The media is losing its credibility war

Peter Heck:

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These days the media knows they are in an all-out war for their credibility with a president who commands the bully pulpit. They have to cover him, and yet every time they put microphones in front of him, they risk him exposing their duplicity in a way that becomes a social media gif or meme that lives on in perpetuity. Trump’s dismissal of CNN’s Jim Acosta as being “fake news” at an early press conference remains one of the most iconic moments of his young presidency.

And while journalists are understandably and rightly concerned about the danger posed to a civilization where people don’t trust those who provide them the news, they have to understand that the problem isn’t really Trump’s. Their own advocacy journalism and opinion journalism that they pretended for years was objective news has played a much bigger role in this current media crisis.

Some seem to understand that, like the President of ABC News, James Goldston. A private recording has leaked of Goldston tearing into his reporters (and particularly chief investigative reporter and notorious left-wing partisan Brian Ross) for butchering the facts about Trump transition team member Michael Flynn.

The contents of his furious tirade reveal a great deal about the pressure media now feels to get the story right.

"I don't think ever in my career have I felt more rage and disappointment and frustration that I felt through this weekend and through the last half of Friday," Goldston told the ABC newsroom. I don't even know how many times we've talked about this, how many times we have talked about the need to get it right," he added. "That how we have to be right and not first. About how in this particular moment, with the stakes as high as these stakes are right now, we cannot afford to get it wrong."

Notice those words “with the stakes as high as these stakes are right now, we cannot afford to get it wrong.” What does that mean? It seems pretty clear this is a reference to a president who will make them pay in a way they’ve never paid before if they mess up....
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Their problem is they have embraced agenda-driven journalism.  They have a preferred narrative and they try to shoehorn every story into that narrative.  That appears to be what Brian Ross did and the facts just did not support his preferred narrative.

One of the arguments they use against Trump is that his attacks are an attack on the first amendment.  That is just not the case.  An attack on the first amendment would be if the President ordered the US Marshalls or the military to seize the presses and broadcast facilities of the media and not allow them to publish. 

What Trump is doing is fighting back against their attack and he is using the media to get his unfiltered message out.  They hate his use of Twitter because they are taken out of the look on his pronouncements.