Taken over by political parties and special interests, the American press has been corrupted to the point that it violates the First Amendment’s right to free speech. Sitting on the sidelines, 44-year-old Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission Avit V. Pai needs to open an investigation into how the nation’s most prestigious broadcast and print outlets have been corrupted by political parties and special interests. Granted special free speech privileges by the First Amendment, the media’s supposed to be the ultimate oversight body of the government, protecting the public against corruption by the three branches of government. Today’s media has fallen prey to politics and corporate influence, preventing the press from its First Amendment oversight capacity. Since 71-year-old President Donald Trump won the presidency Nov. 8, 2016, the media’s been on the warpath.
Trump won the election in part because he ran on what he called the “fake news” media, advancing in 2016 former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political agenda. All major broadcast or print outlets endorsed Hillary for president, exposing extreme prejudice in the newsrooms. Trump ran against the mainstream media, winning the election in what amounted to a stunning rebuke by voters of the American press. Since his win, the media, with the exception of Fox News, has done everything possible to sabotage Trump’s presidency. Not one media organization has done anything to stop the egregious bias against Trump, in fact doubling-down on the anti-Trump message. Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Shorenstein Center reported May 18 that the media was overwhelmingly biased in coverage of Trump, demanding the FCC look into extreme media bias.
There’s no Free Speech in American media when the public can’t trust the unbiased objectivity of journalism. Harvard’s study found that CNN spent 93% of the time reporting negative stories about Trump, an egregious abuse of its First Amendment rights as a credentialed media organization. However many viewers tune in to CNN, they’re getting a prejudicial presentation of the news, reflecting a political agenda, not what’s factually occurring in real new stories. Take, for instance, this weekend’s reporting of the Charlottesville racial melee. “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence—on many sides,” said Trump in his initial response to the Aug. 12 melee, leaving one women dead from a domestic terrorist car-ramming attack. Trump’s statement became subject of widespread political attack by the mainstream media.
Trump’s initial response was criticized for the “on many sides,” comment drawing attention to the fact that the “Unite the Right” demonstration at Emancipation Park to save the Robert E. Lee monument got violent when counter-protesters, led by Black Lives Matters and Antifa, mixed it up with Alt-Right groups. Trump offered no excuses or apologies for the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi groups or other white nationalist groups, only drawing attention to other groups involved in the mayhem. FCC Chairman
Pai needs to look into how and why the mainstream press finds any reason to condemn Trump. “Racism is evil,” Trump clarified on Aug. 14. “And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” Even this clarification drew criticism.
Trump’s inability to satisfy a biased national media can’t pass unnoticed. No credentialed news organization can operate with extreme prejudice under influence from political and special interest groups. Trump’s initial response was far more acceptable than former President Barack Obama when he refused to comment on the July 7, 2016 massacre of five Dallas police officer by a sniper sympathetic to Black Lives Matter. Yet today’s press operates with extreme prejudice against Trump, largely for calling out the press’s propaganda in the 2016 election. When CBS managing director and Nightly News anchor Dan Rather published forged docs on the military service of former president George W. Bush in the 2004 election, he was fired for letting Democrat operatives infiltrate the CBS newsroom. Now newsrooms of all major broadcast and print outlets are taken over by anti-Trump political and special interest groups.
Time has come for FCC Chairman Pai to launch an investigation with Congress into political and special interest corruption of America’s newsrooms. No news organization can serve the public interest when it serves its own political agenda. Trump’s initial response and clarification proves that there’s nothing the White House can do to get fair-and-balanced reporting from mainstream news organizations. No citizen can trust the news media when it has a political agenda to harm Trump. Whether you like Trump or not, it’s not the role of the media to present pernicious propaganda to serve its political agenda, guaranteeing a positive outcome in the 2018 Midterm or 2020 general elections. Congress must use its oversight capacity to work with FCC Chairman Pai to rid American print and broadcast newsrooms of today’s extreme bias, preventing the public from getting the facts on current events.
