Editorial: Biased media? Think again

The handling of the Trump dossier speaks volumes about how the mainstream press actually operates.

Here is a thought exercise for everybody, but particularly Donald Trump supporters who spew a certain type of hatred for the mainstream media.

It is now clear that there is a dossier with allegations — if true — that further impinges the character of President-elect Trump. It also is clear that the major players of the mainstream media — The Washington Post and The New York Times, for example — have had the dossier for months. However, the mainstream media never released the details of that dossier or made it a part of their coverage during the presidential campaign.

Here is the thought exercise part: If the mainstream media’s goal was to see Hillary Clinton elected, why didn’t the mainstream media report voraciously about the dossier and its allegations?

Any political strategist worth his salt would recognize at the moment FBI Director James Comey released his letter regarding Clinton’s emails that Clinton needed something to change the conversation. Enter the dossier. It would have created a story of depravity to counter Clinton’s story of dereliction, and the whole thing likely would have been a draw. With Clinton’s standing in the polls at that moment, a draw is all she needed to become president.

But the mainstream media produced no such stories. Why? Because the mainstream media is not made up of political strategists but rather of journalists. The media tried to confirm the allegations, but were unable to do so. Multiple media organizations — entities that supposedly were working to ensure Trump did not get elected — made the relatively easy journalistic call that they would not report unsubstantiated rumors of such an explosive nature during the final days of a close presidential election.

Yes, post-election the website BuzzFeed made the decision to publish the dossier. It deserves the criticism it is currently receiving for that decision. But to focus only on BuzzFeed’s action misses a good part of the point. The BuzzFeed decision is evidence that a news site that has its DNA as a click-bait factory isn’t a high-quality news source. But more importantly, the mainstream media’s handling of the dossier is overwhelming evidence that the media were not seeking to engineer a particular outcome in the elections.

Every partisan who blabbers about the mainstream media doing all it can to get Clinton elected needs to explain the dossier. The dossier was an obvious and easy strategic move that likely would have sealed the deal for Clinton in the final days of a tightening presidential campaign. Yet, that card remained unplayed.

Certainly the media has its flaws, like every other sector of America does. But if the growing number of media haters would be honest with themselves, they may realize America doesn’t have a biased media problem as much as it has a biased populace problem. Too many people only want to hear the “news” that reinforces what they believe.

The next four years should produce a convincing case of why the news business really doesn’t work that way. Exhibit No. 1: There is a president named Trump.