There was an interesting moment on Monday as the hosts and guest on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” were discussing the coverage of the election. Willie Geist raised the possibility that President Trump could declare victory on election night before all the votes have been counted. Joe Scarborough responded that NBC would simply make a Twitter-like determination and not carry the speech. It would not be treated as obvious news but rather “disinformation” . . . regardless of what has transpired on election day.
What is ironic is the Geist had just slammed Trump for making plans to send in lawyers “no matter what happens.” Without missing a beat, Scarborough then announced that no matter what happens on the election (like a surprise victory), Trump’s speech would be blocked for NBC viewers.
“We’ll be doing coverage on Peacock and we can assure you if Trump declares victory we’ll say, don’t take the feed. It’s not going to happen. We won’t be part of any disinformation campaign, we’ll be doing election coverage until midnight or whenever is over.”
The point tracked a statement from Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon who declared that “[u]nder no scenario will Donald Trump be declared a victor on election night, and that’s fundamentally how we want to approach tomorrow.” I can understand the mathematical point but the Biden campaign does not make such decision. Moreover, this appears only a bar on a Trump victory speech. Some Democrats like James Carville are predicting that they will know by 10 pm. I would find it difficult to see a scenario where an election night victory could be declared but we do not know what will occur today in terms of any surges or landslide. More importantly, the issue raised on Morning Joe goes to the coverage not the claims on election night.
I happen to like and respect Scarborough. I have defended him and his co-host and wife Mika Brzezinski after personal attacks from President Trump. However, this statement was unnerving. I understand what he and Geist are saying about the need to count many votes sent in by mail. The problem is that they are in the news business and NBC viewers tune in for news. This would be, by any measure, news. Indeed, if premature or completely baseless, a victory speech would be even more significant news.
What concerns me is the relative ease with which news figures now state their role in protecting viewers from what they consider “disinformation.” It is precisely the slippery slope that took us to the expanding private censorship on sites like Twitter and Facebook, where a well-founded story in the New York Post is blocked for weeks. Despite the tech companies admitting that the move was a mistake, Democratic Senators demanded more censorship from the companies in the recent hearing. What is missing is the original clarity of the free and open forum of the Internet.
Now a news program is pledging in advance to block its viewers from hearing the President directly if he claims victory on Tuesday night. Instead, they can expect the same formulaic, approved coverage that we now expect in the age of echo chamber journalism. NBC recently was criticized for a bait-and-switch story on Hunter Biden where they debunked an obscure document rather than address the confirmed emails found on Biden’s laptop.
Obviously, viewers on NBC can switch over to Fox or another network to watch any presidential speech on election night. However, Scarborough was assuring the viewers that they would be protected from such news. Clearly he viewed promising to censor the President as a draw for NBC’s viewers — assuring viewers that they would be protected from the news like some journalistic safe space. Protecting viewers from news was not a goal of NBC when I worked for the company many years ago. This would be news any way you cut it. It can be immediately followed by commentary pointing out that such a claim may be premature. However, we do not know “what will happen” on Tuesday night anymore than President Trump does beyond one guarantee . . . it will be news.
Like the predictions said, Trump would take a victory lap long before the counting was done, and long before the absentee and mail ballots were counted, because these would favor Biden. And, like Joe Scarborough said, NBC and its other outlets refused to air Trump’s early-a.m. statements, because they were lies. Contrary to Turley’s position, there is no obligation to broadcast misinformation. Even Fox News’s Chris Wallace said Trump was lying, as did CBS, ABC and CNN.
Catty Kay of BBC World News said that Europeans are generally stunned that Trump wasn’t immediately and overwhelmingly drubbed, because the close vote implies that large numbers of Americans aren’t offended by his absolute incompetence, dishonesty, misogyny, xenophobia, and “America First–Eff Everyone Else” rhetoric and attitude. Even if Biden does win, because of Trump, America has already lost the luster of its leadership as a shining example of democracy. That is sad, indeed.
Was it only Democrat run states that had these voting issues, chaos and delays? Did Republican run states have any of these ballot counting delays and issues we are seeing in D states?
And if it is only D states that have such chaos and confusion in finalizing the votes, then what does that suggest to most people?
Here’s one we missed from last week. Nigerian stowaways try to hijack oil tanker in English Channel – SAS storms ship
https://youtu.be/CRme_HlPN-Y
file that one under “illegal immigrant crimes” — oil tanker hijacking!
Here’s a blast from the past, the story of the corrupt Democratic NYC politician, William Tweed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Tweed
What are the people to think of this process? Once again they’ve been fed bogus polling data for months. Clearly the campaigns were operating off of internal polling data that was far different than what we saw. And now they have to wait for an unknown number of mail in ballots that could magically flip states Trump is leading in. Trust this process? Not a chance. Especially when the consequences of the outcome realistically threaten our natural rights and put an end to our 230 year experiment.
Actually, Olly, the polling data matches at the state level pretty well. You certainly present no evidence to the contrary.
Mail-in ballots aren’t magical, and if GOP legislatures had allowed these states to start counting the mail-in ballots before Election Day, they’d already have been counted.
Either you’re committed to having all legal votes counted, or you aren’t. Which is it?
the polling data matches at the state level pretty well. You certainly present no evidence to the contrary.
What state-level polling are you talking about? You provided no evidence.
I’ll provide my evidence after you present evidence for “Once again they’ve been fed bogus polling data for months”.
Anon: “. . . evidence for ‘Once again they’ve been fed bogus polling data for months’.”
Wisconsin: Washington Post-ABC News poll (10/28) — Biden leads by 17 points (easily searchable).
Michigan: CNN/SSRS poll (late October) — Biden leads by 12 points. (The current voting is Biden up 0.6.)
There are countless such examples. I sense, though, that those facts are not going to persuade you.
‘For those complaining about Trump claiming he won, Biden made that necessary by telling supporters he was likely to win. Once he opened that door, Trump had to walk thru it, otherwise Democrats would pressure parts of the government to defy him (as they have tried for four years)’ @joelpollak
Nonsense. There’s a huge difference between saying you think you’ll win and saying that you’ve already won, when so many votes have yet to be counted. There was no need for Trump to lie and claim that he’d already won. There’s no reason for Trump to lie about fraud. There is no reason for Trump’s hypocrisy, where he wants counting to continue in the states where he’s behind but wants it to stop in states where he’s ahead, when any patriotic American should want all legal votes to be counted.
As of right now, neither has won. We’ll find out who wins by waiting for them to finish counting.
LIE. There is that word again. The one snowflakes use when they know the statement is true in fact although perhaps not in reality. Trump will win. MAGA/KAG 2020
LMAO that you can’t even decide whether America is already great and only needs to be kept great versus America isn’t great and needs to be made great again.
What on earth does “true in fact although perhaps not in reality” even mean? How can something be one but not the other?
Trump lies all the time. He’s presented no evidence of fraud, and HE wants to continue counting ballots in the states where he’s behind but to stop in states where he’s ahead. That’s dishonest and unpatriotic to want to prevent votes from being counted.
“As of right now, neither has won. We’ll find out who wins by waiting for them to finish counting.”
No, we will know who won when the rioting and looting starts. Right now, the rioters don’t know what to do.
I don’t take my cues for rioters. Do YOU?
I have a sense of humor, do YOU?
Rioters were among the big winners from 2020. They had fun breaking stuff and taking new dishwashers for free with no fear of arrest. We worked and paid taxes. Now they will get their reparations
People need to wake up and understand that the working and middle class are squeezed between the lumpen street element, on the low end, ie rioters, and on the high end, the paid mercenaries of the billionaires, ie BLM organizers, Democrat leadership, university dons, Wall Street tycoons, Federal Reserve King Midases, Silicon Valley censors, and Republican never-trump backstabbers, and those who had them all in the pocket, the billionaires.
Don’t be mad at the nobody lumpen rioters. They are not really the enemy . The enemy is billionaires. That’s who engineered the whole thing. They need a stake through their evil hearts, the vampire squid globalist free trade capitalist pig billionaires. Soros, Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, you get the idea, pull the FEC donation data and make a big list of the real enemies. They must be punished. If they are not punished for the outrageous social engineering tricks of 2020 they have pulled then we are all worthless slaves who deserve no better.
-Saloth Sar