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Bret Stephens: President Trump’s Attacks on the Media
Bret Stephens shares his perspective on President Trump’s attacks on the media:
“Trust — the latter flowing exclusively from the former. When you read a story in the Journal, you do so with the assurance that immense reportorial and editorial effort has been expended to ensure that what you read is factual.
Not probably factual. Not partially factual. Not alternatively factual. I mean fundamentally, comprehensively and exclusively factual. And therefore trustworthy.
This is how we operate …
We honor the central idea of journalism — the conviction, as my old boss Peter Kann once said, “that facts are facts; that they are ascertainable through honest, open-minded and diligent reporting; that truth is attainable by laying fact upon fact, much like the construction of a cathedral; and that truth is not merely in the eye of the beholder.” …
Some of you may have noticed that we’re living through a period in which the executive branch of government is engaged in a systematic effort to create a climate of opinion against the news business. …
Today we have “dis-intermediating” technologies such as Twitter, which have cut out the media as the middleman between politicians and the public. Today, just 17% of adults aged 18-24 read a newspaper daily, down from 42% at the turn of the century. Today there are fewer than 33,000 full-time newsroom employees, a drop from 55,000 just 20 years ago …
To believe in an epistemology that can distinguish between truth and falsity, facts and opinions, evidence and wishes. To defend habits of mind and institutions of society, above all a free press, which preserve that epistemology. …”
It was a long rant.
I rather enjoyed it. I found it amusing. Who believes the media is only interested in the “facts” anymore? Who believes the media is value-free, objective or neutral? Who trusts the media to report the truth? Only 6 percent of Americans have “a great deal of confidence” in the Lügenpresse.
Philosophically, the Nietzschean take on the media has triumphed. The media is biased. It has a perspective. It doesn’t report objective truth. It doesn’t merely collect the facts. On the contrary, there are wills operating behind everything the media reports. President Trump and the Lügenpresse are engaged in a struggle for dominance. The contest we are seeing is about power. To borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault, “power-knowledge” is produced by the media.
The Lügenpresse selects and molds the facts to fit the Narrative. The “War on Women” is one example of a narrative. It is engaged in a naked attempt to delegitimize the Trump administration. Again, there is no such thing as objective or neutral reporting. There is only a struggle for dominance and a contest of wills between rival political coalitions which are pushing their own agendas. At the end of the day, either one coalition or the other will emerge triumphant and rule in Washington.
What’s more, if are we are being completely honest with ourselves, our racial, ethnic and cultural identities shape our perspective. There is a Jewish perspective on the news and politics. When Bret Stephens (Jew) in the Wall Street Journal works with Chuck Todd (Jew) at MSNBC and Wolf Blitzer (Jew) at CNN and David Frum (Jew) at The Atlantic and Jonah Goldberg (Jew) at National Review and Bill Kristol (Jew) at The Weekly Standard and Ben Shapiro (Jew) at Daily Wire and the New York Times (Jews) to produce a discourse about President Trump which drives the Narrative, it has a massive distorting effect on the “national conversation.” It is not unusual to turn on MSNBC or CNN and see 3 Jews talking on a panel or to click on a website and every other political pundit flipping out is Jewish.
Jews are only 1.4% of the population, but due to their concentration in the elite media the news cycle is filtered through the prism of what Eastern Jews are thinking, feeling and reacting to on any given day. Don’t sit here and give us this bullshit about how you only report the “facts” or “tell the truth.” Because you don’t. There’s only so much Ezra Klein or Bret Stephens that I can take.
Do you know why I have that flag in the banner of my website? It is because I want people to immediately know where I am coming from. It is the first thing they see when they click on this website. I have a Southern identity. I have a Southern perspective. I’m biased in favor of Southerners, Christians and White people. I’m an unabashed champion of the Southern interest.
These Jews like Bret Stephens are just as biased as I am. I come from a Baptist culture in Alabama though. I have a tendency to say out loud what I think. You might not like what I am saying, but at least I hope you can appreciate my honesty. I’m not engaging in political dissimulation.
Source: http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2017/02/19/bret-stephens-president-trumps-attacks-on-the-media/
