The “mainstream” media is a potent issue this election year, and Donald Trump
has surely turned the public’s distrust of the Fourth Estate into electoral
gold.
Regardless of what one thinks of Trump himself, his ability to turn a media
pile-on into an asset has got to make one wonder what is it about the journalistic
profession, circa 2015, that inspires such antipathy.
Perhaps it’s what they don’t report that’s responsible for the general
disdain in which they are held. Take, for example, this
piece in the New York Times on Tashfeen Malik’s previously unreported
Facebook postings, by Matt Apuzzo, Michael S. Schmidt, and Julia Preston. The
first paragraphs read:
“Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino,
Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as
she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik
had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about
her views on violent jihad.
“She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.
“American law enforcement officials said they recently discovered those
old — and previously unreported — postings as they pieced together the lives
of Ms. Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, trying to understand how they
pulled off the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.”
Okay, but what did she actually say — and where did she say it? The
Times stays mum on this, but we do get some information on her sister,
Fehda Malik, some twenty-three paragraphs later, second from the bottom:
“On social media, Fehda Malik has made provocative comments of her own.
In 2011, on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, she posted a remark
on Facebook beside a photo of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center that
could be interpreted as anti-American.”
Everything must be viewed through the peculiar prism of a New York Times
reporter: no direct quotes allowed — unless it’s from an anonymous government
official pushing his or her agenda. The rest of the article cites government
officials offering lame excuses for why they didn’t bother checking Tashfeen
Malik’s social media postings— essentially, it’s too much bother.
Yes, the Old Grey Lady has become quite insufferable of late, what with its
front page editorials — although one could argue quite reasonably they’ve been
doing that in their “news” department since the 1960s and before.