Townhall.com
Derek Hunter

It’s just a few words, “enemy of the people,” but they have sent liberal journalists collectively flailing to their fainting couches. “President Donald Trump has declared journalists enemies of the people,” they scream, “this puts us in physical danger and threatens our democracy!” Of course, none of that is accurate, but does that make them enemies of the people or just liberal hacks? Does it matter?

Let me just say at the outset that I don’t believe journalists are enemies of the people. I think most of them are frauds – political activists crusading for progressive causes behind the mask of a press credential – but not enemies. That said, they certainly aren’t friends or allies of the people either. Journalists care about journalists, first and foremost, and almost exclusively.

As I write in my book, outside of Hollywood, few professions shower their members with more awards and honors than journalism. If you are a journalist and don’t have a wall full of Lucite blocks and plaques with your name carved into them after 5 years on the job…you’re probably a conservative.

That self-love (Hell, somebody has to love them) is manifesting itself in their outrage over the president’s words. But only some of the president’s words.

Donald Trump doesn’t call all journalists “enemies of the people,” he says “fake news” is the enemy of the people. That so many journalists, particularly from CNN and MSNBC, hear “fake news” and think of themselves is telling.

Of course, everything is about them to these people. They are bastions of truth fighting to protect our democracy from the tyranny of Trump. They’re heroes, just ask them.

None of that is accurate. They’re just people with jobs. Some of them are good at their jobs, most are not. None are crucial and all could easily be replaced. But not one of them will admit that fact.

Their view of themselves is like a circus mirror that not only makes them attractive, it adds a cape. They are heroes in their own stories, writing their own press releases. Their jobs, after all, are mentioned in the First Amendment. They have no such interest in the rest of the First Amendment, or the Second…or the rest of the document.

While they throw out their shoulders patting themselves on the backs for being “champions of the First Amendment,” they seek to silence voices they don’t like.


Look, I’m no fan of Alex Jones. I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories and crazy ideas of “false flag” operations and attacking grieving families. That said, if you can look past that, or you buy into that sort of stuff, knock yourself out. Jones exists because he has an audience who wants to hear him, no one is forced to listen. People love the Big Bang Theory, but it’s not my cup of tea. I don’t want the show canceled, I just don’t watch it.

But liberals can’t handle that contrary opinions exist, they want them silenced; destroyed. CNN had essentially campaigned to get Jones banned from Facebook. On Monday, they succeeded.

These heroes of free speech got Jones and his InfoWars kicked off Facebook, YouTube, Apple apps, and Spotify. While this isn’t a First Amendment issue since these are private companies and not government, it is a free speech issue. Journalists worked to silence someone else’s speech and celebrated it when it happened. Compare that to how they’ve treated the idea of NFL owners attempting to make standing for the national anthem a rule. In that case, liberal journalists whined about the player’s First Amendment rights being somehow infringed. The hypocrisy runs deep.

What was weird about the de-platforming of Jones was how it all came together on the same day. That these mega-companies all decided at the same time to shut him down while being cheered by journalists is more disconcerting than anything he’s said because the implications are much greater.

The left would like nothing more than to shut down Fox News, that is their ultimate goal. They’re content, for now, to try to pick off individual hosts – an attack on Laura Ingraham here, an assault on Sean Hannity there – but de-platforming the entire network is their endgame. So even if you’re like me and not a particular fan of Jones, know this is not where this push ends, it’s where it begins.

This week has exposed how they could do it. Does that make them enemies of the people? It sure doesn’t make them First Amendment heroes, even though they’ll continue to portray themselves as such. As an op-ed on CNN.com put it, “We thank soldiers for their service because they devote themselves to protecting our freedoms, and we should. But we should also thank the media for the same reason -- especially when the stakes have never been higher.”

That gets a hard pass from me.

The liberal media hasn’t let the facts stand in the way of a good story since Donald Trump rode down that escalator to announce his presidential run in June 2015, so why would they start now? Do you call that an “enemy of the people”? I don’t know, but you sure don’t call it a friend.

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quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Are Journalists the Enemy of the People?

The vast majority of current 'journalists'?

Yes.

quote:

Donald Trump doesn’t call all journalists “enemies of the people,” he says “fake news” is the enemy of the people. That so many journalists, particularly from CNN and MSNBC, hear “fake news” and think of themselves is telling.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Are Journalists the Enemy of the People?

The vast majority of current 'journalists'?

Yes.

YUP!!

Don’t really have that many journalist left these days, mostly democratic activist agents. They already have preconceived ways the story will be told, conservatives bad, democrats good. They ask slanted questions, lie as necessary, and ignore anything that will put the democrats in a bad light. Most of all what really pisses them off is, they can’t select who the President is, prior to Trump, they could destroy or damage a candidate , because the candidate needed them to get their message out. Trump didn’t need them to win, and with their best trying cant destroy him. He is the only one in the history of the country, that can give them the finger everyday, give them their shit back at them, and get more popular.

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Are Journalists the Enemy of the People?

The vast majority of current 'journalists'?

Yes.

Absolutely.

"Are Journalists the Enemy of the People"

No. But, individuals parading around extolling their opinion as factual are.

Journalists? No. Leftists? You bet your sweet bippy.


Not sure what a bippy is.

Objective “Umpires” calling them as they see them don’t make the big money, get interviewed on TV, given fancy awards at lavish dinners, consulted, or played by Robert Redford and whatzizname in the movies.

You must be a partisan, preferably on the winning side, for good things to happen.

quote:

Let me just say at the outset that I don’t believe journalists are enemies of the people. I think most of them are frauds – political activists crusading for progressive causes behind the mask of a press credential – but not enemies. That said, they certainly aren’t friends or allies of the people either.

All "progressive causes" lead to socialism. Socialism is a collectivist, anti-liberty agenda. It stands against the freedom of the individual to make his/her own choices. It's against America as founded, a home for individual liberty.

In short, I see anyone pushing socialism as an enemy.

It shouldn't be this way, but, yes, they are, and it is their doing entirely. It's not Donald Trump's fault, nor is it the fault of conservatives in this nation. The press made their sleazy bed and they can just lie in it. Their fault. Their doing. Entirely.

Oh, they don't like having this pointed out? Then, they should have done their job in an ethical manner. Don't point fingers at us when we state the fucking obvious.

They can't have it both ways.

I don't think real journalists are enemies. The problem is that there aren't many actual journalists left who actually do research, verify facts and report stories in a somewhat objective manner. Most who call themselves journalists today stick with a pack mentality or are simply extremely biased talk show hosts masquerading as journalists. I doubt most of them even believe half of the left-wing crap they say or write but it pays their bills. Many so-called journalists aren't much different than community organizers. They are simply looking to stir up or mobilize their mindless followers and aren't really interested in conveying facts to a general public audience.

CNN isn't the enemy of the people. There are some very competent journalists there doing great work everyday on lots of issues other than politics. Chris Cuomo, Jim Acosta, Don Lemon and their ilk- these idiots are the enemy of the people because they believe their role is to destroy the government that the people elected - not hold them to account, which would be entirely legitimate, but to bring them down by any means necessary due to political disagreements. That's not journalism; it's activism, and it undermines and distorts the role of a free press in our constitutional system. I have no problem with the enemy of the people label as applied to them and their kind at other outlets.

the fourth estate has morphed into the fifth column

quote:

Originally posted by BamaJeepster:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Are Journalists the Enemy of the People?

The vast majority of current 'journalists'?

Yes.

FIFY.

They are in the business of garnering clicks, and clicks equal ad revenue.

That's all they do.

And will say or do anything to achieve that end.

Sharyl Attkisson's firing by CBS proved that.

From the Archives on this point:

American Spectator
John Tabin
June, 2005

Mark Felt’s emergence as Deep Throat has occasioned a prolonged Old Timer’s Day of the American left, allowing various aging fakers to take one last, long victory lap. With relish they have renewed their intense moralizing about Richard Nixon even though their own ethics evaporated a long time ago. We overthrew a corrupt order, they in effect say by puffing themselves up — an arrogance that would be more comprehensible if they hadn’t proceeded to create a new corrupt order. The champions of Deep Throat built atop the ruins of Richard Nixon not a better culture but a base culture that would culminate in the Deep Throat presidency of Bill Clinton.

The glib use of the Deep Throat moniker by the establishment buoying Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein was itself a signal of the new corruption: one form of crassness had been replaced by a more chic crassness. And that crassness — at once willing to wallow in scandal in the popular culture and conduct puritanical political purges against select reviled figures — would masquerade as morality for years until it exploded in the liberals’ complicity in the very lies, perjury, and obstruction of justice that they spent their youth decrying.

The destroyers of Nixon ended up his disciples. Disciples not of his ends but of his means. An accidental admission of this came when Bill Clinton offered an almost gaudy eulogy at Nixon’s funeral. Of course, Nixon’s critics furiously deny any resemblance to the low ethics they once opposed and insist that whatever low means they have employed can be chalked up to necessity. (Mark Felt had to break the law, they have said this week). How dare Chuck Colson and Pat Buchanan lecture Felt and his enablers on morality, Ben Bradlee practically thundered on Wednesday’s Nightline to an ingratiating Ted Koppel.

Why can’t they question the propriety of it? Ben Bradlee is hardly a credible scourge of corruption in the presidency. He was John F. Kennedy’s see-no-evil boon companion, whose sister-in-law, a JFK mistress, was murdered mysteriously, a scandal Bradlee was willing to cover-up by helping to destroy her diary detailing the affair.

On Thursday morning in the newspaper of this friend of JFK, a president with ties to Mobsters, appeared a Bob Woodward story that contained a casual reference to Nixon’s circle as “Nazis,” according to Mark Felt’s estimate. This was a revealing excess in Woodward’s story: In the left’s feverish, self-justifying nostalgia, Nixon has to be turned into a Nazi for its hysteria to make any sense.

Not mentioned, by the way, in any of the motive-measuring pieces on Deep Throat is discussion of any of the motives driving the Washington Post‘s coverage. Why did Ben Bradlee give two cub reporters investigative carte blanche against the Nixon White House? One motive was Bradlee’s apoplexy over what he believed to be Nixon’s attempt to put the kibosh on the Post company’s application for broadcasting licenses. Just as Bradlee covered for Kennedy out of personal support, so he exposed Nixon out of personal hatred.

And to destroy Nixon required imitating him. The liberal posse would catch this lawbreaker by breaking laws themselves. They would expose his lies through their own. Somehow Nixon’s ends-justify-the-means thinking was unfathomably evil, but their own perfectly justified. I recently asked Herb Meyer, an aide to former CIA director William Casey, about Bob Woodward’s trustworthiness. Woodward had interviewed Meyer at length for his book on the CIA, Veil. Meyer’s response to my question: “Everything Woodward put in his book about me is wrong.”

The radical chic culture that upended Nixon encouraged making stuff up for the cause. The lies and lawbreaking the radicals would accuse Nixon of was always on display in their own conduct. The radicals, both high and low, in Georgetown with the Ben Bradlees and at protests with the bombthrowers, didn’t object to Nixon’s means; they shared them. What they objected to was his ends, and once they thwarted them they unveiled their own ends which proved calamitous, advancing a nihilistic culture in which the only approved oracles of wisdom go by such noble names as Deep Throat.

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short answer - yes, they are

but replace the word 'journalist' with 'political operative' and its a much better description of what they do, and then it makes more sense

First, there aren't really any 'journalists' anymore. The people masquerading around as journalists are simple stealth pundits. And yes, those people are indeed an enemy of this country.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:
CNN isn't the enemy of the people. There are some very competent journalists there doing great work everyday on lots of issues other than politics.

This is not meant as sarcasm, but please list for me who you think at CNN qualifies as a 'journalist' who plays it straight. I ran the list in my head and couldn't think of a single person that would meet that description.

quote:

Originally posted by ChicagoSigMan:
snip...these idiots are the enemy of the people because they believe their role is to destroy the government that the people elected - not hold them to account , which would be entirely legitimate, ...snip

I've got to quibble with you a bit here. It is not the job of the press to hold anyone to account, that is the mandate of the people. It is the job of the press to report, truthfully, always, so the people can do their job. Of course that doesn't get you laid by impressing the honeys in a beltway saloon or promoted because you 'told truth to power', but that's the job.

Don't make stuff up. For instance don't repeatedly, habitually, tell me that my senator is one of the most powerful people in Washington when anyone with eyes to see and wit to understand knows that she is one of the dumbest people in America (That would be Patty Murray)tell me what she has actually accomplished, anything, anything at all that rates all of this praise, there's your job Mr. man-bun reporter.

"holding to account' implies a legitimate authority. I think pols need to be held to account, but a degree in fake-news doesn't invest one with that authority. They, the press pukes, should either report the facts or turn to fiction, but since most of them can't write that's out, but at least look like you are trying.

And yes I think as they are currently functioning they are an enemy of the people, of truth, of justice and the American way of life.