Mika Brzezinski says the media's job is to "control exactly what people think"

[EnglishPete]

This morning Mike Brzezinski said this about Donald Trump.

"he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control what people think. And that is our job"

So there you have it. Morning show presenter blurting out exactly what she thinks her job is about.

[Santander]

She's not wrong.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

This morning Mike Brzezinski said this about Donald Trump.

"he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control what people think. And that is our job"

So there you have it. Morning show presenter blurting out exactly what she thinks her job is about.

Source?  Even though Mika saying it is not a surprise.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

She can control my thoughts but not my sight. Every time I watch Morning Joe they're practically dry humping each other on air.

[Beet]

The media in this country have always had tremendous power but since the 1970s they have used it to great negative effect.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

The media in this country have always had tremendous power but since the 1970s they have used it to great negative effect.

Wait, what?  Is Blue Beet back? 

[ApatheticAustrian]

source or fake news. and even if she stated those words...gaffe of a pundit, plz try again.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

source or fake news. and even if she stated those words...gaffe of a pundit, plz try again.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2017/02/22/msnbcs-mika-brzezinski-makes-alarming-admission-about-medias-job

[Trapsy]

lol I can't Mika serious on morning joe. I don't know she is so giddy with no independent thought.

Also, It's the media's job to inform people with truth, not control.

[Blackacre]

Maybe she thinks that's her job, but it's not the job of actual journalists and pundits. The job of a NYT or WaPo reporter is to uncover the truth and inform the public. The job of Rachel Maddow or John Oliver is to provide perspective, sharing historical context or viewpoints that the viewing public might not have considered. The job of Jake Tapper and Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert is to deconstruct the news for a laugh and for thought-provoking commentary. (both are successors of Jon Stewart, the king of this kind of thing, and it's part of Oliver's job as well)

None of them have the job of "control what the people think." That's not their goal and it never was. Mika saying otherwise says more about her than it does about the media as a whole.

[ApatheticAustrian]

i am pretty sure she means, it it's the job of journalists to prevent letting the president run away with his own alternative facts - but obviously a gaffe.

cause...even if you THINK the media should LOLOLOLOL "control" LOLOLOL what people think (in fact media in a more general sense of course controle WHAT people think even if not how to think about those things, but that's off-topic), you sure as hell wouldn't state it like that - no advantage at all.

[Associate Justice PiT]

lol I can't Mika serious on morning joe. I don't know she is so giddy with no independent thought.

Also, It's the media's job to inform people with truth, not control.

     The media has been doing a crummy job of it in recent years. I am reluctant to attribute malice where stupidity suffices, but it would explain a few things if they were trying to control what people thought. A more likely explanation is that the MSM journalists are stuck in an echo chamber already and this affects the quality of their reporting.

[ApatheticAustrian]

lol I can't Mika serious on morning joe. I don't know she is so giddy with no independent thought.

Also, It's the media's job to inform people with truth, not control.

     The media has been doing a crummy job of it in recent years. I am reluctant to attribute malice where stupidity suffices, but it would explain a few things if they were trying to control what people thought. A more likely explanation is that the MSM journalists are stuck in an echo chamber already and this affects the quality of their reporting.

may if, for the sake of an open debate, ask, what kind of mistakes you could describe, which wouldn't happen in the past and aren't mostly connected to technical progress and new competition/lower financial security?

[EnglishPete]

This morning Mike Brzezinski said this about Donald Trump.

"he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control what people think. And that is our job"

So there you have it. Morning show presenter blurting out exactly what she thinks her job is about.

Source?  Even though Mika saying it is not a surprise.

Here's the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opf9uUmiyQI

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

Mika Brzezinski ✔ @morningmika
Today I said it's the media's job to keep President Trump from making up his own facts, NOT that it's our job to control what people think.
3:03 PM - 22 Feb 2017

Mika Brzezinski ✔ @morningmika
Of course, that is obvious from the transcript but some people want to make up their own facts. SAD! https://twitter.com/morningmika/status/834463604531404800 …
3:04 PM - 22 Feb 2017

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Mika Brzezinski ✔ @morningmika
Today I said it's the media's job to keep President Trump from making up his own facts, NOT that it's our job to control what people think.
3:03 PM - 22 Feb 2017

Mika Brzezinski ✔ @morningmika
Of course, that is obvious from the transcript but some people want to make up their own facts. SAD! https://twitter.com/morningmika/status/834463604531404800 …
3:04 PM - 22 Feb 2017

Did she not watch the youtube video. 

[Associate Justice PiT]

lol I can't Mika serious on morning joe. I don't know she is so giddy with no independent thought.

Also, It's the media's job to inform people with truth, not control.

     The media has been doing a crummy job of it in recent years. I am reluctant to attribute malice where stupidity suffices, but it would explain a few things if they were trying to control what people thought. A more likely explanation is that the MSM journalists are stuck in an echo chamber already and this affects the quality of their reporting.

may if, for the sake of an open debate, ask, what kind of mistakes you could describe, which wouldn't happen in the past and aren't mostly connected to technical progress and new competition/lower financial security?

     Actually, I'm sure technical progress has had a lot to do with it. In the earliest days of television, there was a heavier focus on reporting the facts. The advent of cable news and the 24-hour cycle has created a need to fill time, and so we get endless panel discussions between various partisans pushing an agenda. The journalists are naturally tasked with moderating these discussions and the result is that genuine reportage gets pushed to the back in favor of commentary.

     Now you may note that this does constitute a sort of debate, so how are they in an echo chamber? It is less about left v. right and more to do with elite interests. Journalists do lean left as a profession and have for a long time, but the issue blew up in 2016 because they completely failed to grasp Donald Trump's appeal since he didn't appeal to the segments they were familiar with. They built him up without realizing it, because they didn't know what was going on. How can they report properly if they have such a big blindspot in the current events that they are supposed to be reporting on?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Mika must have someone cleaning her twatter page......my tweet is gone.  Success!

[ApatheticAustrian]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

hard to pin-point the full scene/segment with a hour-long daily show as morning joe and the attackers conviently never ever clear the date/hour etc or link to the full segment.

[Maxwell]

who watches morning joe besides DC insiders and atlas users?

[elcorazon]

who watches morning joe besides DC insiders and atlas users?

isn't it one of the most popular shows on the network. And I think Trump watches. Although I guess technically, he's now an insider, kind of.

[Person Man]

Fake news.

[ApatheticAustrian]

lol I can't Mika serious on morning joe. I don't know she is so giddy with no independent thought.

Also, It's the media's job to inform people with truth, not control.

     The media has been doing a crummy job of it in recent years. I am reluctant to attribute malice where stupidity suffices, but it would explain a few things if they were trying to control what people thought. A more likely explanation is that the MSM journalists are stuck in an echo chamber already and this affects the quality of their reporting.

may if, for the sake of an open debate, ask, what kind of mistakes you could describe, which wouldn't happen in the past and aren't mostly connected to technical progress and new competition/lower financial security?

     Actually, I'm sure technical progress has had a lot to do with it. In the earliest days of television, there was a heavier focus on reporting the facts. The advent of cable news and the 24-hour cycle has created a need to fill time, and so we get endless panel discussions between various partisans pushing an agenda. The journalists are naturally tasked with moderating these discussions and the result is that genuine reportage gets pushed to the back in favor of commentary.

     Now you may note that this does constitute a sort of debate, so how are they in an echo chamber? It is less about left v. right and more to do with elite interests. Journalists do lean left as a profession and have for a long time, but the issue blew up in 2016 because they completely failed to grasp Donald Trump's appeal since he didn't appeal to the segments they were familiar with. They built him up without realizing it, because they didn't know what was going on. How can they report properly if they have such a big blindspot in the current events that they are supposed to be reporting on?

1) can't agree more on the upper part of your post.....reason i have hated CNN so much for years. if they are not in the field...cause something happens...they kill time with stupid debates, which are IMHO worse than MSNBC/FOX NEWS debates, cause unbiased stupidity is still stupidity. and if something real happens, to talk it to death, without educating anyone ......i am learning more on twitter than i could ever on CNN.

2) i agree in general on your point regarding Trump and stuff, even while i guess it is hard to bame "the media" for that one, cause his victory doesn't "make sense", since it literally broke all political rules regarding gaffes.

i am pretty sure, some stereotypical beltway journalists are out of touch with the even more stereotypical rust belt-small city inhabitants.

but...i think, trump's shtick wouldn't have worked in other years and if a few 1000 people voted in a different way, we would talk about the whole election differently, even while trump would still have been REALLY successful with broad parts of rural america.


the important question should be, imho, how can the "MSM" react to the challenge of trump?

[ApatheticAustrian]

and O'Keefe now wants to crush the Anti-Trumo media.....


http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/22/media/james-okeefe-cnn/index.html

[SteveRogers]

*Sigh*
Okay, let's break this down.

Yeah if you read just the line in the OP without context or regard to the intonation of her speech, I guess it does sound like that's what she said. Here's the quote put more in the context of Mika's train of thought:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

"And that is the ... that is our job." The meaning  of what Brezinski said here clearly comes down to what the meaning of "that" is.
Possibility 1: "That" = "Making up our own facts and undermining the messaging so much that we, the media, can actually control exactly what people think." In other words, Brezinski is saying, "Hey, that's our job!"

Possibility 2: "That" = "Preventing Trump from making up his own facts and thus accomplishing his goal of undermining the messaging so much that he can control exactly what people think." In other words, Brezinski is saying that the job of the media is to prevent all those bad things she just said Trump wants to do.

Clearly Possibility 2 is what she meant. If you're arguing the contrary, then you're just a hack. Is it perfect grammar and syntax? No, and this is why your English teacher taught you to avoid the ambiguous use of generic pronouns. But are Trump apologists really going to come here now and say that everyone's run-on sentences should be parsed hyper-literally? Glass houses, etc. etc.