Another week has passed and the American media has completely beclowned themselves. There is a bevy of embarrassments for critics of the media to choose from.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid declared she was hacked, said the FBI was looking into her hacking, and then opened her show on Saturday by declaring “I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me.” She did write those things, obviously, but her fellow travelers declared her brave and forgave her.
On Saturday evening, the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was headlined by an entertainer who did an unfunny routine of abortion and fat jokes that further highlighted the fact that these journalists are out-of-touch elitists surrounded by their enablers because they think “correctly.”
The response to all of this is not introspection; instead, they are playing the victim:
My problem with last night’s dinner is not that we had a comedian who told some nasty jokes. It’s that we did not really address the nearly constant attacks on the press from the president. The dinner should change with the times so we send a strong message to the world. #WHCD
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) April 29, 2018
The president says he's at "WAR" with the media. Journalists mostly say, to borrow @PostBaron's line, "we're not at war, we're at work." But his "war" talk changes the press-president dynamic. I think this is the key context for the "dinner debate…" https://t.co/zQT6eLp3rf
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 30, 2018
Why this matters: They did declare war. The Washington Post added “Democracy Dies in the Darkness” to their banner and The New York Times decided the truth is “more important now than ever.” Meaning the truth apparently mattered less in 2015, wonder why? Yet, guys like CNN’s Jim Acosta demand we offer deference to them and declare the president and anyone criticizing them are out of line because of the 1st Amendment.
He’s wrong, the president and others who call them out are also expressing their First Amendment rights. Trump is not the problem here. Trump is the response to the problem and the media still hasn’t figured this out.
The details:
— 84 percent of Americans believe the news media have a role to play in democracy, but only 44 percent can name an objective news source.
— Trump may be capitalizing on media mistrust, but he didn’t create it. Fifty-five percent of Americans trusted the media in 1999 and only 32 percent did as of September 2016.
— In January, 67 percent of Republicans saw political bias in the news while only 26 percent of Democrats felt that way, which tells us Democrats are enjoying what the media is selling.
— A recent poll shows that 51 percent of Republicans view the American media as the “enemy of the people,” while only 22 percent of Democrats felt the same way.
DaleJackson is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts a conservative talk show from 7-11 AM weekdays on WVNN in Huntsville.
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