I have been a news junkie since my teenage years. I
simply never felt comfortable unless I had a grasp on what was happening in the
world around me. And for this, I relied on the mainstream media – newsprint, television
and, more recently, alternative media. But now, I find, the media are no longer
reliable. In fact, more and more, they strike me as downright deceptive.
I search the U.S. media in vain for news of the world. I
have been trying to follow events in Venezuela, for example, and in the Middle
East, Southeast Asia and North Korea. But now the mainstream media is all-Trump-all-the-time.
Trump hating, Trump impeachment, the Mueller Report, Attorney General Barr,
Trump’s taxes, Trump’s staff testifying before Congress, Trump-this and
Trump-that! And the truth of it is that it is almost entirely speculation, not
reporting.
The bias in the media has become so blatant, so bald
and transparent, that the commentators and even the reporters no longer try to
hide their contempt for the president and for their profession. Journalism, for
the most part, is no longer objective, it is obsessive; it is no longer
professional, it is overtly political. The facts have been sacrificed on the
bloody altar of political agenda, and it is we, the public who seek information
not indoctrination, who suffer.
Bias is everywhere now, and suffocatingly so, not only
in the words the journalists use, but in their choice of stories, choice of guests,
body language and facial expressions. Their disdain for the president, but
beyond that, for professionalism, is so obvious that it is simply not possible
to view them with any credibility at all. And so, I do not. The only news
source I trust now is NHK, the English-language Japanese news service. It is
there I go to get the headlines on U.S. news, and stories about all the other
underserved parts of the world.
Of course, it is no surprise that the poll rating of
the news media has now dropped to the level of that of Congress. And the reason
for this is simple: the mainstream media are behaving like children. Trump won
and Hillary didn’t, and they can’t forget or forgive the fact. Trump calls them
names, and, like third-graders, they hate him and want to hurt him. Trump’s
policies are working, and this drives them crazy in the same way that an ex-spouse’s
successful remarriage drives the former spouse crazy. They feel bullied,
scorned, vindictive and jealous. And they take it out not only on Trump, but on
the rest of us.
Now, I will say again as I often have on this blog: I
am not a Trump supporter. I could not vote for either candidate in 2016. But
this juvenile obsession with undoing Trump’s presidency, marginalizing him, destroying him as a person and as a political figure, is disgraceful. I am old
enough to remember Huntley and Brinkley, Walter Cronkite and even, vaguely,
Edward R. Murrow. In my recollection,
they could be depended on for a factual presentation of the news. But now,
gaggling puppets like Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow and Chris Cuomo, whose entire ethos
is the demeaning and destruction of Trump, are simply unendurable.
Which brings me to the cavalcade of Democratic candidates
for 2020. As they stumble over one another to prove who wishes more than the
others that the United States was like Sweden or Denmark, they make it all
the more likely that the Trump they so despise will be reelected. The current
mania for socialism, an economic system for the organization of humanity which
has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried, is a delusion bordering on psychosis. We have allowed ourselves to be driven 22 trillion dollars in
debt, and yet all these latter-day Engels can think of is more and more
government spending, more and more government control. Medicare for all, free
college for all, the Green New Deal! The more they hawk this pie-in-the-sky
nonsense, the more they urge independents into the Trump camp, which they would
resist if they had a reasonable alternative.
And that is not Joe Biden. I have paid attention to
him since his announcement, and I must say I am baffled. The man is so far
behind the times, so unabashedly archaic, so muddled, that I cannot see why
anyone would take him seriously. At 76, he is clearly showing his age. He slurs
his words, loses his train of thought, and makes gaffes that no one can dare to
overlook (China is not a threat!). Yet, according to the polls, he is the
Democratic front-runner; and the media, slavishly looking for an alternative to
Trump, continue to prop him up. This, of course, is the same media that created
Trump in the first place, and, realizing with horror the true nature of its
creation, has been trying desperately to destroy ever since.
And so, I have suppressed my lifelong appetite for the
news, since there is no honest news left to be had, and gone on a subsistence
diet. No longer able to stomach the vindictive tripe which passes itself off as journalism,
I now subsist on such crumbs as I can gather from the few news sources which I
still find credible. “Reliable sources:” in the news business these days, that
has, alas, become an oxymoron.
