The Enemy of the People
By Randall H. Nunn
Thomas Paine, the great writer and pamphleteer of the American Revolution, once said that “the honesty of the press is as great an object to society as the freedom of it.” Today in this country we have freedom of the press but very little “honesty of the press” when it comes to the mainstream media.
It is beyond dispute that the mainstream media is controlled almost entirely by liberals and that what passes for news is presented as though it is objective reporting while it is, in fact, infected with liberal bias throughout. While the country is predominantly conservative, the mainstream media is overwhelmingly leftist and opposed to virtually everything the majority of Americans support. Not content with this state of affairs, the mainstream media is convinced it can change public opinion and our culture if it can control the way the issues are presented. It is becoming clearer with each passing day that the greatest enemy of the American people today is the mainstream media.
Few Americans advocate restraints on the freedom of the press to print or broadcast whatever they choose. But many Americans now realize that the purported “news” disseminated by the mainstream media is little more than propaganda. One could select almost any issue from the top twenty issues of concern to Americans today and without first reading an article or listening to a broadcast, predict the theme and conclusion of any mainstream media piece on the topic. Immigration, war in Iraq, terrorism, abortion, gun control, global warming, the environment, affirmative action or any other hot topic of the day will be presented with a pre-packaged analysis and conclusion that supports liberal doctrine on that subject. For liberals and conservatives who are engaged and well informed, this propaganda simply reinforces their beliefs or infuriates, depending upon who the recipient is. But for those who have no firm opinions on the subjects or who have little interest in these issues, the steady stream of manufactured news and slick propaganda can cause the recipients to adopt the positions of what they mistakenly believe to be the popular sentiment of the moment. If the mainstream media were selling a product, they would be guilty of fraud and misrepresentation. But since they are selling selective information and half-baked opinion masquerading as fact, they are guilty only of unprofessionalism. But they deserve the contempt of every American who understands what they are doing and how they are perverting the concept of a free press.
Some will no doubt argue that to call the mainstream media the enemy of the people is a gross exaggeration. But if an institution in this country deliberately attempts to generate anti-war sentiment by misstating the facts while American troops are fighting and dying, doesn’t that suggest that the media is aiding our enemy? If the media accuses the U.S. government and our soldiers of war crimes before an investigation has been completed and without regard to the presumption of innocence that accused Americans enjoy while at the same time showing little or no outrage for acts of unspeakable brutality such as beheading civilians and murdering innocent men, women and children, doesn’t that suggest active aid and encouragement to our enemy? And if the media intentionally discloses details of secret programs designed to obtain intelligence about al-Queda, doesn’t that directly aid the terrorists who have sworn to destroy us?
The mainstream media has shown, and continues to show, that it favors defeat in Iraq rather than victory by the United States. The media condemns the U.S. military based upon unsubstantiated allegations and calls for punishment of our soldiers while largely ignoring admitted and documented savagery by terrorists. An element of our society that wishes the failure of our forces in war and the defeat of western civilization at the hands of terrorists can only be described as an enemy of the people of this country, the vast majority of whom support the free and open institutions of western civilization that are under attack by radical Islam.
The Viet Nam War was lost largely as a result of the anti-war campaign instigated and carried out by the mainstream media.
The same forces are at work in America today, trying to achieve a similar result. The mainstream media, still seething from the defeats of their “chosen” candidates in 2000 and 2004 are more openly hostile than ever before to the current administration and conservatives in general. This hostility and arrogance can be seen daily in the faces and words of network news anchors and commentators and on the pages of the liberal press. It is time that the majority of Americans recognize that the mainstream media holds them and their conservative values in contempt.
It is too much to hope for that those autocrats at the helm of the mainstream media today will repent and pursue the goal of “honesty of the press”. But if enough Americans stop patronizing the mainstream media outlets, the old anti-war and anti-American mainstream media will fail and by replaced by media that more truly reflects the culture of which they are a part.
Randall H. Nunn is a Staff Writer for The New Media Alliance. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.