A random person created the silly gif of Trump body-slamming CNN, which President Trump then tweeted. It’s important to remember that this was the precipitating event that lead CNN to use its myriad resources to seek out the random person and threaten exposure and shame …for creating a stupid gif.
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017
CNN’s editorial bias and noxious behavior predates the stupid gif. Chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta got in a shouting match with President Trump. Trump, in turn, called CNN Fake News. Of course, “Fake News” is now, itself, a meme.
There is tension.
But this infantile jostling between press and president is one thing. It’s another to use resources to target those who create the memes, gifs, and parodies, and threaten those people with exposure if they don’t apologize.
Good people are defending the reporters doing the legwork to find the poor Reddit slob who created the gif. Ridiculous! The reporter may be a nice person, but he’s lost his mind.
That’s what’s happening right now. Decent people are losing their minds and doing profoundly destructive, self-harming, and outlandish things in the defense of what?
Pride?
At what cost is the nonsense proceeding? Do the anti-Trump media and mouth-breathers on the left cheering them on (they’re one and the same, but for the sake of argument), know what they’re doing?
Every day that the media continues to act like rage-monster toddlers, they lose credibility and value. No one will believe their reporting, that’s assured. What’s worse, no one will believe anything at all.
This is a terrible crisis of a whole institution. Last week it was the childish Joe and Mika cutting short a vacation to tangle with the President. This week it’s CNN.
If news organizations took their mandate at all seriously, they’d behave differently and more maturely. But no. They chase ratings at the expense of fairness and truth.
Remember, the media has produced rape hoaxes (New York Times, Rolling Stone), threatened celebrities with videos and pictures (Gawker), made up news (Dan Rather, NBC), and has acted in bad faith since their chosen leader Hillary Clinton lost.
BUT TRUMP!
No. The behavior of someone else, even the President, does not excuse the churlish, childish, mendacious, and malevolent behavior of people whose job it is to maintain decorum even in the face of gifs.
Gifs, people.
It’s time the media gets their collective act together. Maybe, as Ted Cruz points out, they’ll be forced to by lawsuits.
(1/2) Troubling. I assume CNN’s lawyers are examining GA § 16-8-16 Theft by extortion. If CNN constructively obtained the gif-maker’s IP… https://t.co/ChxqocuDgc
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 5, 2017
(2/2) it’s a GA crime if they threatened to “Disseminate any information tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule….” https://t.co/ChxqocuDgc
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 5, 2017
Maybe a lawsuit would get CNN’s attention. We shouldn’t even be here, though. CNN and the rest of this sorry lot should know better.
The Trump presidency has revealed much about the supposed hoary heads of the news media. Their nugatory natterings create self-marginalization. So be it.