Media Bias

There was an article in the Naples Daily News this morning that caught my eye on the opinion page.  It was written by Byron York, a conservative commentator currently writing for the Washington Examiner.  The article admonished us to not blindly accept the mass media’s analysis of the President’s speech at Mount Rushmore, because it was far more positive than the media portrayed it.  He wanted us to read the text of the speech in its entirety and make our own judgement about the point of view of his speech….

…so I did.

As you all know, I am no fan of Donald Trump, and up until I actually read the full text, I simply accepted the media’s interpretation of this speech as being ugly and nefariously divisive and exhibiting the point of view that ‘American Carnage’ was destroying our country from within.  

Well….not so much.

If you read the transcript, you will see that for 80% of the speech he is exalting our heroes on Mt. Rushmore, complete with a recounting of each of those presidents’ accomplishments and efforts to uphold the Constitution and the values that all of us hold dear.  Then he recounted in amazing detail, actually, the accomplishments and contributions of a wide range of America’s most important heroes… Martin Luther King, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass. He invoked the exploits and contributions of Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody, the Wright Brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, General George Patton, Louie Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley, Mohammad Ali, Walt Whitman, the stories of Mark Twain, the songs of Irving Berlin, the voice of Ella Fitzgerald, the style of Frank Sinatra, and the comedy of Bob Hope.  You can see that he was inclusive of a variety of people with a meaningful cross section of backgrounds from white to black.

The speech exalted the American values we all aspire to practice and believe in, and made the claim that America has led the world in promoting those values and representing the best of humanity.  It was actually pretty uplifting in its call to action for all of us to be proud of those accomplishments and aspire to be like all those heroes in everything we do in the name of our country.

He strongly promoted, “ equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed.  Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God.  We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture.  We embrace tolerance, not prejudice.  We support the courageous men and women of law enforcement.  We will never abolish our police or our great Second Amendment, which gives us the right to keep and bear arms.   We believe that our children should be taught to love their country, honor our history, and respect our great American flag.  We stand tall, we stand proud, and we only kneel to Almighty God.  This is who we are.  This is what we believe.  And these are the values that will guide us as we strive to build an even better and greater future."

Nothing wrong with any of that! 

So, clearly, the rest of the speech was a bit different.  Trump  warned about a ‘culture war’ and the danger that those who promote violence; who strive to teach our children to ‘hate America’; to topple monuments of great men like Washington and Grant, and who are “attempting to tear down the beliefs, culture, and identity that have made America the most vibrant and tolerant society in the history of the Earth.”

Well, considering his fear of all those who he thinks are attempting to bring him down, it is not surprising to see him admonish those in attendance to be on guard for efforts by his perceived enemies to accomplish those aims. His language was at times certainly inflammatory, calling those who protest 'angry mobs', 'engaging in a merciless campaign to destroy our history'.  But we do the same to him, so why is he only to blame for that kind of language.

And yet, the mass media actually painted a much darker interpretation of his speech.  They called it divisive, negative, dragging America backward, racially charged, filled with hate and white supremacy….

Well not really!  I didn’t see those things in his speech.  Paranoia? Fear of losing our values? Fear of our children’s future?  Yes, those things were present, but not in the way the Media wanted us to believe.  

What this has shown me is that we all need to be more careful about accepting blindly the analysis of what major news outlets (who take a decidedly negative view of President Trump) tell me about these kind of events. 

I have my own opinion and must draw my own conclusions about Donald Trump from what I observe myself.  I am terribly fearful of the horrific damage he has done to our democracy, our rule of law, and the foundation of our government, but those are my own perceptions.

Just a word to the wise:  draw your own conclusions about the man based on your own observations.  Don’t accept blindly the opinions of the mass media, whether right or left.