Context matters.  Take this statement regarding the combatants of the Civil War:

“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other…The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.”

It’s from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, considered one of the greatest speeches ever given by an American, and nearly the equal of the Gettysburg Address.  In it, Lincoln sought to reconcile victor and vanquished, urging “let us judge not that we be not judged”.  But taken out of context, the lines cited above could be interpreted as “you had very fine people on both sides”, couldn’t they?  It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some of Lincoln’s bitter political opponents, of whom he had more than a few, and who hated him with a white-hot fever, threw them back at him with the retort, “How dare you morally equate slave-owning rebels with the brave men who fought and died to end that evil institution and preserve the Union?!”  Of course, he did no such thing, but without reading the entire speech and putting the words in context, one could be forgiven for not understanding that.  But who lets a little thing like context stand in the way of gaining political advantage, hmm?  It’s a very brief speech and well worth the read, here.

More recently, President Trump was angrily condemned for the following words:

“…you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides…”

The occasion was one of his famously-antagonistic news conferences, filled with his trademark, gratuitous insults of reporters and accusations of “fake news”, and undisguised, angry hostility from said reporters.  The subject was the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in clashes between brain-dead wannabe Nazis and other so-called white nationalists on one side and equally ugly forces including the brain-dead black-clad “Antifa” on the other.  Tragically, a young woman was run over and killed by a so-called white nationalist.  Taken out of context, it certainly appears that Trump is somehow excusing or justifying the actions of the brain-dead wannabe Nazis who, in any halfway-honest assessment of the situation, were responsible for starting the whole ghastly thing.

But context matters, and any halfway-honest reading of the transcript of the news conference shows that Trump was in no way defending those hate-filled dimwits.  But don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself.

That same news conference contained these words from the President:

“As I said on — remember, Saturday — we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America.”

“Well, I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family, and this country. And that is — you can call it terrorism. You can call it murder…The driver of the car is a murderer. And what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.”

“Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging at — excuse me, what about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?  Let me ask you this: What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do. As far as I’m concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day…And you have — you had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now. You had a group — you had a group on the other side that came charging in, without a permit, and they were very, very violent.”

You’re in good company if you were unaware of the other statements.  They weren’t widely reported.  You may reach your own conclusion why.  But there is little doubt that by not reporting them, the President’s meaning was badly distorted.

We count ourselves lucky to live in a country in which the press is expected to engage in a highly-skeptical, aggressive, continuous questioning of everything government does.  There is a good reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment; it is, rightly, one of our most-cherished liberties, and one of the most important reasons that we remain a free nation.  The flip side of every freedom, though, is responsibility.  A freedom abused is a freedom in jeopardy, and, as often as not, soon lost.

Which is the reason that I find the mainstream press’s treatment of President Trump so disturbing.  As noted above, the majority of the reporters at his press conferences are openly hostile – not just skeptical and determined to get to the truth, as they should be, but determined to paint every word he says in the worst possible light and turn every slip of the tongue and poorly-chosen word (of which there are many) against him, context be damned.  And they don’t even try to hide it.

It’s a dangerous game.  Eventually, deeds speak louder than words, and in spite of all the sturm und drang, more and more people who aren’t obsessed with politics and/or political theory are realizing that things really are getting better in their daily lives.  Wages are rising, jobs are plentiful, the stock market is booming, black and brown people are thriving right along with white people.  No, there isn’t a growing plague of hate crimes, at least not where I live; maybe elsewhere, but not here.  No, the President isn’t a Nazi or even a Nazi-wannabe, at least to judge by his inability to stop the negative press coverage. All he can do is whine about “Fake News”, and, boy, that’s really put them in their place, hasn’t it?  (Fox News may be the most watched cable network, but ABC, CBS, NBC and their cable units are all blatantly hostile, and collectively dwarf Fox’s viewership.  The same is true across the board in all media, with even publications like Teen Vogue getting in on the anti-Trump act.)   Illegal immigration really is down, but no one is being thrown into concentration camps (and the “abuses” at detainment centers are almost-laughably trivial), and only a handful of really bad guys are being forcibly expelled – as they should be.  On issue after issue, the interminable hysteria of the mainstream press has been proven to be much ado about nearly nothing, and then only when it isn’t totally wrong.

Gee, you’d think that all those highly-educated journalists would have been taught sometime by someone in their journalism schools that credibility is the currency of the realm, which once debased is debased forever.  I guess not.  No wonder they seem unable to come to grips with the reality that they are taken less and less seriously by a skeptical public, whose situation simply doesn’t match the fantastical rhetoric with which it is bombarded.

It’s long past time for the owners of the media companies to find the courage to put adults in charge of their news divisions; people who will impose some discipline on their reporters, who will demand that reporting be separated from commentary and opinion, and who will insist that context matters.  Cover everything; but cover it fairly, and leave the opinions to the opinion columns.  The owners should do it to regain their self-respect, to show respect for their viewers and readers, and to stop the soiling of their own nest, which is now blindingly obvious to all but the most-partisan of partisans.  But if that isn’t reason enough – and sadly, experience indicates that it’s not – they should do it in self-defense; for a freedom abused is a freedom in jeopardy, and often as not, soon lost.

Kenneth D. Gough © 2020