2017.08.21 Hallmark of Dishonesty

"Hallmark Channel is booming", is used to bash Trump (as escapism). False. It started trending pre-Trump, and was down.

Politicizing everything into being Trumps fault is FakeNews. Like the headline, "The feel-good Hallmark Channel is booming in the age of Trump". Damn that Trump ruins everything, so in 2017 what are poor viewers to do but shelter themselves from his madness, as demonstrated by a 9 percent increase in Hallmark viewers (escapism). Never-mind the lie of omission that Hallmark saw a 46 percent increase in viewers the year before, so viewership growth is down under Trump.

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~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2019-01-27

Politicizing everything into being Trumps fault is FakeNews. Like the headline, "The feel-good Hallmark Channel is booming in the age of Trump". Damn that Trump ruins everything, so in 2017 what are poor viewers to do but shelter themselves from his madness, as demonstrated by a 9 percent increase in Hallmark viewers (escapism). Never-mind the lie of omission that Hallmark saw a 46 percent increase in viewers the year before, so viewership growth is down under Trump.

That's what FakeNews looks like. Quotes in the article like, "Hallmark is the complete opposite of the divisiveness that so many families felt during the election and President Trump's penchant for courting controversy". With the subheading, "More and more Americans are turning to the Hallmark Channel for relief from the daily news cycle", and trying to blame it on Trump.

If you stopped thinking there, you'd be a good progressive WaPo reader that believes Trump is the great spoiler. But if you have any intellectual curiosity you think, what about the prior years? Of course if you keep thinking, you might consider that the reason they're seeking escapism, isn't because of Trump, but because of the constant negativity and whining of the #nevertrump media, and trash stories like this in WaPo. But back to the data: 2016 had Hallmark see a 46% bump over 2015, when we were regularly being told how Hillary was going to beat Trump. So more accurate headlines might be:

"Fear of Hillary Presidency Drives Huge Spike in Hallmark Ratings!"
"Since Hillary's loss, the rate of escapism to the Hallmark Channel is decreasing YoY".

Those would take informed and honest writers, with the intent of informing their audience, instead of regurgitating their hate and Trump bashing. As the WaPo motto claims, "Democracy dies in darkness" -- and they're running around trying to turn off all the lights.

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Fake News
While the term goes back 100 years, the history is summed up well by Sharyl Attkisson.

Washington Post
A once great paper, now a liberal fake news rag that looks more like Bezos Blog (or the DNC's blog) than an objective Newspaper.

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Tags: FakeNews WaPo