Arrogance Defines TIME Editor: 'To Demonize the Press' Is to 'Lay the Groundwork for Repression'

April 26th, 2017 2:44 PM

One of the hallmarks of an arrogant press is the notion that they should not be criticized, that somehow criticizing them is to criticize democracy itself. In his e-mail newsletter, CNN media reporter Brian Stelter highlighted Time Editor Nancy Gibbs for suggesting in her opening remarks at Tuesday night's Time 100 Gala that criticizing the press is anti-democratic and repressive:

Time EIC Nancy Gibbs lauded this year's honorees and Time 100 alums... and lamented politicians' attacks on the media. "Free press," she pointed out, is "still a new idea in the long sweep of history."

"To demonize the press," she said, "to treat it as an enemy of democracy rather than an engine, is to lay the groundwork for repression..." [Emphasis in the CNN original]

This, from a liberal media elite that has demonized the president and the Republican Party as an enemy of democracy rather than as the government elected by the American people, echoes inside a hardened liberal bubble. If demonizing people is repressive, than the media are major-league champions of repression.

As "NewsBusters," we cannot abide the notion that we are treating the media as an "enemy of democracy" any more than we accept being smeared as an enemy of democracy. We are treating the media as a liberal elite who wants to tell the voters how they must vote for liberals, and then when the liberals lose, they try to run the country in between the elections and seek to overturn the conservative election results they don't like. The liberal media have a right to advocate with their massive megaphone. The conservatives have the right to expose their ridiculous claims to be nonpartisan and equal-opportunity government watchdogs.

Criticizing the liberal media isn't against a "free press." The media is more than the liberal "legacy media."  Conservative blogs are part of a free press, even as the media elites suggest a prime facie argument that conservative journalism is not journalism because it's conservative, which is somehow an antonym of "curious"  or "independent," or let's face it, "intelligent." 

But there was more lecturing from Gibbs:

"Influence has a cost, especially in tribal times when those seeking to divide us are not always interested in finding common ground or pursuing the common good," Time Editor Nancy Gibbs said Tuesday. "But the reward is great as well for those who bring us together, as you show us every day in the businesses you lead, the movies you make, the songs you sing, and the books you write, the causes you champion, and the truths you live."

What is this nonsense about "those seeking to divide us"? As if Time magazine isn't divisive? As if it didn't choose sides as they put Trump's melting face on the cover, and then a cover where Trump's face melted into a puddle? Time claiming it's a political unifier is a Pants On Fire lie. This is a woman who has written snide lines about conservatives. In 2000, George W. Bush promised to be "a new kind of Republican, who talked about the poor and spoke Spanish and spanked the House Republicans for their cold hearts and small minds."

Gibbs offered another version of this in her "From The Editor" letter in the magazine: "In divisive times, it's tempting to nestle in a comfort zone, surrounded by people who look like us, think like us, pray like us, vote like us. Yet many of the men and women on this year's list are calling us out, using the technologies that connect us to expand how we see the world."

This was a thinly disguised knock on white conservative Christians. Gibbs immediately followed that by citing 17-year-old Gavin Grimm, who insists she's a man -- that's how Gibbs defines "the truths you live." She can run a cover story yelling "Is Truth Dead?" and not think of transgender advocates. Is Grimm not divisive? By forcing a bathroom debate to go national? You may think that's progress, but you can't say it's not divisive. You can't say Time is nonpartisan either, when Gibbs took the Editor's job when Richard Stengel left to join Barack Obama's State Department.

You can turn that "comfort zone" lingo around, and it explains why Gibbs would go looking to reward the leftist "Women's March" organizers for being top influencers....when their candidate didn't get elected president. They were divisive...for all the right reasons and causes. So liberal journalists should resist the notion that they can pose against "those who would divide us." They should just be honest, and admit they want to nestle in a comfort zone, which is what the Time 100 Gala was for the elites.