The Media should know how to protect U.S. democracy from fascist propaganda & lies. So why do they keep failing the American people?
Defending Truth, American Democracy & Bill Clinton: Part II
Journalists and talking heads wax on about how “surprised” they are about the success of Republicans and Trump’s ability to get traction from the stolen election lie. See article here. If any of them had actually paid attention to the 2016 Democratic primary, it shouldn’t come as any surprise, but they chose to repeat, instead of report. During that primary, both Trump and Bernie had been reading from the same Kremlin playbook. Within days of each other they brought up rigging. After Bernie had no path to victory he continued to fundraise off of it and then screamed “rigged” as soon as Putin hacked into the DNC. During that data breach it was later proved that Sanders camp had stolen Hillary’s data and saved it to a file. The news media were complicit (see article here).
Where would we be, as a nation right now, if the media had just done their job & vetted Sanders, Trump, and the GOP? What if the media had integrity, were professional, and actually understood politics, how government worked and how corrupt and dangerous the fascist Republican party has become? Why isn’t the first lesson that’s taught in the school of journalism, the important duty to ALWAYS protect U.S. democracy first & foremost?
If they were, then journalists wouldn’t ask about emails after she answered their questions the first time. They would have realized how dangerous Trump was and called out his lies right away and focused on that. They would have understood the importance of having someone who is capable with a stunning record of experience is who should be in the white house. Racial incidents just two weeks after Trump was illegitimately “elected” went up by 400%. That’s not a small thing. That is an epidemic. I guess it didn’t fit their narrative. We have to face facts. Our media are not on OUR side, the side of democracy, or on the side of 98%.
There’s something rotten in the state of Washington…
Our American press corps has had 7 long years to figure out the Republican party’s agenda (if they didn’t understand before), and to realize Republicans embraced white supremacy. Yet, they blame everything/everyone else for their own failures (see article here, here, and here). They have no sense of embarrassment at their lack of integrity, ineptitude and exposure of misogynist and racist views. How is it that hack journalists keep believing the brain dead rantings of Trump’s pathological lies? Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps they did know better, but did it for the pay and/or were instructed to do it, even though they knew it was wrong.
Whatever the reason, we must take this problem a bit more serious than we have up until now. American journalism is not doing what it was designed to do, and someone has to step in, or step up and make sure they start doing what they’re supposed to. No one has yet, because it’s hard to do unless you have a lot of money, or a great following or a famous name. For the rest of us…it takes an incredible amount of work, focus, and dedicated unwavering commitment. Even that may not be enough. To me, doing nothing is not an option, because that would only be helping the rich, corrupt Republicans who employ these hack journalists. See article here.
After all of this time, the media STILL cannot figure out what to do about misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and lies. The answer is the same as it’s always been…restore the Fairness Doctrine, which would not allow newscasts to include opinion, propaganda, dis or misinformation, or even spin. I’ve been saying this since the late 1980s that removing the Fairness Doctrine was going to lead the U.S. down the road to fascism. Apparently Bill Clinton thought so too (see article here & here). Sadly, we both were right. We are there. I will do a follow up article on the Fairness Doctrine with all the facts included shortly.
