Monday, February 27, 2017

Trump and the media

There is a war being waged in Washington between the White House and the media. The latest skirmish was the exclusion of CNN and the New York Times, amongst others, from an informal briefing at the White House last Friday. This was painted by the affronted media as an assault on the First Amendment and a signal of the death of the American republic, but (as the Washington Post pointed out in this article) it was an informal briefing of the type to which President Obama also tended only to invite sympathetic media organisations. 

The media organisations who were excluded only have themselves to blame. You cannot take such a partisan approach to reporting on an election as did the New York Times and CNN and then expect to be extended privileged access to that candidate after his successful election. The publisher of the New York Times as much as confessed to his readers after the election that their coverage had been unfair and not impartial.

This incident was quickly followed by President Trump's refusal to attend the White House Correspondent's dinner, an annual event for Washington journalists that became something of a love-in for Obama and the press. Trump's refusal to rub shoulders with a group of people whom he has accused of being overwhelmingly hostile to him suggests he has some consistency at least.

I am no fan of Donald Trump but I am even less of a fan of the mainstream media. I have written before about how the media have destroyed their credibility through increasingly partisan coverage of political issues. They no longer act as the fourth estate but rather as a fifth column, fighting behind the scenes for a left-wing political agenda. Their shrill advocacy of their political viewpoint means they are increasingly isolated from, and at odds with, the real mainstream of society. They are so overwhelmingly of a like mind in their biases that they have created an echo chamber that reverberates with their own chorus. Worst of all, they disparage as fools and bigots the very people they rely on for their revenues and their jobs whenever they perceive public opinion as against them. 

When you man the barricades for one side in a fight, you can't be upset when you find that you are no longer regarded as the honest broker. It is the media themselves who are too stupid and narrow-minded to realise they are the authors of their demise.

1 comment:

paul scott said...

The President’s report to the Nation and Press inclusion and questions [ February 16] was very telling.
This was where the media picked up on the statement
“The leaks are reaI but the news is fake “

Trump went on to explain that the leaks were from the previous regime [ the junk remaining from Islamobama ].
That is that stuff left in the intelligence agencies and so on, which they haven’t been able to weed out yet.
The news then, was being rinsed, massaged, and perverted by CNN and NYT, WAPO and so on.
So, comprehension 101. The news is real but by the time it is reported it is faked up.
The NY Times at some time had gone as far as definitively stating that it is the “opposition” to the President.
This, the ‘fifth column’ you refer to, but I can not find this article for you.

Trump also stated that the CNN broadcast tone was one of hatred, completely flabbergasting them, but not denied.

Here in New Zealand even people like Karl du Fresne [ unusual for him ] were not bothered to see reality, but went a long for the ride on the dreary cognitive dissonance assertion again. Anyone who you can not understand and disagrees with you has some major mental disorganisation.
Too sad, too lame, too liberal and too dumb.
For me, I now completely abstain from the MSM, and it is liberating in a true sense.
I rely on the better blogs [ like this] for all news and assessment of the news.

In the article you refer to from the NYT, an unwitting Freudian slip occurs when the editor says that they covered the 2016 election with agility and creativity and they thank their liberal pansy readers for their loyalty.
Yes. So well seen kiwi wit.

Islamobama will go down as a complete loser of a President, outside toilet arrangements, but Trump will be seen as the defining force of the
destruction of globalism and the return to national pride.
And that meme of pride will follow through the Western world as it is already doing