By Printus LeBlanc
To say the relationship between the mainstream media and President Trump is rocky would be an understatement. The mainstream media has waged a jihad against Trump since he descended from the escalator in Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, to announce his candidacy for President. The press is upset the President calls them out on their blatant bias, but when looking at the details, does the press have a leg to stand on.
While the sad status of journalism began its decline generations ago, the people got a glimpse of it after the 2008 election. It was a widely held belief the mainstream media was left-leaning, but the JournoList scandal solidified it was not only left-leaning but pretty much left-wing propaganda.
In February of 2007, a private google group was created containing 400 left-leaning academics and journalists. This was no big deal until after the 2008 election. The Daily Caller got a hold of some of the conversations going on in the group, and it was shocking. What they found were “journalists” colluding with one another to kill stories that would make then-candidate Obama look bad, while coordinating the effort to boost the future President. The attained documents were evidence of journalists making the transition from reporters to Stalinesque propaganda artists.
The two latest examples show the mainstream media has not changed since and is nothing more than propaganda. One of the heavy hitters on the left is David Brock, Clinton mafia family confidant and founder of Media Matters. He created a memo detailing how the left would win back control of the White House titled “Democracy Matters: Strategic Plan for Action.”
The plan is the typical “we lost this election, here is how we win the next one” report. The Republicans created one after the 2012 debacle that Trump ignored and still won. What is odd about the Brock plan, is the reliance on a friendly mainstream media. The plan calls for “grants,” also known as bribes, to investigate the Trump administration and its associates. We saw similar behavior from Fusion GPS when it paid journalists to investigate and push stories whether they be fake or not. That is not journalism. It is propaganda.
If there were a legitimate 4th estate in the U.S., it would be up in arms over the Fusion GPS scandal and the idea of Media Matters steering journalists to certain stories. But we don’t have that. We have complicit press perfectly happy to be used by the progressive movement to push an agenda because the mainstream media has the same agenda.
The latest example of the mainstream media acting more like propaganda artists than journalists is the Michael Cohen saga. CNN reported that “sources” told them Michael Cohen was prepared to tell the Special Counsel President Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting between Trump associates and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya in advance. CNN ran with the story as the piece of the puzzle that was going to get Trump, finally. One problem. In a total absence of basic journalism, CNN didn’t even bother to check with Congressional sources to see if Cohen testified to what the network wanted to report.
It turns out, under oath, the former Trump lawyer testified he didn’t know if President Trump knew about the meeting. Yet, despite being proven wrong, CNN has refused to retract the story, even though Lanny Davis, former Clinton lawyer and current Cohen lawyer, has been identified as the source for the story and walked back the story himself.
Refusing to retract blatantly false stories is nothing new for CNN. Last summer, CNN ran a story touting the fact that, “17 intelligence agencies released a declassified report concluding that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the 2016 election with the goal of disparaging Hillary Clinton while boosting Trump and undermining the public’s faith in the democratic process.” The story is factually inaccurate. All 17 intelligence agencies within the U.S. government are not investigating the 2016 election. Why would the DEA or Coast Guard intelligence agencies be looking at the election?
The Washington Post, in a very rare act of journalism, backed the President up when he said there were only three or four agencies involved in the assessment. CNN has yet to retract its false story.
The list of journalistic maleficence within the mainstream media is too long to fit into this story, but Sharyl Attkisson did a good job of doing so. Attkisson has compiled an extensive list of mistakes journalists have made concerning President Trump. It details the sad state of affairs the 4th estate is presently in, and hopefully, it will serve as a wakeup call to the “news” outlets to shape up, or the people will tune you out.
The mainstream media is not worried about freedom of the press. They have the right to continue pushing the Democrat agenda, but they must recognize the people living between New York and San Francisco view them as propaganda, not press. If the mainstream media hates being called “Fake News,” maybe it should try not reporting fake news or being the propaganda arm of the progressive movement.
Printus LeBlanc is the Legislative Director at Americans for Limited Government.
