Why We Do Not Trust the Press

Until the election results are certified and the legal challenges are resolved, there is no President-Elect. But the media is working overtime to tell you otherwise.

Here in Connecticut, The Hartford Courant is in a state of high dudgeon against its critics:

“Over the last four years, a fundamental misimpression has developed about how the media and newspapers such as the Courant view Trump. To his GOP fans and followers, the media has engaged in some sort of a conspiratorial exercise because we don’t agree with his policies or his approach on key issues.”

Why might Trump voters have such a “fundamental misimpression” of the media, if indeed that is what it is?

The Courant does not ask the question. They are not interested in the answer. To them, Trump voters are all just enablers of racism anyway.

But it is an important question. And despite a lack of curiosity by The Courant in the very state for which they are supposed to be the paper of record, we here at FIC say it is a question that deserves an answer.

So here’s our answer. It’s a scene we witnessed with our own eyes:

The woman on the right heads the state chapter of NARAL, the pro-abortion lobby. The man leaning down is a candidate for office, the gentleman next to him a volunteer.

But it is the woman with the notebook that we wish to bring to your attention. She is a reporter for the Middletown Press. And she is wearing–forgive the vulgarity–a “pussyhat.”

She showed up at a polling place on Election Day, chirpily declared “I’m from the Middletown Press!” and interviewed the NARAL crowd (and only the NARAL crowd). All while wearing that hat.

FIC does not expect reporters to be robots. Reporters are human beings and human beings have worldviews. (Indeed, when a local TV reporter was criticized for taking a job as spokesman for the Lamont Administration, Peter Wolfgang defended his right to do so.) 

But we do expect reporters to be professionals. We don’t expect them to literally wear their politics on their head while they are on the job, interviewing our opposition.

While not always as obvious as this incident, it is the sort of thing we are seeing more of all the time. That is, a too-cozy relationship between media, politicians, and those very powerful pro-abortion forces against which we fight.  

Wondering whether a politician is serving the public good or his own cronies is, alas, a normal thing.

What is not normal is how the media has tipped the scales in its reporting throughout the Trump presidency. What we have seen these past four years, especially this last one, is far beyond our standard complaint of liberal bias. 

It is an abdication of professional responsibility and of the trust that the public has invested in you. The hat-wearing reporter from the Middletown Press is only the most obvious example of it.

And that, dear Courant editors, is why pro-lifers have the impression of the media that we do.

And why we will not believe there is a President-elect until some other profession besides yours confirms it.