When English statesman Edmund Burke referred to the journalists of his time as the “fourth estate,” it was a term of esteem. To be a member of the press was a high calling, a great responsibility, and an honor. Certainly, the press existed to report news but, maybe more importantly, they were called upon to keep those in power honest. But the news media of today has abdicated that position of respect. No longer are they the fourth estate; instead, they’ve become a fifth column.
The mainstream media has completely betrayed the trust of the American people. ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN aren’t even feigning objectivity anymore. Instead of being the guardians of a free nation, they’ve become nothing but agenda-driven shills for leftist ideology. They are propogandists worthy of comparison to Nazi Joseph Goebbels or Pravda when it was an arm of the Soviet Central Committee.
Hillary Clinton likes to blame her election loss on so-called fake news, those click-baiting non-stories that appear on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But fake news isn’t the real problem. People are only attracted to sham stories because they no longer trust the media to tell them the real stories. Not only are stories on mainstream news reports biased; they are often mistake-ridden.
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In the past few years, there are dozens upon dozens of examples of factual mistakes in the mainstream media. CNN has had to issue multiple corrections on their ongoing Trump-Russia collusion reporting. ABC’s Brian Ross was suspended for mistakenly reporting that President Trump ordered former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to make contact with the Russian authorities.
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
So, not only are the mainstream media biased, they’re also incompetent. Headlines and scandalous snippets that the news shows can flash on chyrons trump facts, and they are what is important to the mainstream media. They eschew fact checking in favor of sensational headlines. They create salacious news narratives, meant not to inform but to sell advertising.
From March 7 to April 30 of this year, CNN interviewed Michael Avenatti — the attorney representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Trump — an astounding 59 times, more than once per day. Anderson Cooper alone interviewed Avenatti 19 times during that span. Avenatti continues to be CNN’s go-to-guy whenever an anchor or a host wishes to be salacious in lieu of reporting actual news. And it’s not just CNN. The Media Research Center reports that the former porn star’s lawyer has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the Fox News Channel 147 times between March 7 and May 15.
President Trump’s alleged consensual relationship with Daniels is more than 11 years in the past. Yet it seems that this is the most important news story since the Kennedy assassination or the September 11 attacks. Keep in mind that this is the same media that basically ignored Bill Clinton’s sexual abuse of an intern in the Oval Office and the myriad accusations of rape made against him.
The American people seem to be catching on to the fact that the mainstream news can no longer be trusted. A 2017 Gallup/Knight Poll on media trust showed that only 44 percent of respondents thought they could name one objective news source. And 65 percent believed that bias in the reporting of news is a major problem. Nearly 60 percent don’t believe the media does enough investigative reporting to uncover certain facts.
And the MSM has no one to blame but themselves for those poll numbers. They have become not only biased, but lazy. Journalism is a tough business. Much too tough for this current crop of slothful leftists parading as reporters. Living in an echo chamber of their own creation, they have decided that their personalities are more important than the news they pretend to report.
JFK’s FCC Chief Newton Minow famously described television as a “vast wasteland.” True enough back in 1960. But today, it’s worse than that, especially the televised news media. Today, the vast wasteland has become a reeking sewer. And it’s not getting better any time soon.
Photo: Clipart.com
