[ad_1]
(Photo by Jon Cherry/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
CNN’s Jim Acosta is fond of the self-indulgent, vainglorious rant.
During the first Trump administration, Acosta suffered from the most acute delusions of grandeur since Don Quixote roamed La Mancha.
Last Thursday, he showed signs of suffering a relapse.
“Journalists exist to seek the truth, to tell people’s stories, to lift up voices that may not be heard otherwise, to shine a light on injustice and to hold the powerful accountable,” declared Acosta during a monologue. “We are not the enemy of the people. We are the defenders of the people. Walter Cronkite once said, ‘freedom of the press is not just important to democracy. It is democracy.””
He went on to hold up a sign that a viewer had sent to him eight years ago.
“She carried it here at a march in Washington. She wrote on the back of the sign to me and the press here in D.C., ‘you have our support.’ To Nora, wherever you are, right back at you,” he continued, seemingly never more proud of himself.
Of course, nothing Acosta had to say was wrong, per se. A free, industrious, and adversarial press is integral to any well-functioning democracy. But for Acosta to say so fresh off a four year vacation during which the press failed on countless levels — and most notably in identifying that the president of the United States was no longer functioning as such — renders it something more akin to a comedy routine than an earnest expression of principle.
It should be conservative media’s aim to put Acosta to shame, not to emulate him.
Right-wing publications and TV — supplemented now by podcasts, and Substacks, and social media addicts — rose out of the recognition that mainstream media was left-wing media. The groupthink was bad when National Review announced itself in 1955, worse when Fox News came on the block in 1996, and is downright intolerable now; a 2023 Syracuse University study found that just 3.4% of American journalists are Republicans. In such an environment, conservative truth-seeking is an imperative, not a luxury, not just for the GOP’s political prospects, but for the health of the country.
In the Trump era, though, too many in this indispensable corner of the Fourth Estate have forfeited their interest in the truth-seeking element of this equation in favor of acting as an arm of the president.
The incentives for doing so are considerable. Trump has an unbreakable hold on the GOP — and thus, conservative media’s base. At best, holding Trump to account limits companies’ audience ceiling. At worst, Trump fires off an angry “Truth” and traffic/ratings plummet.
That capitulation is understandable doesn’t justify it.
Donald Trump is unfit for the office he holds; it’s an axiomatic fact that he proves time and again. To recognize as much isn’t to condemn the Americans who voted for him, or to be pedantic — it’s to treat them with enough respect to tell them the truth.
But then again, conservative media need not issue endless, familiar denunciations of the man himself to level with its audience. After all, Trump is a term-limited lame duck, and the voters have already chosen to entrust him with the White House again. They’ve heard the case against him and delivered their verdict — one that’s completely defensible in light of Joe Biden’s complete and utter failure in the role.
What it must do, though, is accurately describe and fairly evaluate what he’s doing.
And while Trump did much good yesterday, he has also already committed affronts that should appall any and every constitutional conservative.
There were, of course, the disgraceful, indiscriminate pardons he offered to the rioters he sicced on the Capitol Building after losing the 2020 election. That alone is an impeachable offense.
More consequentially, though, he unlawfully signed an executive order delaying the enforcement of the TikTok ban passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress last year. Such a measure is not only indefensible on the merits of the issue, but constitutes a violation of his oath of office — one motivated by explicitly personal reasons.
There is no principled conservative defense of leaving the United States vulnerable to its chief geopolitical rival’s espionage and propaganda efforts because you have a “warm spot” in your heart over its role in getting you elected.
These are sure to be only the first of many inexcusable acts to come.
If conservative media can’t bring itself to call them as much, then it’s no longer conservative media.
It’s the flip side of the same delusional coin Acosta occupies.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
[ad_2]
Source link
