There’s something about Donald Trump winning an election that drives journalists crazy. The National Press Club in the nation’s capital is an epicenter of media arrogance, as anyone could see from its Nov. 21 “Fourth Estate Award Gala,” in which they proclaimed they were honoring the “fearless pursuit of truth.”
But as always, the “truth” is expected to lead to “justice,” which in their view is the opposite of Trump winning the presidency again. Trump’s victory demoralized journalists. They felt like 76.8 million Americans completely ignored their years and years or besmirching Trump as a fascist threat to democracy.
Axios.com co-founder Jim VandeHei uncorked a temper tantrum at the awards ceremony, as he boasted about being in a “war for truth, for freedom.” Translation: For the Democrats. He can’t stand anyone attacking them for making “fake news” or for, ahem, engaging in nonstop Democratic Party talking points. Joy! Vibes! Brat! And all that.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, like, everything we do is under fire,” VandeHei complained. “Elon Musk sits on Twitter every day, or X today, saying, like, ‘We are the media, you are the media.’ My message to Elon Musk is: Bulls–t! You’re not the media. You having — you having a blue check mark, a Twitter handle and 300 words of cleverness doesn’t make you a reporter!”
This is a little funny, since Axios.com was touted by the National Press Club for its “smart brevity.” When it writes little bursts of text for busy, governing-elite people with low attention spans, they’re still hailed as “smart.”
At 1 a.m. on election night, as it became apparent Trump would win again, Musk tweeted, “You are the media.” This enraged VandeHei because journalism is an elite profession, for highly educated people who educate the masses, even if the masses don’t accept their lessons.
VandeHei lamented, “Being a reporter’s hard. Really hard. You have to care. You have to do the hard work. You have to get up every single day and say, ‘I want to get to the closest approximation of the truth without any fear, without any favoritism.’ You don’t do that by popping off on Twitter. You don’t do that by having an opinion. You do it by doing the hard work.”
VandeHei seems to forget that part of the reason people don’t trust journalists is they show a lot of favoritism. They fear being seen as too centrist by their colleagues. They spend large amounts of time popping off on Twitter and opinionating on cable television. Opinions are more highly prized than investigations. Investigative reporters aren’t making Scarborough money.
Naturally, “Morning Joe” played some of VandeHei’s tantrum, and Joe Scarborough asked for a “slow clap,” like VandeHei was Tom Cruise at the end of “Top Gun.”
Scarborough oafishly equated all media criticism with lying: “It continues to need to be said when all of the garbage that’s flying around on social media, lying about reporters, lying about the hard work they do, lying about the hard work editors do, lying about everything up and down about not only their alternative set of facts, but alternative set of facts about what people like you do.”
Did he produce any examples? No. Because ovations and overbroad opinionating are all that matters.
If “smart” journalists want to figure out the election results, they can’t conclude that every media criticism is a lie. They have to engage with critiques and stop thinking they are the most heroic and crucial actors in politics, that democracy dies when people unsubscribe. They need to talk less and listen more. Don’t count on that.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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To this treasonous self-righteous, lying,Democrat Party and their media/political propaganda media, our U.S. Constitution, Laws, Gender, Truth, Facts, Reality and History are all irrelevant. If the Democrats or their journalists do not WANT to believe them, or they disagree with them. Democrats and their rag journalists will just make up their own, laws, Gender, Truth, Facts, Reality and History to fit what they WANT to believe or fits into the Con or Deception that they are running at the time.
The mendacious media thought it was THEY who should decide what American political reality is, and THEY, not THE PEOPLE were best qualified to lead the nation and decide who wins elections. The pain of their proffered promoted political perversions of the real world and how it works got so great, THE PEOPLE had to rebel, or face another 4 years of being mind-drugged in unworkable secular socialist propaganda, and ensnared to the mental machinations that the media put forth to seize control in their imaginary mind manipulations where their reality was so starkly different to what the media offered as truth, that outright rebellion had to occur at the polls. Pain is a great awakener, and so is the loss of the very essentials of safety that secures human comforts and basic survival in a cold dark world. Their first mistake was beginning to believe their own lies, having repeated them over and over again to others, when it was they themselves, who became first addicted, and then destroyed in their own self-made destruction they thought would destroy us, but turned upon each other, and brought themselves down. It’s now a democrat media “One Flew Over the cuckoo’s Nest” media with no nurse Ratchet around to lobotomize them out of their frustrated post-election reality.
GOOD.. LET These kids in adults throw tantrums.. PROVING TO US they are not worthy of being in the media.. LET ALONE the adult ‘playground’ of politics!