... no ... its that the direction of that influence has reversed. Now, the propaganda spewed by FAKE NEWS is recognized for the left-wing tripe that it is ... and the reaction is exactly the opposite of what FAKE NEWS had hoped for. FAKE NEWS is reaping what it has sowed.
Roy Moore and the Fire This Time
http://pjmedia.com/election/roy-moore-fire-time/
What began as a targeted hit on Roy Moore in his Senate race against a faceless Democrat with the generic name of Doug Jones has now turned into a blazing ammo dump, littered with the bodies of Hollywood celebrities and politicians in both the United States and Britain. And yet, despite the best efforts of Gloria Allred, Moore is not only still standing, he is probably again leading in the race. A pair of recent polls has Moore up over Jones by anywhere from two to seven points, and only Democrats will be surprised if Moore wins on Dec. 12. ...
In at least one survey, trust in the media - the necessary vanguard of any free society - is even lower than trust in Trump, which itself is nothing to tweet about. How on earth has this happened?
Well, that's easy. The media, in the form of the Baby Boomers who have reached its highest echelons and have controlled it for the past quarter century, sold its soul to the Democrat party - first to George McGovern, then (briefly) to Jimmy Carter, and finally and fatally to Bill (but not Hillary) Clinton and Barack Obama. Whereas old-school reporters and editors abjured involvement in politics, they embraced it. Whereas once a reporter left to become a public-relations flack or, worse, to work for a politician, he was finished as a journalist, the Boomers celebrated such experience as a resume builder. In short order, a revolving door appeared, connecting the newsrooms of Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the television networks to the corridors of political power. ...
This piece by Matt Latimer in Politico, goes on to make the case that the national media has long held a double standard in its news coverage, which is obvious to anyone on the right side of the aisle. "The job of the media is to reluctantly report the news it can't ignore anymore & then explain why it wasn't important in the first place," cracked Jim Treacher. Iowahawk's famous dictum also comes to mind: "Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving." Nobody trusts the media any more because the media is, by its own definition, partisan and therefore untrustworthy.
And so conservatives view it, rightly, with mistrust and distrust. They know from bitter first-hand experience that there's an agenda behind nearly every story, in every section of the Times: a crack about Trump here, a dig at the Right there. Even ESPN, which used to be a sports network, has gotten into the act, politicizing sports to its own detriment and to the likely ruination of the NFL. Nearly every mainstream media outlet takes as its standpoint a position that is well left of center, at which point its opponents (for so reporters think of those I call Real Americans) can only be deemed far-right. It's a deliberate slander, of course, and everybody knows it.
What to do, what to do?
Of course the first step is for the heads of the major media outlets to actually care about the problem. Despite a few half-hearted efforts during the aftershocks of 2016 election to try to better understand the Trump voters that many reporters didn't know even existed, it's not clear that most really do care. There's very little incentive in today's tribal climate to try to offer a more balanced picture on various issues or to hear out the other side - to have a frame of mind that accepts that maybe tax cuts can help spur job growth, or maybe the Obama administration did make some mistakes, or maybe every single thing Trump does and says isn't by definition an outrage requiring days of focus and attention, or maybe federal regulations have in some cases gone too far, or maybe there are other smart, well-meaning Republicans who aren't Susan Collins or Lindsey Graham.
That's advice they won't heed because they cannot heed it; to do so would be to betray what they consider to be their real job: pushing a Leftist agenda, boosting Democrats, and hoping like hell they'll be offered a job in the next Democrat administration. Because if you can't reward your friends, punish your enemies, and improve your own material circumstances, what's the media for, anyway?
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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