Below is a representative composite of two emails sent to Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi, whose Monday story quoted a television and radio news trade association leader and a Newhouse School of Public Communications academic blaming, at least in part, Donald Trump for the fairly recent rise in violence against TV news crews when they’re out covering the riots they ironically help foment and other, more mundane stories.
Dear Paul,
Perhaps TV news directors would better serve the safety of both their staffs and their communities were they to jump off the woke bandwagon and get back to reporting the news objectively [“TV news crews increasingly threatened with violence on the job,” C1, July 12].
In my left-of-center youth as an award-winning TV newsman, I’d control for my own bias by, for example, giving the hard-ass district attorney a 14-second soundbite of his best stuff (not edited-out-of-context gibberish) and 12 seconds to the cop-killing radical’s defense attorney.
But now, led by the shameless likes of NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, who effectively urged journalists to tell their truths, not the truth, as he accepted the once meaningful Murrow Award earlier this year, TV news and much of the rest of journalism have been inexcusably reduced to spewing propaganda for a minority of leftist elites while actively discounting and openly disdaining the thoughts and concerns of a “deplorable” plurality.
Rarely if ever, even in red states, does a pride parade or an anti-gun or anti-voter-ID rally go uncovered, even if turnout is so scant that local news crews nearly outnumber the marchers or rally-goers. Meanwhile, black and brown folks in fatherlessly crime-ravaged communities demanding more police are largely ignored while race-hustlers with million-dollar homes in gated communities are quoted as authorities on the “over-policing of America.”
Donald Trump can’t be blamed for this incessantly jaundiced presentation of the “news,” even if your Newhouse pal Robert Papper might try. And it wasn’t Trump who pushed the Russia-collusion hoax for three years. Nor did he spend last summer doing live-shots, insisting that viewers disbelieve their own eyes as cities burned, stores were looted and shopkeepers were beaten senseless by radical-left rioters, few of whom will ever be prosecuted.
In any case, if you’re going to stand out in front of a Wendy’s engulfed in flames and, like “Baghdad Bob” before you, insult your audience with nonsense about “mostly peaceful protests” that you helped instigate, maybe you should have to fear for your safety — at least as much as local police and business owners do. After all, antifa and BLM thugs don’t have the exclusive rights on property destruction and aggravated assault. Any idiot can freeze and throw a water bottle.
Darren McKinney, Washington, D.C