Reality Check 101

Newspapers across the country rallied together on August 15th to allegedly defend freedom of the press against President Trump’s relentless criticisms and obvious hostility toward them.   The Boston Globe was the birther of this “call to action” which activated hundreds of editorial boards and ended up exhibiting some obviously long pent up hostility of their own.

Given the number of participating newspapers, the volume of grievances on that Thursday were immense.  Alexandra Hutzler documented what she called “The Best lines” the next day. Here are some samples:

“In such a toxic environment, Trump’s declarations …attempt to blur the difference between fact-based new gathering, and the lies and propaganda that spread like wildfire through social media.” (Tampa Bay Times)

“Just as he has made enemies of women, Muslims, Latinos, and African-Americans, Trump has calculated that it is to his political advantage to isolate skeptics in the press and declare them ‘enemies of the people.'” (The New Yorker)

“…there [is] a larger issue at stake here involving a free inquiry by a free press that gets to the very foundation of our republic.” (Dallas Morning News)

“If one first comes successfully for the press…what stops someone from coming next for your friends? Your family? You?” (Kansas City Star)

“Today [the press] is under serious threat.  And it sends an alarming signal to despots…that journalists can be treated as a domestic enemy.”

The San Francisco Chronicle didn’t join in but re-published some quotes from past editorials:

“The even  broader threat from Trump’s ascension is the contempt he is spreading for the…adherence to the rule of law.”

“President Trump’s expressed contempt for a free press seems right out of an authoritarian playbook…silencing government watchdogs…”  “Journalists like all Americans should be free from the fear of being violently attacked…”

The Chronicle also proudly noted other references to the duly elected president of the United States as a “self-respecting despot” whose “Orwellian” actions are an “assault on the truth”.

These examples demonstrate how the print media lives out their self-avowed mission of battling public ignorance through “researched, incontrovertible, unbiased facts” about President Trump whom they oppose at every turn as a “self-styled demagogue”.  This is the New York Times and Washington Post-style filter of faux objectivity through which the American reading public is rationed “information [they] need to make an informed choices” (Holland Sentinel).

The mainstream broadcast networks have been just as strident, to the point that if an observer were not careful in his assessment, it would appear to be a concerted effort to stoke the overthrow of the administration.  According to an analysis by the Media Research Center, as of August 15th, the evening news outlets of ABC, CBS, and NBC used almost one-fifth of their reporting on the president for linkage to the Russia probe while almost ignoring, to the tune of only 3.3%, the constant drip of corruption within the Mueller probe.  The refusal of the Justice Department to turn over congressionally subpoenaed documents received a scant 125 seconds.  On August 22nd, during a 12 hour period, CNN and MSNBC referred to impeachment an incredible 222 times.

Propaganda is much more powerfully insidious by what it does not say than by what it broadcasts (or prints) from the rooftops.  For the first time in recent memory, like it or not and in total contrast to decades of impotent and duplicitous politics, Donald Trump has been the first president to actually fulfill his promises one after the other.  Border security, tax cuts, Europe’s responsibility for its own preservation, judicial appointments that actually revere the Constitution,honoring the military and building security – everything the electorate drafted him to do, yet barely a positive whisper is heard from the mainstream media (MSM). 

There is indeed an unraveling of the relationship between the people and both the press and the broadcast media.  Plummeting newspaper circulations and anemic ratings for the MSM say it all.  The problem however is not just the internet and President Trump.  The fact is that the President is reflecting a majority opinion of the media, which is part of what got him elected, however over the top or sometimes inflammatory.  The reading-viewing public has caught on to the resurgence of yellow journalism’s pervasive filtering of information to “skew views of the world designed to promote a particular social or political viewpoint.”

A choice has to be made by each and every editorial board and news producer.  They can, as Margaret Sullivan has done, call for more and better collusion between news outlets.  Or they can follow the advice of award-winning journalist Al Tompkins who noted that “Journalists have gotten so much disastrously wrong yet remain intransigent…”  and that  “After the 2016 election…we vowed to listen to the public…”.

Tompkins gives the best final challenge of all when he writes, “How are you (journalists) doing with that listening tour?”  “How willing are you to be changed by discourse?”