It was instructive that Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategist,
said recently that the press should “shut up and listen”, and all that the
press heard, and reported, was “shut up” – they didn’t listen enough to hear or
report the ”and listen” part.
Here is the exact Bannon quote in its entirety: “The media should be embarrassed and
humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”
Here is the New York Times
Jan 26 headline about the quote: “Trump
Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’”. Other papers and TV and online sources had
similar headlines. I am hard pressed to
find any mainstream news that included the “and
just listen for a while” part.
I keep wondering how democracy can function if the media is
so partisan. What little most people know about the important issues they get
from the media, or from friends who themselves get it from the media. So on an important issue like immigration
policy, how are people to make rational judgments if the media distorts the
fact so much?
The media reports, with outrage, that Trump is barring refuges
from Syria (temporarily, until a better vetting process can be established),
but fails to report that Obama barred almost all refugees from Syria for
the past few years.
The media reports that Trump’s order discriminates against
Muslims, but the actual order itself (I have reread it several times) makes no
mention of Muslims, and legal experts doubt that any court would construe it
to discriminate against Muslims, since it doesn’t affect 44 other
Muslim-majority countries.
The media is outraged at the seven countries selected,
but fails to mention that it was the Obama administration that selected these
seven countries as terrorist-promoting in the first place.
The media is outraged
that Trump’s order caps the refugees at 50,000 per year, but fails to mention
that, except for Obama’s last year in office, the cap under his administration
and under the Bush administration before him was in the same range
(50,000-70,000).
The media is outraged that religion is mentioned in the order
(priority for persecuted minority religions), claiming this is un-American. Well,
if it is, it has been un-American for a long time because religious criteria
(persecuted because of religion) has
been part of immigration law for decades now.
Now Trump’s executive order may or may not be good policy.
There are good arguments on both sides and I’m not sure yet which side I find
more compelling. But we are apparently never going to get to that important debate
because the partisan press has sidelined it into hysterical and emotional
reactions to their misinformation.
I mentioned in a previous post how the New York Times, followed by other outlets, misreported the claim
that 2016 was the hottest year on record. And this sort of partisan misreporting,
spinning the facts, slanting the story, reporting only one side of the issue, and
sometimes outright fabrication has been going for issue after issue this year.
It’s not new, but it certainly has gotten a lot worse since Trump won the election.
In the face of this much partisan misinformation from the
media, and the almost hysterical public reaction it has whipped up, how is any
democracy to function?
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