A True Illustration Of Gaslighting

On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article with the following headline, “Biden’s top aide Ron Klain complains press coverage is too negative.” Wow. I guess he would have been really unhappy during the Trump administration with the coverage of President Trump. The Trump children were accused of all sorts of illegal activities, but the accusations were proven false. No one in the media seems to be accusing Hunter Biden of anything even though there is evidence out there that has been proven true.

The article reports:

He’s the Whine House Chief of Staff.

President Biden’s top aide, Ron Klain, took to Twitter Saturday to decry press coverage of his boss.

The chief of staff — known to insiders as the “Prime Minister” for his outsize influence inside the West Wing — shared an opinion essay from the Washington Post arguing that Biden was receiving worse coverage than former President Trump.

The piece from Post opinion columnist Dana Milbank warned that “My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.”

Milbank said he came to the conclusion after an analysis of more than 200,000 articles from 65 news organizations by the information company FiscalNote.

“We need a skeptical, independent press. But how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative,” Milbank carped.

Klain agreed. “Submitted for your consideration,” he said linking to the piece.

It’s amazing to me that anyone with a brain can call President Trump authoritarian and call the Biden administration self-governance. By what authority did President Biden shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline? By what authority did President Biden try to institute vaccine mandates? By what authority will President Biden attempt to ban unvaccinated Americans from airplanes and trains (coming soon)? By what authority will Americans be required to have vaccine passports (coming soon–article here). Americans have always been allowed to travel freely within the country. I fear that will be coming to an end under the Biden administration. That is much more of an authoritarian government than the self-governance that Mr. Klain professes to support.

When I first saw this headline, I thought it was from The Babylon Bee.

How The News Media Covers President Trump

Newsbusters posted an article today analyzing how the major media covers President Trump. As I am sure almost everyone is aware, the coverage is almost always negative. I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article–the statistics are amazing.

The article includes the following graph:

The conclusions of the article are somewhat frightening:

The media reaction to Trump’s first year has been so extreme, the public itself has become polarized over the coverage. In September, Gallup discovered that record numbers of Democrats are reporting “trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly,’” with 72 percent of Democrats saying they trusted the press in 2017, compared to just 51 percent who said that a year ago.

A month later, a Politico/Morning Consult poll found that “more than three-quarters of Republican voters, 76 percent, think the news media invent stories about Trump and his administration.” That number swells to 85 percent when just Trump supporters are asked the question.

What seems to be happening is that many in the media, including the broadcast networks, have chosen to morph into anti-Trump activists. As a result, they provide massive attention to stories that they think make him look bad, give little airtime to more positive aspects of his administration, and punish him with massively negative spin.

The polls suggest anti-Trump Democrats love that kind of news, pro-Trump Republicans hate it — while the national media are cementing their reputation as biased partisans. Their hostility against the White House is now so obvious, nobody could possibly take them seriously if they ever again claim to be fair and non-partisan professionals.

When politicians (or the media) complain about the divisiveness in America, they need look no further than themselves. The lies that the media is telling and the things that the media is choosing to emphasize are not helping inform the public and they are surely not helping to unite us in the common goal of making America a better place.