If The
Media Were Serious About A War With Trump...
This is not a good time to be a reporter.
Once upon a time there used to be a modicum of respect for the
journalist. They had a job to do and a
story to cover, and they were supposed to cover it with an unbiased eye, no
matter what that story was. It was their
job to expose the truth. Or so the story
goes.
And, yeah, being a reporter isn’t easy in other nations. Third world dictators and terrorists have
journalists killed simply for asking a question. But this is America we’re talking about! Freedom of the press; one of the first five
freedoms in the First Amendment! We may
not like the coverage, but we don’t mess with the media, because we’re supposed
to be better than that!
But now we aren’t better than that.
Now we are acting like a third-world junta. That goes all the way to the top, and to the
man with the fake Jersey tan and the fake coiffed hair and the narcissistic
personality disorder that would make Narcissus humble who is now the President
of the United States.
President Donald Trump probably doesn’t “hate” the media, per se. I’m sure that he’d say that he has “enormous
support” for them, “the highest, without a doubt, more than anyone else, bigly.” But I’m also sure that he doesn’t often like
what they have to say about him, especially when what he says is either false
or an over-exaggeration or simply bad.
When they’re kissing his ass, he loves them. But when they’re exposing him to be an ass,
then they’re “the enemy”.
And it’s not like the media has given a pass to any of his predecessors,
despite the con and neo-con lies. The
media covered Obama’s failure to help the American people, his inability to get
anything meaningful passed in a GOP-ruled Congress, and continually brought up the
so-called “Birther” conspiracy as if it was something that would actually
remove him from office. It played no
favorites with George W. Bush for his nearly eight years of fearmongering for
warmongering. And do you really think
that the media gave Bill Clinton a pass during his eight years in office? From Whitewater to “Travelgate” to Monica Lewinsky,
Bill Clinton was stained with more scandals than Ms. Lewinsky’s blue dress.
So what makes Trump think that he should deserve anything different from
the same media that created him? Because
he won the election? Big deal! Over forty men have done that before him! There’s nothing special about that.
Nevertheless, Trump’s election and subsequent inauguration has made it
open season on reporters. He’s shut
out access to the media for certain public events, and condemned them on
camera and especially through is Twitter account. Trump’s favorite condemnation of any media
that does not kiss his oversized ass is “fake news”. Anything bad about him is “fake news”. The truth is “fake news”. His White House Press Secretary is an abusive
hack that seems to treat the media like a bad teacher to a room full of kindergarteners. The loudest complaint made about him when he’s
characterized on Saturday Night Live is not the accuracy of the portrayal, or
the exaggerated abuse, but the fact that he’s being parodied by a woman!
And it’s not just the White House being openly hostile towards the media. A recently-elected member of Congress pled
guilty to physically assaulting a reporter just the day before his election for
the supposed “crime” of asking a question.
That’s hostile! That’s just a
bullet away from being third-world-junta hostile! The United States Senate, under the regime of
the slack-jawed turtle-dick Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell, imposed
new restrictions on the media filming interviews in the hallways of
Congress. You know, the building we all
paid for with our taxes.
Bully much, Bitch?
So my thought isn’t why the GOP is doing this, because we all know why
they are. They’re simply letting their
natural fascism be exposed like a drunk celebutant with no panties. No shame, no morals, and no stopping them from
flashing it for the world to see.
What surprises me is that the media is playing this like a straight-man
in a slapstick comedy. They’re eagerly
tripping on the banana peel, getting slapped upside the head with the ladder
and the wooden plank, and getting pie in the face like it was simply another
day that ends in “Y”.
I can understand why they’re keeping cool about it. They’re playing the victims because it
exposes the GOP as the clear villains in this country. They have a job to do and if the GOP are not
letting them do it, then they can’t be accused of being complicit in the Cult
of Trump or coming up short in challenging them. Hey, they tried. It’s the GOP that are behaving like the
third-world junta thugs that they are.
But that still made me wonder what the media would do if they took Trump’s
war with them seriously. What if they
showed Trump what a real media bias was like?
Well, first of all, you’d find a lot of Washington reporters out of work,
because there would be almost no reporters in the White House and Congress as
long as the GOP and Trump are there.
Sure there would be “some reporters” there. Fox News, NewsMax, Breitbart, InfoWars,
Christian News Broadcasting... all the propaganda mills would be there, but
they’d be the only ones.
Hack Sean Spicer wouldn’t have to be hostile to the reporters in the
White House briefing room, because there wouldn’t be enough people for him to
have a daily briefing. Hell, they’ve
already been talking about doing away with it, as if that was a
punishment. A true “media war” would
make that idea real. And, really, I
think it’s long overdue.
They’d still be talking about Trump’s Twitter-Twit postings, but that would
really be all they’d be talking about with him.
There would be no press conferences.
No public events covered. No rally
coverage. No sound-bytes. No Easter Egg Roll coverage. No Christmas Tree lighting ceremonies. No exclusive interviews outside of those
propaganda mills that kiss his ass. Trump
would have to start a war, or have a 9/11-style terrorist attack, or have the
economy completely fail before a truly hostile media would give him any kind of
air-time.
And it wouldn’t just be Trump that the media would truly freeze out if
they were serious about a “media war”. Trump’s
surrogates would also have a problem getting attention. And I’m not just talking about the flakey
ones like Kellyanne Conaway. Pretty much
anyone that would represent the White House or the GOP-controlled Congress
would be barred from the discussion panels outside of those propaganda mills. No “White House spokesperson”, no
representative to cover what the White House thinks of a certain story,
especially when it’s a subject that affects Trump. Even the conservative columnists like Pat
Buchannan and George Will would be shut out.
The Sunday Morning news shows would be pretty one-sided without those
White House surrogates and defenders.
Oh, and if you cons and neo-cons and Trumpets think that the media is “unfair”
to Trump now, you would be sickened by what the media would be like if they
really gave as good as they have been getting from you cultists! Let’s start with continual references to
Trump’s presidency as being illegitimate.
Let’s have them use actual references to regimes and juntas in their
news stories, not just in the editorial section or in Internet columns like my
own. And to top it off, let’s throw in
discussions about how to quickly remove Trump and company from Washington as
part of their regular news stories, not just in their editorials.
If you think the media is biased now, then you haven’t seen what bias is
really like.
Look at how the media handles things like strip clubs and the Libertarian
Party. The former is treated like evil
incarnate, and the latter is treated like they cannot win no matter what. And, again, we’re talking about normal news stories,
not editorials. So you cons and neo-cons
and Trumpets really have no reason to bitch about how your cult leader is being
“treated” yet.
Let’s get brutally honest here... the members of the media have been
showing a remarkable amount of control when it comes to the abusive treatment
they’re getting at the hands of Trump and the GOP, and we should be grateful
for that. There is much that a truly
abusive media can do to cause damage, and we’ve been witness to that now more
than at any other time in at least the past fifty years.
No, we should be more than just grateful.
We should be ashamed. We should
be ashamed at how we treat a vital part of the First Amendment. We’re supposed to be better than this! This is the United States of America we are
talking about, not the One State of Trump, Incorporated!
We’ve seen what happens when the media is bullied into being nothing more
than a propaganda mill for despots and thugs.
If we want to really be true to our continual promise that we wouldn’t “let
that happen here”, then we have to make sure that the means are there to warn
and inform us. That’s the true role of journalism. That’s what separates the legitimate media
from being another propaganda mill. That’s
why freedom of the press is one of the key protections in the First
Amendment. And if we can’t see that, if
we can’t respect the legitimate media even when we don’t like what they are
doing, then we have no right calling ourselves “Americans”.
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