If Trump becomes the first American dictator, the media will carry a huge amount of the blame. The media’s perennial craving for sensationalism abrogates its public responsibility to provide the people with truthful reporting. Its all about “selling more fucking newspapers”, nothing else. Integrity, balanced reporting, and truth are all subjugated, and peripheral, to sensationalism.
The Special Counsel report on the classified documents found in Biden’s offices and home explicitly says that there was no criminal activity to warrant prosecution and then goes on to assassinate the President politically by citing memory loss and age. Apart from the fact that those comments were possibly an illegal attempt by a Republican Special Counsel to indict Biden politically because he couldn’t indict him criminally, almost certainly on the orders of Donald Trump, the media immediately became complicit in this assassination attempt. Hardly any outlet, conservative or liberal, mentioned the fact that the report found no criminal action. They all made headlines about the non-relevant, and politically charged, comments about age and memory. Why? Because “it sells more fucking newspapers”, and to hell with accurate reporting, integrity, and moral decency – the comment about Biden not remembering the date of his son’s death, faithfully reported by all media, was probably the ultimate low-point in journalistic integrity.
The liberal media faithfully report all the details of the Republican amoral switch from demanding U.S. southern border protection and then voting against it when they got almost everything they wanted. However, they seemed amazingly reluctant to slam Donald Trump for dictating his will on the process and, more importantly, to blast the Republicans for completely kowtowing to his demands. Demands, I should add, that have nothing to do with the good of the country and everything to do with Trump’s ego, and his need for an election campaign issue. Their reporting of Trump’s totally outrageous recent comment about encouraging Putin to take over European countries was muted – It should have been blasted in three-inch high headlines as aiding and abetting the enemy.
All this is complete moral disintegration, not only of the Republicans, which we have come to expect, but also of the liberal media in not forcefully condemning the whole shameful process.
The funding of Ukraine debacle in the House of Representatives is another example of the press handling a fundamental issue of democracy’s survival as if it was politics as usual. The speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is kissing the ring/ass of Donald Trump (a particularly revolting image) so often that it has almost become routine. How can a half-dozen dumb zealots, like Majorie Taylor Greene, whose only interest is being on television, saying stupid, but sensational, things, hold the entire country to ransom over Ukraine funding. Why isn’t the media exposing them for what they are, myopic idiots.
I would suggest that the worst possible attack on Trump and his moronic accolytes, and the one that would hurt the most, is to ignore them, not put them on the front page every day. Donald Trump would almost certainly commit suicide if the entire media ignored him completely in their reporting for a week – an interesting possible democratic strategy, at least for the liberal and mainstream media. They might sell a “few less fucking newspapers” for a week or so, but think of the upside.
It is interesting, and horrifying, that it took the head of a foreign government, Donald Tusk of Poland, to publicly say, “Shame on the U.S.” over its procrastination on Ukraine funding. What a slap in the face for the United States of America…and thoroughly deserved.
If this media short-sighted stupidity, in focusing on sensationalism to the detriment of serving its public, continues, they deserve the results of their labors if Trump becomes President again next year. Those results will almost certainly be a Putin-style suppression of the free press, and jail for any journalist who dares to contradict him, criticize him, or poke fun at him. I would perhaps draw the line at suggesting he would assassinate his media critics, a la Putin, but maybe I shouldn’t.
You’ve been warned.
