Every time I hear a politician claiming their problems are due to the liberal, dishonest or sensationalistic media, it sounds like “Scooby Doo” villains bemoaning the fact that they didn’t get away with their silly scheme because of “those meddling kids.”
There are more liberals in the media than in other parts of your life because most media jobs require college degrees.
Even though only about a third of the American populace identifies as liberal or mostly liberal, the number for college graduates increases that figure to 44 percent. If you include people with post-graduate degrees, the number of liberals increases another 10 percent.
However, just because a larger percentage of journalists are liberal minded, that doesn’t make them unfair. And when these liberals are seen as being unfair because they use quotes and video clips of actual things candidates or elected officials do and say, it is hard to feel too bad for these public figures.
That is especially true for Donald Trump. He vanquished 16 Republican challengers primarily because every crazy thing he said was received by the media like Moses coming down the mountain with stone tablets.
Did Trump say he was going to build a huge wall across the border of Mexico?
Did he mock a reporter’s disability?
Did Trump say he was going to ban Muslims and end Muslim immigration?
Did Trump say how much he admires Vladimir Putin and say he is a better leader than Barack Obama?
Did Trump refuse to endorse Paul Ryan and John McCain for almost a week?
All of these things, and skirmishes with the Khan family, misstatements on foreign affairs and several other obvious gaffes in the post-convention period have been reported and tweeted repeatedly.
The same media that helped him flay his opponents is now turning the knife on Trump. Jeb Bush was repeatedly bashed as low energy by Trump during free media appearances. It vanquished Bush. Cruz faced the same attacks. Remember “Lyin Ted”? Trump did that to him during appearances on dishonest media outlets.
In his big economic policy speech in Detroit Monday, he showed the hypocrisy causing his house of cards to fall. Trump quoted work from the Washington Post.
You remember the Washington Post — one of the newspapers the candidate banned from his events for being dishonest, but you can fully rely on their analysis during this speech.
Trump said he was going to do away with executive orders if he is elected. He said that just after saying he was going to use an executive order to stop new regulations.
You won’t convince me that “the media” is biased against Trump. The media isn’t an amorphous blob that shares talking points each morning. FOX News is the media. The Wall Street Journal is the media. TMZ is the media. Thousands of people make up the Fourth Estate, and only about half of them would even identify as liberal.
The problem is that people in the media tend to have a pretty high standard for right and wrong, and when someone says something that is offensive or incorrect, they are more likely to point it out.
This doesn’t apply to Sean Hannity, but most other media members will. Trump is far from the first person to put his troubles off on the media being against him. Trump is facing double-digit deficits in polls three months before an election. Others have had a lot more on the line.
Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned 43 years ago this week after the press turned the heat up on him and his role in the Vietnam War. Agnew swore he would never resign, and blamed his issues on the media who he said were “out to get him.”
They got him.
He resigned a few months later.
His former boss, President Richard Nixon, met a similar fate thanks to those “meddling kids,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Journalists don’t get a scoop if there is nothing in it. These media reports have to be true if the media outlets are going to remain credible. That is the difference between politicians and reporters.
If a reporter is wrong, they have to correct it.
Contact Kent Bush, publisher of the Shawnee (Oklahoma) News-Star, at kent.bush@news-star.com.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: BUSH: Politicians and the media — 'those meddling kids'