MEDIA FAILS ITS CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE
By Mildred Robertson
The 2016 election is an anomaly.
The absurdity of it all could not have been better written by Stephen Colbert’s
comedy writers. Our airwaves have been assaulted by everything from outlandish
accusations of alleged criminality to unfettered vulgarities. The media has ceded its considerable power to
a backstreet carnival barker who has almost single-handedly plunged our
political process into a dark abyss.
Now, as we stand on the threshold
of an historic election that should have been about breaking barriers, national
security, the right to health-care and a living wage we must instead make a
choice on who scares us least…who is less likely to destroy our nation as we
know it.
It is not that Hillary Clinton
did not try to talk policy. If you take the time to surf her website you will
find her position on raising income and restoring economic security to the
middle class. She talks about how to create good-paying jobs. She is focused on
closing the racial wealth gap, protecting voting rights, and fixing our
immigration system. Clinton wants to fight climate change and create an economy
based on clean energy, and she wants to provide quality, affordable education
for all Americans. She has a plan to address global threats and her
administration plans to focus on protecting American values at home and abroad.
But she hasn’t been able to talk
about any of that, because the media-made buffoon is sucking up all the air in
the room. Trump has turned earned media into an art, feeding off the media’s
insatiable desire for ratings. Every news network has been guilty of hanging on
to his every word; eager to “break the news,” regardless of how outrageous or
patently false his statements or those of his surrogates may be.
The media has failed to carry out
its Constitutional obligation by pandering to Trump and his surrogates and
leaving the public to sort through the mile-high pile of excrement that
emanates daily from the Trump campaign. Trump surrogates have regularly
appeared on news shows spewing half-truths, lies and innuendos, broadcast, in
many instances, as though they were fact. It is amazing that Kelley Anne Conway can unabashedly
equate Hillary Clinton’s email blunder with the alleged tax evasion, child rape
and shady business practices of her candidate without being challenged, let
alone led down a path that resulted in a discussion of policy. She and the
other surrogates are expert at deflecting all media queries to come back to the
same old script where Clinton is a demon and Trump is the savior.
To that end, media have spent the
past 6-8 months reporting on the horse race as affected by one outrageous Trump
statement after the other. They talk about whether his attack on a Gold-Star
family, or a former beauty queen, or an alleged assault victim will end his
campaign. “What do the numbers say?” Apparently that is the most pertinent
question for 2016 news reporters covering the campaign.
If you have learned anything
about either candidate’s position on any issue of importance to you, it is
because you took the initiative to research it yourself. You will not see it on
the nightly news. You probably won’t find much of it in a newspaper or a
magazine. You can read about emails, tax evasion, lawsuits and FBI letters, but
you won’t find much about how each candidate’s policies will affect your life.
And isn’t that the point of a
free press? Shouldn’t we be able to
glean from at least the main-stream media, a clear picture of what might be our
nation’s direction under a particular leader? Instead, we’ve heard of policies
about a wall that will never be built, and a candidate who will never be
jailed, hung or shot.
Heaven help us if this election
is NOT an anomaly.
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