A Free Nation Cannot Long Survive If Its Press Takes Sides.

Pandemics can temporarily set a free society on its heels; a cheerleading press can kill it for good.


Gay lied in saying Trump told governors they are on their own

Gay lied in saying Trump told governors they are on their own, thus misleading readers to think he refused to provide the governors with federal funds for critical medical equipment. Below is what Trump actually said — the part in boldface is what Gay selectively quoted, everything else is what she maliciously omitted:

“We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”

After unequivocally promising to back the governors with federal help, Trump suggested that some medical supplies could be obtained more quickly if they deal directly with vendors.

What Gay did was journalistic malpractice at its most evil, a fake news political hatchet job against a president she hates in hopes of torpedoing his re-election. Mara Gay is no rookie reporter who made an innocent mistake. She’s a member of the New York Times Editorial Board. Her dissembling brand of destroy-Trump journalism has been practiced non-stop for nearly four years by virtually the entire mainstream media.

Another recent example.  When the coronavirus outbreak hit the news in January, mainstream journalists routinely referred to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus” or the “Chinese coronavirus.” When they noticed Trump was using the same descriptions, and sensing a chance to cripple him politically, they abruptly stopped using those terms, and are now accusing him of being a xenophobic racist for calling the virus what they themselves called it until they sensed a chance to bleed him. Ten days after the first confirmed coronavirus case in this country, Trump took decisive action by restricting flights into the U.S. from China. Rather than applaud the decision, or merely question it, the mainstream media called him a xenophobic racist for that too.

Esteemed admiral slams Trump for complaining about biased media

Now retired, Admiral William McRaven became one of America’s most heralded military commanders for overseeing the SEAL Team Six raid that killed Osama bin Laden. As reported by the Washington Post, McRaven has harshly criticized President Trump for calling the media “the enemy of the American people.”

In opening the door for literalists to say he meant all news outlets, the words Trump used in his initial statement were not well chosen. He since has clarified the remark by saying that fake news is the enemy of the American people, which, as I’m sure Adm. McRaven would agree, it most certainly is, no matter which side propagates it.

Polls show media coverage of Trump is overwhelmingly negative.  But most of the scorched earth press he receives derives from politically slanted reporting by news organizations that loathe him and the party he represents. From the time he won the Republican nomination, mainstream media outlets have savaged him with slanted, anonymously-sourced reports later found to be totally false. To the best of my knowledge, none of those outlets ever apologized for having trafficked in fake news.

An attempt to justify slanted reporting was acknowledged in August 2016, when the New York Times openly abandoned its fairness standards in covering Trump, because, in its hyper-partisan opinion, he is “so abnormal and potentially dangerous” that he doesn’t deserve fair coverage. Thus given a green light by the nation’s leading newspaper of record, other mainstream outlets followed suit by abandoning their own fairness standards in favor of slanted coverage of Trump. How else to explain the 93% negative press he receives?

As the most insidious form of journalistic corruption, politically slanted reporting is known by another name: propaganda. In this day and time it’s also called fake news. Whatever name is used to describe it, slanted reporting is an enemy of the search for Truth, and therefore an enemy of the American people. It’s also an enemy of journalism, a once-respected profession that’s seen its reputation plummet as a direct result of its most prominent members having morphed themselves into willing mouthpieces for one of America’s major political parties.

In an article published on TheHill.com, opinion contributor John Solomon argues that the greatest threat to journalism today is the non-objectivity of many of its practitioners, journalists whose personal views cause them “to stray from the neutral, factual voice their teachers in journalism school insisted they practice.” That the mainstream media have veered sharply away from neutrality is a premise that cannot be intelligently challenged.

In an address to students and faculty of the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas-Austin, Adm. McRaven said that Trump calling the media the enemy of the American people was “perhaps the greatest threat to democracy” he’s ever seen. It’s a good thing he left himself some wiggle room by saying perhaps, because there’s an infinitely greater threat to the constitutional democracy he swore to protect and defend from all enemies, foreign and domestic. That clear and present danger is domestic in nature, and can be summed up in the following nightmare scenario:

A free nation cannot long survive if its press takes sides.

Stuck pigs squeal the loudest

It doesn’t take an esteemed admiral to see the truth in that. When the German press took sides in the 1930s, the German people witnessed firsthand their country’s loss of freedom, as did all others throughout history who suffered ruthless oppression meted out by single-party authoritarian regimes, the misdeeds of which were covered up or defended by a cheerleading press that took sides.

Protect Press Freedom (PPF) is a wolf in sheep’s clothing propaganda arm of the mainstream media. The organization’s website cites this Thomas Jefferson quote: “The only security of all is a free press.” That observation by America’s third president is 100% true, but a non-objective press is not a free press, it’s the polar opposite, an open gate to tyranny, a mortal threat to Liberty. PPF’s website also says this: “Free Press, Free People.” That too is 100% accurate, and so is this: “Cheerleading Press, Enslaved People.”

In a thinly veiled broadside against President Trump, PPF’s website makes this declaration: “The government is responsible for following the First Amendment and upholding our nation’s press freedom principles, but sometimes government officials use their power and platform to intimidate members of the media and chill reporting.”  Trump calling out the cheerleading mainstream media for its non-objective reporting doesn’t intimidate them, nor does it chill their reporting—his opinions have done nothing to change their transparently partisan behavior. Feigned outrage by mainstream “journalists” over being called out for their unprofessional bias is remindful of the saying that stuck pigs squeal the loudest.

EDITORS NOTE: This Canada Free Press column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

0 replies

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *