The Media That Cried Wolf
In a week in which CNN cried wolf when there was no wolf by falsely condemning Trump for poor fish-feeding habits, is it surprising that decades-old charges of sexual impropriety being leveled against Judge Roy Moore aren’t being unquestioningly accepted by voters?
We can all remember a number of times when the media has proclaimed a wolf was present when we later discovered they were wrong.
There is Global Warming… err, Climate Change where we were told that by now the world would be doomed but somehow that hasn’t happened.
We were told that the black man shot in Ferguson was holding his hands up to surrender.
In the last century the media informed us that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation. Of course, that was bogus.
We were told that many women had been assaulted by Trump but the fact that they all apparently disappeared after the election makes reasonable people wonder if there was a wolf.
The media can’t stop talking about Russian colluding with Trump even though after months and months of investigation absolutely nothing has been found.
Clearly a reasonable person would hesitate before assuming that salacious charges raised weeks before a contentious election by a highly biased news source is true. The media has cried wolf so often when there was no wolf that sane people reserve judgement until there’s more proof.
That attitude is exacerbated by the fact that when wolves do appear the media often fails to mention them.
We know that none of the major networks have mentioned the fact that for more than two months a Democratic senator has been on trial for accepting bribes.
We know that the media ignored a credible claim that Bill Clinton raped a woman.
We know that the media ignores the fact that thousands of blacks are shot each year in Democrat-run cities.
We know that the media has refused to cover the clear evidence that Hillary colluded with Russia when she was secretary of state and that her campaign colluded with the Russians to fake dirt on Trump.
We know that the media has defended Roman Polanski, who has admitted to raping a 13-year-old and that the media doesn’t mention that Woody Allen has been accused of raping a child.
A reasonable person would conclude that the media is utterly untrustworthy because it cries wolf when there is no wolf and stays silent when wolves prey on people.
Further the pattern is clear the stories that are pushed are designed to further the political objectives of the mainstream media. The sins of liberals are ignored and any claim no matter how tenuous of impropriety by a conservative is incessantly repeated.
This is a result of the politicization of the major media outlets in America. Instead of diverse voices whose biases balance out, the major media are a monoculture of left-wing radicalism. Instead of trying to be objective, reporters and their bosses have become “woke” and believe that their job isn’t informing Americans but controlling what Americans think.
In the real world that’s called a propaganda machine, not a free press.
The Moore case shows the cost of this radically biased behavior on American democracy. Most people would probably want Moore to step down if the charges against him are true. But because we can’t trust the media we can’t be sure if the charges are true. That means that the voters can’t make the informed decisions about who to vote for.
Because we know the media has lied about politicians it doesn’t like with enthusiasm, we can’t help but think that they’re lying now because for decades Moore has appeared to be a good person.
But even worse is the fact that the media was perfectly comfortable with Bill Clinton cheating on his wife, sexually harassing subordinates, and being accused of rape. This incentivises Republicans to lower their standards. If it’s okay for Teddy Kennedy to kill a woman and Bill Clinton to be accused of rape, why should we be concerned if Moore did bad things decades ago?
Is it unreasonable for voters to wonder if the Washington Post manages to destroy Moore’s campaign with decades-old claims that every conservative who runs for any office will suddenly be accused of ancient unprovable acts of evil weeks before the election?
That’s the bad thing -- unlike liberals, conservatives don’t want sexual predators in office, but without being able to know for sure what the truth is, conservatives may end up supporting deeply flawed candidates. When Clinton was accused, the Democrat response was to smear the accusers. Conservatives aren’t doing that; instead they’re, by and large, desperately trying to find out the truth because unlike liberals we don’t want our politicians to be moral reprobates.
If your liberal friends attack you, ask them if American Thinker posted a story based on decades-old claims about Moore’s opponent if they’d immediately believe those charges and demand that the Democrat leave the race? They’ll of course declare that American Thinker is untrustworthy while the Washington Post is a paragon of virtue. Then explain to them how you see it; namely that nothing the Post publishes can be trusted. Get them to understand that just as they’d reject an unverifiable report from a media source they don’t like you have the right to reject an unverifiable report from a media source you can show is biased.
The Moore story is shining a light on the critical problem caused by the mainstream media turning into the propaganda arm of the Democrats. For democracy to work, the voters have to have the facts so that they can decide. But in today’s America it’s nearly impossible to get facts from media sources that haven’t sold their souls to advance their agenda.
If Moore is guilty and he is elected, it’s because the liberal media has become so untrustworthy that people just assume they’re lying. An unintended consequence of the media picking sides and intentionally slanting the “news”.
Use this as a teachable moment for your liberal friends. Point out that if the media is willing to lie about how Trump feeds fish in Japan it’s really hard to take the media seriously when it digs up decades-old charges right before an election. Get them to realize that we all benefit from not just a free press but an honest and free press.
There’s also one more lesson to be learned; not reporting sexual harassment will lead to a loss of credibility and more victims. If either of the women accusing Moore had gone to the cops at the time, we’d be living in a different, and presumably better, world. As it stands, it’s really hard to believe that these women were harassed when they said nothing about it for decades and then suddenly came forward just four weeks before a critical election.
You can read more of tom’s rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious and feel free to follow him on Twitter