Media Miscues in the Covington Narrative | City Journal

Media Miscues in the Covington Narrative | City Journal

"Reporters have always made errors, but mistakes should occur independent of ideology. What we're seeing instead is a pattern--media miscues always occur in the same direction, in favor of the liberal perspective. Over the last two years, countless "bombshell" reports have signaled grave danger for the Trump presidency, up to and including impeachment or resignation. Trump's son got an early look at the Wikileaks pages; Anthony Scaramucci was tied to a dodgy Russian hedge fund; Michael Cohen met Russians in Prague; Paul Manafort met Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London; James Comey would testify that Trump was under investigation; and so on. As outrage ebbs from each discredited story, it is relegated to the memory hole in time for the next one to emerge....

"Ever since Trump's arrival on the national stage, the media have devoted themselves to destroying him, and, by extension, the ideologies that supposedly account for his popularity--white supremacy and toxic masculinity. Major media outlets have shed any pretense to rigor or probity, even as they make ostentatious shows of 'fact-checking' the president's statements.

"Obsession with white privilege focuses maximal scrutiny on any incident that tracks with the right narrative. Over the last year, we've seen a spate of cellphone videos capturing petty disputes amplified across social media and reported in the national media--as long as the footage depicts a white person complaining to or about a black person doing something relatively minor. Whether the incidents in question have anything to do with race is unimportant. Pushing the narrative that Trump has ignited a firestorm of white racism across the country requires a continual flow of stories making that point, regardless of accuracy or context. The relentless search for Trumpian villainy has precast the meaning of every story. All that remains is to fill in the blanks."