OPINION:
It looks like Joe Biden has won the presidency with what no one could call a mandate. And now we can expect exhortations for Joe to end all polarization and “bring us together.” Well, how did we get so far apart in the first place?
It is an incontrovertible fact that Donald Trump was elected as our 45th president and pursued the agenda he ran on. The political opposition never accepted him (or the election results) and did everything in their power to thwart his agenda. Not exactly what one could call four years of bipartisanship that put the country first and politics last.
But the worst of all was the mainstream media. A recent Media Research Center survey revealed that Mr. Trump and his team suffered the most hostile coverage of a president in TV news history: 92% negative vs. just 8% positive. The mainstream media have long ceased to be journalists in the image of Walter Cronkite — reporting the facts in a relatively even-handed manner. Richard Rahn observed that the change is not just political bias, but what appears to be an acceptance of both incompetence and ignorance among journalists.
Political candidates and parties haven’t helped, but the deluge of information from the mainstream media over the past four years has been made up of largely negative fantasies and adverse opinion, not necessarily fact. Thus, the “journalists” in today’s mainstream media would be more accurately termed “propagandists.” It is they who are primarily responsible for dividing us as a country.
PAUL MCILVAINE
Alexandria, Va.
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