OPINION:
President Donald Trump has been fighting against the media since his campaign days, when he first announced intent to seek the high office. And now the media’s doubling down in the bunkers for an even more aggressive fight.
Why? Because Trump’s winning. He not only won the White House.
He not only continues to sidestep the media with tweeted messages and clamp-downs on press conference coverage.
He not only has convinced the American people that the media cannot be trusted — and his supporters among the American people, in turn, have encouraged him to keep on tweeting.
But he also just won key concessions from CNN with the resignation of three of its news staffers and a company retraction for faulty news coverage. The media is having difficulty swallowing their failures.
Wolf Blitzer on CNN on “The Situation Room” asked White House Correspondents’ Association President Jeff Mason is his organization was discussing the “potentially very dangerous” trend of Trump outing the media as “enemies” of the American people — as if Trump were saying something wildly outrageous. To Blitzer, it is.
“That is a very, very harsh statement and potentially very dangerous,” Blitzer said, Breitbart noted.
Well, no, actually, that has become a very, very truthful statement — witness, CNN’s own skewed coverage of Trump, coverage that was aimed more at taking down a president than giving Americans the facts. Isn’t that an act of an enemy?
Trump calling out the media for its agenda — its pretty deceptive and evil agenda, to put it bluntly — is not the danger. The fact the media’s taking it on itself to try every which way to out this president from the White House — to find the impeachable offense and if not possible, to create in the minds of the people an impeachable offense — is the much larger danger.
But the media’s chosen sides in this war of words.
NBC’s Chuck Todd came out in defense of CNN, calling the White House the perpetrator and the media, the innocent victim.
His statement, again from Breitbart: “I’m obsessed with the White House’s war on the press and on media. Let’s be clear about this: That war is nothing less than a war on the truth. Do we get it right all the time? Nope, we don’t. And when we don’t, we run a correction and in some cases, people lose their jobs. That’s just what happened at CNN.”
He went on: “CNN took responsibility for its mistakes. At this network, we’ve done it quite a few times publicly as well. But because we try to get it right. We take what we do seriously, because trust, viewers and readers’ trust is all we have, and without that we’re nothing. We all know we get fired for not telling the truth. And of course that’s the point, isn’t it? Of course, the White House attacks, delegitimizes the media to create running room for its version of events. It’s as old as media itself. The White House is not above using anonymous sources to criticize the use of anonymous sources. … So no, Mr. President, no, White House press shop, the media is not the enemy of the people. We’re just here to find, as Carl Bernstein put it so well, the best obtainable version of the truth. It can hurt you, it can hurt us and, yes, even you, Mr. President.”
Well, not quite.
Alisyn Camerota, one of CNN’s news hosts, engaged in a heated exchange a few weeks back with New Hampshire’s former governor, John Sununu, over the whole Russia-hacked-the-election mantra that’s dotted Trump’s footsteps since Hillary Clinton lost. At one point, Sununu asked Camerota if she had the proof that Trump colluded with Russia to skew the election and Camerota said no, not yet.
No — not yet, despite the fact the story’s been front and center at CNN, and other left-leaning media outlets, for months. No proof, no evidence — something even the media admits — but the story goes on and on and on. The point?
The media’s taken itself to dig where there’s nothing to dig up. And the attitude of the media has become, by God, we’ll keep digging until we find something.
That’s what makes the media an enemy — an enemy of truth, an enemy of this administration, an enemy of the American people. Too many within its ranks want to pretend like they’re watchdogging, when really they’re witch-hunting. And when a few get caught outright skewing and deceiving — when they’re caught red-handed and have nowhere to turn to hide — the media then wants to act like they’re self-policing and holding themselves accountable.
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