Enemy of the People

Patrick Caddell, a former Democratic Party public opinion pollster who worked for Democratic President Jimmy Carter, gave an impassioned lecture on September 29, 2012, at a conference sponsored by Accuracy in Media, where he decried the media, for its bias in elections, as a threat to democracy and said: 

The press’ job is to stand the ramparts and protect the people from organized government and governmental power, when they desert those ramparts and go to (one) side they decide to become active participants … to decide what truths you may know and what you may not … then they have made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy and made themselves an enemy to the American people.

Most major news outlets are at war against President Donald Trump, as is he with them.  Trump speaks of fake news as anything from the press that is unflattering about him.  The press speaks of fake news as anything that does not originate from them.  The former is ego and the latter is arrogance.  The former is for the consumption by a political base, but the latter, as shrouded in bias, is the sophistry of deceit.

For example, MSNBC was reporting this week on the Fusion GPS dossier with the caption: No fact in the dossier has been proven incorrect.  Let’s examine this phrase regarding the dossier that is a collage of allegations regarding Trump’s activities with Russia.  First, an allegation is not a fact, meaning it has not been proven correct.  However, the caption positions the dossier as factual, which has not been proven.  It then follows with a negative proof: there is no proof that anything in the dossier is wrong.  A negative proof means that everything in the dossier is therefore correct until proven wrong.  This reasoning is both faulty and dishonest. The press puts on display their blatant and extreme bias developed to mislead an audience to a conclusion that has not been supported by fact.  And accordingly, as Caddell writes, the press is an enemy of the people.

In the end, the media is not bound by law or oath to be fair, complete, or correct . . . and they are not nor have been since the beginning of the Republic.  The press has always been a hot bed of prejudice.  Therefore, it is and always has been, our responsibility, and vigilant citizens, to find the facts and reason a judgment . . . that is the requirement of responsible citizenship.