Trump Hysteria

Let’s get this straight to begin with. I am not a Trump fan. Didn’t vote for him. Contributed to his opponents during the primary campaign. Told everybody I could get to listen that he was unqualified. Told them I spent most of a day with him in the early 80s at a conference, and concluded he was the biggest horse’s ass I’d ever met. Since then, I have more experience, and have met bigger horse’s asses, but he is still in my personal horse’s ass hall of fame.
That said, I submit that the media’s relentless vilification of Trump is a bad idea.

Since the dawn of written communication (which started out as inventory records–rendering logistics the worlds oldest profession from a literary prospective), almost all political and historical writing has been polemic. The authors had an axe to grind or a patron to serve. The earliest newspapers were aligned with political parties or politicians or policy positions. In the early years of the 20th century, efforts began to establish journalism as a profession. Professional standards calling for objectivity, separation of fact reporting from opinion, multiple sourcing, etc. flogged at schools of journalism.

The patina of objectivity, refusal to rely solely on anonymous sources, presentation of competing narratives, and all that professional stuff have gone by the wayside in the torrent of RESIST. The White House correspondents dinner (the look-at-us-and-see-how-important-we-are function of the year) featured Woodward and Bernstein at the head table. The clear message was . . . we brought down one President we didn’t like and we can do it again. We aren’t reporting news now; we are finding ways to attack Trump’s legitimacy and hamstring his agenda. Even the last 60 Minutes episode I watched–showing 3 reruns–managed to use two of them to take backhand swipes at Trump during the setup.

It would be a whole lot better for the profession of journalism if the destruction of Trump proceeded in an objective and analytical fashion; that the criticism was leavened with some acknowledgement of achievements; and that there was more reliance on transparently sourced facts, and less on leaks/rumors.

My summary is that the profession of journalism is destroying itself in its attempt to destroy the presidency of Donald J. Trump.