Monday, August 15, 2016

Propaganda in the American Media

Watching the media coverage of this year's election makes me want to pull my hair out.  This year, because the powers that be are so scared of a Trump presidency, the media has dropped its façade of objectiveness and crossed over into advocacy for Hillary Clinton.  There are so many instances of this, but in the interest of time, I'll only point out a couple.
The first instance I'd like to highlight is the difference in coverage between the "Khan" story and the "Mateen" story.  Everyone knows that Mr. Trump denigrated a Muslim soldier killed in action in Iraq, thus dishonoring both his memory and the military at the same time.  TOO BAD THIS IS FALSE.  Mr. Khan attacked Mr. Trump first and implied, when he waved the Constitution metaphorically in Mr. Trump's face, that Mr. Trump is un-American.  Mr. Trump then merely questioned why Mrs. Khan stood by silently during his tirade, and questioned whether she was allowed to speak, probably to make the point the Muslims regularly, as a matter of course, subjugate their women.  The press, of course, portrayed it as an attack on the family, a "gold star" family, and questioned why Mr. Trump would insult the military, etc., etc.  The story got 24/7 coverage for days.  It turns out that Mr. Khan was paid thousands of dollars by the Hillary campaign to attack Trump at the convention, and that Mr. Khan has written articles suggesting that Sharia law "trumps" the Constitution of the United States--the very Constitution he waved at the convention, but of course that wasn't reported by the vast majority of the media.
Now, compare that coverage with the coverage of Mr. Mateen. 
This man is the father of the radical Islamist who killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub, and who was pictured sitting in the front row of a Hillary Clinton rally. He also endorsed Hillary for president.  Now, if this had been a Trump rally, the media would have been going on for days about how Trump was supported by an Islamic murderer's father and how letting him come to a rally and sit in the front row not only showed that he condoned the actions of his son but actually approved.  There would be countless editorials questioning his judgement, and by the end of the new cycle a couple of weeks later, half the country would think Mr. Trump himself was a radical jihadist.
There are many other examples of the media being in bed with the Clinton campaign, but perhaps the most insidious and dangerous way is through the use of "push" polls.  These are polls that purposefully over-sample Democrats to show Hillary winning, after which the same papers that run the dishonest polls crow about how Hillary is pulling away and Trump is flailing.  It is the most pernicious type of media trickery, and the ensuing coverage of the poll is a type of propaganda with which Mr. Goebbels or Mr. Stalin would be proud.
The evidence of these dishonest polls is readily available to anyone who looks for it.  Polling firms must disclose their methodologies, and you can usually find their sampling at the end of the poll.  For instance, in the latest CBS poll putting Clinton up by 5, they over-sampled Democrats by 5 points!  The Monmouth poll that came out a couple of weeks ago over sampled Democrats by 35% to 26%!  The NBC Marist poll has a similar over-sampling.  The few polls which do honest demographic sampling show the race a statistical tie.  These include the LA Times and Rasmussen.  However, even these polls are incorrect. First of all, most of these polls only call a few hundred people, thereby making the extrapolation of the numbers suspect.  Also, Mr. Trump has by all accounts pulled millions of new voters into the party.  It is evident he is pulling blue collar Democrats.  Therefore, all the polls should over-sample REPUBLICANS to get a true picture of election day.  One interesting poll which just came out is the Arizona Freedom Alliance poll.  This poll actually polled 1,000 people in every state--50,000 people nationwide (or 57,000 if you're Barack Obama), and the results were so astonishing that you won't see them in the media.  Mr. Trump pulled 67% to 19% for Mrs. Clinton!  The demographic sampling was 33% Democrat, 33% Republican, and 34% independent.
So we have the media actively supporting Mrs. Clinton.  Despite overwhelming evidence of a pay to play scheme between her foundation donors and access while she was Secretary of State, the media hasn't looked into it.  (If it was Trump, they'd be looking at it with an electron microscope).  However, if Mr. Trump has done nothing else this year, he's awakened people to the fact that we have a dishonest media, and the people aren't buying it this year.  Their plans will not dampen voter turnout for Mr. Trump.  It actually could repress voter turnout for Clinton, since many Democrats may say that she's got it in the bag so there's no need to go vote. 
Donald Trump may not be the most eloquent candidate ever, but if you listen to him speak rather than listen to cherry-picked soundbites, he makes sense.  His policies are commons sense policies.  We want a secure border while still welcoming LEGAL immigrants.  We want economic growth, something Mrs. Clinton's plan will not bring with its additional regulations and government control of the economy.  We want to destroy radical Islamists, even though Hillary can't bring herself to utter the words.  We want the 2nd amendment to stay a pillar of our Constitution, giving every American the right to protect themselves and their families.  We don't want to "fire" whole industries, thereby putting millions out of work in the name of "green" energy.  We don't want crippling regulations (Obama's cost about $100 billion per year--imagine what we could do with that money!). 
One last thing to say about the disparate media treatment of the two candidates.  Mrs. Clinton's last press conference was almost nine months ago.   Imagine if Mr. Trump went that long without a press conference.  They would be going crazy.  Have you heard anything about Mrs. Clinton's lack of press conferences in 95% of the media?  No, neither have I.  When it comes to that, when it comes to the questions about her foundation, when it comes to her contradictory economic ideas, when it comes to letting the father of a murdering jihadist sit in the front row of her rally, all I hear from the media is crickets.

1 comment:

  1. A new "push" poll today from the Washington Post in the state of Virginia. It shows Hillary up by 7 with likely voters. However, they polled 31% Democrats, 21% Republicans, and the rest independent. So with a sampling of Democrats 10 points higher, Mr. Trump comes out 7 points behind. That tells me he's actually winning.

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