The media earned the moniker, “Fake News,” for just reason.
For the most part, they are too lazy to go out and do the digging to uncover a real story.
They are satisfied with sitting back and throwing their thoughts from a parallel universe in the hopes that they will stick.
Reporters are spending the day prattling about how short President Trump has come up in his first 100 days, but why should they have all the fun?
In that same 100 days, a new Morning Consult poll released Friday said that more people are trusting of the White House than the media to tell them the truth.
The poll also said that more than half of Americans think the media are out of touch and that 48 percent think the media have been harder on him than on past presidents.
(The other 52 percent must not recall the time Julie Pace of the Associated Press asked Obama in 2014 if he had a good night’s sleep.)
What’s the opposite of “success?”
Everyone knew Trump, a celebrity businessman with no political experience, would be on a steep learning curve after his surprise win in November so that he hasn’t passed any major legislation in 100 days means nothing.
The press, however, isn’t new to this and it’s done worse in the same amount of time. But even after two years of journalists confessing they “missed something” in Trump’s rise, the national papers, networks and news websites have done nothing different and even when they have, it’s been dumb.
After the Daily Beast hired some conservative writers earlier this year, the site’s editor in chief, John Avlon, patted himself on the back by releasing a statement to acknowledge his “growing roster of reform Republican columnists.”
The statement didn’t say that “reform Republican columnists” translates to: writers who hate Trump.
Matt Lewis, Stuart Stevens, Rick Wilson and Lachlan Markay are all Republicans at the Daily Beast who didn’t like Trump during the campaign and write almost exclusively negative things about him now.
At the start of April the Los Angeles Times began a series of editorials on Trump, six total, all negative, and then bravely explained why they “took a stand.”
(Very brave to criticize the president from that hotbed of Trump supporters known as Southern California.)
The Washington Post, competing with Lifetime Movies for best melodrama, adopted the humiliating slogan “Democracy dies in darkness.”
Scott Pelley of the CBS “Evening News” was heralded twice by the press this year for inserting what passes for searing commentary into his newscasts, like “Today, the president had another Twitter tantrum.”
It’s as if the media collectively woke up and said, “I’m either going to stab myself to death or die trying!”
Trump has boosted the economic outlook by dismantling excessive regulations, slowed illegal immigration at the border to a near halt and appointed a young Supreme Court justice.
The most would-be conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat could do was say in an op-ed last week that things “could be worse.”
To mark the lead up to Trump’s 100 days in office, MSNBC on Thursday aired a news package with interviews of foreigners offering their “reviews” of Trump, which correspondent Richard Engel worriedly summed up as “not good.”
True, “America First” probably doesn’t poll well in the West Bank (where Engel interviewed someone for his story) but so long as it seems to reflect poorly on Trump, MSNBC will run it.
Nobody expects a loudmouthed outsider to swoop into the highest office without some setbacks, least of which just 100 days in.
But everyone can see Trump is pushing forward on the big things he said he would: A plan for a wall on the Mexican border has been commissioned, NAFTA is being renegotiated and another attempt at healthcare legislation is on its way.
On the other hand, the news media said they would undertake the massive burden of understanding the perspective of working class people who voted for Trump and: Nah, he’s a racist!
Trump’s 100 days haven’t been flawless. But at least he’s trying.
The national media aren’t even doing that.
THE END
JCscuba
Jim Campbell's 