President Trump is right about mainstream American media

Nov 17, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

The biased American media has been enjoying the embrace of a substantial part of their country’s population, because a controversial president is constantly attacking them. He has thrown his net over all the mainstream media companies except Fox News. He has accused them of bias, fake news and twisting the news. He went in an extreme direction when he assigned the label of “enemy of the people” to them.
Whoever Trump attacks, his object gets sympathy because Trump is seen as a divisive, extreme-right wing, racist ideologue. If you do not like Trump then you don’t believe the things he says about organizations, politicians, companies and media houses that he directs his wrath against.
Are their areas of validity in Trump’s wide daubing of the brush? The answer depends on where you are in the world and the race you belong to. The United States became history’s richest and most powerful country after the collapse of Europe and Japan because of their destruction in World War 2. American institutions of sports, entertainment, media, fashion, academia and the military came to be the most influential throughout the world.
It is not that these institutions were better than their European and Third World counterparts. They became dominant because of the sheer financial power of the US. The most graphic example of this is global soccer. A small percentage of the American population rages after soccer. Football is a European and Third World craze. Yet the US hosted the World Cup in 1994 and will be co-hosting with Canada and Mexico in 2026. Spain’s La Liga administrators have scheduled matches to be played in the US. The obvious reason for all of this is the money that will come from the US.
Another example is academia. The average European and Third World university has a far more balanced approach to the study and teaching of international relations. But US universities, because of their vast wealth, have had a greater impact on how the world sees global politics. There is a more balanced approach in the teaching and writing of the role of the USSR in the end of WW2, by European and Third World professors of international relations.
It is for this reason that the New York Times (NYT) and the Washington Post became more popular throughout the world than the BBC. The mainstream media in the US cannot come near to the BBC for the objective and professional approach to journalism. They are not even close. The Guardian (UK) is next in line. To compare the professional journalism of the Guardian with any of the important US media houses is to compare a village footballer with Cristiano Ronaldo.
The mainstream American media are contemptuous of the Third World and its people and leaders. We are of no importance to the NYT or CNN. The most powerful media houses have never reported on radical American politics. Black organizations and Black leaders are never given adequate coverage. Anyone who disbelieves Trump’s accusations against the media giants just have to meticulously examine their journalism. It is the journalism that serves American capitalism, American culture and American power. This is in direct contrast with the BBC and the Guardian.
The giants of the American landscape are no examples of professionalism journalism. Anyone who thinks of the NYT as a paragon of professional journalism is naïve. The most compelling example is how that paper dismisses the Third World. Clifford Krauss, who recently reported on Guyana, is a complete jackass. His editor is a complete jackass for passing that piece on Guyana. The contempt for non-white people at the NYT runs so deeply that Krauss was too cynical to do even a Google check on Guyana. If he did, he would have had to withdraw about ninety percent of his description.
Unfortunately the Guyana Government through its embassy in Washington DC and through the assistance of the Black caucus of the US congress did not confront the NYT. But for sure if the Guyana Ambassador did, the NYT would not have even read the envoy’s letter of protest. In the eyes of the NYT, their journalist, Krauss, is a more credible and superior human than the ambassador from a Third World country. One doubts very much that the US Embassy sought contact with the NYT to discuss the inaccurate journalism of Krauss, perhaps thinking that was for the Guyana Government to do.
When you see the sordid and misinformed reporting of the non-white world and non-white leaders in the US itself by outfits like CNN NBC, ABC, and the NYT, then you have to conclude that Trump has a genuine grievance against them.

---

---