The Press v. Trump

Well, you know. "Press" is how old folks refer to "the media". Conrad Black has an article out titled: Election Emerges As Titanic Battle Of Press v. Trump. In it, toward the end, he hits on an issue that's really been bothering me, and should bother all Americans. The press--or media, if you prefer--has a privileged status under current interpretations of the Constitution. That privileged status seems to me to be quite unwarranted, in that the press has show itself to be both biased as well as remarkably uninterested in factual reporting. Their role in electoral politics in so many ways--from fake polling to fake reporting to ignoring of relevant facts--is a scandal that should be readdressed by the SCOTUS. Here's how Black puts it:

This election is the supreme test of whether the electoral process will weigh the merits of the competing candidates, or whether a dishonest press can exploit and abuse the constitutional protections it receives by info-assassinating the incumbent while the challengers skulk about Delaware wearing masks.

This is a decisive election in terms of the legitimacy of its methods and the ability to resist press manipulation. This is even before we get to the determination of important policy matters. The defeat of a rather successful president by an incompetent rival carried to the goal line by corrupt media, would produce the greatest crisis American democracy has faced since the Great Depression and Roosevelt, if not the Civil War and Lincoln. The forces of righteous discernment should be heard from as soon as the public focuses on the election which is normally shortly after Labor Day. What we have now is a dangerous and fraudulent levitation.