Over there at The New York Post, Lisa Daftari “a foreign policy analyst and media commentator based in Los Angeles”, nails a real problem with the American media exactly.
Her headline:
The mullahs’ best weapon isn’t a missile — it’s some in the US media
Among other things, Daftari quotes President Trump as follows:
If Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone and resting at the bottom of the sea, and their Air Force is no longer with us, and if their entire Military walks out of Tehran, weapons dropped and hands held high, each shouting ‘I surrender, I surrender’ while wildly waving the representative White Flag… The Failing New York Times, The China Street Journal, Corrupt and now Irrelevant CNN, and all other members of the Fake News Media, will headline that Iran had a Masterful and Brilliant Victory over The United States of America.
Daftari notes:
It reads like satire, but it’s a precise description of the coverage Americans are getting.
It is information warfare, and it is working.
Exactly.
And there’s more Daftari did not mention. Namely: The recent “news” -- and I put that in quotes -- from former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden. CBS headlined the Jill Biden story this way:
Jill Biden says she was "frightened" by Joe Biden's 2024 debate performance, thought he was having a stroke.
CBS reported:
Former first lady Jill Biden said she was ‘frightened’ by her husband Joe Biden's 2024 debate performance and thought he was having a stroke.
'I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,' Jill Biden told CBS News Sunday Morning's Rita Braver in an interview airing Sunday on CBS.
'I don't know what happened,' she said. 'As I watched it, I thought, 'Oh, my God, he's having a stroke.' And it scared me to death.'
Well now. What, one media analyst might ask, is going on here?
Answer: The American media is not about reporting the news. The facts. As the fictional Detective Sergeant Joe Friday would always say when questioning a suspect in that ancient TV show Dragnet: "All we want are the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”
Yes. And as is plain from no less than President Trump and, of all people Dr. Jill, “just the facts” is something that is averse to the American media.
In the long ago (2013), I had my first meeting with then private citizen Donald Trump, who was openly considering running for President in 2016. I asked him about what even then was seen by many Republicans as liberal media bias. His response was blunt. He would call it out and was unafraid to do so. That was a full thirteen years ago. And suffice to say, as just that one statement above from now President Trump makes clear, he has no hesitation in doing so.
The problem is now decidedly for the media. Whether it’s coverage of President Trump’s Iran war operations or the coverage of former President Biden’s health, the media has repeatedly damaged its credibility in not even attempting “just the facts” news.
And alas, it is exactly that tilted coverage that has proved so telling for the media’s credibility. Make that “lack of credibility.” What Americans are seeing unfold in front of them is indeed “information warfare.”
Perhaps most telling in all this is the coverage -- or lack of it -- provided on the health of former President Biden. For those unfamiliar with this particular bit of history, way, way back in the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was a major participant in World War One. And when it was over, the issue at hand was the US signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which not only ended the war but involved the US in the League of Nations.
President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was a staunch supporter of the US joining the League and set out on a cross country train trip to get support for the Treaty and US League membership. In September of 1919, after a speech in Colorado, his wife discovered her husband the President seriously ill on his train. It was soon announced that the train trip was cancelled with the President returning to Washington. A handful of days after his return to the White House, Mrs. Wilson found him on the floor of a White House bathroom. She called the White House physician, who quickly realized the suddenly paralyzed President had suffered a stroke.
Famously, historians would later learn that the secrecy of the extent of the President’s ill health was so tight that the American people did not know Mrs. Wilson was effectively running the presidency and did so until her husband’s successor, Warren Harding, was elected and inaugurated in 1920.
This is notable because here in the media-centric 21st century one would think a similar problem with President Biden would have resulted in massive coverage and his resignation. But no.
In effect, the role of the protective Mrs. Wilson in 1919 was played this time around by a protective media -- and, yes, First Lady Jill Biden. What Americans have seen unfold in front of their eyes in terms of President Biden and his health was “information warfare.”
And as Daftari makes plain, “information warfare” has been at work in the media’s coverage of both Joe Biden (with the aid of Jill Biden) and in the coverage of the events in Iran.
Whether the issue was the media “reporting” on President Joe Biden’s health during his presidency or today’s state of the war in Iran, “information warfare” is being waged by the media.
If the issue involves a liberal Democrat in the White House, the liberal media will, a la Joe Biden, rally to protect him. If a conservative Republican in the White House is defending the U.S. war effort in the Middle East, the lefty media will pile on.
The Democrats count on it. Our enemies can seek to exploit it.
