Why Both the Left and Right are Wrong About the Media
President Trump recently referred to the media as the “enemy of the American people,” sparking a debate between both left and right wing political pundits. Unfortunately, both these sides to be ignoring the topic at hand: Is the main stream media really out to deceive the American public?
From the announcement of his presidential candidacy President Trump was the anti-establishment choice. Watching him speak it’s almost as if he didn’t know this at the time, seeming almost naïve to the fact until he was nominated at the Republican National Convention. Once he came to this realization, like any populist candidate, he took the bait and ran with it. When Hillary stated she lost in part due to “fake news” he learned that many Americans distrusted the media. Trump took Clinton’s words and built his own brand with them, defining “the establishment” as the left-wing mainstream media and now equates them to “fake news” and corruption.
This brings us back to the question: Is the main stream media really out to deceive the American public? The answer to this isn’t simple, it’s both true and untrue at the same time. The issue with the mainstream media is the fact that they are lazy and motivated purely by profit not accuracy. Why wait for the details in a story to emerge and lose potential earnings when you push a possibly false story and reap the benefits. The media is held unaccountable for their actions, so when they get some very wrong there are no repercussions. As Thomas Paine once famously said,” A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”
The standard operating procedure for the mainstream media (in news) has been to report on something as soon as it is said or done. The problem with the Trump Administration is that the President speaks in such a strange way that we have no idea what he means until Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, or the President himself actually clarifies his statements. So to report on what the President says when he says it doesn’t really make any sense and appears to spread a false narrative.
Another thing that the President has brought up to back his point of the media being the “enemy of the American people” is that the media is in constant collusion with the left. He often says that the media is influenced by special interest groups in the same way that Capitol Hill is. Though I will draw no conclusion on this issue in this post, the evidence supporting the President’s claims are very strong. Specifically, the DNC leaks posted on Wikileaks show CNN contributor and then chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Donna Brazile, giving questions to the Clinton Campaign before a debate. Furthermore, there’s been seemingly endless examples of false and misleading headlines belittling Trump about every issue in his platform while the media seemingly dismiss any Democratic wrongdoings.
With all of that being explored, do I think the mainstream media is the enemy of the American people as the President says? No, I do not. I do however, think the mainstream media is deeply flawed and must be fixed. Any special interest groups running these giant media corporations need to be expelled and the control of the press must be returned to the people. We as a society need to think for ourselves. We need to start thinking outside the box. This is 2017, our choices for news sources are not limited to CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, WSJ et al. There are thousands of websites on the internet where we can get news from. There’s sites like Reason, Rare and the Daily Caller. We are not limited to what we once were before the internet and we need to realize that.
If you truly believe the media is out to get the President, then I think it’s time you stop listening to them.
