MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell laid into news outlets on his show Thursday night, comparing their collective failure to call out Donald Trump's falsehoods to 2016."It was 2016 all over again, today," he told his viewers. "Donald Trump spoke at his home in Florida for over an hour and all the major ca...

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell laid into news outlets on his show Thursday night, comparing their collective failure to call out Donald Trump’s falsehoods to 2016.

“It was 2016 all over again, today,” he told his viewers. “Donald Trump spoke at his home in Florida for over an hour and all the major cable news networks, including this one, carried it live. Just like they all did repeatedly in 2016. It would be hard to find a sentence that Donald Trump said today that did not include at least one lie.”

O’Donnell acknowledged that some networks attempted to fact-check the MAGA leader, but only after he finished his speech.

“That of course is way too late and utterly useless,” he said. “No network tried to fact-check every lie Donald Trump told.”

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
    12·
    2 months ago

    I watched both the Trump conference and O’Donnell’s take live and, yeah, he has a point.

    The feed I had, you couldn’t hear the reporters questions at all. So all you could hear was Trump and there was no way to know what the actual question was based on his answers.

    But nobody follows up on ANY politician and it’s been that way for a couple of decades now.

    The classic example I always cite is one that happens all the time:

    “Well, we’re going to get rid of job-killing regulations.”

    The logical follow up question would be:

    “Can you cite an example of a regulation you’d get rid of and in what way it’s a job killer?”

    But nobody ever asks that question.

    • TunaCowboy@lemmy.world
      61·
      2 months ago

      I was initially disappointed in NABJ’s decision to host drumpf, but happy to be wrong when I witnessed him facing a serious interview for the first fucking time. Massive respect to NABJ and the interviewers for tactfully exposing him publicly.

  • themachine@lemm.ee
    9·
    2 months ago

    Serious question, but couldn’t you get more earrings for being the aggressive and combative fact checker when addressing Trump vs the soft ball question lobber?

    Is this just a matter of demographics watching and giving more advertising money to traditional media and therefore doing so is less profitable?

    I would definitely put my eyeballs more towards any organization that would challenge all politicians vs those who are basically allowing them to advertise their talking points.

    I’m ignorant on media and looking at this simply, if it isn’t obvious.

    • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I think the unfortunate answer is you are in the minority. that’s why we end up with highly partisan news outlets like Fox, people watch what makes them feel good, not what challenges their beliefs.

      also, it’s hard to fact check in real time (especially Gish galloping trump). of course it could be done by large media organizations but it would cost more money to do.

  • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    2 months ago

    Don’t these networks have AI? Voice to text from the feed, send it through ChatGPT to summarize fact check, quickly verify the stats and add the result to graphics overlay.

    I’m surprised a streamer hasn’t done this yet.