Media hysterics of Trump continue
Has the media ever been so ludicrous and contemptible as now, in its grief and rage over Donald Trump? Has the ABC's bias ever been so exposed, not least by its Washington correspondent's interview of her two young children?
Would there been a single reporter or presenter in the ABC whose children support Donald Trump? Or, if so, would there be one game enough to admit it?
No risk of that with the ABC's Washington bureau chief, Zoe Daniel, who incredibly believes that interviewing her own children is (A) newsworthy, and (B) not like simply interviewing herself.
Here's her report for the allegedly impartial ABC:
Donald Trump's victory has provoked fear and concern for some children as they try to understand what his presidency means for America, and if or how it will affect them and people that they know.
My own children have grown up mostly as expats...
Back in Washington DC after spending much of the year on the road covering the election, I asked them what they were thinking as they watched the election coverage on Tuesday night.
Arkie is almost 10...
"I may disagree with Trump's opinions," he said."But that's what he thinks is right for America so I think you should give him a chance."
"I think [what friends at school don't like about Trump] is the racism, the sexism, the assaults to the gay people, and Latinos, and all those people who have done nothing in their life for Trump to hurt their feelings that way," he said.
Arkie thinks most of the stuff Mr Trump said in the primaries and caucuses will not happen, as even Republicans think "some things are too over-the-top to actually happen"...
During the primaries process Pearl [8] did declare a liking for Bernie Sanders — funny how an elderly man connected so well with young people.But she said if Mr Trump was kicked out it, "we would be more mean than he is right now".
Pearl has been worried about the wall between the US and Mexico, a cornerstone of Mr Trump's campaign.
"If you're a Mexican or anything like that you'll get kicked out, and some of people's friends are Mexican," she said...
She too watched the election coverage and I asked her what she thought about Hillary Clinton's concession speech.
"She was trying to say 'don't give up', and no matter what people say you should just keep going to what your goal is."
Other ABC reporters and presenters have been uniform in despising Trump and saying so, despite the ABC's statutory duty to be impartial:
[Barrie] Cassidy posted on Twitter on the day of the election as results poured in that the “nightmare” of a Trump presidency had been defeated. “Trump cannot win. The nightmare is over,” he tweeted...
Paul Barry, host of the ABC’s Media Watch program, shared a link to an article ridiculing comments made by Trump with the remark: “Another ridiculous Trump porkie. And this man could be US president”.
[Annabel] Crabb wrote in mid-October: “Donald Trump makes his first post-debate appearance …. Where is the off switch for this campaign.”
Wendy Harmer, host of the ABC Sydney’s Mornings radio program, posted in response to an article with the headline ‘The four words that just lost Donald Trump the election: Hello, I’m Donald Trump”. “Shouldn’t be surprised, I guess,” she wrote last month, “that Trump’s ‘best’ joke was using his wife as a punchline. Humiliating.”
Joe O’Brien, who hosts ABC News 24’s morning news program, shared an article with the comment: “Yet another example of Donald Trump’s reworking of reality.”...
Why is the ABC so biased? What effort has it made to address this outrageous breach of iuts charter? Don't its leaders - and the Turnbull Government - now see that such bias actually leads the ABC into profoundly misleading its audience on the state of the world?
But back to the media's grieving.
Nick Cater witnesses the media's comic distress:
In 1975, Kevin P. Phillips noted the rise of a “mediacracy” with a precise cultural agenda...
Four years ago, Angelo Codevilla declared them members of a new ruling class, united by the conceit they were the best and brightest “while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional”.
With the election of the deplorable Trump, the ruling class has been deposed. To them it is the end of life as they know it. “The world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from,” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin wrote in Vanity Fair. “That’s a terrible feeling for a father.”
“Where does this leave us?” Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times. “What, as concerned and horrified citizens, should we do?”
Beneath the sentimental rhetoric lurks a realisation of powerlessness. For 18 months they have been lecturing Americans, in ever more strident terms, about the dangers of Trumpism, but Americans called their bluff...
The shattering defeat of the US cultural elite has resonated strongly in Australia, where our own media class largely shares the same values...
“I watched in stunned shock and dismay,” writes Anne Summers. “I am fearful.”
Trump will “almost certainly inspire a truly awful wave of ugliness against women and minorities around the world”, writes Waleed Aly.
Huffington Post Australia’s Emily Brooks spoke to a child psychologist who warned young girls might feel “disempowered” by the result. good and evil. How do you balance a debate between Joan of Arc and Attila the Hun?
Media Watch surveys the weeping and gnashing of teeth among the defeated media class:
And to say the result’s a shock and not to everyone’s taste is an understatement, as you can see from these front pages from around the world.
FUUUCK!— El Grafico, 9 November, 2016
OH MY GOD!— Le Journal de Montreal, 9 November, 2016
AMERICAN PSYCHO— Liberation, 10 November, 2016
Horror-Clown!— Hamburger Morgenpost, 8 November, 2016
DEAR AMERICA …NO YOU CAN’T!— New Zealand Herald, 9 November, 2016...
And some pundits, like Fairfax’s Paul McGeough, announced that Trump had lost before the starting gun was even fired.
Today, Americans will awake from a nightmare. Donald Trump will not be their president.— Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November, 2016
Whoops...
A little later, as results rolled in, the ABC’s political insider Barrie Cassidy was tweeting even more confidently:
Trump cannot win. The nightmare is over. — Twitter, @barriecassidy, 9 November, 2016
But at that point—midday on Wednesday in Australia—the so-called nightmare was just about to begin...
CHARLES FIRTH: Can I be the first to call it for Trump?...
JESSICA ROWE: DON’T! You’re not really?
CHARLES FIRTH: No, no, well it’s ...
JESSICA ROWE: Ohhh! — Channel Ten, Election coverage, 9 November, 2016
KRISTINA KENEALLY: Yeah, this is not where we expected to be at this time of the day and I have to confess I feel like I’m going through the stages of grief at the moment, I’ve been through denial, I’m slowly moving into anger. — Sky News, 9 November, 2016
PETER VAN ONSELEN: I hope to God that I put the mocker on the person I predict here because if I had to predict, I’d pick Donald Trump to win this one now, and I can’t believe I’m saying it … Donald Trump! I mean, he’s the guy that bragged about sexually assaulting women. This is a disgrace to America. — Sky News, 9 November, 2016...
Others, however, are still defiant... [A] fighting editorial in the New York Times – which has apologised for underestimating Trump’s support – described him as a ‘reckless, unqualified leader’ and declared the paper was ready to support him BUT:
… without denying the many disgraceful things he did and said to get elected, the promises he may or may not keep, the falsehoods he peddled that were either delusions or lies.— New York Times, 9 November, 2016
Meanwhile the American Society of Professional journalists issued a statement to its members to say:
… you may, understandably, be concerned about the future... President-elect Trump’s past comments and actions about and toward the press foreshadows a potentially dangerous reality. — Society of Professional Journalists, 9 November, 2016
It's not just the media that's been caught out. How about Sydney University's Centre for US Studies? Mark Latham exposes it ruthlessly: