Do the Press Lie? Are they indeed the enemy of the American People?

I am constantly torn between remaining calm and principled in the face of lies that, should they be believed, will change an election, and doing as Trump is doing and "hitting" back rhetorically.  Jonah Goldberg makes some good points in his article today at Townhall.com entitled The Logic of the Vendetta Now Guides Our Politics. He is right, and he is wrong. At some point, we need to defend ourselves, and our actions. President Bush (both 41 and 43) showed us the pitfalls of being stoical in the face of constant attacks from the media. The Left just kept coming after them. Then there is the story of the Proud Boys over at the American Thinker. Go read it, and tell me, Mr. Goldberg, what are people to take away from that. Doesn't it sound like the press has taken sides, again, and rather than fairly reporting events wants to color events to the Proud Boys disadvantage?

After meeting with the police to give a statement on what I saw, I was confident that justice would be served. I could have never imagined what was next to come. A complete inversion of reality was widely reported by the press, who seized upon the incident to fabricate an "October Surprise" to damage the GOP's chances for November's midterm elections. Top Democratic officials, including the New York governor, New York City public advocate, and the attorney general all badmouthed the Proud Boys publicly and called for their prosecution for defending their rights and engaging in self-defense during other incidents that night. Antifa assailants are referred to simply as “protestors” while a multiracial and multiethnic group of Proud Boys are defamed as “White Nationalists” in the press, being simultaneously “doxxed” by the online wing of the Antifa mob. Now, the feeding frenzy has started. Our stand for freedom against leftist terror has been completely spun. Out-of-context quotes from Gavin McInnes are being used to paint him as a right-wing militant leader when he in all actuality he just runs a patriotic fraternal group who like America and beer. Antifa’s acts of terror and manifesto promising more violence were glossed over completely in nearly all reports.

The Proud Boys, it should be noted, are a group of men who are, as they say, "Western Chauvinists" who accept all men who share their philosophy. Ladies can join the Proud Boys' Girls.  They are not alt-right, which are really yet more collectivist ninnies. Instead they do not buy into political correctness, nor the reparations nonsense. In fact, if their website is any indication, they sound pretty normal.  So, its no surprise The Southern Poverty Lie ...er... Law Center has them down as a hate group, which means they don't really hate anyone.

I  have a story of my own.  We were stationed in Panama in the late 1980s, during the time George H. W. Bush was trying to extract Noriega from Panama for trafficking in drugs to the United States.  Noriega was playing the administration for a fool in the press.  To that end, he would stage "protestors" for the cameras to make a bunch of noise, burn tires, and look threatening.  The action would take place on the street on a particular block. The protestors themselves viewed this as a job, and typically went home for lunch.  They were a rent-a-mob who protested whatever someone would pay them to protest.  Meanwhile, through editing, close up shots, and other photo illusions, the reporting on CNN was that the entire city was ablaze, and Anti-Americanism was rampant.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.

We got CNN on the Armed Forces Radio and Television station, so I knew what CNN was reporting first hand.  When we would call home, my mother was frightened  for us, so I figured NBC, CBS and ABC were showing similar footage of "Panama burning."  We often explained that we had just been downtown, and everything was fine.  But to her, it looked to be true, and she probably thought we just didn't want her to worry.

I remembered going to Universal Studios, where one of the stops along the tour was "Tarzan's Jungle."  The jungle was a stand of trees about 600 square feet in extent, and the entire Tarzan series of films starring Johnny Weissmuller was filmed in that tiny area.  Yet on screen, Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan seems bigger than life, his territory seems to extend to the ends of the earth.  That is the power of photo illusions.

Meanwhile, at the same time that CNN was inflaming the American public, they were bashing President Bush, in hopes of getting rid of him at the next election and electing instead another Democrat.  They succeeded by the way.  CNN and the rest of the MSM should use the power of photography to inform, but they don't.  Instead they use it to shape a story to fit an agenda.  In doing so, they lie.

So tell me, are the media the enemy of the American people as President Trump says?  it is difficult to see where he is wrong.  So sad.