There
was a time (long ago now) when the staid old New York Times was the newspaper
of record; a reliable source of relatively unbiased reporting about national events.
Those days are apparently long past, as the current flap over the Trump story
is revealing. For any who have not been following the story, the Times ran a
lead article Sunday about how badly Trump had treated women over the past two
decades, and then the women quoted at the beginning of the article came out and
said the Times had deliberately “spun” her words to make him look bad. Trump also noted that he had supplied the
Times reporters with a long list of women he had worked with, but they
interviewed none of them.
The
giveaway that the Times is not unbiased is (1) the fact that they chose to
report on Trump’s personal behavior, and on the very issue Hillary Clinton is
trying to use against him, rather than examine his policy positions, and (2)
that there appears to be no plan for the Times to examine Hillary’s personal
behavior as well, especially her personal behavior toward women abused by her
husband.
But
then, as I said in an earlier posting, the insider political and media establishment
– Republican and Democrat alike – sees Trump’s campaign as an existential
threat to their cozy world, and is clearly gearing up to go all out to defeat
him in any way they can. It will be a rough campaign. It is by no means clear
that he is suitable to be president, but if he can withstand the combined
Republican and Democratic attacks over the coming months and win, I will
certainly be impressed with his abilities.
Actually
there is sort of a poetic justice that Trump is so adroit at turning the media’s
own biases and weaknesses to his advantage – sort of like jiu jitsu moves that use
the opponent’s own momentum to throw him.
But
then I have never trusted the press since Goldwater came to speak at Indiana
University in 1964 when I was a graduate student. He came and gave quite a
reasonable speech to a very orderly and supportive crowd. But the national TV press coverage that night
focused entirely on a small group of perhaps 6 or 8 protesters at the very edge of
the crowd, and the print press, in reporting on the question and answer session
afterward, actually matched answers to other, different questions, so as to
make Goldwater look as bad as possible.
I have never believed in unbiased press since.
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