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Wednesday, December 4, 2024 - 01:47 PM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

President Trump has called newspapers “enemies of the people.” That assertion is part of his also calling media in general “fake news.” An analysis by Harvard of media stories found that in the last 18 months, 93% of the stories were negative toward the President. It is understandable, then, that the President feels newspapers are his enemies, if not also enemies of the people. CNN, for example, has clearly earned the titles of ‘fake news’ and ‘enemies of the people.’ CNN’s daily stream of negative stories about the POTUS make it clear they no longer aspire to be a news outlet. CNN’s animus toward the President is its organizing principle, everything that is said and done by that network is in service to its hatred for the President. Jim Acosta, CNN’s White House reporter, is not acting out on his own; his childish antics are fully supported by his employers. It would improve the daily White House press scrum if CNN had its credentials revoked…they have no right to attend when their only intention in doing so is to cause distraction.

Recently, several hundred newspapers in America called to action by the Boston Globe, printed editorials lambasting President Trump for calling them enemies of the people. In doing so they demonstrated what collusion is all about, and why the President is accurate to label them as he sees fit. It is clear the campaign to show a united front against the President will serve only to exacerbate the tension between Donald Trump and the media. What the newspapers did in demonstrating collusion was to prove President Trump’s criticism of their independence and professionalism was warranted.

The Canons of Journalism were developed in 1923 by the Society of (American) Newspaper Editors to establish a code of ethics, some criteria of professionalism for newspapers. They form the basis of principles that journalists supposedly aspire to hold dear. Among their lofty dictates are statements such as, “By every consideration of good faith a newspaper is constrained to be truthful.” It also says that, “Sound practice makes clear distinction between news reports and expressions of opinion. News reports should be free of opinion or bias of any kind.” Suffice it to say that newspapers have ignored their ethics in so far as their coverage of Donald Trump as President…93% of the time anyway.

It is a serious challenge to our free society when the medium whose duty it is to report the news, prefers instead to become the news. Jim Acosta daily desires to be the news in White House press briefings, and by so doing renders his actions devoid of professional ethics. Walking out of a press briefing, for example, as Acosta recently did became the story. Such behavior stains its owner and those who condone it, it is yellow journalism at its deepest hue.

Since the people rely on the news medium to inform them, and being informed is a critical element in the public’s ability to make sound decisions in voting for its elected representatives, the role of the news medium remains essential.

The debate in choosing which topics to cover is even more important than how they report those subjects. Not mentioning certain events is a form of censorship, and the press has clearly opted to be a platform of progressive orthodoxy in recent years. How the press covers Planned Parenthood (PP) is a good example of how it expresses its devotion to progressive values.

Planned Parenthood receives some 500 million dollars a year in public money and uses it to perform abortions. It does so in spite of a Congressional ban (The Hyde amendment) against abortions being performed with public dollars. To pretend that public funding is not being used to perform abortions at PP is delusional when more than 90% of services it provides is abortions. Moreover, the press makes no attempt to honestly report what PP actually does, preferring instead to hide behind the rubric of ‘women’s health.’

The daily stream of stories put out by newspapers indicates their membership in a cabal, a conspiracy against the elected President. Put simply, newspapers give voice to those who refuse to accept the results of the election of 2016. It is not only un-American, it marks such conspirators as an ‘enemy of the people.’ What people, well, the 63 million people in 30 states whose majority voted for Donald Trump.

Newspapers and the larger media can whine about being called an enemy of the people, but frankly, it’s an accurate characterization.