Today’s the day, 8/16/18, for the big pushback by newspaper editorialists led by the Boston Globe against U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called label of them as “the enemy of the people.” Of all things to use in their conclusion, they chose a line from George Orwell’s “1984” book, followed by an utterly misplaced line about how lies are antithetical to an informed citizenry (click image to enlarge).

Oh really? Isn’t failing to tell the whole truth while engaging in alleged ‘journalism’ even more antithetical?

The line about what’s “antithetical to an informed citizenry” is beyond ironic. In the old days, journalists gathered all the facts, laid them out in a concise manner, and the public became more informed as a result, which in turn prompted influential leaders to take action. Reporters did their complete jobs, in other words. But in what has to be one of the bigger unforced errors ever made by a major news outlet official, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet recently confessed:

… a journalist has to have, at his heart or her heart, a desire to make society better.

No, sir. The utter wrongheadedness of that notion can be illustrated this way: effective hospital care makes society better. A doctor within that hospital who does his job to the best extent possible enables that goal to be achieved. A hospital is a detriment to society when its doctors routinely misdiagnose medical conditions which causes patients to die or spread untreated diseases wider.

Objective, unbiased journalists aren’t the enemy of the people, of course. The notion that President Trump meant exactly that is a false premise. Biased, propaganda-pushing ‘journalists’ are an existential threat to the well-being of the country because they contribute to the citizenry being uninformed and needlessly enraged about issues that would normally only prompt tepid reactions.

Take the global warming issue, for example. We’re told it is a settled science that’s needlessly bogged down by inaction due to industry-corrupted skeptic climate scientists who are paid to lie about the certainty of it all — a talking point dutifully regurgitated by the Boston Globe as recently as last month (except the person they quoted didn’t complete the bit about ‘misinformation lies’ like other news outlets did).

This is the same Boston Globe which gave its former journalist Ross Gelbspan an unquestioned platform — dutifully regurgitated by the New York Times — to make assertions about hurricanes and other climate science conditions. Neither newspaper bothered to further inform their readers that Gelbspan had no expertise (despite accolades to the contrary) to make these assertions; they didn’t inform readers that the reference to him on the cover of his then-year old 2004 “Boiling Point” book as a Pulitzer winner was, well, tantamount to a lie; and his ‘industry corruption’ accusation against skeptic climate scientists has never been challenged by either news organization.

This is the same New York Times organization, as I noted in my previous blog post, that had a particular publication devoted entirely to the global warming topic that was promoted on the PBS NewsHour news outlet, where two egregious errors were allowed to be asserted without question that would have otherwise completely undercut the entire idea of global warming as a long-accepted settled science.

This is the same PBS NewsHour which has apparently excluded an entire science-based side of the global warming issue from their program for over two decades, which otherwise completely undercuts the idea of global warming as an accepted settled science.

See the pattern here? What is offered to the public by these ‘journalism organizations’ are not lies, per se, they’re just not the whole truth. If these ‘journalism organizations’ could demonstrate that the only opposition to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports were fabrications concocted in the boardrooms of ‘Big Coal & Oil’ where shills were paid to pose as ’science experts,’ then we would label this as genuine news which is above reproach. When these ‘journalism organizations’ don’t even advocate for face-to-face debate with IPCC scientists that would end in public ridicule for the ‘shills,’ and when they don’t even lift a finger to speculate about why narratives from prominent accusers don’t line up right about ‘crooked skeptics, the whole issue begins to take on the appearance of fake news promulgated by propagandist organizations that — in any other situation — would be viewed as enemies conspiring to create an uninformed citizenry.

This situation isn’t limited to the global warming issue. Notions abound in the media that police departments across the country are using minority men for indiscriminate target practice, and that white supremacy is on the rise, which contributed to the election of President Trump, and his administration grossly mistreats immigrants as a result of outright mean-spirited discrimination. We’re further told that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was of no great concern, but rather that Russian influence for Trump and against her also led to his election. Plus, we’re told male/female genders is not settled science. Each issue is met with massive amounts of public rage, to the point of violence in some cases. Each issue is massively undercut with contradicting information …………..

……….. not that the mainstream media tells the public about that, however. We are instead reassured by today’s multi-hundred editorials that the mainstream media is not to be questioned, and that they are the victims of a vengeful individual.

Take another look at that Orwell quote the Boston Globe ironically chose to hammer home at the end of their editorial:

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

What’s missing is what followed after that:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

The Boston Globe and all the others who glommed onto today’s editorial want you to believe “the party” is President Trump, while being oblivious to how this has every appearance of being psychological projection on their part; they are “the party” in question, saying “trust us on our arithmetic totals, pay no attention to what we’re hiding from you.”