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Zynep Tufekci

WATCH Turkish Coup Survivor Zeynep Tufekci Name What Trump Is Trying To Do

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

ZEYNEP TUFEKCI (GUEST): And more importantly, and I think this is the part where the smoke kind of needs to clear, is that the Republican leadership has not come out and said, "You have to stop this right now."

And that's really important, because this is not a child whose tantrum we're watching. This the man who is the President of the United States, with whom we trust with the nuclear codes, who has executive power, and he is blatantly trying to -- yes, very clumsily, very buffoonish, it's clownish, it's not going to work, the lawsuits are incoherent -- but it's still an attempt to overturn a legitimate election --

CHRIS HAYES (HOST): Yeah.

TUFEKCI: Not through legal means but through extra legal means. And I -- you know, I'm an academic. I can argue forever is this an oligarch, which is technically a little more correct.

There's words like constitutional coup, there's democratic backsliding, which this country seen over the past few decades.

So, I can get even more and more precise and detailed about the technical term. But if you just kind of step back and look at it --

HAYES: Right.

TUFEKCI: It doesn't really matter what the exact term is unless we're contesting our grades here. You know, if I'm marking a paper, yes. But the reason people say coup is that it captures the spirit of what's being attempted.

HAYES: That's right.

TUFEKCI: And the fact that it's ridiculous does not make it unserious or not dangerous especially because the Republican lack of concern, fury, anything about it when there's already so much minority rule entrenched in this country is something really worrisome.

Oh, Susan Sarandon

Oh, Susan Sarandon

Susan, Susan, Susan.

This Democratic primary is starting to feel like the family reunion that should have ended weeks ago in a house full of relatives who refuse to leave.

Earlier this week, actor and progressive activist Susan Sarandon showed up for Chris Hayes’ show on MSNBC to talk about why she supports Bernie Sanders.

Fine. I mean it. I was fine with that. I had already accepted that Thelma’s friend Louise was not going to support the first viable female candidate for president. I’m a teensy bit troubled that, for the first time, I don’t feel that pang of regret when I think of them driving off that cliff, but I’ve been hanging on to that for too long anyway.

Besides, I’ve got friends and people in my own family who are a lot like Susan Sarandon, whom I have long admired. Like her, they go on and on about the purity of their commitment, pausing just long enough to give me an unsolicited tutorial on why my support for Hillary Clinton proves I can’t possibly be a true progressive.

Please. As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up with the Jack and Jesus wall. There they were, Jack Kennedy and Jesus, hanging shoulder to shoulder — a tag-team reminder that every fight for justice starts with a true believer and ends with a pragmatist to hammer out the details.

If you ask me, I’ve been a pretty good sport about this Hillary-Bernie thing. And, no, I don’t think that Facebook photo of our dog Franklin in the Hillary Clinton wig was too far. This is the problem when you’ve got an entire generation of Democrats who never spent time in a union hall. So touchy.

Anyway, back to Susan Sarandon. When Chris Hayes asked her if she’d vote for Clinton over Donald Trump, she said, “I don’t know. I’m going to see what happens.”

A friend whose passion for Clinton makes my support look like a symptom of anemia sent an immediate text quoting Sarandon, along with a few other words we don’t need to get into right now. I texted — is that a verb yet? — my response: “I’m sure you heard her wrong.”

She has sent me a screenshot of that exchange only about 100 times now, always with a link to yet another story about Sarandon’s inexplicably ridiculous comments that followed.

Thank you to Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart for chronicling the ensuing exchange:

HAYES: Right, but isn’t the question always in an election about choices, right. I mean, I think a lot of people think to themselves well if it’s Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and I think Bernie Sanders probably would think this…

SARANDON: I think Bernie probably would encourage people because he doesn’t have any ego. I think a lot of people are sorry, I can’t bring myself to do that.

HAYES: How about you personally?

SARANDON: I don’t know. I’m going to see what happens.

HAYES: Really?

SARANDON: Really.

HAYES: I cannot believe as you’re watching the, if Donald Trump…

SARANDON: Some people feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know explode.

Well, that went about as well as you can imagine, particularly on social media. If you haven’t see any of the tirades, let’s just say Susan Sarandon is either the mighty prophet who will finally conquer Sisyphus or so blinded by her privilege that she can’t picture the visual disconnect of someone like her claiming she needs a revolution.

Sarandon has since denied — via Twitter, of course — ever saying she would vote for Trump.

“Of course I would never support Trump for any reason,” she responded to actor Jamie Lee Curtis. “If you watch the interview you’ll see that’s not what I said.”

When my friend sent along a screenshot of that tweet, I responded with a line from Sarandon’s character Annie Savoy in “Bull Durham”: “The world is made for people who aren’t cursed with self awareness.”

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State University’s school of journalism. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

In 2016, Journalistic Fraud Still Looms Large

In 2016, Journalistic Fraud Still Looms Large

Alas, this is pretty much where I came in. Starting in 1994, when your humble, obedient servant was approached to contribute weekly political columns, I found the behavior of the national political press shocking and alarming.

Today, it’s even worse.

Even so, it’s not every day a TV talker apologizes for broadcasting a doctored video misrepresenting something Bill Clinton said about President Obama. So it’s definitely worth taking note.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes did that the other night, at least temporarily persuading me that the network hasn’t yet gone full Fox News.

But first, some ancient history on a theme directly relevant to today’s Democratic primary campaign: Hillary the Big Liar.

See, by 1994 I’d been writing professionally for years, mainly as a literary journalist and monthly magazine reporter. The publications I’d written for employed assiduous fact-checkers. Opinions were expected, so long as they were grounded in fact. After all, what’s the point winning an argument if you’ve got to cheat to do it?

However, that’s not how Washington journalism works. One incident in particular astonished me.

In April 1994, Hillary Clinton had given a press conference about the make-believe Whitewater scandal. She answered every question the press threw at her for a couple of hours. The immediate effect was rather like last fall’s Benghazi hearings: her detailed answers calmed the storm. Having previously given sworn testimony to Treasury Department investigators probing Jim McDougal’s failed S & L, she was on solid ground.

Two years further on, ABC’s Nightline dug up a video clip of an answer she’d given about a specific issue and seamlessly deleted two sentences by substituting stock footage of journalists taking notes. Then they pretended she’d been asked a much broader question, and accused her of lying about the information they’d subtracted.

Specifically, Hillary acknowledged signing a letter “because I was what we called the billing attorney” for the Madison Guaranty account. Nightline charged her with concealing exactly that fact. Jeff Greenfield said no wonder “the White House was so worried about what was in Vince Foster’s office when he killed himself”—a contemptible insinuation.

Within days, the doctored quote was all over ABC News, CNN, the New York Times and everywhere else. Almost needless to say, Maureen Dowd ran with it. William Safire predicted her imminent criminal indictment.

In short, the theme of Hillary Clinton as epic liar began with an instance of barefaced journalistic fraud.

Everybody involved should have been run out of the profession. It wasn’t exactly an obscure mystery. Video of the press conference existed. The New York Times had printed the full transcript.

But there was no Internet. Beltway pundits covered for each other like crooked cops.

So anyway, last week Bill Clinton made a campaign appearance for his wife in Memphis. If you’d only seen it on MSNBC or read about it in the Washington Post, you’d think he made a political blunder, trashing President Obama as a weak leader.

On Chris Hayes’ program All In, the host chided the former President for going “a bit off message.”

MSNBC aired this video clip:

“BILL CLINTON: She’s always making something good happen. She’s the best change maker I’ve ever known. A lot of people say, ‘Oh well, you don’t understand. It’s different now. It’s rigged.’ Yeah, it’s rigged—because you don’t have a president who is a change maker.”

Full stop.

Ouch! To the Washington Post’s Abby Phillips, “it sounded like he was agreeing with one of [Bernie] Sanders’s central arguments about income inequality—but blaming the sitting president for it.”

Older and thinner, Mr. Yesterday was clearly losing it.

Except he wasn’t. The real villain was, once again, creative video editing. Tommy Christopher at Mediaite.com restored the full context.

So here’s what Bill Clinton actually said about President Obama:

“Yeah, it’s rigged—because you don’t have a president who is a change maker with a Congress who will work with him. But the president has done a better job than he has gotten credit for. And don’t you forget it!
(APPLAUSE)
Don’t you forget it! Don’t you forget it!
(LOUDER APPLAUSE)
Don’t you forget it. Let me just tell you. I’ve been there, and we shared the same gift. We only had a Democratic Congress for two years. And then we lost it.
There’s some of the loudest voices in our party say—it’s unbelievable—say, ‘Well the only reason we had it for two years is that President Obama wasn’t liberal enough!’
Is there one soul in this crowd that believes that?”

Judging by the crowd response, there was not.

Mediaite.com’s Christopher put it succinctly: “This is an edit so egregious, it rivals the worst in dishonest political ads, and surpasses them.”

Greatly to his credit (and my surprise), Chris Hayes subsequently rebroadcast Clinton’s remarks in full. “We shouldn’t have done that,” he admitted.

No, they certainly should not.

Photo: Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton arrives with her daughter Chelsea Clinton and her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, to speak to supporters at her final 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary night rally in Hooksett, New Hampshire February 9, 2016. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Ronan Farrow Might Just Make His Mark As The Anti-Piers Morgan

Ronan Farrow Might Just Make His Mark As The Anti-Piers Morgan

By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times

Piers Morgan out, Ronan Farrow in.

On Sunday, CNN confirmed that “Piers Morgan Live” will be ending next month, proving that a large Twitter following and pedigree of minor non-journalistic celebrity (though a former editor, Morgan, 48, was mostly known as a judge on “Britain’s” and then “America’s Got Talent”) does not necessarily a successful news host make.

Then on Monday, MSNBC debuted the first hour of “Ronan Farrow Daily,” proving that a large Twitter following and a pedigree of minor non-journalistic celebrity (though a contributor to many news organizations including this one, Farrow, 26, is mostly known as the super-smart son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen) remain acceptable news host credentials nonetheless.

Forget the judging panel on “American Idol,” or even the Leno/ Fallon, Fallon/ Meyers handoff; it’s the hosts of our cable news shows that mirror the increasingly messy line between social and media, between profession and personality.

While Farrow was earnestly interviewing former Defense Secretary Bill Cohen and David Axelrod on Monday about the crisis in Ukraine, many people were far more interested in reacting to Morgan’s ouster on Twitter and the blogosphere. Some did so in joy, a few in woe, but most wondered why Morgan had failed so spectacularly in the prime-time slot that Larry King made famous (before beginning to fail there himself.)

Just as if we didn’t know. He tanked because he’s insufferable.

Morgan would like everyone to believe that Americans didn’t warm to him because he was a “British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing.” Never mind that many news hosts and commentators have been outspoken about gun control or that with our near-hysteria devotion to “Downton Abbey,” Kate Middleton and Benedict Cumberbatch, most Americans have all but applied for dual citizenship with the U.K.

No, it wasn’t the cricket references or the football (as in soccer) issue. Morgan failed as a host because he was smug, arrogant, condescending and thin-skinned. He failed because he was more interested in keeping his name in the news than in the news itself.

As recently as two weeks ago, when a guest (transgender author and activist Janet Mock) complained about the sensationalistic nature of Morgan’s questions, he “apologized” by having her back on the show and reprimanded her for the caustic response on Twitter. When Stephen Colbert sent up Morgan’s response and interviewed Mock, Morgan continued to rant on social media.

Watching him repeatedly foment his own controversy, then “report” in high dudgeon about his treatment in the wake of it, television audiences were reminded, once again, of the prescient wisdom of James L. Brooks’ “Broadcast News.” “Let’s never forget,” says Albert Brooks sarcastically as TV reporter Aaron Altman, “we’re the real story. Not them.”

Enter Farrow, who sailed through a dutifully disparate array of topics during his first hour with the slightly anxious confidence of the star student enlisted to run the class.

He covered the Ukraine crisis from pathos to policy — what will Russia do? How does it affect the U.S.? — pausing to explain, with a map, why exactly Ukraine is such a mess. He discussed budget cuts at the Pentagon, the governors’ meeting at the White House, a possible rise in the minimum wage and, in the show’s only truly light-hearted segment, the problem of dumpster diving behind Colorado’s now legal marijuana shops.

Looking much younger than his years, Farrow was carefully aimed at a post-boomer mentality. He joked about watching reruns of news greats (Murrow and Cronkite), referred to marijuana as “weed,” referenced both Lena Dunham and selfies. At times painfully earnest, he introduced a new interactive feature called “The Daily Battle” by calling on viewers to tweet their thoughts about who was handling the Ukraine crisis better, #RFDObama or #RFDPutin.

What Farrow didn’t do was mention in any way, shape or form his personal life. That included the portions of it that have been part of a huge and emotional reaction to his sister Dylan’s recent insistence that Allen molested her. It also included the ongoing question of his own parentage (according to his mother, Frank Sinatra may have been involved).

Like Morgan, or for that matter, Alec Baldwin, who was recently relieved of hosting duty by MSNBC, Farrow views the world from a narrative platform. Leaning more perhaps toward the book-learned Rachel Maddow than Chris Hayes, Farrow — the Rhodes Scholar who graduated college at age 15 — fits in nicely with MSNBC’s ongoing attempt to make smart the new hip. (Political analyst Joy Reid also debuted her new show on Monday afternoon.)

But still it is him, his take, his performance that will make or break the show. Will more people want to see Ronan Farrow daily than wanted to see Piers Morgan live?

The timing of his show’s debut has already been commented on in light of his family’s public crisis, but with Morgan’s departure, it becomes even more meaningful. More than three decades younger than the Brit, born to fame rather than cultivating it, much more interested in appearing smart than right, Farrow could make his mark as an anti-Piers.

Though one suspects that with his international pedigree, Farrow might just be in the habit of calling soccer “football” too.

AFP Photo/Ben Gabbe