Attacking the media is nothing new.\u00a0 Republicans especially enjoy fomenting claims of media bias to garner support from conservative voters.\u00a0 Let me say up front, I am not a media apologist.\u00a0 In fact, I am often critical of the media.\u00a0 The media is a business focused on their profit margin, not a service ensuring a better-informed public.\u00a0 As viewers equal profits, it is a safe bet that the media will extensively cover sensational, visual, and controversial news items.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 Profits love a good scandal as a good scandal attracts more viewers tuning in.<\/p>\n
The media is not a monolith with unitary focus or motivation.\u00a0 There are thousands of journalists, reporters and commentators alike, working on stories every day.\u00a0 The media is not perfect, either institutionally or individually.\u00a0 It is easy to see with so many individuals that in any given period, some will make mistakes.\u00a0 Nevertheless, there is no effort within the media to intentionally mislead the public with false stories.\u00a0 In fact, much to the contrary.\u00a0 When a mistake is made, the responsible organization issues a correction, an apology, and where appropriate termination of the responsible individual.\u00a0 The actual untrue stories posing as news in social media either come from known satirical organizations relying on humor or disreputable non-media sources abusing our freedoms for nefarious purposes.\u00a0 Of the latter we must all remain especially vigilant and pressure social media platforms to be responsible.<\/p>\n
While we may validly criticize media decisions concerning what to cover, how they divide air time, and the substance of commentary, as a profession the majority of journalists work hard to investigate and report on stories.\u00a0 There is certainly not an effort by the media to create and issue fake news (items that are known to be untrue or issued with reckless indifference to their validity).\u00a0 President Trump has taken the perennial Republican anti-media rallying cry to a new level.\u00a0 He continually refers to any story that he perceives as negative as \u201cfake news\u201d and calls out any network that reports these stories as \u201cfake news.\u201d\u00a0 Unfortunately for the president, the facts overwhelmingly negate his labels of fake news.\u00a0 Every such story has been established as fact by independent corroboration.\u00a0 People may not like the intensity or focus of the coverage, but the national networks and cable news have not been spreading news items that are untrue or unverified.<\/p>\n
Ironically, if we really scrutinized the network content for accuracy, Fox News would likely rank the lowest.\u00a0 Sean Hannity, one of Fox News\u2019 biggest stars, loves to put out fake news to back up conservative political narrative (e.g., baseless personal and professional attacks on Robert Mueller).\u00a0 In fact, Fox News\u2019 Shepard Smith, a respectable journalist, felt compelled to put out a thorough, detailed story completely debunking a story his Fox colleagues were spreading that falsely linked Hilary Clinton to the infamous Uranium One deal and that falsely stated that Russia was taking U.S. uranium supplies.\u00a0 Even after Smith\u2019s report, there are commentators who continue to spread the falsehoods.\u00a0 Fox News was the fake news.\u00a0 The President often calls out reports referencing Russian interference in our election as a hoax and fake news.\u00a0 Mr. President, there continues to be a thorough and fruitful investigation the uncovered evidence.\u00a0 Members of your campaign and administration have been charged with related crimes.\u00a0 Most importantly, multiple members of your campaign and administration have pleaded GUILTY to these related charges and will be facing serious punishment.\u00a0 Fake news?\u00a0 Just your continued denials.<\/p>\n
There is also a beautiful irony to President Trump attacking the media.\u00a0 He used the media for decades the create his public persona and then to become a reality TV star.\u00a0 He won the GOP nomination in large part due to an extremely clever, and certainly highly effective, plan to create extensive free media coverage to spread his message to voters.\u00a0 Now in office, the media upon which he heavily relied is suddenly fake news.\u00a0 A lot of President Trump\u2019s disagreement with media coverage is the product of his own intransigence.\u00a0 For example, by refusing to provide any tax returns or medical reports, he dared the media to challenge his representations and search for the data.\u00a0 By lying or misrepresenting facts, he challenged the media to correct the record and cover the story.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the truth is well documented and media coverage in this area is anything but fake.\u00a0 Russian attacks on our democracy and election process are big news.\u00a0 It does not matter whether we ever learn if there was a demonstrable impact \u2013 that is for the political scientists and analysts.\u00a0 Administration denials only fuel the fire.\u00a0 If Trump or his representatives would be more forthcoming, the media would not have to respond to his gamesmanship.\u00a0 What are you hiding, Mr. President, about your dealings with Russia?\u00a0 You are challenging the media to find out.<\/p>\n
There is a more serious issue at stake.\u00a0 The First Amendment to the Constitution was the most important statement of freedom and liberty in the creation of our democracy.\u00a0 It includes freedom of the press because of the paramount importance of a free press.\u00a0 No matter what criticism prevailed at the time, we have never had a president (not even Nixon, known for his paranoia), attack and threaten a free press.\u00a0 Not until President Trump.\u00a0 If the media deserves to be challenged on a particular story, then criticize that story.\u00a0 However, attacks on freedom of the press are unacceptable, un-American, and threaten the very fabric of democracy.\u00a0 Remember, back during the campaign, then candidate Trump engaged in excessive disparaging and threatening of the media to the extent reporters were attacked and needed official protection, even when covering his events.\u00a0 President Trump has on multiple occasions crossed the line when discussing the press.\u00a0 He has referred to the press as \u201cthe enemy of the people.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0This is grossly unprofessional and improper, not to mention dangerous.\u00a0 How unfortunate that Stalin, brutal Russian dictator who murdered millions of his own people, spoke those very words in his rise to power.\u00a0 I have disagreed with those who want to link the President to fascism.\u00a0 However, he walks a fine line in that direction with fundamental attacks and threats on a free press.\u00a0 Those are the repressive messages of autocrats.\u00a0 Thankfully many Republican leaders publicly disagree with him on this point and remind us all of the role of a free press in society.\u00a0 We may not like every article, but we would suffer greatly and lose our freedom in lightning speed if the press did not hold leaders and institution accountable.\u00a0 Remember, the oath is to the Constitution and to uphold all of our freedoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Attacking the media is nothing new.\u00a0 Republicans especially enjoy fomenting claims of media bias to garner support from conservative voters.\u00a0 Let me say up front, I am not a media […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[68,103,107,185,204,225],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-constitution","tag-fake-news","tag-first-amendment","tag-media","tag-news","tag-president-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whoobazoo.com\/thebooth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}