THE “GOOD MORNING AMERICA/TODAY SHOW EFFECT”–STYLE, SUBSTANCE AND OMISSION – with updates

Original Version (May 2020)

(Please read through to the end to see updates on this original)

All of the network morning shows and the network evening news fall into the style of media programming that I categorize as the “GOOD MORNING AMERICA/TODAY SHOW EFFECT” (hereafter the GMA Effect). They are uniformly soft in their approach, but consistently biased in their presentation, content and coverage. For example ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today Show and CBS’ This Morning present a lot of very useful content that is of interest to women and is presented in a pleasant manner by congenial hosts and guests. The hosts, however, as congenial and pleasant as they may be, are also Clinton and Obama acolytes. Virtually all of their focus on national issues favors the Democrat Party agenda with negative innuendos directed at conservative values. Any news that can be presented in a manner that is negative about Republican Party members, President Trump and free market values is given a generous amount of air time and any news that is negative about Clinton, Obama, the Democrat Party and left wing agendas is ignored. One example of this is the “China Virus” coverage. Any rally held by President Trump is a horrible danger to the health of the country as a whole even though each rally is limited to a single location and the rallies are scheduled weeks apart if not longer. The massive spread of the China Virus attributable to large uncontrolled and often violent Black Lives Matter protests in multiple locations on a daily basis for many days is overlooked and under reported as the GMA Effect programs celebrate the peaceful portions of the protests. The screeching blatantly far left cable programs, in contrast, only serve their base so they are not capable of mesmerizing and subliminally influencing the viewing public like the programs that specialize in the GMA Effect.

As an overall assessment, the GMA Effect programs deliver wonderfully pleasant style, good substance when presenting non news information, and massively deceptive presentation of substance when disseminating news with political overtones, including the rather obvious omission of materials that do not further their agenda. The constant GMA Effect soft attack has plenty of ammunition generously supplied by President Trump in the form of poorly scripted tweets that can easily be presented in a negative manner. The aggressive, often abrasive, bumptious style of Donald Trump makes him an easy target for the soft congenial GMA Effect hosts. One of the best and most confusing gifts bestowed by Trump that boosts the GMA Effect relates to the use of masks and the ”China Virus” Pandemic in general. Why he chose to let himself to be drawn into that totally unnecessary and self defeating battle is disconcerting especially since that pitfall could have been easily circumvented. He should have supported masks as a way to hasten the opening of the economy and kept that issue out of the political arena while making it clear that state and local jurisdictions should make the definitive call based on Federal guidelines.

Instead of calling the coverage of the pandemic a hoax which can be easily transformed and spun out of context into the pandemic is a hoax he could pound on the fact that all of the projections have been empirically incorrect because of horribly incorrect and noisy data from the very beginning. He could have made the case that if China had supplied good data and information from the beginning the medical gurus in the pandemic task force could have quickly set strict rules about masks, distancing, mass transit, the elderly and those with compromising conditions and not shut down the economy to the extent that occurred –and – probably we would have been better off than we are today. His stubborn stance regarding masks and the overall condition of the pandemic has been and will continue to be very damaging politically unless the severity of the pandemic is sufficiently reduced at least a month prior to the upcoming presidential election in a manner that silences the GMA effect players. This has been an unnecessary battle that could have and should have been avoided.

The national network evening news programs which purport be objective, even handed dispensers of national news, are eager to present information that can be interpreted as negative relating to the actions of the Trump Administration, but will give sparse attention with a skeptical approach to negative information relating to malfeasance on the part of Democrats and/or left wing and anti administration operatives. The presentation of the news by the network anchors is polished and smooth, and they strive to give the appearance of objectivity as they present every snippet of news that advances their biases and omit the news that does not. A good example of the bias unfolded at the very beginning of the Trump Administration as the case for impeachment was steadily and voluminously built up by the Democrat Party and the their close allies in the national network news. The inability of the left wing attorneys who comprised the Mueller team to link the Trump Administration and Russia led to a report that was not pleasing to the national network gurus. The conclusions which basically exonerated Trump were cleverly written by the Mueller team and the national network programs jumped on the opportunity to spend as much time questioning the conclusions as reporting them. Note that the network news is curiously silent about the work being done by U.S Attorney John Durham under the direction of Attorney General Barr that is likely to lead to the indictment of a number of the players that initiated the Trump Russia Conspiracy Investigation.

A current example relates to the blatantly biased and misguided accusation made by the New York Times that either Trump has ignored intelligence or his administration has failed to act on the intelligence leak that Russia has been paying for Afghanistan rebels (Taliban, etc.) to target U.S. soldiers. The national network media has joyfully jumped on this disclosure without determining the credibility as well as the functional importance of the leak other than to create political havoc and inflict damage to intelligence sources. The network media has repeatedly reported the same story day after day. I guarantee that if and when it is demonstrated that the leaked information has been improperly handled and that the leak only served to injure intelligence sources and the accurate analysis of the situation, the reporting will be scant. One would be amazingly naive to think that Russia has not been trying to thwart American objectives in Afghanistan from the moment the United States entered Afghanistan following 9/11. Remember all of the shenanigans the U.S. undertook in Afghanistan leading up to the 1989 termination of the Russian presence there. It is well known that the Russians have been supporting the Taliban from the beginning of the American presence in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attack, and to make the distinction between supplying funding for weapons and other materials needed to kill Afghan and American soldiers and a bounty to target American soldiers is blatant political nonsense. Could it be that the Russians intended for the weaponry supplied to the Taliban to be used to kill mountain goats.

Observations from the sidelines: By now President Trump, must have been told many times by many of his advisors that every tweet he makes is heavily scrutinized by the left for openings to amplify any negative connotation that can be extracted whether accurate or not. After the left spin doctors generate an angle of attack they turn over the narrative to the morning shows and network news gurus who are experts spinning their magic in a manner that I refer to as the GMA Effect, morning after morning and evening after evening. Way too often the tweets offer easily constructed narratives that will be played over and over again. The cure to this problem is obvious but probably not one that will be accepted by the patient – PICK YOUR BATTLES AND HONE YOUR TWEETS .

The GMA Effect programming is exceedingly effective. The biases and constant subliminal messaging is so effective that it is apparent that this media wing of the Democrat part has preyed on many of their viewers in order to tilt their opinion of conservative personalities and politicians.

It is my opinion that any person after four years of watching Good Morning America, the Morning Show and virtually any of the network news on a regular basis, who was amused and sometimes taken aback by Trump’s personality and language leading up to the 2016 presidential election, and has not developed a visceral distaste for President Trump has been half asleep when watching these programs or tunes out except for specific items of interest.

Second Revisit: The GMA Effect (December 2021)

(First revisit is included in this report – see below)

Surprise, surprise, as the end of the year approaches nothing has significantly changed even though some of he liberal cable “news” networks have recognized Biden’s plummeting ratings. Other than covering what cannot be hidden or ignored it is business as usual except that most of the left wing failures underlying Biden’s problems are glossed over or not reported at all. A good example is the Good Morning America discussion relating to inflation Nov 14, 2021 where there was discussion of the existence of inflation but no mention of cause. During the same time period GMA gave time to the Biden Administration to respond to inflation from their viewpoint with no time given to any opposing viewpoints (including Obama Administration economic advisors such as Lawrence Summers). In another example of omission or bias the Rittenhouse acquittal was reported by Good Morning America in a blatantly agenda driven manner. They just could not stick to the facts of the case and basic arguments of both sides. In a write up of their coverage dated November 19, 2021 titled “Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted on all charges”, out of approximately thirty distinguishable statements/paragraphs separated by spaces, eleven were neutral general statements, six were Rittenhouse specific statements that were informational or relatively soft statements of intent, and thirteen were aggressively negative statements relating to Rittenhouse or the judgment. They parroted the racially infused arguments of the far left Democrat party when their coverage of and opposition to Rittenhouse and the judgment could have been couched in a far more acceptable journalistic manner.

With the effects of inflation ravaging middle and low income families, Good Morning America (November 14) gave time to the Biden administration to spin their massaged version of the inflation issue and the underling causes but totally ignored the inflationary effects of Biden’s socialist spending spree agenda. Even the warnings of former Obama Administration economic advisors such as Lawrence Summers received zero coverage. As a final example, the coverage of the Durham Investigation related to the debunked Steele Dossier in behalf of GMA by George Stephanopoulos falls right in line with expectations. George afforded Steele a friendly platform to defend his most blatantly fallacious claims about Donald Trump that Durham found to be completely false. That was virtually all of Good Morning Amereica’s and ABC’s reporting of the ongoing Durham Investigation which connects the subject dossier to the Hillary Clinton Campaign. What a surprise – never would have guessed! George Stephanopoulos knew that what he was doing and it is surprising that the did not do a better job of “putting make up” on his obvious white washing “waltz” with Christopher Steele.

It is fairly obvious that the obsession with Trump has diminished but not gone away. Trump still gathers more attention from the “GMA Effect” morning programs and the network news than Biden’s failures. Biden’s failures coupled with his aggressively socialist agenda have exposed the “bate and switch, smoke and mirrors” deception pulled off by the Democrat party during the 2020 presidential election that can not be covered up by the left wing media. Biden’s cratering approval rating indicates that the Biden charade has been penetrated by reality. The” GMA Effect” however is alive and operational as the morning programs and the network media continue to to offer the public all of the news and only the news – that is, what they want them to see and hear.

First Revisit: The GMA Effect (July 2021)

It is obvious that the GMA Effect is still operating in full force, with a minor operational shift. Given the Biden victory in the 2020 presidential election, their major focus has shifted from attacking the Trump Administration to covering up the nonstop blunders of the Biden Administration and the perilous aggressive Marxist agenda of the political left endorsed by Biden’s handlers. Their ultimate goal is and always will be to replace the free market and individual liberties with a communist/socialist system which results in the total control of the economy and choices available to individuals. The Biden Administration has and will continue their push to make the general public dependent on the federal government through ongoing unnecessary stimulus checks which has and will continue to stymie the return of workers to the post pandemic workplace. This policy which encourages individuals to stay out of the active workforce cripples the supply side of the economy and amplifies inflation issues. Biden’s handlers will keep up the pressure to implement central control of the choices available to individuals with the blatant, salivating support from Good Morning America and the network news I have termed the GMA Effect original article below).. This specific threat can be somewhat muted by a shift in fiscal policy spurred by the election process.

Another much more problematic push toward the Marxist model that has been totally ignored and/or misrepresented by the GMA Effect crew is summarized as follows. This plan is a process initiated by the Obama Administration and expanded by the Biden Administration that directs all relevant federal agencies to encourage efficiency through the regulatory process. In other words, the agencies are directed to create new regulations that are specific to businesses within their purview which can be singularly focused and enforced. This is a very clever “smoke and mirrors” project that is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. In effect, embedded federal agency bureaucrats will be able to and will unquestionably pick winners and losers by designing regulations that support their political agenda out of view of the voting public (bypassing Congress). Existing antitrust laws have been set up to address anti-competitive behavior without reference to specific industries or businesses, whereby the government is supposed to be a referee and not a player. The plan outlined above does exactly the opposite and the results of the successful implementation of such a plan has the regressive appearance and pungent odor of fascism. What we are witnessing is a major frontal assault on the free market, an ongoing decline of rational economic policy and the rise of the Marxist state in America, pablumized for the viewing public via the GMA Effect. Note that the attacks on the free market discussed above are just two of the many attacks that the left has in the works or in the planning stage. The voting public must be made aware of the subtlety of the left’s presentation and the unflagging support of the media through the GMA effect.