{"id":102859,"date":"2016-08-03T01:46:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T09:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=102859"},"modified":"2016-08-08T00:39:53","modified_gmt":"2016-08-08T08:39:53","slug":"to-fight-trump-journalists-have-dispensed-with-objectivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=102859","title":{"rendered":"To fight Trump, journalists have dispensed with objectivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Raimondo writes in the Los Angeles Times<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Are the rules of journalism being rewritten this election year?<\/p>\n

My local newspaper, the Sonoma County Press-Democrat, is so clearly in the tank for Hillary Clinton that I no longer take pleasure in my morning read. Trump\u2019s acceptance speech, for example, was covered on the front page with two stories: on the left a straight, albeit somewhat judgmental, account of the speech, and on the right a \u201cfact check\u201d that disputed every point made by the GOP nominee. Clinton\u2019s speech was covered with three front page stories, with headlines describing her nomination as \u201chistoric,\u201d \u201cinspiring\u201d and \u201ctrailblazing.\u201d A relatively mild fact-checking piece was relegated to the back pages.<\/p>\n

This transparent bias is a national phenomenon, infecting both print and television media to such an extent that it has become almost impossible to separate coverage of the Trump campaign from attempts to tear it down. The media has long been accused of having a liberal slant, but in this cycle journalists seem to have cast themselves as defenders of the republic against what they see as a major threat, and in playing this role they\u2019ve lost the ability to assess events rationally.<\/p>\n

To take a recent example: Trump said at a news conference that he hoped the Russians \u2014 who are accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee\u2019s computers \u2014 would release the 30,000 emails previously erased by Clinton\u2019s staff. The DNC went ballistic, claiming that Trump had asked the Russians to commit \u201cespionage\u201d against the United States. Aside from the fact that Trump was obviously joking, Clinton claims those emails, which were on her unauthorized server during her tenure as secretary of State, were about her yoga lessons and personal notes to her husband \u2014 so how would revealing them endanger \u201cnational security\u201d? Yet the media reported this accusation uncritically. A New York Times piece by Maggie Haberman and Ashley Parker, ostensibly reporting Trump\u2019s contention that he spoke in jest, nonetheless averred that \u201cthe Republican nominee basically urged Russia, an adversary, to conduct cyber-espionage against a former secretary of state.\u201d Would it be a stretch to conclude from this description that the New York Times is a Trump adversary?<\/p>\n

The DNC emails, published by Wikileaks, reveal a stunning level of collaboration between important media outlets and the Democrats. Former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz sought to silence NBC\u2019s Mika Brzezinski, who had found fault with the DNC\u2019s role in the primaries. The emails have headings like \u201cThis must stop.\u201d Incredibly, NBC\u2019s Chuck Todd agreed to act as a go-between, even arranging a call between Wasserman Schultz and Brzezinski. Which raises the question: Why was a major media figure taking his marching orders from the Democratic party chair \u2014 and how did this affect his network\u2019s coverage of the Trump campaign?<\/p>\n

The DNC emails also show that Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel sent his copy for a story on Clinton\u2019s fundraising operation to the DNC\u2019s national press secretary, Mark Paustenbach, prior to publication. Politico has since apologized, but Vogel has his defenders. The Washington Post\u2019s Erik Wemple said Vogel\u2019s \u201cprepublication generosity\u201d was meant to give \u201cthe people you\u2019re writing about \u2026 the opportunity to rebut all relevant claims in a story.\u201d One wonders if the Washington Post does this for the Trump campaign. Somehow I doubt it.<\/p>\n

Since last summer, Politico has been vehemently anti-Trump, and it\u2019s only getting more extreme. It\u2019s run several stories linking Trump to Vladimir Putin: \u201cWhy Russia is Rejoicing Over Trump,\u201d \u201cGOP Gobsmacked by Trump\u2019s Warm Embrace of Putin,\u201d \u201cDonald Trump Heaps More Praise on Vladimir Putin\u201d \u2014 and dozens of similar articles. The gist of these pieces is that Trump\u2019s stated desire to \u201cget along with Putin,\u201d and his comments on the costs imposed by our membership in NATO, mean that Trump is essentially an agent of a foreign power. A recent article by Katie Glueck on Trump\u2019s hacking joke said that Trump \u201cappeared to align himself with Russia over his Democratic opponent\u201d \u2014 as if he were a kind of Manchurian candidate.<\/p>\n

Of course, Politico is not alone in what was once called red-baiting. The Atlantic also weighed in with Jeffrey Goldberg\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s Official: Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Vladimir Putin,\u201d and a Franklin Foer story in Slate was headlined \u201cThe Real Winner of the RNC: Vladimir Putin.\u201d This coverage smacks of the sort of McCarthyism that we haven\u2019t seen in this country since the most frigid years of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

Any objective observer of the news media\u2019s treatment of Trump can certainly conclude that reporters are taking a side in this election \u2014 and they don\u2019t have to be wearing a button that says \u201cI\u2019m with her\u201d for this to be readily apparent. The irony is that the media\u2019s Trump bashing may wind up having the exact opposite of its intended effect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Raimondo writes in the Los Angeles Times: Are the rules of journalism being rewritten this election year? My local newspaper, the Sonoma County Press-Democrat, is so clearly in the tank for Hillary Clinton that I no longer take pleasure … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[592,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102859"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103165,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102859\/revisions\/103165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}