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By G. Tod Slone, Editor of The American Dissident
Public opinion vis-a-vis journalists is at an all time low, which speaks highly of the intelligence and discernment of the public.
Journalists themselves have still not caught on, as witness this editorial in the Cape Cod Times (11/20/16), which concludes that the public does not have the “ability to discern between fact and fiction, between reality and rhetoric, and between substance and sound bites.”
Well, perhaps the public does possess the ability to discern between PC-news and factual news.
In a front-page editorial in the same Sunday paper, Editor-in-Chief Paul Pronovost noted that a reader had suggested the Cape Cod Times issue a mea culpa in the same light, or rather darkness, of the one issued by the New York Times. Pronovost then noted that the latter was not really a mea culpa at all, and how could any person of discernment not agree? We certainly do.
That infamous New York Times letter by the publisher was essentially a denial of egregious left-wing, pro-Hillary bias in the face of overwhelming evidence. Indeed, the paper had even endorsed Hillary Clinton. How could the publisher possibly state that the Times was not biased after such a well-publicized endorsement?
Well, the publisher did claim a lack of bias:
"The Times is certainly not afraid — our investigative report has demonstrated our courage many times over," the memo said. "That fearless, hard-fought journalism will always stand as the backbone of The Times, no matter the president. But we also approach the incoming Trump administration without bias. We will cover his policies and his agenda fairly.”
Unsurprisingly Pronovost followed that mind-boggling road of everything’s fine in the media state of denial with a similar platitudinously vacuous declaration and promise:
We certainly do pledge to be even-handed in our coverage of the president and his administration. The first responsibility of a free press it [sic] to seek the truth and to tell it as fully and fairly as possible. Those are not only words to us, they are a belief system. And as such, we do indeed promise to be impartial, just and equitable in our reporting of President-elect Trump. We will do our best to bring you the facts without bias or judgment because a democracy cannot function properly without an educated populace.
A democracy cannot function properly without educated and courageously individualistic — as opposed to ideologically-bound, professional/careerist — journalists. How might one peer through ideological glasses and somehow see without bias or judgment? Evidently, that was not possible with the New York Times, nor for the Cape Cod Times.
One would have to be wearing extra-thick ideological glasses not to perceive the day-by-day, anti-Trump, pro-Hillary New York Times front page articles and opinions, not to mention the anti-white racist rants often penned by Charles Blow. Even some left-wing persons with faulty lenses did manage to perceive that egregious bias, including MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.
For some aberrant reason or delusion, Pronovost actually believes he is part of the “free press.” He noted, “For us, that means fulfilling the responsibility of the free press to share the news of the day without prejudice.” Hogwash 101! The free press is certainly not bound to serve community pillars and advertisers like Pronovost and his careerist colleagues.
As a concrete example of Pronovost’s vacuous assertion that “I can promise that our intention is to fulfill our mission to deliver to you the facts, fully and fairly, to the best of our ability, every day,” he refused to even cover a worthy story that a local senior citizen had been permanently banned from his neighborhood library for a speech crime without due process. Indeed, the ban was dictated by a community pillar, a local elite and probable friend of Pronovost.
What other stories did Pronovost decide not to cover at all, let alone “fully and fairly”? Well, we’ll never have the answer to that.
Pronovost noted, “It is not for us to whitewash the truth or to blindly follow our leaders in the interest of keeping the peace.” Again, Hogwash 101. Considering the transparent and well-documented bias of our professional journalists, professional politicians, professional lawyers, and professional academics, the very term "professional" ought to be viewed negatively. Indeed, call us unprofessional, and we’ll take that as a compliment.
Pronovost’s lofty view regarding the press was certainly not something Provost and his colleagues put to practice. Our democracy has not been particularly healthy for many years, but Pronovost didn’t - and still doesn't - seem to understand that. And a big reason for its unhealthiness is the current state of the press.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote to Lafayette:
The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed.
Our Founders rightly believed that an independent press was an essential check on the power and corruption of government. It never occurred to them that the press would, of its own free will, gravitate towards one particular political view and overwhelmingly choose to censor all other points of view, without the power of government being used to bring this about.
Why? Careerism and so-called "professionalism" as taught in our elite leftist colleges of journalism are the culprits sitting in the front of the bus. The truth sits in the back of the bus, if indeed it is on board at all.
The PC-plague has largely taken over the “dedicated to the truth” press. So, in reality the press tends to be dedicated to PC-ideology, not to the truth.
Pronovost could not of course help but expose in his editorial his own bias, first by praising Obama, “we certainly appreciated the words President Obama shared with Trump last week in the Oval Office.” Then he denounced a faux-story propagated by a Trump supporter: “Protesters responding to a Craigslist ad and getting paid $3,500 for attending an anti-Trump rally—it was fiction.”
If not biased, how did he manage not to mention any of the egregiously corrupt practices and faux-stories of Clinton surrogates as clearly exposed by Project Veritas, Wikileaks, and Judicial Watch? Was that what he considered fair and balanced? Pronovost, and almost the entire rest of the legions of his media colleagues, need to look in the mirror and take a dose of his own advice, as in “if you are falling into that trap (i.e., “agreeing with everything you’re reading in a publication” [e.g., the New York Times]), do some more homework and apply critical thinking skills.”
If indeed the Cape Cod Times is “New England’s Newspaper of the Year,” as it boasts on each day’s front page, then journalism in New England is in serious trouble. In vain, this critique was sent to the Cape Cod Times and unsurprisingly rejected because its editor cannot bear criticism, preferring to utter laudatory principles, while not adhering to them, and simultaneously congratulating himself on a job he argues to have been well done despite the overwhelming majority of the American people clearly realizing the exact opposite.