THE PRESIDENT AND THE PRESS – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 12:30 P.M. ET:  President Trump is in an open battle with the American media.  It is long overdue. 

The press has become increasingly biased toward the left, but refuses to acknowledge that plain truth.  It claims that its job is to hold presidential administrations to account, but it seemed to have forgotten that job in the eight years that Barack Obama was president.   

Trump charged this past week that the media has become an enemy of the people.  He was widely chastised for that remark, and perhaps could have used more elegant language.  But is there some truth to what he said?  Can a free press actually damage, or even destroy, the country that protects press freedoms?  Marc Giller said this, in the Resurgent: 

The reason that the Founders specifically set aside protections for a free press in the First Amendment is that they understood that a government–even a freely-elected one–was going to try and get away with as much chicanery as it could, and that the best bulwark against that was a press that would hold it accountable to the voters. The problem these days, however, is that we don’t have a free press. Oh, they may be free to do whatever they want without interference from government; but rather than exercise that freedom, most of the media (at least on the network level) have willingly chosen to become a de-facto propaganda organ for progressive causes in general, and the Democrat party in particular. With the stories they cover–and, more importantly, the stories they don’t cover–they have actively sought to advance a narrative for the express purpose of pushing the country farther and farther to the left, all while nurturing and providing cover for Democrat politicians. And they’ve done this by openly lying about their motives, presenting themselves as neutral when they are anything but.

In other words, the news media have been trying to push us to a one-party state–one in which government becomes bigger and more intrusive, while civil liberties (at least the ones leftists don’t like) shrink ever smaller. That is the very definition of a threat to the Republic.

Does that make the media an “enemy of the people”? The answer is more gray than even honest Trump critics might think.

COMMENT:  Very well put.  You might have noticed that The New York Times, in its subscription ads, is asserting that subscribers further the "mission" of The Times.  Maybe some brave reader will write in asking exactly what that mission is.  Don't expect a straight answer. 

February 25, 2017