https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/18/15646098/right-wing-media-collective-memories
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The past week of Trump scandals for people reading mainstream news outlets has gone something like this: President Trump fired the FBI director who was investigating his campaigns connection with Russia and then the next day, Trump shared classified information with Russian officials.
But on conservative news outlets, the narrative was very different. It was about an FBI director whose firing was long overdue, and a liberal media desperate to take down Trump.
That means the conservative media narrative went something like this:
Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for his mishandling of the Clinton investigation and his stubborn insistence on continuing the Russia investigation despite no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The liberal media drove this narrative to take down Trump, who only wanted the investigation done properly, and then started to question Trumps mental stability.
The deep state leaked classified info to the Washington Post. Plus, Trump has the right to disclose classified information to Russians, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster agrees.
Comey is getting revenge with memos that reveal Trump asked him to shut down the investigation into his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
Lets be clear about whats happening here: Right-wing media is creating coherent alternate storylines with different characters and different context but a narrative that competes with contextual facts that support a more accurate story. Even amid some of the most troubling presidential news in decades, a huge portion of this country is having a very different experience of these events, and repeating it over and over. Our collective memories and, in turn, our shared culture are being splintered.
One way to form an alternate storyline: by ignoring context
Lets focus on the Comey firing here.
The New York Times stayed laser-focused on how Comey wanted to expand the Russia investigation just days before his termination. This framing falls in line with reporting from several other outlets, as well as Trumps interview to NBC saying that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.
But Breitbart and Fox News removed that context from their coverage.
Breitbart only mentioned the Russia investigation to reiterate that Trumps connections with Russia or lack thereof were a settled matter. The big red enough about Russia summarizes their coverage.
Fox News barely mentioned Russia. Instead, it focused on Comeys handling of the Clinton email investigation and who would replace Comey and then ultimately pivoting to other stories to lead the site on Thursday, May 11, before coming back to focus on Trump saying he supports a Russia probe done properly.
These are fundamentally different stories. One is about a president who is interfering with an investigation, and the other is about an FBI director whose firing was a long time coming.
Its quite disconcerting when a major piece of context is missing from your understanding of a story. This is a literary technique many TV shows use to keep the audience on their feet. (Game of Thrones comes to mind.) But in this case, the reveal might never come. After all, according to a poll, two in three Republicans still believe Comey was fired over the Clinton investigation.
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