Donald J. Trump v. The Media
Donald Trump brought a suit against The Des Moines Register and pollster J. Ann Selzer for consumer fraud.
“Selzer’s polling ‘miss’ was not an astonishing coincidence,” the lawsuit filed in a state court in Polk County, Iowa, explains, “it was intentional.”
In a shock poll released days before the presidential election, Selzer placed Kamala Harris three percentage points ahead in Iowa; Donald Trump won by 13.2 percent. If one really buys into such media flattery as “Ann Selzer is the best pollster in politics,” then it seems difficult to believe that she could err to such a massive degree.
The suit comes on the heels of ABC News settling a defamation suit for about $16 million brought by the president. The crux of that case involved George Stephanopoulos repeatedly, and wrongly, claiming that a jury had found Trump liable for rape.
Such mistakes tend to occur with less frequency when you avoid propping up seething partisans as objective anchormen. ABC News, akin to early silent-era singerie in which Hollywood dressed up monkeys as cowboys, anointed Bill Clinton’s spin doctor as its Sunday morning news program “moderator.”
Why not name King Kong Bundy as the guardian of the baked goods?
Of course, when you assign a 450-pound man to guard the chocolate chip cookies, the edible delights tend to disappear as quickly as a news organization’s credibility does after it appoints a partisan flack as its arbiter of balance, objectivity, and truth.
CNN’s Clarissa Ward, similarly allowing passion to overwhelm judgment, described the liberation of a Syrian prisoner as “one of the most extraordinary moments” of her career in journalism. Many viewers had never seen anything like it, either. The prisoner, apparently an intelligence agent of the Bashar al-Assad regime who had brutalized inmates rather than an inmate brutalized by the fallen regime, hoodwinked Ward, who had consoled the seemingly upset man by telling him, “You’re okay, you’re okay.”
“We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity,” CNN told the New York Post. “We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story.”
Stephanopoulos deleted his Twitter account and did not address his network’s settlement on his Sunday show. Selzer responded to the lawsuit against her by saying “It would not be in my best interest, or that of my clients — the Des Moines Register and Mediacom — to conjure fake numbers.”
Surely it would not. But in recent years a corruption of purpose overwhelms so many previously apolitical endeavors. Late-night comedy, awards shows, advertising, higher education, and, yes, journalism reoriented, often in a non sequitur fashion, toward an unsubtle political purpose. In doing this, comedians do not provoke much laughs, advertisers do not sell products, professors do not educate, and journalists do not get the story straight.
ABC News pursues its purpose as pushing politics rather than reporting the news. This resulted in a consequence of a million in lawyers’ fees and a $15 million donation to Trump’s future presidential library. (READ MORE: Trump Humiliates His Media Enemies)
Whether Trump wins his fraud suit against the preposterously wrong pollster and her media sponsor in court seems secondary. The activists posing as journalists have already lost in the court of public opinion.
MSNBC and CNN have witnessed an exodus of half of its viewership since Election Day. In other words, the left-wing partisans who had tuned in for a prolonged Two Minutes Hate now flee to the Home Shopping Network or some other cathartic entertainment now that they no longer receive, post-Nov. 5, politically-reinforcing propaganda. MSNBC’s parent company seeks to spin off ownership of the cable network. Sources point to the possible sale of CNN as well. (READ MORE: Dems Click Off MSNBC and Discover There’s No Place Like Home)
Donald Trump’s legal action cannot damage the Democratic Party’s press auxiliary any more than it has damaged itself. His mere presence stripped off the Walter Cronkite mask to reveal a Fourth Estate of shiny-eyed Michael Moores, William Kunstlers, and Madalyn Murray O’Hairs.
READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn:
The Familiar Themes of Hope and Delusion in Syria
Luigi Mangione’s Cognitive Dissonance
Dems Click Off MSNBC and Discover There’s No Place Like Home
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