Anti-Trump journalists put personal passions above facts

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Anti-Trump journalists put personal passions above facts
Donald Trump, via Wikimedia Commons

Include hatred for Trump at the top of your resume, and you’ll be sure to land a job working in the media. The coordinated attacks on President Trump by the mainstream media have led to the corruption of ethical journalism.

In the past four years, the liberal media has done everything in its power to delegitimize and downplay President Trump’s historic first term. The “fake news” era is a cultural byproduct of a disinterest in separating facts from feelings.

From the manufactured Russian collusion story that dominated national headlines across the country, to the misquoting of President Trump’s comments about undocumented immigrants, the politically-correct media knowingly misinforms the American people, silences free speech, and prohibits open discourse.

An excellent example is the coverage of President Trump’s tweet about Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. Trump said Baltimore “is a disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess,” and called the city “filthy.”

After Trump’s tweet, liberal leaders and news pundits labeled President Trump as a racist. Many news channels chose to engage in journalistic dishonesty by paraphrasing and creating headlines that intentionally distorted the truth by omitting “rat and rodent” from Trump’s statement. For days, the liberal media spewed their own political narratives in an attempt to create an emotional stirring and further alienate our president.

If those journalists had actually followed their job description and dug deeper into the facts regarding the city of Baltimore, they could have reported that USA Today ranked Baltimore as the “Most Dangerous Big City” in 2018 and that the city has consistently been ranked one of the top ten most rat-infested cities, by Orkin’s yearly report.

If these reporters were interested in being bipartisan and objective, they could have reported that when visiting Baltimore in 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., compared the district to a third-world country.

“Anyone who took the walk that we took around this neighborhood would not think that you are in a wealthy nation,” Sanders said. “You would think that you were in a third-world country.”

Sanders wasn’t labeled a racist for comparing the city to a third-world country. He wasn’t demonized by the press for weeks after pointing out the facts.

The liberal media’s double standard is appalling. Since President Trump’s election, 92 percent of all stories covering his administration have been negative, according to Media Research Center.

Despite negative media coverage of President Trump’s first term, nearly four million jobs have been created and more Americans are employed than ever before. American unemployment is at a 49-year low and the lowest ever in the history of our country for African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans, according to the White House.

We, as American people dealing with a dishonest media, have a challenging job before us. We must decipher the truth from the lies and remove our feelings from the facts.

The Society for Professional Journalists said, “Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.”

A journalist’s ethical responsibility is to report the facts regardless of the consequences. They are to cover both the accomplishments and downfalls of an administration while refraining from altering the story to fit their own preconceived beliefs or ideas.

Journalism was once admired and esteemed because of its dedication to reporting the truth and informing the public of both local and national affairs that impact our daily lives. Today, journalism has become a breeding ground for false information and moral outrage.

President Trump continues to call attention to the fake news media that daily sacrifice journalistic integrity in order to satisfy their own agendas. It’s time for journalists to do their job and report the facts rooted in truth.

Ryan Young is a freshman studying rhetoric and public address.