Trump's truth: 'Fake' news is Americans' enemy

(On Thursday morning, 300+ newspapers ran editorials attacking President Trump's criticism of Fake News. In support of our president, I'm offering this counter essay.)

In his electric remarks before the 2017 Conservative Political Action conference, President Trump highlighted a pivotal, definitional qualifier establishment commentators generally pretend to not notice.

"In covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the 'fake' news the enemy of the people - the 'fake' news. They dropped off the word 'fake,' And all of a sudden, the story became 'the media is the enemy.' They take the word 'fake' out...I'm not against the media. I'm not against the press. I don't mind bad stories if I deserve them...But I am only against the fake news media or press. They have to leave that word...There are some great reporters around. They're talented, they're honest as the day is long. But there are some terrible, dishonest people, and they do a tremendous disservice to our country and to our people...They get upset when we call out their fake stories. They say that we can't criticize their fake coverage because of the First Amendment. And I love the First Amendment. Nobody loves it more than me. Nobody. I mean, who uses it more than me?"

When commentators misrepresent his words as referencing the entire journalistic enterprise, they underscore his point. By refusing to acknowledge the crucial distinction, journalists essentially throw arms about Fake News's shoulders, claim it as a legitimate free press component, and declare that to call out the improper former is to necessarily imperil the proper latter.

When candidate Trump assailed the mainstream news media's unrelenting and falsity-freighted crusade against him, his sprawling base roared its understanding.

An October, 2017 Detroit Free Press report was headlined "Donald Trump's 'fake news' claims are real, say 46% of voters in Morning Consult / Politico poll." 

The Knight Foundation Trust, Media, and Democracy initiative published on January 15, 2018 a poll Knight had conducted in conjunction with Gallup. A release on that poll, which had included some 19,000 respondents, summarized its findings: 

"[M]ost Americans believe it is now harder to be well-informed and to determine which news is accurate. They increasingly perceive the media as biased and struggle to identify objective news sources. They believe the media continue to have a critical role in our democracy, but are not very positive about how the media are fulfilling that role."

Last May, the results of a study by the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy were issued. After monitoring the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and the newscasts (not talk shows) of Fox, CNN, CBS, and NBC during Trump's first 100 days in office, they reported coverage of him was 93% negative.

Byron York, in Real Clear Politics, observed "The coverage of some news stations was so negative, according to the Harvard study, that it seems hard to argue the coverage was anywhere near a neutral presentation of facts."

Ideally, when reporters confront officials at news conferences, they represent us, and ask probing questions on our behalf; questions whose full, honest answers we who would direct democratic government must have.

To whatever extent that laudable ideal might once have been reality, though, it has in recent decades been strangled. Brash trumpeting of the supposed superiority of authoritarian elites has become the mainstream media standard.

Since the populist Trump Revolution threatened status quo sensibilities, its adherents were often ridiculed as unlettered and oafish, if not detrimental to refined society. Toward that scurrilous end, reporters, on-air talking heads, editors, columnists, producers, analysts, and even cartoonists were pressed into monotonously impious service.

Dodgy news partisans typically portray themselves in the revered tradition of storied muckrakers. Beaming with self-congratulation, they hail theirs as an endeavor without whose hawk-eyed watchfulness and unflinching analyses the public would fall prey to bureaucratic and commercial manipulations.

Stirring indeed are romantic tales of dogged reporters rope-swinging into darkened-windows planning lairs of swinish barons of high finance and unscrupulous agents of dominion, and of an ethically unimpeachable investigative press ripping away pretenses of propriety, bravely speaking truth to power, and advocating for rank-and-file citizens who would otherwise lack meaningful access to ensconced prominence.

Don't be mislead by such mawkish fancy spinning. Inky dirt-doers have a mission, and it is not objective reporting. That partisan predominence and the crushing of opposing factions be realized, they promulgate slants, deceptively incomplete renditions, even shouted deceits.  

Print and electronic press outlets miss no opportunity to smear the popular movement headed by President Trump to wrest back control of America from backstairs overlords who desire its recreation as a faceless, effete component of grim globalist machinery. 

Regular assaults on Trump and his average-citizen base are effected in manners sometimes insidious, but in other episodes, jarringly bold. Regardless of visibility or volume, though, the clear message is that the desires of elites alone should determine our shared future. The well-being and wishes of rank-and-file Americans are of less import than the ideological fancies of upper-crust popinjays in gated demenses.

Recondite media poohbahs and bylined perpetrators do not share average Americans' values. Daily, they promote a reptilian ideology of control. 

We the people are dismissed by media-perched bigots who reek of elitist prejudice. We are falsely classed as racists, sexists, xenophobes, or whatever other lurid sobriquet might be handy.

In order to best chart our country's course, citizens require objective accounting of essential information. Our effective participation in the political process is sabotaged by skewed reportage and commentary. 

Rather than penning high-hat editorials, mainstream scribes who are not honest enough to admit systemic crimes are perpetrated by their fellows should hang low their heads. The first step in overcoming a problem is admitting you have one, but the authors of today's defensive editorials appear unwilling to seek better health.

Trump was right. The 'fake' news is our enemy.


(This essay was adapted from my 2017 book That a Man Can Again Stand Up and my 2018 Ideas Afoot.)