Press Now Plumbs Its Own Depths Of Depravity

There has never been a presidential campaign in the United States where the administration was so massively opposed by the principal press outlets as in this election. Nor, in at least a century, have the national political media so widely and thoroughly discarded the traditional criterion for journalistic professionalism: the clear division between comment and reporting.

Many aspects of the Trump presidency are unprecedented; he is the first president never to have sought or held a public office, elected or unelected, or a high military command; and this is the first presidency, at least in living memory, in which almost the entire national political press have completely and constantly misreported the president’s public remarks and policies.

The former newspaper of record, the New York Times, has been commendably forthright in declaring that it was opposing rather than just reporting on the Trump administration. Mr. Trump delivered the greatest speech of his career on Friday evening at Mount Rushmore, devoted altogether to celebrating the idealism of the American Revolution, the suppression of the Confederate insurrection in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, and the enactment — albeit tardily — of the Jeffersonian promise, renewed by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, that all men are created equal. The Washington Post editorial board declared that he had reached “new depths of depravity.” This is an outrage worthy only of the press of a totalitarian country describing an opposition figure.

With few exceptions, the United States is now served by a national political media that is incapable of reporting about the president accurately, that baits him at press briefings with disgusting insolence, and that is extraordinarily negligent in ignoring or downplaying anything that reflects poorly on the president’s other enemies, the media’s allies in the war against the president.

The hideous permutation of the legitimate protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 — protests the president endorsed — into widespread arson, pillage, vandalism, and assault resulting in more than 20 deaths in many cities across the country was largely ignored or deemphasized by the media.