The Media As Victim

A significant majority of all members of the national main stream media took their masks off after the upset election of Donald Trump. It wouldn't be so bad if they were simply biased and partisan—they're surely that. But they also reject the basic tenets of their supposed profession—selectively reporting or ignoring stories based on their impact to the prevailing progressive narrative, omitting context and crucial facts that might help people better understand a story, and making "mistakes" in reporting (with resultant retractions) that always seem to benefit Democrats and hurt the GOP. As a consequence they are sometimes the purveyors of "fake news." They are also extremely thin-skinned.

Let me explain.

Over the past three or four decades, the main stream media became an extension of the Democratic party, attacking every GOP president and every GOP presidential candidate during election years. Often dishonestly. But in those days, the people who were attacked simply turned the other cheek—they were gentlemen and women and never punched back. That allowed the media to become bullies—they thought they could deliver their bias with impunity—that no one would notice and certainly, that no national politician would dare call them on it.

Boy, has that changed.

Donald Trump has decided to fight back—hard. He demonizes the media, He points out their errors publicly, notes their bias with reference to specific reporters, and has suggested that they are "the enemy of the American people." Wow ... that hit a nerve.

The usual cast of trained hamsters were apoplectic. Proponents of an ideology that sees far too many groups as "victims," they decided to become victims themselves. They argued that any demonization of the media "was a threat to democracy" and a weapon employed only by nazis or fascists. They called Trump's attacks "dehumanizing." After all, they were the important forth estate—a group that was supposed to keep dishonest politicians in check, reign in the excesses of government, investigate scandals when they arose, and inform the people. Over the past decade, far too many "journalists" have done none of those things—so many, in fact, that the few true professionals are notable exceptions to the norm.

Every day, important stories (that conflict with the prevailing Democrat narrative) go un- or under-reported; every week, breaking news that validates the existence of government scandals is ignored or buried on figurative page 37; every month the main stream media becomes less and less objective and more and more partisan. And as they do those things, they become a threat—not to all Americans, but to those that still believe that the media delivers objective, honest reporting. They become a threat because they enable corruption by failing to investigate it, they encourage dishonesty on one side of the aisle by refusing to identify it, they warp the notion of "objectivity" by thinking they deliver it, and then they whine about attacks on their integrity when they have no integrity to defend.

Yeah, Trump is a brute when he calls out the media. Maybe he's callous when he ridicules their objectivity, and maybe he's hyperbolic when he calls them a "threat." But maybe, based on a decade or more of irresponsible actions, that's exactly what the media deserves.