If there’s one thing the media wanted to make perfectly clear this election cycle, it was the narrative that Trump and his campaign were powered by bigotry. Leading up to the election, it seemed like everywhere you looked there was a new story accusing Trump of something racist or sexist.
After Trump’s victory, the rhetoric only intensified. On election night, CNN anchor Van Jones called Trump’s victory a “white-lash“, despite the fact that exit poll numbers showed it wasn’t. When Trump named Steve Bannon senior counselor, media critics were quick to label him a white supremacist, even though there is no evidence to support that claim. And who could forget the “epidemic” of hate crimes against minorities after Trump won? Of course, most of those were debunked as well.
The media’s unfair coverage of Trump speaks volumes, but it’s perhaps what they fail to report that truly shows just how biased the media has become. Despite widely reporting unsubstantiated stories of hate crimes against minorities, the media has remained silent on the abuse suffered by white students and Trump supporters. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center tried to hide that information from their most recent hate crimes report. From the New York Post:
At least 2,000 educators around the country reported racist slurs and other derogatory language leveled against white students in the first days after Donald Trump was elected president. But the group that surveyed the teachers didn’t publish the results in its report on Trump-related “hate crimes.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center partnered with the American Federation of Teachers, which formally endorsed Hillary Clinton, to circulate the questionnaire among its 1.6 million mostly Democratic members. The survey was sent out to K-12 teachers and administrators who subscribe to its “Teaching Tolerance” newsletter.
The SPLC’s widely cited report — “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Presidential Election on Our Nation’s Schools” However — shamefully yet not surprisingly — the report omits mention of bias-related incidents against whites reported in the survey. When SPLC spokeswoman Kirsten Bokenkamp was pressed on the matter, she finally revealed that about 20 percent answered affirmatively to that question, “I have heard derogatory language or slurs about white students.”“Bokenkamp did not provide an explanation for the absence of such a substantial metric — at least 2,000 bias-related incidents against white students — from the report, which focuses instead on “anti-immigrant sentiment,” “anti-Muslim sentiment” and “slurs about students of color” related to the election.
“They left that result out because it would not fit their ideological narrative,” former Education Department civil rights attorney Hans Bader said. “It was deemed an inconvenient truth.””
What’s become clear is that the media is not interested in reporting the news. Instead, they attempt to form narratives, and ignore any information that might get in the way of pushing their anti-Trump agenda.
Now that Donald Trump has secured the election, the press is concerned about their access to the president-elect. They worry he will continue to bypass the media in favor posting on Twitter. Of course, what they won’t consider is that Trump’s treatment of the media is a direct result of their unfair coverage of him. After all, 91% of Trump coverage this election cycle was negative coverage.
If the media wants to regain the trust of the American people and the new administration, they should start by reporting all the facts. Unsurprisingly to most, they are not off to a good start.
[Note: This post is authored by Michael Lee. Follow him on Twitter at @UAMichaelLee]
