Media ought to quit whining about Trump

OPINION:

A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, just printed an essay he originally delivered as a speech at the Notre Dame Kellogg Institute for International Studies that was titled, “A Free People Need a Free Press.” It was a critical attack on President Trump and his so-called “increasingly aggressive efforts to curtail and punish independent journalism,” yada yada, just like Joseph Stalin used to do; just how Stalin used to label opposition “the enemy of the people.” Stalin. 

Stalin? 

For real. 

Well, if anyone knows a Stalin, it’d be the staff of The New York Times. They did, after all, publish plenty of pro-Stalin, pro-dictator, pro-Soviet articles in the early 1930s, all penned by their ace, go-to guy, Walter Duranty. 

But that’s to digress.

“When we make mistakes, we try to own them, learn from them and do better,” Sulzberger wrote of The Times.

Laugh? Cry? It’s a toss-up.

This is the same newspaper that reported 21 days before the 2016 election that Hillary Clinton had a 91 percent chance to win against Trump, whom they figured at a measly 9 percent of the vote — the same newspaper that came out post-election, egg on face and promised in a letter to readers to “rededicate ourselves” to solid and unbiased journalism, all the while insisting staff “reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign” — and then the same newspaper that edited that apology-not-apology letter to readers shortly after readers collectively LOL’d on the “fairly” sentence: They removed the whole line. Gaslight complete. Historical revision finished. 

Stalin-esque erasure done.

And now this same newspaper, via its publisher, has the gall to liken Trump to Stalin, cry about an “anti-press campaign,” whine over a “democracy in retreat” and more, and all while tossing about hearty references to the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the First Amendment and Russian collusion. Oh, wait. Scrap that last. Too soon. The memories haven’t yet fully faded.

Question: “Will New York Times, Washington Post Return Pulitzer for Misleading Russia Collusion Stories?” one Heritage Foundation headline ran in December 2021.

Answer. No.

What The Times will do, however, is rail against the machine of MAGA while pretending “we’re not the resistance,” “we are nobody’s opposition,” “we’re also nobody’s cheerleader,” and “our loyalty is to the truth.”

If that were so, then the political leanings of the vast majorities of journalists, opinion-writers, editors and executives in the largest circulation newspapers in America wouldn’t all be Democrat — or, in media code for Democrat, so-called independent. They wouldn’t claim to be unbiased, knowing full well that unbiased is unattainable. They wouldn’t pretend to watchdog both Democrats and Republicans with the same levels of intensity, even as they ignore Hunter Biden’s laptop; even as they defend Joe Biden’s brain power, or lack thereof; even as they chuckle about conspiracies like “The Great Reset” — despite its open descriptions on the World Economic Forum website; even as they cheer and cherrypick COVID scientists doing the Democrats’ bidding, not Republicans’, and applaud the shutdown of information on social media that does the Republicans’ bidding, but upholds the Democrats’.

They wouldn’t say in one breath, as Sulzberger does, that Trump “continues to make himself more available to reporters than previous presidents” — while in 99 other breaths, condemn Trump as tyrannical to the press.

The problem with the press is that it’s filled with members who think they know best what the rest of the world should know and not know, and that anyone who dares object to their coverage decisions should keep their criticisms quiet.

Else they’re behaving like Stalin. Or Trump. In their elitist eyes, there’s really no difference.

That’s the problem with the press.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.