The Press has never been objective, but its subjectivity today is astounds me. The change in degree begs a question: How much does the change reflect society vs. how much the change molds society? And by society, I mean the Democratic Party.
In My Naive Youth
Had I been old enough to vote in 1960, I would have cast my ballot without reservations for JFK. My naive mind had been shaped directly and indirectly to favor him: Directly by an unwavering Democrat household of my youth and indirectly by a subjective Press that protected JFK from scandal and kept me from knowing anything negative about the man. In one of those “If I knew then what I know now,” moments I reflect that I might not have—again had I been old enough—cast that ballot without questions about him.
Let me admit within his first year I thought Democrat John Kennedy was an ineffective President after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, but then I thought he showed resolve and leadership in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962—after scaring the beekeepers out of me over the threat of nuclear war. I believed he inspired the country with his call to put a man on the moon, but even in that I realized the estimated cost of $30 billion to do so would be a tax burden. However, that was exhilarating stuff in my young mind. Also, because for one dollar I joined the NAACP in sympathy for the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, I favored his sending troops to Alabama.
But I did not understand his motive for sending 16,000 advisors to Vietnam, especially since he once said insightfully, “I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance … can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere.” Nevertheless, until I learned more about his personal life after his assassination, I held him and his party in high esteem. To me Kennedy was as an articulate man who had served in the military and who did not press, except for the formation of NASA, for a larger government with its inevitable wasteful spending.
Overall, as a representative Democrat and in spite of his missteps, Kennedy had convinced me that his party supported the best American traditions and values that I saw growing up in that Democrat household with a father who had served as a marine in Okinawa. Had I known more about his character, I might understood that his sending those troops to Vietnam was a matter of political expediency, probably an attempt to look even “tougher”on Communists after the missile crisis.
New Era, Different Party Different Press, if not in Kind, Certainly in Degree
Regardless of Kennedy’s imperfections, I can’t imagine his being a member of today’s mainstream Democratic Party or his supporting the socialism embedded in recent Obama-Biden era legislation with hundreds of pages of special interest giveaways amounting to trillions of dollars and stifling economic regulations. Nor can I imagine his acquiescing to today’s Far Left or allowing Antifa to run Seattle and Portland into their current decline. Surely, he would have restored order In short order as his action in Alabama indicates. So, how would today’s Press accept him?
Support in Complicit Media
I knew little to nothing about Kennedy’s true character because of a protective silence in the Press. I had no sense of his real character. It was an era of few news outlets, no James O’Keefe, no pundit shows, but rather Walter Cronkite and press conferences given to letting Kennedy’s wit shine. There was no coverage by today’s ubiquitous cameras, only cameras with cumbersome flash bulbs and movie cameras with the limitations shown in the famous Zapruder film. (Had the assassination occurred in the twenty-first century, there would be no controversy about the “grassy knoll”)
The Press generally seemed to love Kennedy, its first TV star politician whose off-the-cuff remarks in press conferences showed an ease of communication that was refreshingly new during the infancy of TV coverage. As Dr. Marco Soddu writes in Foreign Policy Journal online, “John F. Kennedy was the first American president who understood the power and the political relevance of television.” * And he would garner even more favorable reporting today, especially because he was articulate and “presidential” (as the leader of the American Camelot).
Speaking of Missteps (or Missed Steps)
Kennedy appeared to know that the substance of one’s remarks “is irrelevant if one cannot say it effortlessly,” as Soddu says. He was the antithesis of muttering, digressing Joe Biden whose diehard followers do all they can to tell us he has a “presidential” demeanor. And unlike the Press that favored Kennedy and protected him, today’s Press appears to feign its favor for Biden because of its innate support for the Party and its ostensible hate for all things Republican. Surely, reporters see what the rest of us see: The muttering, the brain freezes, the anger, the inability to speak off the cuff, the refusal to take questions, the dependence on note cards and vetted questions, the “I probably shouldn’t say this, or I’ll get into trouble,” and the aimless wandering. And now the Press wants us to believe we don’t see what we see, like Obama or Jill or a rabbit leading Biden, and those note cards telling him to sit down. Surely they see the illogic of a saying Biden is competent while the DOJ won’t prosecute because of his mental capacity—as Special Prosecutor Robert Hur notes in his report:
“as discussed to some extent above, Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”**
Blatant Hostility, Blatant Protection: What Flavor Ice Cream Did You Get, Mr. Biden?
Ever notice the differences between interviews conducted by Left-leaning and Right-leaning reporters when they address politicians they favor or disdain? The differences lie in the intensity of antagonism and in the depth of questioning. Left-leaning reporters ask few followup questions in interviews with Democrats, but aggressively argue with and attempt to trap Republicans.
Example: Katy Couric’s interview of VP candidate Sarah Palin.* Couric’s demeanor appeared to center on her need for some gotcha moment. It was a humorless frowny-faced attempt to show Palin as an inexperienced dolt. In contrast, look at the treatment of Obama who was a “community organizer”—Palin was a governor. I say “humorless” because the Press made much of Palin’s saying tongue in cheek she could see Russia from her house and nothing about Obama’s saying he visited “all 57 states.” (What are those other seven, Mr. Obama? Were you in the country of Heinz?)
Call me a generalizer if you want, but I see anger in the eyes of Leftist reporters when they approach conservatives and rational inquisitiveness in the eyes of Rightist reporters when they approach progressives. And I see in Left-leaners an inability to ask followup questions after getting an unspecific or meaningless answers from a liberal politician.
I think of the heady days of the early Obama White House, when the Press Secretary Robert Gibbs entered the Press Room to a crowd of jovial reporters in contrast to the press secretaries of the Trump Administration, who had to deal with an unabashedly truculent crowd.
Tolerating Unending Epexegesis by the Current VP
No indictment of the Press’s subjectivity is more telling than its treatment of VP Harris. Pretending an unwarranted profundity in all her appearances, VP Harris, word salad chef par excellence, has yet to make an intelligible coherent argument about any policy, such as border, education, or energy policy. Here are examples that received no followups:
“Our young people are always our most important stakeholders in education. Today's youth policy summit is an important reminder that youth are also leaders of both today and tomorrow— and key partners in the policy discussions that effect their lives.”
“So, you know, many of us study history. And as you study our nation’s history, it is always quite clear, when you track nearly every movement in our country that has been about progress, we have had young leaders at the head. Every one of them.”
“When we look at extreme climate, we see that we are experiencing drought around the world. If people don’t have water where they live, they will leave where they live. If they cannot grow food where they live, they will leave where they live, and they will go to other places. And if we think about this in the global perspective, and they will invariably go to places that speak a different language and pray to a different god. And what do you think might happen then? You’re probably looking at the beginning of conflict.”
“We were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to passage of time. There is such great significance to the passage of time when you think of a day in the life of our children.”
So, the Press Hasn’t Changed, but…
Still as protective of Democrats as it was of Kennedy, the Press has put itself into the position of defending the indefensible and set itself up as unquestioning Democratic sycophants. It hasn’t changed character, but it has intensified its lockstep affinity to protect all things Democrat.
*https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/12/08/jfk-and-the-media-during-his-electoral-campaigns/ PDF available here: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/121208-Soddu-JFK-Media.pdf
**https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/robert-hur-report-biden-classified-documents-read/index.html
In My Naive Youth
Had I been old enough to vote in 1960, I would have cast my ballot without reservations for JFK. My naive mind had been shaped directly and indirectly to favor him: Directly by an unwavering Democrat household of my youth and indirectly by a subjective Press that protected JFK from scandal and kept me from knowing anything negative about the man. In one of those “If I knew then what I know now,” moments I reflect that I might not have—again had I been old enough—cast that ballot without questions about him.
Let me admit within his first year I thought Democrat John Kennedy was an ineffective President after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, but then I thought he showed resolve and leadership in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962—after scaring the beekeepers out of me over the threat of nuclear war. I believed he inspired the country with his call to put a man on the moon, but even in that I realized the estimated cost of $30 billion to do so would be a tax burden. However, that was exhilarating stuff in my young mind. Also, because for one dollar I joined the NAACP in sympathy for the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, I favored his sending troops to Alabama.
But I did not understand his motive for sending 16,000 advisors to Vietnam, especially since he once said insightfully, “I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance … can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere.” Nevertheless, until I learned more about his personal life after his assassination, I held him and his party in high esteem. To me Kennedy was as an articulate man who had served in the military and who did not press, except for the formation of NASA, for a larger government with its inevitable wasteful spending.
Overall, as a representative Democrat and in spite of his missteps, Kennedy had convinced me that his party supported the best American traditions and values that I saw growing up in that Democrat household with a father who had served as a marine in Okinawa. Had I known more about his character, I might understood that his sending those troops to Vietnam was a matter of political expediency, probably an attempt to look even “tougher”on Communists after the missile crisis.
New Era, Different Party Different Press, if not in Kind, Certainly in Degree
Regardless of Kennedy’s imperfections, I can’t imagine his being a member of today’s mainstream Democratic Party or his supporting the socialism embedded in recent Obama-Biden era legislation with hundreds of pages of special interest giveaways amounting to trillions of dollars and stifling economic regulations. Nor can I imagine his acquiescing to today’s Far Left or allowing Antifa to run Seattle and Portland into their current decline. Surely, he would have restored order In short order as his action in Alabama indicates. So, how would today’s Press accept him?
Support in Complicit Media
I knew little to nothing about Kennedy’s true character because of a protective silence in the Press. I had no sense of his real character. It was an era of few news outlets, no James O’Keefe, no pundit shows, but rather Walter Cronkite and press conferences given to letting Kennedy’s wit shine. There was no coverage by today’s ubiquitous cameras, only cameras with cumbersome flash bulbs and movie cameras with the limitations shown in the famous Zapruder film. (Had the assassination occurred in the twenty-first century, there would be no controversy about the “grassy knoll”)
The Press generally seemed to love Kennedy, its first TV star politician whose off-the-cuff remarks in press conferences showed an ease of communication that was refreshingly new during the infancy of TV coverage. As Dr. Marco Soddu writes in Foreign Policy Journal online, “John F. Kennedy was the first American president who understood the power and the political relevance of television.” * And he would garner even more favorable reporting today, especially because he was articulate and “presidential” (as the leader of the American Camelot).
Speaking of Missteps (or Missed Steps)
Kennedy appeared to know that the substance of one’s remarks “is irrelevant if one cannot say it effortlessly,” as Soddu says. He was the antithesis of muttering, digressing Joe Biden whose diehard followers do all they can to tell us he has a “presidential” demeanor. And unlike the Press that favored Kennedy and protected him, today’s Press appears to feign its favor for Biden because of its innate support for the Party and its ostensible hate for all things Republican. Surely, reporters see what the rest of us see: The muttering, the brain freezes, the anger, the inability to speak off the cuff, the refusal to take questions, the dependence on note cards and vetted questions, the “I probably shouldn’t say this, or I’ll get into trouble,” and the aimless wandering. And now the Press wants us to believe we don’t see what we see, like Obama or Jill or a rabbit leading Biden, and those note cards telling him to sit down. Surely they see the illogic of a saying Biden is competent while the DOJ won’t prosecute because of his mental capacity—as Special Prosecutor Robert Hur notes in his report:
“as discussed to some extent above, Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”**
Blatant Hostility, Blatant Protection: What Flavor Ice Cream Did You Get, Mr. Biden?
Ever notice the differences between interviews conducted by Left-leaning and Right-leaning reporters when they address politicians they favor or disdain? The differences lie in the intensity of antagonism and in the depth of questioning. Left-leaning reporters ask few followup questions in interviews with Democrats, but aggressively argue with and attempt to trap Republicans.
Example: Katy Couric’s interview of VP candidate Sarah Palin.* Couric’s demeanor appeared to center on her need for some gotcha moment. It was a humorless frowny-faced attempt to show Palin as an inexperienced dolt. In contrast, look at the treatment of Obama who was a “community organizer”—Palin was a governor. I say “humorless” because the Press made much of Palin’s saying tongue in cheek she could see Russia from her house and nothing about Obama’s saying he visited “all 57 states.” (What are those other seven, Mr. Obama? Were you in the country of Heinz?)
Call me a generalizer if you want, but I see anger in the eyes of Leftist reporters when they approach conservatives and rational inquisitiveness in the eyes of Rightist reporters when they approach progressives. And I see in Left-leaners an inability to ask followup questions after getting an unspecific or meaningless answers from a liberal politician.
I think of the heady days of the early Obama White House, when the Press Secretary Robert Gibbs entered the Press Room to a crowd of jovial reporters in contrast to the press secretaries of the Trump Administration, who had to deal with an unabashedly truculent crowd.
Tolerating Unending Epexegesis by the Current VP
No indictment of the Press’s subjectivity is more telling than its treatment of VP Harris. Pretending an unwarranted profundity in all her appearances, VP Harris, word salad chef par excellence, has yet to make an intelligible coherent argument about any policy, such as border, education, or energy policy. Here are examples that received no followups:
“Our young people are always our most important stakeholders in education. Today's youth policy summit is an important reminder that youth are also leaders of both today and tomorrow— and key partners in the policy discussions that effect their lives.”
“So, you know, many of us study history. And as you study our nation’s history, it is always quite clear, when you track nearly every movement in our country that has been about progress, we have had young leaders at the head. Every one of them.”
“When we look at extreme climate, we see that we are experiencing drought around the world. If people don’t have water where they live, they will leave where they live. If they cannot grow food where they live, they will leave where they live, and they will go to other places. And if we think about this in the global perspective, and they will invariably go to places that speak a different language and pray to a different god. And what do you think might happen then? You’re probably looking at the beginning of conflict.”
“We were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to passage of time. There is such great significance to the passage of time when you think of a day in the life of our children.”
So, the Press Hasn’t Changed, but…
Still as protective of Democrats as it was of Kennedy, the Press has put itself into the position of defending the indefensible and set itself up as unquestioning Democratic sycophants. It hasn’t changed character, but it has intensified its lockstep affinity to protect all things Democrat.
*https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/12/08/jfk-and-the-media-during-his-electoral-campaigns/ PDF available here: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/121208-Soddu-JFK-Media.pdf
**https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/politics/robert-hur-report-biden-classified-documents-read/index.html
RSS Feed