It will never cease to amaze me how clueless members of the activist media have become. Sometimes they say things that make me wonder if they are braindead or if they think their audience is braindead. That’s where Politico comes in.
John Harris, one of the outlet’s founding members, wrote a rather interesting piece acknowledging how the media lost so much credibility during the Trump years. In the article, he makes the dubious claim that journalists have, and still are, the “good guys.”
You can take a quick pause until you are done laughing.
The article discusses the state of contemporary journalism in the aftermath of the Trump administration. While journalists portrayed themselves as soldiers fighting for the greater good, the reality is that the defining ethos of contemporary journalism is insecurity, which is reflected in everything from the business models of news organizations to the public personas and career arcs of reporters and editors.
Harris also notes the contradictory relationship between the press and the Orange Man What Is Bad™, as he was good for business, and critical coverage often turned into another rallying cry for his supporters. Additionally, many media innovations have made journalists more insular and self-involved in their attention, unlike the illusory detachment from political and corporate power that was prioritized in the past.
The author also highlights the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where divergent strands of journalistic psychology are put in sharp relief. The heart of the weekend is all manner of socializing and scene-making, and while the contradictions are funny and essentially harmless, according to Harris, it’s different when those contradictions are on full display during the rest of the year.
The article ends by emphasizing the need for reporters to try harder to stay on the side of the “good guys,” despite having been in a compromised state after the Trump years.
Of course, all of this is a load of bovine excrement. The media has been compromised for decades. There are several examples of the press actively deceiving the public into believing whatever false narrative they are peddling at a given moment.
Remember the case of Nick Sandmann and the Covington Kids? The story became national news in 2019 when a video surfaced showing an alleged confrontation between Sandmann, a high school student from Kentucky, and a Native American activist in Washington D.C. The video went viral, and Sandmann was initially portrayed as the aggressor in the situation. Outlets like CNN, the Washington Post, and other leftist propaganda mills used the altercation to generate outrage over white supremacy because of a kid wearing a red hat and a smirk.
However, a longer video clip and additional context later revealed that the situation was much more complicated than it appeared in the initial footage. Sandmann was part of a group of students from a Catholic high school who were in D.C. for a March for Life rally, and they were confronted by a group of Black Hebrew Israelites before the encounter with the Native American activist. The student and his family received significant backlash and even death threats as a result of the initial coverage, but they later sued several news organizations for defamation and reached settlements with some of them.
To put it simply, the establishment media was willing to falsely smear a bunch of kids because it sought to score some cheap political points. Doesn’t really sound like they were the “good guys” in this instance, does it?
But wait, there’s more!
Remember when a bunch of white nationalist morons staged a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in the death of a left-wing counterprotester? It wasn’t enough for the media to make it appear as if these loons somehow represented all conservatives. They even created an entire hoax out of it involving their favorite boogeyman, Donald J. Trump. CNN and other outlets deceptively edited footage of the president’s press conference to make it appear as if he called Nazis “fine people.”
In reality, Trump specifically condemned the neo-Nazis and white supremacists, calling them “criminals and thugs,” while also acknowledging that there were people present who were simply there to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. The media’s misrepresentation of Trump’s remarks further fueled the already heated political discourse and further deepened the polarization between different groups in the United States, which was precisely what the left-wing media establishment was hoping for.
But let’s go back further, shall we?
Remember how the George W. Bush administration deceived the public into supporting the Iraq war? Well, the government didn’t work alone in this endeavor.
The media was crucial in shaping public opinion about the Iraq war. In the lead-up to the conflict, many news outlets, including prominent ones like The New York Times and CNN, uncritically reported the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda. They amplified the administration’s fear-mongering and ignored dissenting voices from experts and activists who warned of the disastrous consequences of war.
Moreover, many news networks failed to ask tough questions and instead acted as stenographers for the government’s propaganda. The result was a media-driven narrative that falsely portrayed the Iraq war as a necessary and justifiable response to the 9/11 attacks. The media’s role in deceiving the American public into supporting the war underscores the need for a free and independent press that is willing to hold those in power accountable and seek the truth.
These are only a tiny sampling of the many lies and false narratives that have come out of the activist media. If one were to look even deeper, one would see the truth: Despite what folks like Harris would like us to believe, the media establishment was never the “good guys.”