The problem with the liberal media’s coverage of all things President Trump isn’t so much that they’re liars (though they are) but rather that they actually believe that whatever it is they decide to obsess over and hype with fury really is how the average person sees things.
The New York Times perfectly illustrated that tendency with its write-up of the first day of the Republican National Convention.
“At times, the speakers and prerecorded videos appeared to be describing an alternate reality,” read the front-page story. “One in which the nation was not nearing 180,000 deaths from the coronavirus; in which Mr. Trump had not consistently ignored serious warnings about the disease; in which the president had not spent much of his term appealing openly to xenophobia and racial animus; and in which someone other than Mr. Trump had presided over an economy that began crumbling in the spring.”
A fair news media would admit that all of those points are, at a minimum, debatable. But we don’t have a fair media. We have the American media, and for them, political reality is no longer about competing narratives or arguments in which voters are trusted to hear all of the facts before deciding for themselves. For them, political reality is what they say it is, and everything else isn’t worth your consideration.
It’s apparently an “alternate reality” to point out facts and real-life events backed by documented proof.
On the remarks delivered by the McCloskeys, the armed St. Louis couple who have been charged in relation to defending their home from a threatening mob of protesters, the New York Times called them “barely veiled racial rhetoric.” The quote in particular that the paper chose to highlight as proof of the “barely veiled racial rhetoric” was this: “Your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”
That certainly wasn’t the best part of the McCloskeys’ speech (which was truly magnificent and should serve as the template for Trump’s acceptance speech), but it’s unclear what would make those words “racial,” unless the New York Times wants to come out and admit that it associates safety with race.
It’s not an “alternate reality” to say that Democrats sympathize with the “defund the police” movement, a concept that the party’s nominee, Joe Biden, has endorsed. It’s not an “alternate reality” to observe, with accuracy, that major cities are on fire, rioters are vandalizing private property, and arsonists are torching public monuments.
It’s not an “alternate reality” to state, accurately, that the “crumbling” economy is a result of Democrats advocating for indefinite lockdowns. Trump has begged for the opposite, in the light of overwhelming evidence that the virus is, at most, the cost of a few sick days for the vast majority of people who become infected.
These aren’t fake little stories Republicans dream up to mislead voters. They’re inconvenient truths that the media pretend don’t matter.
It may not be the reality that the media want everyone to accept. But that doesn’t make it any less real.
