FILE – This Jan. 17, 2001 file photo shows pedestrians entering CNN Center, the headquarters for CNN, in downtown Atlanta. The latest rough patch for CNN illustrates the two contradictions at the network’s heart. In a brutal time for the news business, CNN is one of the few media organizations thriving while its most visible part in the United States, prime-time on the flagship network, is hurting. The company has built its brand on nonpartisan reporting, while CNN’s audience tilts Democratic as much or more as Fox News Channel’s audience is Republican. (AP Photo/Ric Feld, File)
My colleague Brad Slager penned a great piece earlier Tuesday, in which he discusses the media’s disdain for America and uses the press’s reaction to “My Pillow” creator Mike Lindell as proof.
Before he got into the real meat of the article, he posts a tweet from S.E. Cupp asking Twitter not to take their politics out on journalists because journalists are on the front lines of every crisis the modern world has ever seen. To say the tweet is ridiculous would be underselling it. Journalists, at least the ones in the mainstream, can hardly be considered reporters any longer. There is a clear bias attached to every bit of reporting they do.
To be quite honest, this bias wouldn’t really bother me. I’ve never witnessed an unbiased reporter in my lifetime, and if I’m being perfectly honest, I make a living off of being a commentator who makes no secret about which way I lean. I want to be open and honest that I’m a right-leaning person with a heaping dose of libertarian sentimentalities. That said, I can’t say the same for many mainstream journalists who lay down clear lines of bias in every word they spew forth but then turn around act as if their reporting is pure as the driven cocaine.
When they try to take these positions I can’t help but feel slighted. It insults my intelligence. It feels like a bad con-artist is blatantly trying to fool me into buying their cheap, knock-off brand item while telling me it’s the real deal.
I was absolutely disgusted when these same journalists who try to tell me that they don’t choose sides took to Twitter and began insulting Lindell after he appeared on the White House lawn and said a few words alongside President Donald Trump.
The story first came to my attention when my apolitical fiance began laughing about the fact that Lindell even appeared on the White House lawn in the first place. She thought it was another wacky thing Trump was doing. I explained to her that Lindell had essentially retooled his company in order to produce medical supplies at a time when our nation desperately needs them. Interestingly, this wasn’t immediately made plain to her on the social media post where she first discovered it.
The tweets began pouring in from journalists and leftist users alike, all of them savaging Lindell.
Why would they do that? Lindell was being recognized for stepping up and helping all of us, including the people who are currently laughing at and insulting him. They do it because they’ve been lead by these journalists we’re not supposed to slam with our politics into believing their politics through misreporting, narrative creation, and flat-out lies.
For years we didn’t have a frame of reference to know any better about what the media was selling us, but now the internet has gifted us with the tools to not only research the subject at hand but to fire back directly. As we learned that the stories we were being told and the villains that they were creating weren’t really the bad guy all along we began to realize that the real bad guys were the people telling the stories in the first place.
Is it any wonder that we began to resent the media? Is it really that bizarre to believe that we’ve developed a healthy dose of contempt for these people, these people who will drag an American man through the mud for being friends with someone they don’t like, even after he went out of his way to be of service to the entire country in its time of need?
Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of people I dislike but I draw lines that I don’t cross purely out of my own humanity. Chris Cuomo has tested positive for the Coronavirus and despite the fact that I find the man’s reporting abhorrent, I still wish him a fast recovery. Meanwhile, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has volunteered to get back out there and keep working for the future of his country in spite of the risks and people publicly wish he dies horribly while accusing the GOP of being a death cult, blue checks included.
You’re damn right we don’t like the media. You can bet your ass that we’re going to call them out, resist their narratives, and lambast them when their nasty biases rear their ugly heads. It’d be wrong not to.
If Cupp wants the kindness shown to journalists that she professes, then she and her fellow journalists need to be kind.
