The mainstream news media is so titillated by the prospect of President Trump’s removal from office that our top journalists have been caught neglecting their responsibilities while binging on porn. Impeachment porn.
Impeachment Porn has rendered far too many esteemed members of the Fourth Estate blinded to faithfully reporting on Manchester and the greatest current threat to the American public. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Manchester terrorist suicide bombing, which stole the lives of 22 (and counting) innocent people and injured scores of others. It was a brazen attack on tens of thousands of people attending a pop concert by one of America’s biggest musical performers.
Anti-Trump media elites could not wait to spin the story into something critical of the President of the United States. Manchester is currently leading the way on nearly every news front page, but the focus is on Trump sharing intelligence more so than the fact that the United Kingdom’s threat level is the highest. It’s part of a pattern of journalistic malpractice on the Manchester news coverage. For large portions of the day-of and the days-after, the story has been relegated behind the ongoing investigation of the Trump/Flynn/Comey scandal.
Most of the top news outlets - print, online and TV - treat the Manchester attack as little more than a temporary sideshow from their hysterical binge on impeachment porn. Editors and producers in charge of front page news and A-block TV segments - in particular CNN - should be ashamed of how long it took to switch over to coverage on Manchester on Sunday.
Make no mistake: the allegations against the President of the United States are extremely extremely newsworthy and important. They must be thoroughly investigated by journalists and reviewed by the American people. But ask legitimate political scholars and they’ll tell you that Trump losing control of the White House is far from a foregone conclusion. This pipe dream for millions of Americans is not days, week or even months away from becoming reality.
The specter of impeachment has been implied, and frequently made explicit, on the front pages of major news outlets every day for six months. Every single day. It’s a waste of time to count the number of proclamations used daily by top news outlet about the “epic” or “historic” or “unprecedented” new developments surrounding Donald Trump. There’s no minimizing the subject of removing a sitting U.S. President, but the relentless coverage and its impact on diminishing other newsworthy developments cannot be excused.
Manchester became the top trending topic on Twitter within minutes of the attack, even though there were no details and a significant chance the event could have been unrelated to terrorism. Plenty of excellent journalists recognized it immediately, focusing resources and digging for every lead just in case it turned out to be a malicious attack. But most were slow to see the significance of Manchester, and they remain so addicted to impeachment porn and reliant on Trump-hater click-bait headlines that they can’t help but seek out their latest fix in every nook and cranny of the Manchester bombing.
It’s fair to argue that other recent terror attacks were more relevant. San Bernardino was closer to home, happening on our home soil. Paris is an iconic global hub, while most Americans can’t locate Manchester on a map, let alone recognize it’s only 200 miles from the capital of our closest international ally. But it didn’t take more than an hour after the bombing for Manchester’s importance to become clear to those actually in charge of homeland security for the U.S., the UK and elsewhere. And yet reporters still lag behind their wall-to-wall coverage of other recent attacks.
The simple reason: decision-makers in Manhattan newsrooms are solidly entrenched in the camp of vocal Americans that hate Trump beyond reason. A new Harvard University study shows an objective view on recent media coverage, finding that the majority of recent stories have been slanted against Trump.
It shouldn’t be surprising, considering that the idea of removing Trump from office was widely-promoted within 24 hours of his election. Hillary’s loss was such a shock to the system that tens of millions of people actually thought there was a real chance that somehow he wouldn’t even take office. As if their sheer hatred of the man would will into being a champion to bring about his demise.
Journalists have become such “heroes,” despite their pervasive and utterly misguided confidence in their knowledge of political science, government and the impeachment process. The inflated egos and certainty about an inevitable impeachment (and a conviction) is the closest thing to being epic, or historic, or unprecedented, or whatever is on the word-of-the-day calendar for media elites.
Given the charged political atmosphere, anti-Trumpers will perceive and dismiss such a criticism of the press as a concerted Republican AstroTurf concept. An anti-anti-Trump campaign.
But for those among us who cried the day after Trump won, or participated in the Women’s March, or deem it their duty to resist, it’s necessary to take a breath.
Look objectively at the antipathy hiding just below the surface of “investigative journalism.”
Spend a few minutes - hopefully much more - and watch and learn about Manchester. It’s a lot easier on the eyes and soul than impeachment porn.