefter emailing a source, ‘Mr. Editor,’ his unpublished story for approval; and [Sanjay] Gupta exposing CNN’s petty, needless deception,” Alberta tweeted, adding: “People despise us. They distrust us. Maybe we stop whistling past the graveyard.”

This deception has disproportionately eroded trust in the media among conservatives, with Gallup’s survey showing 68 percent of Democrats saying they trust the media “a great deal or fair amount,” but just 11 percent of Republicans holding that same opinion. “Confidence in the media among Republicans over the past five years is at unprecedented lows,” says Gallup, and who could blame them?

Whether we’re talking about the media’s initial portrayal of Covington student Nick Sandmann’s smug privilege, credulity towards Jussie Smollett’s status as a victim of a “hate crime,” reflexive portrayal of the lab leak theory as a debunked “conspiracy theory,” or double standard when it came to the lack of social distancing at Black Lives Matter rallies, liberal media bias is a long-standing and observable phenomenon.

The media’s coverups always seem to benefit the same political side. The same year Couric interviewed RBG, for example, her documentary on gun violence “deceptively edited” an interview with pro-gun activists.

I am also reminded of an even more consequential example that does not involve Couric. Back in 2012, CBS’s 60 Minutes withheld some of President Barack Obama’s comments about the attack on Benghazi. That controversy may seem like ancient history, but the airing of Obama’s comments would have benefitted Mitt Romney’s presidential bid.

Indeed, days after that interview was conducted, but months before it was seen in full (which not incidentally only happened after the election), Mitt Romney was cut off in a crucial debate moment by CNN moderator Candy Crowley, who “fact-checked” Romney when he said that Obama suggested for weeks after the attack that it was a spontaneous demonstration rather than a planned act of terror.

Romney was correct “in the main” (as Crowley later conceded)—and the footage that 60 Minutes withheld would have buttressed that sense. Instead, Crowley’s intervention took the wind out of Romney’s sails, serving as a turning point for that debate, which was a turning point for the 2012 election. The debate over Obama’s characterization of the Benghazi attack dominated multiple news cycles, but rather than airing footage that would have provided additional context for the American people (not to mention, driven ratings and clicks), CBS chose to sit on it.

Romney’s loss convinced many conservatives that nice guys can’t win and they they needed a fighter to take on the left and the media—which is no small part of the story of how the party ended up with Trump.

Collectively, these incidents have eroded trust in the media as an institution, persuaded millions of Americans to tune out mainstream media elites and outlets (and tune into alternative outlets), and empowered bad political actors who want to exploit this lack of trust for political gain.
Bias isn’t just what you cover, it’s also what you decide not to cover. By employing the sin of omission, the media protects its progressive heroes and, in the process, picks political winners and losers. Instead of telling us the facts, they print the legend. Is it any surprise that we don't believe them anymore?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/katie-cour...ith-trump/

They've since paywalled the article, but it's on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/202110170912...ith-trump/