July 25, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Donald Trump’s decision to brawl with the media in a fashion unprecedented in modern American history has resulted in a distinct divide in the conservative movement. Some figures, such as the National Review’s David French and The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, accurately point out that Trump’s infantile name-calling is unpresidential and rather embarrassing. Others, as Shapiro admitted in a recent column, have become so fed up with the media’s overt bias and brazen contempt for those who fall outside of the current strains of progressive thought that they revel in Trump’s willingness to “fight back.”
I tend to agree with French and Shapiro, although with caveats. I think there is a fundamental difference between “freedom of the press” and politicians calmly standing by while media opponents torch their careers, mock their intelligence, and smear their reputations. George W. Bush’s refusal to respond to eight long years of being called stupid (and far worse) is a testament to his character and his respect for the dignity of the office, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who would have thoroughly enjoyed a scathing response every now and again. But there’s another story that’s being missed here: The reasons that those on the right side of the spectrum don’t care that Trump is attacking the media, regardless of how ridiculous it all sometimes seems.
The executives at CNN might find it bewildering that millions of Americans revel in the president referring to them as “fake news” and tweeting memes about them, but that’s because they don’t realize that a sizeable percentage of the American population sees the media as the opposition. Even those who don’t think Trump should be taking time out from, you know, being president to go after some snarky journalist don’t really care that the media is being attacked because most of them think the media has had it coming for a long time. Let me explain with a few examples:
-
Pro-lifers rarely get fair coverage from the media. When pro-life activists release information about horrific goings-on within the abortion industry, the media does its best to debunk the story, destroy the reputations of those who uncovered the story, or ignore the story entirely. When David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress revealed that many Planned Parenthood employees were involved in cash-for-baby-parts schemes, for example, the media did its utmost to present the videos as “deceptively edited” or “widely discredited” and virtually salivated with glee when bought-and-paid-for prosecutors pressed charges against the investigators. Not only that, but the media regularly refers to pro-lifers as “anti-abortion” and abortion activists by their preferred moniker, “pro-choice.” I don’t object to the term “anti-abortion,” but it is indicative of where the media bias lies.
-
The media is willing to go to great lengths to avoid covering stories that could potentially shed a negative light on secular sacred cows. The abortion industry is one of these — it took a massive Twitter-shaming campaign to get the media to give even perfunctory coverage to the “Abortion Trial of the Century” in Philadelphia, where Dr. Kermit Gosnell was on trial for snipping the spinal cords of wriggling children in live-birth abortions, dismembering viable full-term babies in the womb, and displaying severed limbs as trophies in jars in his office. The story was grotesque, sensational, and shocking — all elements which usually draw journalists in like flies. Not this time, though — and a few journalists were honest enough to admit that they were afraid the trial would shed a negative light on the abortion industry.
-
The media often does the same for progressive politicians, running cover for them as long as humanly possible. Journalist Michael Isikoff wrote an entire book — Uncovering Clinton — explaining how many stories on Bill Clinton got spiked during his tenure at Newsweek due to fears that negative stories (one of which included credible rape allegations) could lead to Clinton’s impeachment. If the media pursued scandals perpetrated by progressive politicians with the same tenacity they pursue discrediting information about conservative ones, they would have collected a lot more scalps by now.
-
Shortly after the Republican primaries, the media abandoned any pretence of neutrality and threw their full weight behind Hillary Clinton, doing everything in their power to ensure that Donald Trump lost the presidential election. This is not to say that Trump did not provide a lot of rich material in this regard — I detailed many of his shortcomings in my own columns. This is simply to point out that virtually nobody who supports Trump actually believes anything the media has to say about him, even when the media has an ironclad case and meticulously researched journalism. They gave up their right to be believed when they publicly chose a team, and now they’re paying for it.
-
The media has completely bought into the current gender ideology, and is pushing it for all they’re worth. TIME Magazine’s cover story “The Transgender Tipping Point” was considered by many trans activists to be a tipping point in and of itself—the cover of TIME, after all, has always been considered prestigious. More recently, their cover story was “Beyond He and She,” a nauseating celebration of gender fluidity, welcomed our new morally-bewildered society with open arms. To watch once solemn and respected news hosts stumbling over new genders and new gender pronouns is, quite simply, sad and depressing.
-
The media’s cheerleading for what they call “non-traditional families” or “emerging sexualities” has an even uglier side. Those who haven’t yet been sufficiently re-educated—the men and women who were once considered ordinary and their views boring — have discovered overnight that the media complex views their lack of enlightenment with the utmost contempt. Homophobes, transphobes, bigots, throwbacks — the derision with which the media treats those subscribing to institutions and realities that have held Western Civilization together for hundreds of years often leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of those on the receiving end of it. If the media has lost respect, it is in large part because they decided some time ago to stop trying to understand those they mock.
-
Only 7 percent of journalists are Republicans, and it shows. Perhaps only academia and Hollywood are so homogenous in their political views, and together they dwell in a nearly airtight bubble containing a feedback loop of confirmation and self-congratulation. Just take a look, for example, at how many former Clinton staffers and Democratic operatives later take jobs in the media. It’s nearly impossible to expect conservative politicians — who most members of the media genuinely despise — to treat a political party they see as a threat to the welfare of the nation with any measure of fairness.
-
The media is very, very lazy. As a pro-life activist, I always find it interesting that even when overt pro-abortion bias isn’t present, journalists often just get very basic facts wrong that they obviously never bothered to look up or double-check. CNN’s current battle with President Donald Trump has been exacerbated by the fact that the journalists keep on making very stupid mistakes and having to issue retractions, lending credibility to the accusations that they are “fake news.” Part of this is the 24-7 news cycle and pressure to provide material on the fly rather than working extensively on stories and committing resources and researchers to them, but it’s also true that the media simply doesn’t bother to do the groundwork necessary to accurately portray what is happening on the ground.
-
The media has become pornified. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed that “stories” on media outlets ranging from The Independent to The Daily Caller to CNN and FOX News now regularly include sex tips that could once only be found in the pages of soft-core porn mags like Cosmopolitan. Not only that, but even so-called conservative outlets often publish stories about the MINDBLOWING pictures of this or that celebrity sporting new swimwear. Tips for oral sex, anal sex, urgent calls for daily masturbation — articles of this sort can regularly be found in publications that were once devoted to actually informing the public on serious issues.
-
The media simply doubles down when they screw up. After Trump’s election, there was a brief moment of painful self-reflection, where journalists promised to venture out into the Mordor of flyover country and talk to the “other” Americans that apparently outnumbered them. Many of them even admitted that their elitist smugness may have contributed to the bubble that had Hillary Clinton and the rest of the progressives believing, right up until the last moment, that Donald Trump would go down in flames. But the moment passed swiftly, the media joined The Resistance, and self-reflection has given way to righteous indignation. The media failed miserably in nearly every prediction they made, and yet they man their shows and their columns as if such a catastrophic failure should remain irrelevant to their credibility.
In short, Trump supporters and many others on the right side of the political spectrum don’t see the media as an essential part of a healthy democracy. They see the media as a PAC running cover for the Democrats, pushing progressive ideology, and demonizing those who can’t keep up with the lightning-fast pace of the ever-moving Sexual Revolution. They don’t expect the media to represent their interests, accurately tell their stories, or understand their motives. Thus, when a political figure emerges and publicly says what many of them having been saying for years — that Buzzfeed is a “failing pile of garbage,” for example, they think it’s hilarious. And even if they don’t, and even if they wish Trump hadn’t said it, they certainly can’t conjure up the slightest inkling of sympathy for a group of smug elitists that have viewed them with contempt for several decades.
