Chasing Their Own Tail

                I’m not sure how much more bad journalism I can take. Nor do I know how much more whining I can take about how unfairly alleged journalists and the media they work for are treated or how we are in danger of destroying our first amendment if we continue not to believe the left wing agenda the fourth branch keeps heaping on us.

                Alexander Hamilton back at the turn of the 19^th century complained about the rampant bias in the press so I guess this isn’t really anything new. Someone always feels slighted by the opinions of the media masquerading as news. But this is as bad as I’ve seen it in my lifetime.

Deep Throat during the Watergate investigation was one of the first anonymous sources that could never be checked, verified, or questioned that I remember but that may have been because of my tender young age.

Back then I still believed that journalism was a noble profession. I really wanted to be Woodward or Bernstein but if I had gone the direction I wanted to go I’d have ended up in a Clinton body bag after I shot myself in the back of the head twice.

                As much as the media and the left hated the great Ronaldus Magnus, and as slanted as the news was to the left even in the 80’s I don’t remember outright lies, fabrication and straw boogeymen like we are subjected to currently. In fact, Dan Rather fabricating a false service record for George W. Bush so that Rather could call him a coward and advance his Bush-bashing campaign was the first major outright lie I can remember by a major journalist and Hollywood still made a movie about it and someone actually said, “Just because he lied doesn’t mean he was wrong.”

                Since then there have been more journalistic lies than I can recount.  I’d have started a list if I’d known it was going to get this bad. I could try and name them all but I’d probably misremember some.

                On June 26 of this year CNN sought and received the resignations of a reporter and two editors for fabricating a story about a member of Trump’s campaign “colluding” with a Russian investment fund and bank for fun and profit. When it first aired on CNN the week before it was hailed as “the smoking gun” in the Great Russian Collusion Conspiracy (Zzzzzzzzzz) and as “the story of the year.”

                Sadly. for the left and their poor excuse for a media it turned out to be completely untrue. They got caught lying by a conservative news agency and, of all sources, a Russian news agency.  And I suppose no one was surprised that the story of the three CNN investigative journalists and editors who seem to have had a little problem with the truth ended up on the inside pages (at least in my own beloved Denver Post) instead of on page one as it was when it was the story of the year.

                And in the face of outright media lies, The Washington Post on July 4 and July 6 unashamedly ran pieces bemoaning the threat to the First Amendment represented by our current President because he dared to suggest “the media is the enemy of the American people.” Some WaPo asshat named Laurence Peters suggested that was “Hitlerian.”

                So there goes the left again, unable to remember that the Nazi Party was comprised of a bunch of socialists.

                I don’t think most of us needed the President to point out that the leftist media is currently the enemy of the American people. In my opinion, the biggest threat right now to the First Amendment is the loss of credibility the media suffers as their rape and perversion of information is peddled as fact in an effort to advance their own agenda and discredit the half of the nation they don’t like as represented by Donald Trump.

                He has called out CNN because they lie about him, which as of June 26, even they had to admit. Conveniently forgotten in this hysteria over an imagined attack on the first amendment is the fact that Obama stonewalled Fox News and repeatedly suggested that Americans quit listening to Rush Limbaugh.  When it’s their guy saying it, I guess incriminating news sources is just good leadership.

                And maybe the craziest part is the media and the left (should I continue to make a distinction between them?) don’t even see that their ineffectual cries and alleged reporting make no difference whatsoever.

                They refuse to recognize that the base of people who elected Donald Trump President still exists and may, in fact, be growing to include former democrats who are sickened by the left’s childish reaction to a conservative administration and who are objective enough to give the President credit for his impressive checklist of accomplishments.

                Prior to the few months before the 2016 elections Rush Limbaugh’s daily radio audience numbered 12-15 million—the largest single consuming media audience in the world. It is usual for all media outlets to experience a positive bump in consumption right before a presidential election and Limbaugh’s audience was no exception. It grew to 20 million per day leading up to the election.

  

After an election it is also customary for audiences to decline to prior levels although I’m not sure that has been the case for any of them this year.  Limbaugh is no exception other than his post-election growth may be exceptional amongst a sea of improvement.  His audience has swelled to 26 million listeners daily.  Double what it was before the election season.

                As I said, all media outlets may be able to claim a boost in ratings this year. Donald Trump is an entertaining guy—maybe, for some, in the same way it’s hard not to look at a trainwreck but it’s undeniably entertaining.  And what would it take, really, for leftist outlets to have an increase?

 

                I do believe, and this is just my theory which I will not attempt to advance as a fact like, you know, the lamestream media would: That so many liberals have heretofore been so uninformed that even a mild interest on their part would result in a ratings boost for traditional leftist channels.

            

The left wing media is losing folks. Badly. The only threat to the First Amendment is the one they represent to themselves. Those liberal viewing increases are just an opportunity for the conservative point of view to win over people who already voted for the loser. I am thrilled that more people than ever are trying to educate themselves on politics and the world around them because in a battle of ideas conservatism wins.

Thomas Sowell wrote it so well: “If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting the news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and chooses their news sources accordingly.”

Hallelujah. Amen.