You can bet public trust in the media has reached a low point when even a CNN host notes the Mueller report findings reveal how relentlessly negative the coverage of President Donald Trump has been for two years.
S.E. Cupp, a columnist and host of CNN's S.E. Cupp Unfiltered, writes that results of the nearly two-year Mueller investigation stand as a stark example of the media zeal to damage one president without previously applying the same standards to all who've sought the office regardless of political party.
In other words, playing the partisan game of choosing political favorites.
Such selective coverage in the liberal mainstream is far from a revelation. We've watched for years as newspaper stories and TV news accounts have been relentlessly slanted toward damaging Trump, including the practically rabid national media speculations about how Mueller's findings would most assuredly bring Trump's undoing and impeachment.
The relentless crusade has been beyond obvious to readers on a daily basis. And Mueller's non-findings serve as a humiliating validation of just how vicious and unfounded these assaults have been.
Having been in the journalism business for decades, I have little difficulty spotting calculated agendas when I see or hear them. The negative spin and connotations usually appear, in the case of newspapers, in headlines and within the first three or four paragraphs. Tens of millions of thinking adults have come to recognize the same thing.
I've despised this distorted approach to alleged "objective journalism" in much of the mainstream press mainly because I see (and feel) it applies a broad brush to the credibility of everyone who practices this craft in an objective manner.
In much of the public's mind, so many examples of partisan bias against one politician and/or political party naturally reflects poorly on our industry as a whole. And that is a genuine shame.
An authentic journalist reporting the news accurately without foes to attack or friends to favor (as opposed to, say, a stenographer or activist bent on facilitating social engineering by attacking one side while protecting the other) earns his or her trust through the quality of their reporting. This requires a proven track record displaying both credibility and trustworthiness.
Yet it takes only brief lapses into bias and obvious attempts at persuasion to shred it. For in the end, trustworthiness is the value a news reporter has to offer.
Publisher Walter E. Hussman's "Statement of Core Values" published daily on Page 2 of this paper, says it best in one paragraph: "Credibility is the greatest asset of any news medium, and impartiality is the greatest source of credibility."
I was somewhat surprised to see Cupp (a conservative openly disdainful of Trump) publish such a refreshingly honest analysis on the way what we've agreed to call the mainstream media has so blatantly failed to impartially report on all presidents and presidential candidates equally when it comes to the focus and intensity of their scrutiny.
It's true I believe that had the mainstream put every president, certainly to include Barack Obama, under the same hypercritical (and hypocritical) microscope as Trump for every misstep, flaw and perceived failure, the level of public distrust and disgust would be much less than it is today.
What most of the public would have accepted, likely even respected, was a media fulfilling its First Amendment obligations to objectively ignore political affiliation and focus on finding and impartially reporting truths, good, bad and ugly. In other words, be uncompromising yet nonpartisan, fair and balanced in their reporting. That's no more than what good reporters and editors should expect of themselves.
The tedious drumbeat of harping in the news for nearly two years over Trump's supposed collusion with Russians only to have it evaporate into a Double Whopper Nothingburger provided contrasting evidence supporting what many Americans believe has been politicized media collaboration to destroy the president. Examples of gross media bias (often becoming personal) is enormous and undeniable.
Cupp expressed it another way: "Despite having a slim record of accomplishments upon ascending to the White House, President Obama earned the quick adoration of many in the media," she writes." But, with some exceptions, had the press been as systemically suspicious of Obama as it is of Trump, we might not have needed to rely on whistle-blowers to expose illegal drone wars, mass data collection or shoddy defense contracts, not to mention an inadequate response to a drug abuse crisis that's now killing tens of thousands of people."
Might I add Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the VA scandal and the IRS targeting of conservatives.
Cupp continued, saying that, from the Truman to the Kennedy administrations, a more adversarial press also might have uncovered the true level of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War years before. "And as openly disapproving of George W. Bush as many in the media were, even that administration received the benefit of the doubt on far too many occasions for far too long, from the passing of the Patriot Act to the justification for the Iraq War."
I've previously states that in 1971 while completing a journalism degree at the University of Central Arkansas, our professor, the late J. Dean Duncan (a liberal-minded former Peace Corps worker), never taught us to become propagandists or protectors of one political agenda. There was not a single class on how to intentionally harm or damage another person or elected official in the news pages.
Duncan did admonish that placing anyone's life under a microscope and unfairly focusing on negative traits and flaws in new stories could likely have a "killing effect" on them and was not only unfair, but a dishonest journalistic practice.
With corporations and their special interests controlling the vast majority of the American media today, it's apparent to me the die sadly has been cast on this latest destructive form of so-called news reporting. It would be far more understandable, even acceptable, however, if such an approach would apply equally to candidates from all political parties rather than pushing one partisan view in efforts to further a specific agenda.
Sure wish all of my colleagues across the country could have studied and learned the vast difference between honest news reporting and opinion writing under Dean Duncan's guiding hand.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
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