The mainstream media covers President Trump the way an earlier generation of reporters covered the Vietnam War.
They hated that war and the U.S. involvement in it as much as they now hate Trump. Their slanted and frequently dishonest reporting showed that hatred during the war just as it does now toward Trump a generation later.
Hate among progressives has a long shelf life.
Back then reporters treated every major U.S. victory — and there were many — as defeats; every minor enemy success, no matter how small, was exaggerated and reported as a U.S. setback.
This was especially true of the 1968 Tet Offensive, which was a massive defeat for the North Vietnamese and the biggest U.S. victory in the war, but one that the media, especially the television media, turned into a defeat.
The media succeeded in turning the American public against the war. Returning veterans, many of them draftees, were spit upon at airports. Stirred up anti-war activists acted as though these soldiers had started the war.
These are the same veterans that ironically were honored all these years later at pro-military services on Memorial Day.
Make no mistake. The war was a bummer. But once it began it could have and should have been won.
And the media did not “lose” the Vietnam war; they only helped lose it.
Or, as historian Victor Davis Hanson points out in his book “Carnage and Culture” the media: “only contributed to the collapse of American power and resistance by accentuating frequent American blunders and South Vietnamese corruption, without commensurate attention paid to North Vietnamese atrocities, the brutal history of communism in Asia and the geopolitical stakes involved.
“Their ability to sensationalize relatively minor American setbacks and exaggerate modest communist victories often helped turn public opinion and thus give them undue influence with American politicians who directed the course of the war.”
That is the way the White House media covers Trump at the press briefings. Every favorable major accomplishment — and there are many — is either downplayed or ignored, while every minor screw up is blown all out of proportion.
If Trump does not wear a mask, the media jumps all over him. If he does reporters will report it as a sign of resignation or failure in the war against the coronavirus pandemic. Questions from reporters are not designed to solicit information. They are “gotcha” questions aimed at making them look good and Trump look bad.
White House reporters in the fashion of the preening and self-important Jim Acosta of CNN, are not as interested in policy as they are in making themselves part of the story so they can look important on television. That means provoking Trump or his press spokesperson to respond to loaded, nasty and frequently dumb questions.
These are the type of questions that the reporters never asked former President Barack Obama, who they worshipped, during one of his rare press conferences, but feel free to ask them daily of Trump, who they loathe.
It can be refreshing when it backfires, as it did last week when Trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, 32, stunned White House reporters in response to a “gotcha” question over Trump’s demand that governors reopen churches.
“The president will strongly encourage every governor to allow their churches to respond, and boy, it’s interesting to be in a room that desperately wants to seem to see these churches and houses of worship stay closed,” she said.
Then she ripped into the reporters for not showing “journalistic curiosity” when it came to questioning Obama about the unmasking of former Gen. Michael Flynn.
McEnany gave a list of questions they should ask Obama, including why so many of Obama’s political appointee were in on the unmasking of Flynn, including Joe Biden.
“This is extraordinary. If it were political appointees in the Trump Administration, I can guarantee you I’d have questions in my inbox right now, but apparently Obama’s spokesperson does not.”
“It is a criminal act to leak the identity of Michael Flynn to the press, but it happened. Where are the questions to the Obama spokesperson? Because my team would be running around this building if this had happened in the Trump administration,” she correctly said.
If you did not get the opportunity to read, see or hear about McEnany’s justifiable tirade against the press, it is because it was downplayed or ignored by the media.
Which makes the point.
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The double standard for the mainstream media: Tough on Trump, soft on Obama - Lowell Sun
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