Major media unwittingly helped elected Donald Trump as U.S. President.
Here’s how that happened: Let’s begin with a survey by the American Press Institute that showed only six percent of Americans have faith in the mainstream [MSM] media. Look at it another way, that’s a stunning 94 percent rejection of major media. People have more faith in drug dealers, pedophiles and GMO food.
[Courtesy of Ramireztoons]
That Americans have so little faith in the mainstream/corporate media became clear when Republican Donald Trump triumphed over Democrat Hillary Clinton for the presidency — a defeat many media outlets described as “surprising” and “unexpected.”
For the hard-core liberals, I suppose it was. You can add to the list social justice warriors, bed-wetters and participant trophy winners.
It was only surprising and unexpected because so many major media reporters, editors and publishers were living in a bubble. Had they been in the real world and in touch with commonfolk Americans, they would have discovered that the flamboyant billionaire and TV star had more than a fighting chance of becoming their next leader.
[Image courtesy of the CBC]
“Even reporters within the major networks,” Jankowski adds, “have admitted that the media has been corrupted by political and corporate interests.”
Because of the Internet people are becoming more skeptical about everything, including corporate media. They’re well aware there is a lot of smoke and mirrors.
FAIL: PUBLIC OPINION POLLS
Not everyone bought into the lie of what the election pollsters were telling us. Remember those surveys that gave Hillary Clinton an insurmountable lead … and those exit polls that showed her way ahead of Trump? Bullshit.
There’s a report that Clinton campaign workers in New York were sipping champagne before the first results came in. They had two reasons to celebrate early: some very positive opinion polls and the non-stop demonization of Donald Trump in the major media.
You can bet a $6.95 latte that on election night there was an air of giddiness in newsrooms across North America as well. It was supposed to be a slam dunk for Clinton. “Atta-girl, Hillary! … first U.S. female president!” But when the results started to appear on television, so did the long faces of the program hosts. “How could this have happened?” they asked. Others said, “We have to change the system … and Trump should be impeached!”
How about this question instead: “Isn’t it time some journalists got out of the business?”
[Image courtesy of Google]
AMERICANS WERE FED UP
Americans who voted for Donald Trump were not only fed up with the major media but with the corruption and lies of the career politicians. The electorate wanted someone who wasn’t a politician, and someone who wasn’t beholding to Wall Street.
Enter Donald Trump, the businessman.
From the time Trump jumped into the race for the leadership of the Republican party, right up to election day, few gave the man a chance. They lacked self-awareness, to put it nicely.
Trump proved everyone wrong when he nailed the Republican nomination. That should have been a lesson for major media, but apparently it wasn’t. Trump then proved them wrong all over again by winning the Presidency.
Fingers crossed that Donald Trump continues to prove ’em wrong — and that the man makes good on his promise to “make America great again.”
Trump feels that Hilliary Clinton should be behind bars for breaking the law, to put it mildly. If she’s guilty [as judged not by Trump but by the American judicial system], she should be jailed. Duh. And if she is guilty, it would do Americans good to see her eat prison food. But if she’s guilty and given a pardon, Americans are back to having zero confidence in government.
That’s because most people prefer the rule of law over cheap talk.
SO LONG … WE’LL MISS YA
Let’s hope reporters stop asking movie stars and other celebrities for advice and insight, unless it’s about divorce or substance abuse. Because someone has starred in a make-believe movie doesn’t give them a special insight into how to run a country.
As for those demigods who threatened to leave the United States if Donald Trump was elected … let’s see if they’ll now become famous for walking the talk. Like I say, no one likes cheap talk.
Here’s a sampling of those who vowed to leave the United States if Trump became President. Thanks in large part to them, President-elect Trump became the subject of global mockery and scorn. Remember these celebrities: Neve Campbell, Bryan Cranston, Miley Cyrus, Lena Dunham, Chelsea Handler, Samuel L. Jackson, Keegan-Michael Key, Amy Schumer, Barbara Streisand, Cher, Ne Yo, Jon Stewart, Eddie Griffin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Whoopi Goldberg, Omari Hardwick, Raven-Symone, Spike Lee, Chloë Sevigny, George Lopez and Amber Rose.
[Credit: Artist Glenn McCoy]
An easy assignment for the mainstream media: determine which celebrities have actually left the States — and who has dined on crow. Those with real conviction will pull out of Dodge but the fakes will stay.
[Courtesy of Ramireztoons]
BIASED COVERAGE
My read on mainstream media coverage of the U.S. election was that it was biased against Donald Trump. Dissappointing, but hardly surprising. Just an aside here, I am a national award-winning radio and newspaper reporter who spent most of his career in the taxpayer funded, so-called left-leaning, mainstream media. I am not what one would call a right-winger.
I won’t go on with a long list of examples of biased coverage, but this one was telling: towards the end of the election campaign, thousands of supporters showed up for a Trump rally in Florida … while Clinton’s running mate, at a rally in the same state, had only 30 people or so — and that included reporters. That was a news story. The alarm bells should have gone off but the mainstream media kept all that quiet because it was bad news for the candidate who had strong aspirations of becoming the first female president of the United States of America.
The coverage became so one-sided that Trump often made references to it during his election speeches. The upstart Trump had nailed it. If it wasn’t for social media and for people who didn’t trust the mainstream media, Trump’s point of view might not have been heard.
TRUMP QUOTES
Did Trump ever say he was against immigration? … or did he say he was against ILLEGAL immigration? There’s a big difference. As for the screening of Muslims wanting to immigrate to the United States, why wouldn’t that happen after the violence-prone, failed assimilation of Muslim immigrants in France, Sweden, Netherlands, etc where Sharia law apparently now holds court in parts of the land?
The body count is climbing and why shouldn’t Americans be concerned?
Sharia law, in my view, is a throw-back to the Middle Ages. Let’s be fair here, so too are some passages from the Old Testament. One would have to be smoking a ton of pot to think God would give a thumbs-up to sadistic, barbaric acts.
When Trump talked about immigration and law and order he was called a racist. And those who supported his point of view were also labelled racists.
I found it odd that when I posted pro-Hillary information on Facebook, no one objected. But if I posted material that was pro-Trump, I got flak. It’s strange that in a democracy, civil people suddenly became narrow-minded and abusive with comments like “give your head a shake” … all because someone had a different point of view. I thought about these people on election night … sitting around the television and giving their heads a shake.
“We’ve got to stop acting out hate,” writes Charles Eisenstein in Yes! Magazine. “We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil. This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary. It is to offer acute political analysis that doesn’t carry the implicit message of, “Aren’t those people horrible?””
[Credit to forbes.com/cartoons]
‘SNAKES, COVER-UP ARTISTS AND LIARS’
It can never be said that Jon Rappoport sucks up to major media.
“[Major] media presumed too much,” the San Diego, California-based journalist writes in his blog, NoMoreFakeNews.com. “They presumed they had us in the palm of their hand. We were their property. We were transfixed by their authority. All that is going away. Bye bye. The big shift is accelerating. Independent media are in the ascendance. Understand that. Recognize it. The impossible is happening.”
“Fake news sites? Please,” begs Rappoport. “The major media are the biggest fakes the world has ever seen. Their anchors and star reporters are bloviating cranks. They’re dinner-theatre actors.”
“Understand this: Major media have a rock-bottom article of faith. It is: “We own the news.” They can’t give it up. They’ll never give it up. It fuels everything they do. It’s the substance and core of their attitude. As their ship goes down below the waves, they’ll be chanting it. “We own the news.”
“But they don’t,” he says. “In truth, they never did. For a time, they managed to sell that delusion to the people. That time is drawing to a close.”
For Rappoport’s take on a November 21, 2016 meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and major media stars [‘snakes, cover-up artists and liars’] check this out:
‘A BILLIONAIRE ROBIN HOOD’
“Underestimate him at your peril,” warned Piers Morgan, the British TV show host, about Donald Trump on June 17, 2015.
In a recent opinion piece for Mail Online, Morgan wrote about his reflections of more than a year ago: “[Trump] has a big popular appeal away from the snobby halls of Washington and New York’s media elite. Regular Americans love the guy; he’s a fierce patriot, gutsy, and bursting with ‘can-do’ confidence. He doesn’t pretend to be something he isn’t. He’s big, bold, bombastic, loud, dynamic, compelling and a polarizing character who craves and commands attention … and who will electrify the tediously long U.S. election process with the same fearless aggression he goes after those who cross him in business or on Twitter.”
Morgan put it right out there: “[Trump] challenged all political convention and every single facet of the establishment. He took on his 17 Republican rivals, the Democrats, the print and TV media, Washington and Wall Street elites, and sneering foreign leaders.”
[And don’t forget, Donald Trump also had to defeat the ‘Never Trump Movement’ within his own party.]
Back to Morgan: “[Trump was] astonishingly effective in rallying support from the tens of millions of working-class Americans struggling to make ends meet, many of whom can’t even afford a train ticket to taste the rich and privileged air on the East and West coasts.”
“Trump was their billionaire Robin Hood.” — Piers Morgan
“The key issues in this campaign,” Morgan writes, “were not climate change, legalising marijuana or gay marriage. They were the economy, jobs, immigration, and terrorism.”
“[Trump] also positioned himself against the corrupt, self-interested, lobby group-infested political system that these same Americans feel strongly has enriched itself at their expense.”
“Hillary Clinton,” according to Morgan, “perfectly personified that system; a career politician who has repeatedly fleeced her positions of power to make millions of dollars for herself and her husband, and who carried with her a permanent smug sense of entitlement to be America’s first female president. Hillary herself dripped with haught, superior arrogance, referring to Trump’s supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables.’
“In the most obscene illustration of revoltingly elitist back-slapping, Madonna even publicly promised to give oral sex to everyone who voted for Hillary.”
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD
Political correctness has gotten out of hand, but that also helped Donald Trump. I believe voters saw through the charade and said ‘screw you’ to not only political correctness, but career politicians, investment bankers, the elite, and the mainstream media.
[Image courtesy of CopsPlus.com]
Many a $60.00 pair of running shoes from a looted shop went for $60.00 off. Expensive work boots were left behind.
In three decades of reporting I’ve found that the “liberal” media, more than any, tends to want to tell people what’s best for them — especially when it comes to political correctness.
[Courtesy of Facebook]
A BLOW FOR THE ELITES
It didn’t bother me one bit that Donald Trump stuck it to the ruling elite, the same outfit that controls mainstream and corporate media in the U.S. Good for him. We’re living in La-La Land if we think that those who control the purse strings of media outlets — whether it be private or public media — have no influence in what’s being put out there.
Same goes for government-funded radio and television stations. Do people really think any government is going to pour billions of dollars into a news organization just to “unite the people?” Think: protect the Status Quo.
More than 90 percent of mainstream media in the United States is owned by half a dozen companies. In Canada, there’s even more sleaze. Here, some big media companies are run by families where to be in the top managerial positions one must pass a unique test — a DNA test. “Thanks for the job, daddy.” “That’s fine, son. I knew you had it in you.”
These media companies have a lot of money — and power. The issue isn’t ownership nor money, it’s about control. That means shaping public opinion.
The job of the media is to report the news, not manufacture it. Or be rototic cheerleaders. Or shills. Put another way, it’s not the job of the media to slant news to influence public opinion. But it happens, folks, and it probably happens more than we realize. Both left-leaning and right-leaning news organizations are guilty of this. Let’s keep in mind that it’s the job of governments and advertising agencies, not newsrooms, to influence public opinion.
FOX News — considered by some to be “very right wing” — came out of the election looking better than their opponents because they did a better job of reading the pulse of Americans.
The Los Angeles Times also did a remarkable job of calling the election results. The same can’t be said for other big news organizations.
The publisher of The New York Times issued a public apology for his paper’s supposed biased coverage, pleading with readers not to cancel their subscriptions. Actually, that’s exactly what readers should do — kick them to the curb. Money talks. Give ’em a strong, clear message: We don’t trust you, and we don’t want you around unless your coverage is balanced, fair, accurate and complete.
IN CONCLUSION …
As for those violent protests throughout the United States following Trump’s win … question: did Republican supporters go nuts and behave like that when Barack Obama got in? Don’t think they did. If I recall, the Republicans behaved with class.
Another question: are these violent demonstrations purely spontaneous … or is someone FUNDING them? Could it be that powerful economic elites who supported Hilliary Clinton are paying people to protest and providing them with placards?
Here’s a kicker: Wasn’t Trump being bashed by the media because he said he might not accept the outcome of the vote?
It wouldn’t be hard for reporters to ask rioters if they’re part of the 50 percent who voted. The mainstream media should be asking the tough questions and not only reporting on who’s behind the demos, but leading with the story. Meanwhile, the social media is having a field day with this one.
If Washington is serious about fighting terrrorism, here’s a suggestion: Investigate those ‘uncontrolled disturbances’ and if there’s evidence of anyone having incited a riot, lay charges. And if there’s enough evidence, convict and send the sleazebags off to prison.
Same for the crooked investment bankers on Wall Street — the ‘too big to jail’ people. Let’s hope the new presidency in the U.S. does what Iceland did to its rogue bankers: take away their million-dollar homes, suits and cocktail parties and give them prison uniforms, handcuffs and behind-glass visits with relatives.
“The more the privileged elite sucked up to Clinton, notes Piers Morgan, the more determined it made Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary American to trigger Millennial Armageddon.”
He’s right. Monica Lewinsky wasn’t the only one dropping to her knees. She had plenty of company.
[Image courtesy of Randy Marshall]
