The brutal stabbing of a 23-year old Ukranian-American woman in Charlotte by a black serial criminal was completely ignored by all of the so-called mainstream media. Only days later, when national outrage and the wrath of Donald Trump forced their hands, did any of the major media outlets finally to offer any kind of coverage. Is this a new phenomenon? Hardly. What does not fit the Leftist agenda does not get covered or is absurdly featured. Hence we observe the convoluted coverage last month of the transsexual (man to women) who murdered young Christian students at a day school in Minneapolis.
Media bias in general has been problematic for decades. In his seminal book Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time (1979), Herbert J. Gans made a compelling argument that the media in our society, not merely leaning Left or Right, was hopelessly biased. Today, the Leftist media has gone off the rails with the most recent example of blaming Donald Trump for Charlie Kirk’s assassination, or the gun lobby, or Kirk himself, rather than the deranged 22-year old who had planned the murder for weeks.
All the News We Can Use?
Gans dissected what kind of stories major news media offered to their markets, the level of information presented, the connection of reporters to their sources, the prevalence of subtopics within a story, and even the unwritten rules of journalism. The Gans text, updated 25 years later, is still a classic and has influenced those in the media who are wise enough to learn from it. Sadly, it seems that the major entities in the news and information industry today largely have taken giant steps backward.
For at least the second half of the 20th century when people referred to the major purveyors of news in our society this meant the big three television networks, the largest newspapers, headed by the New York Times and the Washington Post, a variety of big budget radio stations, and a handful of influential magazine publishers. Over many years, this syndicate was referred to as the “mainstream media.” From the outset this media leaned Left. Worse, referring to these media dominators as the “mainstream media” implied that other voices and alternative viewpoints were out of the mainstream.
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A Garbage Heap by Any Other Name
The “mainstream media” designation, obviously, does not sit well with those on the Right and hence the quest to apply titles that more accurately depict what these media dominators actually represent. Some pundits refer to this megalithic propaganda machine as the “corporate media.”
When Donald Trump was first running for office and then elected, he aptly employed the term “fake news.” This label doesn't completely describe what the dominant media represent, but it is close enough so that most people, particularly on the Right, know to what he is referring.
More recently, some on the Right have referred to the so-called mainstream media as the “legacy media.” Legacy in that they’ve been around for a while, independent certainly of the quality of reporting.
Another moniker, the “libstream media” is rather fitting considering the extreme position that it represents. Slightly more that 92% of all features and articles on Donald Trump are negative, and 7.8% – are positive or more general neutral. Clearly, something is amiss. Joe Biden among the worst of all presidents, as even many on the Left now acknowledge, never suffered having 92% of articles and features about him being negative. The libstream press leaned over backward to characterize him as coherent, confident, and competent.
The Fakestream Media
The title “fakestream media” has merit. Newspapers such as the Times and the Post occasionally print blatantly inaccurate stories and features about the Trump Administration and anyone on the Right. Mostly, however, they slyly add fake or highly biased elements into a story that otherwise offers a modicum of accuracy.
Stories that they don't feature represents a large chunk of their inactivity. How do you scrape by, under-covering Elon Musk's ability to rescue stranded astronauts? How do you disregard his Starlink system which brought the internet to communities devastated by floods and fires? How do you neglect his neural link breakthrough for the severely injured, giving them a new way to make their voice heard by others?
Then, of course, how do you cover for Joe Biden’s mental ineptitude over four long years? How do you downplay the inflationary spiral brought on by his economic brain trust? How do shield Biden, Harris, and Mayorkas as they invited 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants to invade our nation?
Automatic and Reflexive
How do you overlook the massive corporation and government entities that Donald Trump has induced to break new ground in America? How do you manage to besmirch the historic trade deal that he made with the European Union? How do explain away his tariffs which have struck gold?
As part of the fakestream media you do this automatically. You cannot stomach the progress made by President Trump or by Republicans in general. You aggrandize whatever Democrats do that is even mildly beneficial, while ever-seeking to portray their outlandish and foolish political positions as prudent, proper, and patriotic.
Fakestream media members seemingly operate in lock step, to the detriment of our nation, Western civilization, and the entire world. They are hopeless ideologues who fool enough of the people enough of the time to get away with their contorted, malignant views of news, society, and the direction of humankind.
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