Jonah Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of the Washington Free Beacon, wants to once again bury the mainstream media in accusations of slimy liberality and mendacity, but appears to be suffering from a certain biased view of the facts himself. This is from the National Review’s copy of his original article:
For years, reporters were content to obscure their ideological dogmas and partisan goals behind the pretense of objectivity and detachment. Though the Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN practiced combat journalism against conservatives and Republicans, they did so while aspiring to professional standards of facticity and fairness, and applying, every now and then, scrutiny to liberals and Democrats worthy of investigation.
Donald Trump changed that, of course. He is so unusual a figure, and his behavior so outlandish, that his rise precipitated a crisis in a profession already decimated by the collapse of print circulation and advertising dollars. The forces that brought Trump to power are alien to the experience of the men and women who populate newsrooms, his supporters unlike their colleagues, friends, and neighbors, his agenda anathema to the catechism of social liberalism, his career and business empire complex and murky and sensational. Little surprise that journalists reacted to his election with a combination of panic, fear, disgust, fascination, exhilaration, and the self-affirming belief that they remain the last line of defense against an emerging American autocracy. Who has time for dispassionate analysis, for methodical research and reporting, when the president’s very being is an assault on one’s conception of self, when nothing less than the future of the country is at stake?
So all that fact checking that revealed Trump as a liar doesn’t count? The analysis, which certainly counted as the most conservative possible, indicating that lying liars are among the most unreliable and incompetent people in the world? Those analyses of proposed budget numbers never happened, and those results don’t count?
Nor was I stunned when a major report from the Pew Research Center found that “about six-in-ten news stories about Trump’s first 60 days (62 percent) carried an overall negative assessment of his words and actions. That is about three times more negative than for Obama (20 percent) and roughly twice that of Bush and Clinton (28 percent each).” This, at a time when the stock market is at record highs, the economy is at full employment, and Americans are upbeat about the recovery. The president’s inability to register majority approval in opinion polls may be unprecedented, but so is the amount of negative coverage he has received. Perhaps there’s a connection.
From Maddowblog.
Sure. Did Obama, Bush, or Clinton indulge in such amateurish stunts as talking to the President of Taiwan in the first weeks of their Presidencies? Of threatening, and then collapsing to, the Communist Chinese? Meanwhile, Goldberg can only speak of Obama’s accomplishments as if they were Trump’s; it may be wise for Goldberg to not follow this path further, given recent job number results, as seen to the right. The last data entry indicates a loss of jobs in the last month; Steve Benen also notes that the jobs numbers for two previous months were revised downwards. Obama’s actions may have resurrected the stock market, but even though I appreciate and benefit from his actions, I would not take the stock market as the bellwether of the economic health of the nation.
Like many such articles, it’s a mix of truth and misleading statements. I take his point regarding the FEMA response to the disaster in Puerto Rico, as I earlier noted here, but he ignores the fact that experts with experience with Hurricane Katrina and other such incidents have also criticized the Administration response. Eliding certain facts may make his article seem stronger, but in the end those facts can easily turn around and bite the writer. Winning some rhetorical points can be dwarfed by the reality elephant sitting on you. Then you can only hope your readers have short memories.
But, perhaps most interesting, was the tone of the article. It has a strain of moral superiority, of knowing better than those who he’s chosen to criticize. I’ve noticed this as a common thread running through current conservative writing[1], and it seems to be the caulk used to cement over the cracks in their arguments. I suspect it appeals to his regular readers, but for those of us who rarely read him and see the holes in his assertions, it grates on the nerves. I would suggest that considering all the facts, an assertion he makes against the “liberal” media, may be a lesson he can, himself, benefit from.
1Come to think of it, I was seeing some of the same tone in the early 90s from a conservative or two I knew.
