To the editor:
This is simply too good an oped response opportunity to allow to pass unaddressed. Here goes.
Readers of the Daily Journal’s opinion page, please peruse (i.e. “read attentively”) the following paragraph, lifted from the Dec. 7 issue of the newspaper and answer the pithy pivotal question at the end.
“Journalism is the art of verification. But there are forces on the march behind verification-in-reverse. That’s when you take facts that have been nailed down and introduce doubt about them. That releases energy — controversy, furor, culture war, backlash – that you use to power a political movement.”
OK, ready for the big question?
Is the writer, Francis Wilkinson, 1) describing what the secular press, revenge campaigners and “never Trumpers” penned, said and did this past year — ever since the “fact of President Trump’s election and inauguration” (stop and think about that!); or, 2) is Wilkinson justifying this view, “… Trump and his allies aren’t content to criticize the professional news media for political advantage. He’s trying to kill it, and belief in the very existence of truth along with it.”?
What say you? The answer?
Here’s a further hint, another quote, from Wilkinson’s column “The press goes to war on character assassins.”
“Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart — the whole slithering right-wing media serpent — would have cast the story (i.e. exposed pseudo fraud at The Washington Post) as proof that the Post is nothing but a heap of liberal animus and lies. It would have been a great leap forward in the right’s epistemological war.” Hmm.
Know what? In my opinion, the original pivotal quote accurately describes “destroy Trump media bias” seen and heard continually during this past year. You agree or disagree? The real answer? The quote describes both sorry scenarios!
George Allen
Indianapolis
