An industry in denial

I’m willing to wager that reporters’ arms are still sore from patting themselves on the back at last Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington.

Muslim comedian Hasan Minhaj was the entertainment for the night. I never heard of him until Saturday but it sounds like I wasn’t missing much. At one point Minhaj took a break from his predictable jokes denigrating all things Republican and conservative to take a serious swipe at President Donald Trump for choosing not to play the role of human pincushion on stage.

“But the president didn’t show up because Donald Trump doesn’t care about free speech,” Minhaj said. “The man who tweets everything that enters his head refuses to acknowledge the amendment that allows him to do it.”

Minhaj then bravely opened up about his dilemma in reaching the difficult decision to criticize the president: “You know, do I come up here and just try to fit in and not ruffle any feathers, or do I say how I really feel?”

To suggest that by bashing President Trump he wouldn’t fit in at a dinner attended by a roomful of liberal reporters was perhaps his funniest joke of the night.

Admittedly, I wouldn’t know. Like President Trump, I declined my dinner invitation. But I’ve heard and read enough to see that the Saturday’s event was yet another example of the denial that has imperiled the once noble profession of journalism.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were there to bask in their long-past glory days as the Watergate reporters who helped bring down President Richard Nixon. The UK’s Daily Mail, which often does a better job covering Washington than many of the U.S. media outlets represented at the dinner, wrote:

“Bernstein was applauded raucously for his repeated use of the word ‘lies,’ a word which has become freighted with meaning as a series of mainstream media outlets have put aside years of convention to accuse Trump of lying directly—something most did not even do to Bill Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky affair.”

And it’s not just Bill Clinton. The media didn’t call former President Barack Obama a liar either when he made promises about healthcare or referred to the “red line” in Syria. Major media never called Clinton and Obama liars because their philosophy aligns mostly with Democrats, as revealed in numerous polls.

When it was time for him to speak, Woodward uttered these immortal lines: “Mr. President, the media is not fake news.”

Woodward and all of the other dinner attendees may think that of themselves, but it’s not what large numbers of Americans think.

Days before the dinner, an opinion poll by Morning Consult, a media and technology company specializing in polling and market research analysis, found that “… roughly half (51 percent) of Americans said the national political media ‘is out of touch with everyday Americans,’ compared with 28 percent who said it “understands the issues everyday Americans are facing.”

What other industry operates like that? Would any other business refuse to address the concerns of its consumers? Do the deciders of what news to cover and how to cover it ever sit down with people who don’t trust them, refuse to subscribe to their newspapers, and don’t watch their news programs and try to understand why?

I have. These conservatives tell me the major media rarely present their views fairly and accurately, if at all. They see the media fixated on cultural issues like transgenders and same-sex bathrooms. They read and see liberals treated as compassionate folks who care about people while observing conservatives portrayed as humorless, hate-filled, and caring only for the rich. Who needs to read and watch that every day?

Conservatives tell me the major media rarely present their views fairly and accurately, if at all.

To its credit, The New York Times recently hired pro-Israel and sometimes conservative columnist Bret Stephens away from The Wall Street Journal. The Times also has Peter Wehner, a former aide to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as a contributing columnist. Though a frequent critic of Trump, Wehner is a thoughtful man who also does a credible job of addressing religious and cultural issues.

That’s a start, and the Times has acknowledged it has a perception problem.

If the mainstream media can stop patting itself on the back long enough to listen to what consumers are trying to tell them, they might see their approval numbers rebound and readers, viewers, and listeners return.

Listen to Cal Thomas’ commentary on the May 4 edition of The World and Everything in It.