It’s the audience that counts
The short clip below from the Stephen Colbert late night show has been making the rounds today. Colbert is interviewing a CNN news anchor and says the following, ““I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.”
To his shock the audience laughs, clearly recognizing how inaccurate, stupid, and clueless Colbert’s description of CNN is. Kaitlan Collins, the news anchor, responds, “That supposed to be a laugh line?” and Colbert, clearly uncomfortable, answers, “It wasn’t supposed to be.”
Watch an enjoy:
Not even NYC lefties buy CNN as objective. @colbertlateshow audience laughed when Stephen #Colbert asserted: “I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is” @KaitlanCollins: “That supposed to be a laugh line?” Colbert: “It wasn’t supposed to be” pic.twitter.com/IfqNEDPrfa
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) August 13, 2024
The most important fact to take from this short clip is the audience’s response. In the past Colbert could have expressed a similar stupid and very leftist partisan claim and been very confident his New York audience would not only have agreed, it would have often cheered. That it laughed at his words shocked him, but more importantly it indicated that he no longer controls the narrative, even with a New York audience. That audience now knows better, and is glad to ridicule such leftist partisan stupidity by partisan media hacks.
This reaction reveals also that the conservative and independent press is now successfully getting its side of the story out, even to this deeply partisan Democratic Party New York audience. It isn’t on the fringes anymore, but succeeding in matching story for story with the propaganda press (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC) that for decades dictated the leftwing narrative and forbid any other perspectives.
That success explains the increasingly desperate effort by the left and the government to censor that independent press. It can no longer defend its own weak message by overwhelming the news cycle, so it has to try to squelch the free speech of others. In this day of a vast decentralized social media world, such censorship however is very difficult to achieve
There are no guarantees, but I see this short clip as one of the most hopeful news events I’ve seen in years.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
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c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The short clip below from the Stephen Colbert late night show has been making the rounds today. Colbert is interviewing a CNN news anchor and says the following, ““I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.”
To his shock the audience laughs, clearly recognizing how inaccurate, stupid, and clueless Colbert’s description of CNN is. Kaitlan Collins, the news anchor, responds, “That supposed to be a laugh line?” and Colbert, clearly uncomfortable, answers, “It wasn’t supposed to be.”
Watch an enjoy:
Not even NYC lefties buy CNN as objective. @colbertlateshow audience laughed when Stephen #Colbert asserted: “I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is” @KaitlanCollins: “That supposed to be a laugh line?” Colbert: “It wasn’t supposed to be” pic.twitter.com/IfqNEDPrfa
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) August 13, 2024
The most important fact to take from this short clip is the audience’s response. In the past Colbert could have expressed a similar stupid and very leftist partisan claim and been very confident his New York audience would not only have agreed, it would have often cheered. That it laughed at his words shocked him, but more importantly it indicated that he no longer controls the narrative, even with a New York audience. That audience now knows better, and is glad to ridicule such leftist partisan stupidity by partisan media hacks.
This reaction reveals also that the conservative and independent press is now successfully getting its side of the story out, even to this deeply partisan Democratic Party New York audience. It isn’t on the fringes anymore, but succeeding in matching story for story with the propaganda press (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC) that for decades dictated the leftwing narrative and forbid any other perspectives.
That success explains the increasingly desperate effort by the left and the government to censor that independent press. It can no longer defend its own weak message by overwhelming the news cycle, so it has to try to squelch the free speech of others. In this day of a vast decentralized social media world, such censorship however is very difficult to achieve
There are no guarantees, but I see this short clip as one of the most hopeful news events I’ve seen in years.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
It’s too bad that the crowd’s reaction is unlikely to lead to any level of self-reflection on the part of Colbert or Collins.
Colbert is obviously NOT a journalist, so he is free to espouse any viewpoints he favors, but even serving as an entertainer on a national platform, one would hopefully have a respect for opposing opinions and a willingness to test/examine them for veracity.
Collins, on the other hand, IS supposedly a journalist, and like a scientist who follows the scientific method, she should be objectively examining issues and viewpoints in an effort to determine the truth. Unfortunately, she is not objective, and works to promote her own beliefs and values, whether or not they comport with the facts.
We can only hope that greater numbers of citizens/voters will come to realize the broken nature of Mainstream Media “journalism”.
In the past, retractions were done well after the fact–but the “cheap fakes” mantra coming right before Biden seized up in the debate was the first time non-talk radio fans realized they were being lied to by the MSN.
Ironically, Biden getting out so late made Kamala look energetic with less time to pivot.
Had Biden always announce he was a one-termer you would not have the current sugar high.
F Writes:
“Collins, on the other hand, IS supposedly a journalist, and like a scientist who follows the scientific method, she should be objectively examining issues and viewpoints in an effort to determine the truth. Unfortunately, she is not objective, and works to promote her own beliefs and values, whether or not they comport with the facts.”
Exactly. The problem is that a majority of “journalists” in this country apparently now understand their profession in precisely these terms. They are *not* objective, and they no longer believe that their primary allegiance should be to something like uncovering the truth, objectively reporting the facts, and letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions. Instead, their “truth” is that they are defending our democracy against “authoritarians” by any means necessary, fair or foul, and they are subject to no higher ethical standards. If all this sounds suspiciously like how Pravda operated in the bad old days of the Soviet Union, well, those comrades were *also* building socialism, and they couldn’t be bothered by such niceties as whether or not what they wrote was objectively true. (Imagine the World Weekly News with a political slant…) However ironic the sign over their door, truth simply wasn’t the issue.
Fast forward a half century, and Orwell’s new, post-truth culture has largely been put into place through the efforts of academic left and their media and teachers union handmaidens, and — exactly as F observes — our country is now divided between two very different kinds of consensual reality. There is a “Reality A” where, truth, logical consistency, and seeking our the facts still matter, and “Reality B” where such things serve no purpose at all, and its adherents are proud to be unencumbered by such obsolete notions.
Perhaps the biggest mistake that conservatives can make at this point is that we fail to understand that most of the people who inhabit Reality B are utterly uninterested in the “old” strictures of journalism or what it was supposed to do. Likewise, most left-leaning people and sundry low information voters who had no inkling of the original role of journalism (the Fourth Estate) in public life let alone its replacement are as happy as fish in water in this new, post-truth ocean. Therefore criticizing them on this basis — they tell / are told blatant lies and they are joyfully inconsistent in their thinking — is shrugged off as quaintly irrelevant.
The real question, or so it seems to me, is whether or not there are still enough adherents to the “old reality” to win elections in 2024, and what it might take to expand Colbert’s audience and help them to follow the string back to sanity.
I always assume an agenda.
I didn’t trust Fox during Cheney’s adventurism or MSNBC or CNN.
They all lie
So, Colbert’s audience is right. Good to know.
They’re also right when they boo Trump or cheer when Colbert makes jokes about how awful/stupid/inept Trump is.,
I’m happy you’ve finally see the light. Good to know we agree on something.