https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjyxZ7HO7aY
The link to the YouTube video posted here is not an endorsement of Donald Trump for president. (I’m not a fan.) It is not a condemnation of the paid left-wingers who disrupt his rallies. (I’m not a fan.) It’s not a reaction to the grubby level of political dialogue nowadays. (I’m not a fan.)
No, I’m posting this man’s comments because the American press has become an embarrassment.
The link to the YouTube video posted here is not an endorsement of Donald Trump for president. (I’m not a fan.) It is not a condemnation of the paid left-wingers who disrupt his rallies. (I’m not a fan.) It’s not a reaction to the grubby level of political dialogue nowadays. (I’m not a fan.)
No, I’m posting this man’s comments because the American press has become an embarrassment.
Here is an ordinary American citizen who came away from a Donald Trump political rally with a completely different view of that event than those reported by the press.
Most of our reporters are not out-and-out liars. Many of them even like to think of themselves as “fair-minded.” Because of their backgrounds and their beliefs, however, they slant the news. They see events through a prism created by their culture and education.
Many of these people attended major universities, where most of them majored either in journalism or in the liberal arts. Most of them had their opinions shaped by teachers professing progressive politics and in some cases, Marxism.
On graduation, these same people went to work in newsrooms where the overwhelming majority of their colleagues had attended similar institutions and shared similar ideas. Their friends outside of journalism believed these ideas as well.
Like the rest of us, these men and women are prejudiced. But because of their education, their colleagues, and their friends, they are unaware of their prejudices. To them, their prejudices regarding politics, culture, and religion are not prejudices at all. Their prejudices constitute the truth, the starting point for evaluating the world around them.
Hence, the bias in the mainstream media today.
One expects such bias in certain online sites and blogs. When readers visit Matt Walsh’s blog, for example, they know they will read the opinions of a Catholic conservative. When they peruse maggiesfarm.com, they know the editors are feisty New England libertarians. When they rummage through Salon or Slate, they expect the progressivism of most of the authors.
News organizations should hold themselves to a higher standard.
Reporters should give us the who, what, where, when, and why of the news. They should try to do so as objectively and thoroughly as possible in the medium in which they operate.
In our day, however, reporters and news broadcasters bring their bias into their work, a bias to which they are oblivious. They regard themselves as high-minded and tolerant, and unwittingly see themselves as missionaries among savages, an elite out to educate the great unwashed of “fly-over country”. Consequently, they see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and then report it as news.
Not only that, but because of their education, many journalists are ignorant. Many took journalism and writing courses, which enhanced their reportorial skills, but few acquired similar knowledge in subjects like economics, history, or the sciences. Read a story of the horrendous rate of shootings and murder in Chicago, for example, and note that few of the accounts tells us of Chicago’s strict gun laws or its history of control by the Democratic party for the last eighty years.
Sometimes this ignorance produces laughter. Recently Time Magazine included Evelyn Waugh in its list of top 100 female authors. I cherish the works of Evelyn Waugh, one of the great authors of the twentieth century, but I also know that Evelyn Waugh was a man. (Waugh himself, a curmudgeon extraordinaire, would have roared at this mistake).
This is an inconsequential error, but there are greater ones. For example: Many reporters and broadcasters attack Donald Trump for wanting to build a wall on our Mexican border. Some reporters have put forth the argument that as president Trump can’t decide by himself to build a wall. That may or may not be true, but the president, whoever he or she is, doesn’t have to decide anything. Congress approved and funded the wall ten years ago. That wall has never been finished.
In addition to their blindness and ignorance, many reporters are lazy. Instead of covering a story, they simply do what other bloggers and I do. They go online, read a few articles, and then write up their story. Such practices typically perpetuate those falsehoods in which the Internet abounds.
For the last fifteen years or so, I have written book reviews for a weekly, the Smoky Mountain News. I would guess that most of the staff lean toward the liberal side of politics. Yet I am proud to write for this paper because the editor is fair-minded and the reporters dig into local events. Those reporters ask tough questions and write articles that cite real evidence rather than opinions. They may get certain things wrong, but those mistakes derive from the harried pace of their workday rather than from blind prejudice.
Few people trust the media these days. As we watch the way the mainstream press approaches Donald Trump (“Adolph Hitler”), Ted Cruz (a humorless fascist), Hilary Clinton (give her a pass), and Bernie Sanders (grandfather figure), we realize why that distrust runs so deep. Bernie Sanders supporters, for example, have complained with good reason that the press has picked Clinton as its presidential candidate, giving her far greater coverage than they have given Sanders. Even though much of the press coverage of Trump is negative, the same situation holds true for the Republican race.
That police officer in Tucson went in person in search of some facts. What he found convinced him that what he read of such events in papers and what he saw on television was biased and skewed.
The rest of us need to follow his example. We can no longer trust our press. Whether the issue is climate change, Muslim immigration, Hilary Clinton’s emails, or Donald Trump’s treatment of women, we must root around online rather than buying wholesale television news or articles in our daily papers. And when we do that research, we must look at a variety of sites rather than limiting ourselves to those whose ideology appeals to us.
More than at any time in history, we have the ability to dig out the truth for ourselves. Let’s do it.
Most of our reporters are not out-and-out liars. Many of them even like to think of themselves as “fair-minded.” Because of their backgrounds and their beliefs, however, they slant the news. They see events through a prism created by their culture and education.
Many of these people attended major universities, where most of them majored either in journalism or in the liberal arts. Most of them had their opinions shaped by teachers professing progressive politics and in some cases, Marxism.
On graduation, these same people went to work in newsrooms where the overwhelming majority of their colleagues had attended similar institutions and shared similar ideas. Their friends outside of journalism believed these ideas as well.
Like the rest of us, these men and women are prejudiced. But because of their education, their colleagues, and their friends, they are unaware of their prejudices. To them, their prejudices regarding politics, culture, and religion are not prejudices at all. Their prejudices constitute the truth, the starting point for evaluating the world around them.
Hence, the bias in the mainstream media today.
One expects such bias in certain online sites and blogs. When readers visit Matt Walsh’s blog, for example, they know they will read the opinions of a Catholic conservative. When they peruse maggiesfarm.com, they know the editors are feisty New England libertarians. When they rummage through Salon or Slate, they expect the progressivism of most of the authors.
News organizations should hold themselves to a higher standard.
Reporters should give us the who, what, where, when, and why of the news. They should try to do so as objectively and thoroughly as possible in the medium in which they operate.
In our day, however, reporters and news broadcasters bring their bias into their work, a bias to which they are oblivious. They regard themselves as high-minded and tolerant, and unwittingly see themselves as missionaries among savages, an elite out to educate the great unwashed of “fly-over country”. Consequently, they see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear, and then report it as news.
Not only that, but because of their education, many journalists are ignorant. Many took journalism and writing courses, which enhanced their reportorial skills, but few acquired similar knowledge in subjects like economics, history, or the sciences. Read a story of the horrendous rate of shootings and murder in Chicago, for example, and note that few of the accounts tells us of Chicago’s strict gun laws or its history of control by the Democratic party for the last eighty years.
Sometimes this ignorance produces laughter. Recently Time Magazine included Evelyn Waugh in its list of top 100 female authors. I cherish the works of Evelyn Waugh, one of the great authors of the twentieth century, but I also know that Evelyn Waugh was a man. (Waugh himself, a curmudgeon extraordinaire, would have roared at this mistake).
This is an inconsequential error, but there are greater ones. For example: Many reporters and broadcasters attack Donald Trump for wanting to build a wall on our Mexican border. Some reporters have put forth the argument that as president Trump can’t decide by himself to build a wall. That may or may not be true, but the president, whoever he or she is, doesn’t have to decide anything. Congress approved and funded the wall ten years ago. That wall has never been finished.
In addition to their blindness and ignorance, many reporters are lazy. Instead of covering a story, they simply do what other bloggers and I do. They go online, read a few articles, and then write up their story. Such practices typically perpetuate those falsehoods in which the Internet abounds.
For the last fifteen years or so, I have written book reviews for a weekly, the Smoky Mountain News. I would guess that most of the staff lean toward the liberal side of politics. Yet I am proud to write for this paper because the editor is fair-minded and the reporters dig into local events. Those reporters ask tough questions and write articles that cite real evidence rather than opinions. They may get certain things wrong, but those mistakes derive from the harried pace of their workday rather than from blind prejudice.
Few people trust the media these days. As we watch the way the mainstream press approaches Donald Trump (“Adolph Hitler”), Ted Cruz (a humorless fascist), Hilary Clinton (give her a pass), and Bernie Sanders (grandfather figure), we realize why that distrust runs so deep. Bernie Sanders supporters, for example, have complained with good reason that the press has picked Clinton as its presidential candidate, giving her far greater coverage than they have given Sanders. Even though much of the press coverage of Trump is negative, the same situation holds true for the Republican race.
That police officer in Tucson went in person in search of some facts. What he found convinced him that what he read of such events in papers and what he saw on television was biased and skewed.
The rest of us need to follow his example. We can no longer trust our press. Whether the issue is climate change, Muslim immigration, Hilary Clinton’s emails, or Donald Trump’s treatment of women, we must root around online rather than buying wholesale television news or articles in our daily papers. And when we do that research, we must look at a variety of sites rather than limiting ourselves to those whose ideology appeals to us.
More than at any time in history, we have the ability to dig out the truth for ourselves. Let’s do it.