The Media Betrays The American Experiment

Authored by Carson Holloway via AmericanMind.org,

The stunning events of the last several weeks have highlighted the great weaknesses in the corporate media, an essential part of modern America’s political system. They have, as they constantly remind us, a vital role to play. But they betrayed that role by their open partisanship.

For one brief shining moment, it seemed as if the media would live up to the promise of Adolph Ochs, the founder of the modern New York Times: “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.” In the month after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the media raised and vigorously pressed the questions about his fitness for office that had to be addressed for the good of the country.

Yet this spasm of critical curiosity about the fitness of our Democratic president turned out to be just an interlude. Everybody can remember that right before the debate the media (including the New York Times, which later called for Biden to leave the race) were saying that Biden was fine and questions about his decline were based on out-of-context video clips, labeled “cheap fakes” by the White House press office. But now that Biden has left the race, the media have reverted to their usual lack of interest in anything that sheds negative light on the national Democratic Party.

There is certainly no lack of material. In the wake of Biden’s withdrawal from campaigning, it would be no exaggeration to call this an administration mired in scandal. Besides the voter dissatisfaction over the failures of the last three and a half years, three new developments loom like shadows over the Biden-Harris White House.

Consider the mysterious way in which Biden was forced out of the race. Up to the day he dropped out he and his top aides were insisting that he was all in. Then he suddenly stepped aside without offering any reason, seemingly pushed aside, perhaps by powerful and shadowy figures with no public accountability.

There is also the scandal of the officials close to Biden—including the Democrats’ new presumptive nominee, Vice President Harris—evidently knowing about his decline and covering it up, or even directly misleading the public about it. Related to this is the Democrats’ rationally indefensible combination of choices: to drop Biden from the ticket amid widespread reports of his failing memory and flagging concentration, but to leave him in the office of the presidency for the next six months despite these signs of mental infirmity.

Finally, there is the scandalous failure of the Secret Service to provide adequate protection to a former president and the leading presidential candidate in the present election. Had it been successful, the assassination of Donald Trump would have been one of the worst attacks on American democracy in decades. It would have effectively disenfranchised the tens of millions of Americans who hope to vote for Trump. And the government’s as yet unexplained security lapses almost permitted this to happen.

Each of these scandals reflects very badly on the nation’s present governing party. Each is also a once in a century story. Yet the media seem very uninterested in getting to the bottom of any of them. They would rather fawn over Kamala Harris.

Taken together, the events of the last several weeks suggest that Biden’s rough coverage in July was not even really an interlude for the media. It was instead more of their standard operating procedure. Their scrutiny of Biden was not a return to professional standards of reporting. It was rather another case of the media making themselves part of a political operation to protect the Democratic Party—in this case by helping to push aside a president that they had concluded was an electoral liability.

No serious person who has lived through these events can credibly deny the partisanship of the corporate media. This partisanship undermines our democracy. Democracy means self-government. It means that the people get to choose the direction of the country by electing their leaders. The media could play a vital role in this wonderful process (denied to most people throughout history) through impartial and thorough reporting on public issues.

Thus they would provide the voters with the information they need to choose freely and intelligently. Instead, the media do all they can to prop up the political party with which they sympathize—all the while professing an objectivity that they manifestly do not possess. To this extent their work is an ongoing fraud on the American public.

This partisanship also hurts the country itself in other ways.

By shielding the Democrats from criticism, the media permits them to govern incompetently and recklessly with near impunity. The result: foolish policies (inflationary spending, unregulated immigration, and unnecessary foreign wars) that hurt America and Americans.

Donald Trump, with his characteristic simplicity and harshness, once said that “the fake news is the enemy of the people.”

No doubt the media resent this judgment, but they are doing everything they can to demonstrate its accuracy.