By Vernon A. Williams, Gary Crusader
It seems like every day, every week, misdeeds by the President of the United States are more outrageous than the last.
It’s bad enough knowing that the so-called leader of the free world is a narcissistic, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, fascist, sexist, homophobe. It is even worse examining how he got there and why he remains so comfortable amidst such chaos.
In a week, 45 sided with Russian autocratic leader Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence, insulted our traditional U.S. allies, and announced an unprecedented threat to punish political opponents by taking away their security clearance. Then, despite the disastrous outcome of the Helsinki Summit, 45 wants to invite Putin for a D.C. visit soon.
Putin and Trump have a “bromance” unparalleled in international politics. Despite confirmed meddling in the 2016 presidential election – and plans to do the same this year – the next utterance by Trump critical of Putin will be his first.
Some still ask how we ever went down this rabbit hole. The answer is painfully simple. In the pursuit of ratings, news organizations opted for profitable sensationalism as they colluded to make the lying wooden puppet into a real person.
The unprofessionalism of FOX News during the campaign was consistently disgraceful. But in the ratings war game, CNN and MSNBC were similarly complicit in their gentle rejection of a candidate who spoke in unintelligible riddles as he relied on commentators and minions to make his words sound even vaguely sensible.
Even though 45 lambasted CNN and MSNBC as “fake news” and “enemies of the people,” the two major cable network news operations were helplessly captive to spiraling ratings and corresponding advertising dollars generated by a shrewd and unethical reality show host who pushed all the right buttons to the Oval Office.
Though, 45 has never acknowledged it, other than to openly express gratitude for the billions of dollars in advertising which resulted from their over-coverage of a political novice who had something offensive to say to everyone.
MSNBC and CNN, not FOX, swept the most unlikely nominee in the history of our republic into office ahead of arguably the most qualified female to receive a major party nomination.
Cable news did a feeble job of fact checking the endless lies of Agent Orange before, during and after his candidacy began. Here’s the question, if you discovered something he said was inaccurate or untrue, why not edit out the lie or cut the erroneous sound byte from the report altogether?
What compels journalists to perpetuate lies? The answer, absolutely nothing.
And why give equal time to lying minions of Trump who have no right to your air waves when you know that their conversation is replete with untruths? Why so many commentators, period? Why not report the facts, inject brief analysis and keep it moving?
Once again, network executives elected to follow the money. He maintains access to major air waves to disseminate self-serving misrepresentations of fact after fact after fact. That’s on you, CNN and MSNBC.
It will be much more difficult to capture and cage this escaped tiger. But the same Dr. Frankenstein who created this monster will have to engineer strategies to capture him and get him back into his cage.
It won’t be easy. But it has got to be done.
CIRCLE CITY CONNECTION by Vernon A. Williams is a series of essays on myriad topics that include social issues, human interest, entertainment and profiles of difference-makers who are forging change in a constantly evolving society. Williams is a 40-year veteran journalist based in Indianapolis, IN – commonly referred to as The Circle City. Send comments or questions to: [email protected].
