The last week has seen some of the most glaring examples of media bias we’ve seen over the last several years, which, believe me, is really saying something.
The way the establishment media covered the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and subsequent horrific massacre in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in which a career criminal is accused of deliberately swerving his vehicle through a crowd at a Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring dozens of others, has been downright atrocious.
Rittenhouse, who was found not guilty of all counts against him after defending his life during a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, was portrayed, without any basis, as a “white supremacist” vigilante who “murdered” two people.
The Waukesha massacre, meanwhile, was depicted as an “accident,” while the lengthy criminal history and left-wing ideology of the suspect were shamefully ignored or downplayed.
This, in the immortal words of former President Donald Trump, is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the “fake news” media.
But as the 45th POTUS himself, whose commentary and criticism on the establishment media has grown substantially larger than his own impressive personage, told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview that aired Tuesday, the “fake news” ought really to be called the “corrupt news” these days, because this is exactly what the corporate media has become.
And the fake news is most certainly, as he famously said more than once during his presidency, still the enemy of the people.
“They are corrupt,” Trump said. “I don’t want to say it much, but I say it and I hope in the future I don’t have to: They are the enemy of the people.”
As president, he inspired much pearl-clutching, especially from the self-aggrandizing members of the biased establishment media complex, for declaring that the “fake news” media were the “enemy of the people.”
Of course, the self-styled martyrs of the biased media spun his comments falsely, thus confirming his sentiment toward them in the first place. Instead, they reacted as though he had called the free press the enemy of the people.
By taking this so personally, of course, establishment media figures unwittingly admitted to being members of the “fake news” of Trump’s own characterization, so eager were they to give the American people the impression that the Orange Man sought to limit press freedoms.
Interestingly, it was ultimately Trump whose free speech was sorely undermined by corporate social media right before leaving office, and by the corporate media that still enjoy free rein to report (and distort) the news.
Trump went on, however, to make a very important point about the impact of media bias on American society that strikes at the core of just how much control the corporate outlets have over our lives.
“We could have a country that would be able to heal and get together except the media foments it,” he said.
This couldn’t be truer in regards to the Rittenhouse case and the Waukesha massacre. I believe it’s likely the vast majority of Americans would have defended Rittenhouse’s actions and been even more disturbed by the Waukesha massacre had they simply been presented with the facts instead of the wildly biased spin.
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Giving himself a pat on the back for popularizing the term “fake news,” Trump said that it really ought to be the “corrupt news.”
“They’re really the ‘corrupt news,'” he said. “It’s corrupt what they do and they’re so important … they used to have a high approval rating, now they have the lowest, I think they have a lower rating than Mitch McConnell, which is pretty good.” (This sly jab at Senate Minority Leader McConnell elected a chuckle from host Hannity.)
Trump added, “People have gotten wise to it, they’ve just gotten wise to it, and it’s a shame.”
He is absolutely correct. A free press is vital to the function of a free republic, but biased, agenda-driven media disguising themselves as free, fair media could be the death of it.
Nothing demonstrated how astoundingly slanted the media are like the coverage of Trump’s presidency.
Ironically, they seriously undermined their own trustworthiness by reporting on a presidency that was easily rife for criticism by trying to spin every last mundane, uncontroversial detail of his words and actions into a major national crisis.
To say nothing of running with and promoting the exhaustively debunked Russia conspiracy theory while ignoring the far more substantial evidence that the hoax was cooked up by former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and several shadowy political operatives.
Fake, biased, corporate news that covers for crooks and routinely bashes and attacks the will of the American people while destroying every last semblance of civility in our national discourse is very much the enemy of the people.
And the people, indeed, are waking up.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
