Mainstream news media does not run America
The mainstream news media is an industry driven by hypocrisy, power and greed, but it does not and should not be the force that defines America. It is the symbol of the American foundation of free speech, but in recent years has become a driving force behind political change. Instead of reporting the news, the mainstream news is creating the news, defining the news, and driving it in a direction desired by its corporate owners.
By Ray Hanania
It’s hard to talk about the “mainstream news media” because it is so nebulous and has no real form. It is diverse and stratified with many layers with varying degrees of influence on American society.
It is confusing, too, with some media tasked with recording events as they happen, objectively and with balance to all of the involved factors, sides and views — objective reporting. Some media analyzes the events, as presented by their colleagues who are reporters, and from their own personal perspectives and political bias — commentators, opinion columns and editorials.
In recent years, reporting and commenting have become one and the same. Journalists who are supposed to be presenting the facts as they happen fairly, objectively, completely and with non-partisan balance, have instead been driving the reporting with their own opinions, or reflecting the opinions of the corporate bosses who own their media.
Instead of reporting the news, most “reporters” are “spinning” the news to reflect their views, their personal agendas and their anger at politicians they don’t like.
It’s almost as if the news media has become its own political party, with it’s own agenda, deciding what is right and what is wrong and imposing that interpretation on the public, its readership.
Making it more confusing is that this doesn’t always happen. In many instances, reporters are fair, objective and professional in their writing, excluding their biases, their partisan beliefs and the agendas of their corporate owners. But in some instances, they are not fair, not objective and are so unprofessional it is disgustingly obvious. That latter instance is occurring in today’s political world where the media is driving the hate against President Donald Trump in collusion with Trump’s political foes, like Senator Chuck Schumer and former Senator Hillary Clinton, and his rivals like Republicans Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham.
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What the media should do is report the news and then shut up. They should allow the commentators on all sides to fairly analyze the facts. But you can’t fairly analyze facts when the facts are not presented fairly
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They do this with many other issues where partisan where political partisan lobbying is critical and corporate bias is important, such as coverage of the Middle East
No one elected the news media to represent a political faction or view. And yet the news media is playing politics with the news at their leisure, when it suits them. They not only skewer the reporting coverage of the “news” to reflect their beliefs, but they then reinforce that bias by providing a one-sided interpretation and partisan analysis of the biased news they report when it comes to the Trump Administration.
Since his election, President Trump has been in a constant war with much of the so-called mainstream news media.
The media has been outrageous in its disrespect to the Office of the President, and as such is also disrespectful to the American people themselves who voted and elected Trump as President.
The media has been defining what the issues are, marginalizing his political policies and his achievements while exaggerating controversies, provoking the President, his cabinet, his staff and the Trump administration as a whole, to respond. They then use those responses to add fuel to the biased reporting that they have created.
They have fueled the exaggerated assertions that President Trump conspired with a foreign government, Russia, to control the outcome of the November 2016 elections that Trump won. They have exaggerated his responses to the unproven opinionated assertions and used that to make their false claims look more real and acceptable to some segments of the public.
The mainstream news media picks and choses what to report so they exaggerate instances of racism and sexism when it harms Trump, and down plays the same when it hurts their allies in this political battle.
The mainstream news media has raised issues, not the legal system, that they assert the legal system should be pouncing on, such as assertions of ethical violations by Trump’s family and staff.
To strengthen this biased, distorted coverage, the mainstream news media is getting support from the television talkshow media. The media showcases those talking heads that support their claims, like Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert, and ignores those of media talking heads on the right who support Trump.
In response, the President and the President’s spokesman Sean Spicer has managed who they will take questions from, picking over the traditional White House press corp to allow more objective bloggers and media from outside of the White House media inner circle to ask questions at press conferences.
Trump refused to attend the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, a powerful attack against the mainstream news media’s power, and he has been cherry picking, correctly, interviews that he will do.
This week, Spicer announced that the White House will not always allow the broadcast media to cover his press briefings “live” or to record them.
The mainstream news media has responded by attacking Trump and Spicer even more.
Journalists that are supposed to be objective have become critics leading the attacks against Trump undermining the professionalism of the media organizations they represent, such as CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta who became a focus of the coverage of Spicer curtailing of broadcast media coverage.
What the media should do is report the news and then shut up. They should allow the commentators on all sides to fairly analyze the facts. But you can’t fairly analyze facts when the facts are not presented fairly.
What President Trump needs to do is to continue to push back against news media bias, assert his agenda, and distribute information about his policies speeches and news through any means possible, including directly through the White House itself.
Today, the American people do not need to be slaves to the bias of the mainstream American news media. They can go to the President’s White House Facebook Page or White House briefing pages to read the facts uncensored and use those facts to make up their own minds.
The more the news media becomes biased and unfair int heir reporting, the less relevant the news media is to the public.
Challenging the bias of the mainstream news media is one of the most important endeavors that President Trump and the White House can do to free the American people from ignorance, racism, hate and bias.
Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.
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