The readers of any newspaper are entitled to believe they are being regaled with honest attempts to present the Objective Truth rather than mere convulsions of Ideological Bias. Sadly, up until the very recent past, my generation, the Baby Boomer Generation, has dominated the so-called Legacy Media with its brazenly irrational, anti-conservative, Woke Woodstock “liberalism.” This bias, however, has come to be the victim of simple common sense, as evidenced by the massive decline in the readership and viewership of various “progressive” outlets. Let us use the Washington Post as an example.
According to an article posted by The Lion on Jan. 14, The Washington Post’s daily readership shrank from approximately 22.5 million in 2021, to 2.5 to 3 million by mid 2024. Multiple other sources validate these statistics. When billionaire Jeff Bezos, who bought the paper in 2013, refused to endorse Kamala Harris as the 2024 election approached, over 200,000 subscribers cancelled their subscriptions in October alone. His decision led several writers to ultimately jump ship, including Jen Rubin who was appalled that Bezos had actually congratulated Trump on his victory. In explaining her departure from The Post she said it “has failed spectacularly at a moment that we most need a robust, aggressive free press.”
As I have said repeatedly, Donald Trump is far from perfect. His pugnacious manner, his often irresponsible choice of words, his dealings with women, etc., are certainly not worthy of admiration. But on most every issue, the policies he endorses are significantly superior to those that would have been pursued by Kamala had she won the election. Jen Rubin, however, is one of those millions who cannot get beyond her loathing of Trump in assessing the current political scene. Ironically, therefore, she ludicrously implied that Jeff Bezos’ decision to remain politically neutral as the 2024 election approached, was somehow a violation of the freedom of the press! Her notion of Freedom, in other words, entails the assumption that everyone ought to agree with Her!
Coincidentally, Patrick Soon-Shiong, now the owner of The L.A. Times, decided that his paper also would actively endorse no candidate as the 2024 presidential election approached. Indeed he expressed regret that The Times had supported Karen Bass in becoming the mayor of L.A.. The tendency of the Left to preach to the masses rather than merely inform them, he suggested, is a form of elitist arrogance. The millions who voted for Trump, he implied, are not all idiots! Indeed he has cited the obvious fact that the Republican Party, disdained by the “woke” as the party of the “privileged rich,” has now in fact become the party of the common man. Not surprisingly, his refusal to allow his writers to campaign for Kamala also led to several resignations.
The 200,000 that abandoned the Washington Post in October because it failed to support Kamala were clearly interested in having their views validated rather than in reading unbiased political commentary. But the vast majority of the almost 20 million that ceased reading the paper since 2021 did so because they were tired of its relentless Leftist bias. Indeed I would suggest that many of the thousands who marched on the Capitol in 2021 did so not only because of their disdain for various aspects of the Biden regime, but because of the mainstream media’s insistence on defending it no matter what. Ironically, the narrative that has evolved regarding Jan. 6 is a perfect example of the sort of B.S. which fed the outrage of its participants in the first place.
While the Left continues to refer to the events of Jan 6 as a violent insurrection, the facts simply do not support this ridiculous exaggeration. 99% of those who participated were not armed and the few who were, were hardly looking to kill anyone. Pelosi and others have admitted that Trump recommended calling in military support to keep things under control, yet the lie persists that he has no respect for America’s Democracy. What he did not respect, of course, was what he saw as the Democrats’ attempt to use various government institutions to both destroy his reputation and and assure their return to power. The FBI is there to serve the people of America and not either political party. Yet when various “conservative” sources claimed that there were, suspiciously, several FBI agents among the hordes on Jan. 6, their charge was unequivocally denied. Just recently, however, as Trump prepared to take office, the FBI admitted that there were in fact 26 of their personnel among the crowds that day. Why did this agency lie? To whom does it owe its loyalty; to Joe Biden and the Democrats, or to the American people?
While there may be exceptions, the vast majority of the 1500 whom Trump has pardoned for their participation in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, do not deserve to have their lives ruined as a result of that one day. Of course the Left and its media minions will charge Trump with grossly abusing his presidential authority. But where were they when Joe Biden rescued his son from criminal conviction in a move that was clearly designed to obfuscate the fact that the entire Biden family had profited millions from Joe’s sale of his influence to various foreign powers? I take no pleasure in demonizing an elderly man, but had the media been in any way honest in reporting the Facts as the 2020 election approached, Joe no doubt would have ended up in jail rather than in the Oval Office.
Should Trump attempt to use institutions such as the D.O.J. or FBI to gain revenge on his political enemies, I would hope an honest press would condemn him. Am I utterly confidant that he will not do so? Of course not. But at the same time, I fully understand his disdain for a cultural elite which has for decades now cast a blind eye on the absurdities of the political Left, while simplistically denouncing the demonstrably rational policies espoused by “conservatives” as expressions of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc..