The media is under heavy fire following the Nov. 8 election and the surprising win by Republican candidate Donald Trump. And for good reason. The “media,” using the term very generally, went way out on a limb to advocate against the election of Trump. And many mainstream publications admitted they believed it was their duty to destroy Donald Trump as a legitimate candidate for the presidency.
Some can and will say that journalists have a duty to expose candidates’ viewpoints, financial situations, conflicts of interest and behavioral history, particularly in presidential races. That certainly is true. The voters have a right to know as much as possible about presidential candidates, and the press is supposed to play a very important role in that education process.
However, instead of accurately and objectively reporting the facts and letting the readers or viewers decide, the press aggressively advocated for their own agenda and viewpoint about Donald Trump’s character or fitness for the office. They crossed the line in a way that I’m not aware has occurred in the last 50-60 years.
Trump as a candidate, and now a president-elect, is quite a conundrum for the press in that he is openly and publicly taking them on. It’s conventional wisdom that presidents and presidential candidates are supposed to have an adversarial relationship with the press. The press has always had a huge platform (and barrels of ink) to make their case for putting candidates and office holders on their heels. For the most part, that serves the public well. And, candidates in the past have just “taken it” as part of the game.
Trump isn’t taking it, and he continues to call members of the press out for what he considers one-sided coverage of him, even in the transition. Poll after poll shows the public believes the media is biased against Trump and biased toward left-wing policies. Now, members of the president-elect’s press corps are genuinely alarmed that public sentiment is against them.
Let’s get this straight. A free and untethered press is vital to protecting and enhancing the freedoms we enjoy in the United States. However, a storm has been brewing in the last decade or more in that the media in general have bought into left-leaning ideas that promote intolerance and demonizing of viewpoints that don’t conform to the liberal elites’ viewpoint of the world and America’s standing in it. Trump put a face and voice to it, and now it’s out of the bag.
The social agenda advocated by the left are not all bad. I like the word “progressive,” and I view progress as a good thing. Still, there are other viewpoints based on religious preferences, spirituality, economics, science and research that should not be dismissed simply because they don’t conform to those pushing certain social agendas.
People who support enforcing immigration policies don’t like being called racists (because they’re not). People who aren’t pro-gay marriage based on religious principles don’t like being called hateful. People who don’t embrace over-zealous environmental regulations that hurt businesses and industries and take away jobs don’t like being called uneducated climate-change deniers.
The media, in general, for the last decade has aided and abetted the liberals in shouting down viewpoints that don’t conform to their agenda. They’ve also been willing participants in ginning up anger and outrage toward those who don’t conform. They have labeled good, honest and hard-working people as racists, bigots, uneducated, red-neck and just about every derogatory term you can come up with. Those who are supposed to protect the First Amendment have become the front-line of stifling speech and thought.
The press has so much work to do to regain the public’s trust, but the first thing they need to do is stop telling people how or what to think. Report the news with accuracy and objectivity. Seek out differing viewpoints and don’t seek to destroy those differing viewpoints as non-credible. There are honest, smart and thinking individuals on just about every side of the issues the liberals say they care about. Devote less time to punditry and more time to actual news gathering. And corporations running media enterprises need to reinvest in newsrooms. If they don’t, news organizations will continue to lose credibility and audiences.
The public needs to do its part, too. Stop assuming information you see on social media is accurate. Look at the source before citing it. Do your own research. Despite its faults, mainstream media sources such as print newspapers, network broadcast and radio stations, and even some established online sites with paid advertising or subscriptions, are still better sources for news than online aggregate sites that simply pick and choose stories that fit their own agendas.
If Trump’s presidency is an unmitigated disaster, that will be evident to the voters soon enough. They won’t need the press trying to convince them of it. What they will need is a press that is once again a stronger Fourth Estate that has the credibility to be trusted and believed.
Cindy Allen 
Being a voter registered as independent and owing nothing to either party, I’ll say I must agree with your statement that the public needs to do its part by researching, when often they fail to do that and simply buy what social media sites promote. I will add, though, that the uglier posts I’ve seen (racial and religious slurs) come from the ultra-conservative side. Many things about the election and the ideology that has become apparent disturb me. But I find it’s hard to talk sense to those whose minds are made up because of the many “bogus news” sites promoted by social media and whose only interest is reading stories that support their viewpoints about the “evil” of the other side.
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Yes the SM posts were ridiculous. However, the lack of due journalatic diligence from the mainstream press has helped give rise to idiotic online sites filling the void. I can only hope this past election drives some change to get real media back on track and help the public understand and reject obviously ridiculous sicial media nonsense.
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