Developing a Vaccine for Media Bias

By Cliff Kincaid

H.G. Wells’ book, War of the Worlds, shows the aliens dying at the end, after almost destroying planet earth, when germs poison them. In real life, human beings are being killed by germs in the form of the coronavirus and the major media. One poisons your body, the other poisons your mind.

“We were all praying for a miracle,” says Gene Barry in the 1953 movie version of the book, as church bells ring in the distance. The movie narrator explains, “The Martians had no resistance to the bacteria in our atmosphere to which we have long since become immune. Once they had breathed our air, germs which no longer affect us began to kill them.”

Over the course of decades, I co-authored several books with Reed Irvine, founder of Accuracy in Media, with such titles as Profiles of Deception and The News Manipulators. Media bias is like a coronavirus spreading around the world. Media are like modern germs. President Trump is our vaccine.

At one time, I thought the media would eventually correct their mistakes, in order to avoid embarrassment. Yet, they get worse, day by day, and even continue to claim that they provide “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” A newspaper with the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” wants to censor President Trump’s daily press briefings.

To his credit, President Trump uses his coronavirus task force briefings not only to bring us good news about the war against the invisible enemy but to identify the enemy that is sitting right in front of him (and us) in the briefing room. He understands that the media today function as the equivalent of Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally during World War II.

In this war, Trump has tried to rally the nation to victory while praising the first line of defense, consisting of doctors, nurses, first responders, soldiers, and others. At the same time, he takes on those in the media who want to undermine the war effort. He knows their poisonous approach has disastrous consequences.

On Monday, Trump made mince-meat of various reporters who, in a series of gotcha moments, seized upon another report out of the bureaucracy about supposed problems in the medical supply chains involving coronavirus tests. It turns out, under questioning, that the reporters didn’t know the name of the bureaucrat and only reluctantly, under questioning, admitted the bureaucrat came out of the bowels of the Obama bureaucracy. These reporters don’t even read beyond the headlines.

“I wish we had a fair media in this country,” the president said. His own questioning made the reporters look foolish. He called one, Jonathan Karl of ABC, “third-rate.”

Reporters claim they are trying to assure accountability from government. But they go into these briefings with information based on headlines and no facts. They asked about an Inspector General report written by a bureaucrat whose name they didn’t know. Jonathan Karl looked unprepared as he tried to supply basic biographical information about the bureaucrat.

Trump pressed them, in dramatic fashion, because he knows that the title “Inspector General” sounds impressive but can be a mask for politically-motivated actions. That’s why he fired the Inspector General for the so-called intelligence community.

In this case, Trump got reinforcements, as Admiral Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health, responded, “I don’t know the inspector general. I don’t know that person. I’ll tell you one thing I have a problem with: If there was such a problem that she knew about or he knew about on March 23 and 24, why did I find out about the test [problem] from them on the news media at 8 o’clock this morning?”

In other words, the report was old news and released for political purposes. Even worse, the bureaucratic reluctance to share information about a potential problem may have cost lives. Instead, the information went to the news media, to serve as ammunition against Trump.

Our media, by and large, don’t want to solve anything. They could be on their death beds from the virus and still spew out poison toward the Commander-in-Chief. They work in conjunction with bureaucrats left over from the previous administration who also want to make Trump look bad. This problem is as bad as the virus itself.

As a professional media analyst, I used to spend many hours a week watching the news, in order to document their malpractice. I have finally come to realize that the procedure of media monitoring is itself hazardous to one’s health. Nothing is to be gained from watching Lester Holt, except for the feel-good story at the very end of the broadcast. I’ve noticed how the feel-good stories never involve anything the Trump Administration has done in the current crisis to save lives.

Today, I watch the White House briefings, with some lively give-and-take, and Tucker Carlson’s independently-minded Fox News program.

It is better to spend my time comparing and contrasting different sources of information, doing my own research, and then reporting my findings at my own website, America’s Survival, Inc. I recommend this approach to my fellow Americans. A vaccine for media bias is free and available now. It is called critical thinking.

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net

*Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org