The Thumb on the Scales.

The Thumb on the Scales.  Propaganda is as much a matter of what is left out, as of what is actually said.  Those words of George Orwell were prophetic when spoken long ago and have become part and parcel of modern journalism.   As recently as two decades ago, I could have listed at least three-to-five newspapers or magazines that I thought did a reasonably professional and non-biased job of covering the news; now I cannot name one.  Every single media outlet I am familiar with has an agenda, right or left, and they all pursue them shamelessly.  The only hope a regular Joe with a limited amount of time and resource for self-informing to get a balanced picture of today’s world is to make certain their media diet consists of healthy portions representing varied and opposing opinions.  This is especially important (and the lack of it blatantly obvious) with our high school and college youth and our low-information adult citizens.  For whatever personal reasons, they latch onto a monolithic media source, be it right or be it left, and ease into the notion that all they receive from this source is the gospel and sufficient to make important and sweeping decisions about our world.  In fact, Orwell’s words of warning have been lost in the media shuffle and today’s media litmus test is not so much whether the reported facts are accurate, but whether or not all of the pertinent facts are presented.  It has become accepted practice for our media sources to routinely keep a thumb on the scales.   Legal liability determines the amount of truth in the report; personal agenda determines the number and selection of facts in the report. 

Two recent examples of this phenomenon that I find amusing is the way both the right-centric media and the left-centric media have covered the candidacy of Trump.  Fox News has simply been enthralled with Trump; featuring him pretty much as a regular on O’Reilly.  For all the barbs that Bill O throws towards CNN; he has been just as shameless in his donation of free air time to the Donald.   I’m not sure, but I think Fox has been around Obama so much that that have been affected with his favorite pastime; that of looking at yourself in the mirror and being excessively impressed.  I’m not sure why they are choosing to cover all of the flash and flicker of Trump and give him a pass on his record, but there it is.  Here lately, they have begun to demonstrate awareness that Trump does, in fact, have a record that bears examination; they are just pretty damn late to the party.

As for the left, I don’t think there is any question as to motivation for their kid glove coverage of Trump.  Whether it be correct or not, they are openly salivating at the prospect of having Donald Trump as the 2016 Republican presidential candidate.  Donald Trump’s life record is a veritable mine field of controversy, but why cover that now?  Why would a liberal press who wants the weakest Republican candidate to win play their best cards against him now, when it might possibly lead to a stronger candidate obtaining the nomination?  Helping Trump skate to the nomination fits rather nicely in their plan to continue a liberal executive order into the next eight years.  If you will, contrast this Trump coverage with how Hillary is covered.  It is true that much of the liberal press has spent a significant amount of time and resource covering some of Clinton’s legal issues; such as the personal server, her email security, and the possible Clinton Foundation conflicts of interest.  But it is equally true that no reasonable person has ever given Sanders a chance in hell of beating Clinton out for the Democratic nomination.  All of that critical coverage is on the cheap.  It serves a dual purpose of putting it out there now in hopes of it fading away by the general election season; at some point you have to acknowledge it because it is so blatant; and it also gives them some cover to claim some degree of objectiveness.  Imagine, if you will, the media covering Trump with the same appetite evident in Clinton coverage?  If that were the case, would we just now, at this later (and therefore less consequential) date, be hearing about Trump Academy, illegal Trump Corp labor issues, and other various past Trump escapades? 

The promise of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is a very solemn oath; and it was once a very public goal and mantra of this nation’s journalistic community.  That oath has now morphed into “what is presented as truth, part of it being actually true, but clearly not all of the facts involved in the matter”.  Far more than any of us care to acknowledge, we are products of the information stimuli that bombards us each day.  We rush through our lives at breakneck speed, taking care of the essential tasks that pop up on our “ten feet ahead of us” radar, and soak up the news in the most efficient (but not necessarily effective) manners possible.  As is the case with our government, the American journalistic community is populated by youthful, idealistic, and agenda-driven individuals who profess high levels of professionalism but regularly display poor ethics, lack of recognition regarding their own limitations and weaknesses, and blind ambition.  These are the people that guide us in many of our daily and consequential decisions; how we choose to vote being one of them.  Elections have consequences.  We deserve the leaders that we elect.  We deserve the government they shape.  We all need to look for that thumb on the scales and when we recognize it, make an effort to find the story told by the thumb on the other side of the scales.