Each of us have our daily news go-to’s.
Being aware of our favorite news sources’ biases is as important as keeping up with events around us, probably more important. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
For several years, Colorado patent attorney Vanessa Otero has studied the proliferation of news outlets and their degree of bias. You may have seen this chart floating around. It’s Otero’s brain child and she regularly tweaks and updates it at her site All Generalizations Are False.
Otero claims no particular authority on this issue, and her website name is a wry reference to Mark Twain’s adage: “All generalizations are false, including this one.”
But as one looks at this chart there seems to be a lot of common sense in Otero’s observations. And it’s worth looking at.
Bias is inherent in all media, with influences on content ranging from audience ratings, to personal reporter bias, to advertisers, to media company ownership.
But imperfect as it may be, this free flow of information is one of our most humanly sacred rights. And hard won.
The Urantia Book’s paper 71, “The Development of the State,” lists ten steps toward “the evolution of a practical and efficient form of representative government.” The steps begin with freedom of the individual, followed by freedom of the mind (education), then the reign of law. The fourth is freedom of speech, stating that “representative government is unthinkable without freedom of all forms of expression for human aspirations and opinions.” (71:2.13)
As Ben Franklin reminded us, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
July 13, 2018, US President Donald Trump stood before reporters next to UK Prime Minister Theresa May and skipped over a question from CNN, calling it “fake news,” before taking a question from Fox News reporter John Roberts.
“CNN is fake news, I don’t take questions from CNN,” said the President, pointing away from the reporter. “John Roberts of Fox, let’s go to a real network.”
Later, John Roberts went live on Fox News to state “I also used to work at CNN. There are some fine journalists who work there and risk their lives to report on stories around the world. To issue a blanket condemnation of the network as ‘fake news’ is also unfair.”
Trump’s continuous labeling of multiple, mainstream news outlets as “fake news” and “an enemy of the people” is a daily earmark of his discourse. It’s also reckless, reprehensible and dangerous. It attacks every American’s right to free speech written in the first Amendment to the US Constitution, and says to the world that America disdains such freedom. Fortunately, the United States has one of the freest, most robust media environments in the world, under girded with strong legal protections.
Such freedom is fragile, and only upheld by citizen advocates who insist on leadership that sustains such freedom.
Trump’s attack on the free press was an unremitting theme in his campaign, and continued in the first weeks of his presidency when the New York Times, CNN, the Huffington Post, and several other news outlets were banned from a closed-door session with then White House press secretary Sean Spicer. The Associated Press and Time magazine were invited, but boycotted the session in solidarity with the other news organizations.
Republican Senator John McCain finally got a bellyful and said of suppressing a free press, “that’s how dictators get started.”
All US presidents and politicians have experienced strained relationships with the US free press. Barack Obama stated that Fox News was “entirely devoted to attacking my administration,” and his then-chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said the network was “not a news organization.” Obama’s anger toward Fox was not ignored by journalists. Jake Tapper of CNN said to Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs, “Thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a ‘news organization’ – why is that appropriate for the White House to say?” Gibbs replied, “That’s our opinion.”
Obama’s relationship and reactions to the press were fairly typical of all US leaders.
Trump is different.
His contempt for the press is constant and insidious. It’s not cute. It’s not funny. It sounds more like the blather of a “would be dictator.”
More like we’d expect from Recep Erdoğan, Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, and Kim Jong Un.
Freedom House, a watchdog organization devoted to analysis of press freedom worldwide, describes and decries violations of press country by country. They cite that Turkey’s President Erdoğan has “overseen a substantial decline in press freedom over the past decade.” Russia’s Vladimir Putin has permitted “attacks, threats, censorship, arrests, and prison sentences against both journalists and ordinary citizens.” The Philippines are “compromised by the threat of legal action, violence, and impunity for past crimes against journalists.” And at the low end of the spectrum, unsurprisingly, is Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, “one of the most repressive media environments in the world.”
Fortunately, Freedom House cites how the United States’ “traditionally high level of press freedom can be attributed in part to robust constitutional safeguards that have been repeatedly upheld by independent courts.”
But it also noted as the top highlight of 2016 that “journalists covering the campaign of Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump were subject to unusually hostile rhetoric from the candidate himself, as well as instances of exclusion from events and intimidation by Trump supporters.”
Getting back to Otero’s chart, as annoying and odious as I personally find Infowars and Breitbart, their very existence right alongside Mother Jones and Occupy Democrats is a comfort. It indicates the free press is working and the Fourth Amendment is functioning as conceived.
Getting back to The Urantia Book’s statement about free speech: the demagoguery of multiple current world leaders, including President Trump, should be taken seriously as threats to the evolution of good government on our planet.
Because if any media outlet gets subverted, that’s when we really should take notice.
As Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote in her 1906 book The Friends of Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
I even apply this sentiment to President Trump.
He just needs to be voted out of office.