Trump, the media, and democratic hypocrisy

So, a lot of people on the left are freaking out about Donald Trump's treatment of the media and acting like he's such a fascist because he's so anti free press. Some of these concerns are legitimate, don't get me wrong, but other concerns are things that are routinely done by both sides, and I believe the democrats are attacking Trump for things they do when everyone else isn't looking anyway.

To get the big elephant out of the room, yes, the idea of Trump changing libel laws and suing anyone who disagrees with him IS scary, and is the most concerning thing I've heard. This is not okay, and reminds me of how John Adams tried to muzzle the press because, like Trump, he was very thin skinned.

However, other than that, most of the criticisms, while somewhat concerning, are pretty hypocritical given the fact that the democrats making the criticisms are doing just about the same thing. Let's look ar Robert Reich's 7 criticisms posted on his facebook wall today:

1. Berate the media. Yesterday Trump called two-dozen TV news anchors and executives to the Trump Tower – including Lester Holt, Charlie Rose, George Stephanopoulos, and Wolf Blitzer -- to chew them out about their reporting during the election. 

 Didn't the DNC do the same exact thing during the primary process, and weren't they caught red handed by wikileaks doing this behind the scenes? (see point 6). I'm not saying that Trump's behavior isn't a problem here, but both sides seem to be doing it.

2. Blacklist media that criticize them. Trump has maintained a blacklist of news outlets to which he has refused to grant event credentials. This morning he cancelled a meeting with the New York Times. 

 I was under the impression this was standard business. After all Noam Chomsky's propaganda model notes that capitalist media relies on connections with sources, and as such won't say bad things about these sources because if they do they might lose access to information from these sources. The fact that Trump would cut access openly is a problem, but I'm not convinced this is a new thing that only Trump has done.

3. Turn the public against the media. Trump refers to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” He tweets that the New York Times has lost “thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena.’” (The Times says it added 41,000 net paid subscriptions in the week after the election.)

 I'll give this one to Reich to an extent. Trump is flat out lying whereas the likes of Obama tends to take criticism from the media more graciously and be less likely to retaliate. Trump does have a uniquely thin skin here and is acting like a baby. This isn't to say the media doesn't deserve criticism, but Trump's criticisms seem to amount to an emotional temper tantrum.

4. Threaten the media. Trump says he’ll “open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

 I already covered this, yes, this is the biggest, scariest thing to come out of a Trump administration on this subject in my opinion.

5. Block media access. Trump hasn’t had a news conference since July. He has blocked the media from traveling with him, or knowing whom he’s meeting with. (His phone call last week with Putin was first reported by the Kremlin.)

 Again, this is a weakness of the propaganda model and how it forces media outlets to be nice to sources of information because if they don't, they lose that information. And again, I do believe this is common practice, and bringing up this article again (point 5 this time), it seems that the democrats do the same darned thing.

6. Establish their own alternative controlled media. Trump sends messages through Alt-Right Breitbart News and Fox News. 

 Um, it's pretty common knowledge these days that the democrats do the same darned thing. The difference is everyone, outside of conservatives who have been railing against the "mainstream media" for years, seems to think that the sources the democrats use like CNN are "objective". The fact is almost all major corporate media outlets are pawns of the political parties. The GOP has fox, the democrats have CNN and MSNBC. Our media has been a problem for a while, and I've been focusing attention on how propaganda laden it is a lot this whole election. It's a huge reason I believe that Bernie was screwed out of the primary, because these media outlets clearly shaped coverage to favor Clinton. And it's well known that CNN is owned by a Clinton supporter, and that much of the media has been colluding with the DNC (see the above link I already linked twice).

7. Bypass the media and communicate with the public directly. Trump uses tweets and videos. The word “media” comes from “intermediate” between newsmakers and the public. Trump wants to eliminate the media. 

 I don't see what the problem is here. Why should he have to communicate with the media when he can talk to people himself? Seems only fair.

The fact is, outside of the libel laws thing and Trump's immature temper tantrums against media outlets, these are things that have been problems for a while. Let's not call Trump a despot on 5/7 of these criticisms. The fact is, the media has been forced to form powerful relationships with government officials and political parties for a while, and while Reich and others seem to think Trump presents a unique threat to the press, I think that the press has been propaganda all election cycle. It really, really has. The democrats have been doing the same things outside of the whole libel laws thing all election cycle. They've berated the press for covering them negatively, they've formed their own propaganda networks to disseminate information (I haven't even gotten into the awfulness that was CTR in this post), and they've denied access to people who don't play their game. This is well known at this point, and if you're concerned that Trump is turning us fascist, maybe we should really be asking if we're already living in a fascist society and don't even realize it (and sometimes I do have to wonder if we're far less free and more oligarchical than we often like to think we are). Because honestly, most of these things have been problems for a while. And this does not excuse Trump, once again, it seems the democrats only care when they're on the receiving end of the stick, and that much of what they're complaining about is something they themselves have done and supported in the past when it benefitted them.

Yes, we should be scared about Trump on libel laws. We should be harsh on Trump's immature spats with the media. But other than that this is business as usual, and if the democrats really care about these things, they need to fix their own house first before they start criticizing everyone else.