Media continues to destroy its own credibility

For several years, the cover photo on my personal Facebook page has been a banner stating, "I Don't Believe The Liberal Media!" It's a replica of a bumper sticker distributed by the watchdog Media Research Center (and I really need to find my copy of it and put it on my vehicle.)

Those who know me know my background. My college degrees are in journalism/communications. I spent 14 years in the newspaper field, most of that time in editorial positions. When I got out of college, and for several years thereafter, my career goal was to write for the Lexington Herald-Leader. It's a goal I'm glad I've never attained, given the leftward leanings of that publication. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that the reporter I most looked up, someone I had gotten to know when I was in college and with whom I had several professional dealings after I went into the profession, to turned out to be another stereotypical liberal journalist.

I've been out of the journalism field for 15 years now, but still keep a keen eye on my former occupation. It's gotten to the point where I'm ashamed of my education and my background.

Another thing those who know me know is that I did not support Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential race. I supported Ted Cruz, and was not a fan of Trump's primary campaign. But it was impossible not to notice the bias with which the national press covered Trump's campaign. It was plain for me, a Trump opponent, to see that the media was against him and was trying every way possible to bring him down. It got to the point where in my house, we couldn't watch the CBS Evening News anymore between the local news and "Wheel of Fortune."

The coverage of Trump's presidency has been an embarrassment. He's right to attack CNN, NBC, and the leading newspapers as "fake news." They aren't interested in facts. They want to torpedo his administration.

If you need proof, look at the way Trump's criticisms of various Congressional Democrats has been branded. Stories about Trump's tweets usually state they are "racist" or "inherently racist" as if it's the gospel. Truth is, it's a lie and a fabrication. Trump has never mentioned race at all when he's gone after Elijah Cummings and Baltimore, or any of the four freshman females known collectively as "The Squad." He's mentioned policies and ideologies and unpleasant truths about the areas some of them represent, but he's never touched on race. Only a media looking for a way to criticize him sees racism in his comments and actions.

That's why the revelations last week about the infamous New York Times staff meeting come as no surprise. Distill that to its essence, and you get this: "We tried, and failed, to get Trump on this Russian collusion stuff. So now, we're going to try to get him as a racist, and we're going to brand his supporters as racist, as well." I've read the transcript of the leaked staff meeting. Those who dispute that's the gist of what was said are being willfully ignorant.

And that's not to mention their "1619 Project," which is an attempt to sell the absurd idea that America is an inherently racist nation, the real founding of this country occurred not in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but years earlier when the first slaves were brought to our shores, and that everything America is now was built by involuntary servitude.

I have yet to read Mark Levin's best-selling book, Unfreedom of the Press, but I plan to. Like all of Levin's books, it's a well-researched and unassailable history of the biases the press has shown in recent years. The New York Times' overlooking the Holocaust is a particular subject of concern, and it became even more relevant last week when the anti-Semitic comments of a NYT editor, Tom Wright-Piersanti, were made public.

Several years ago, something called "the Journolist" made news. It was an email group run by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, and it further exposed key journalists as doctrinaire liberals.

Then, as now as the latest scandals erupt and little is said, except for liberal journalists and those they support circling the wagons. Arthur Schwartz, a Trump supporter who helped expose Wright-Piersanti, has come under fire for his disclosure that he and others have compiled a list of compromising statements journalists have made, and will make them public. Unlike the fake Russian dossier which began the investigation of Trump, these are 100 percent true and made up of the journalists' own words.

Or to state it differently, only liberal journalists have First Amendment rights. When someone else exercises them, they're engaging in blackmail and extortion.

Need any more examples of the media being tone-deaf and unaware? Look no farther than the new hire the Courier-Journal breathlessly announced last week, Joe Sonka. If the C-J needed any more reinforcement for the view that its coverage is biased to the left, this provides it in spades.

If Schwartz and his group of opposition researchers want a Kentucky trophy to hang on their wall, then Sonka gives them a rich history. For years, Sonka ran the "Barefoot and Progressive" blog in Lexington. There, his liberalism and atheism was on full display. He raged against Gov. Ernie Fletcher, President George W. Bush, Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning, and anyone else of the Republican persuasion.

He left that blog, and Lexington, to go to work for the Louisville Eccentric Observer, otherwise known as LEO Weekly, but left in a snit with the publication's owner, Aaron Yarmuth (son of a certain congressman). From there, he went to Insider Louisville, which recently shut down. At those publications, he couldn't keep his viewpoint separated from his "reporting." He lucked out and scored a job at the C-J.

There, he'll fit right in with Joe Gerth. Gerth puts his anti-conservative bias on full display every time he writes a column. Given the views he freely expresses in his opinion pieces, it's easy to see why his news stories read the way they do.

I'd also say that he'll fit right in with Tom Loftus, but he won't for long. Loftus, who seems to think Gov. Matt Bevin's purchase of a house in Jefferson County is the biggest news story ever in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, announced his upcoming retirement last week. Maybe Sonka's hiring was too over-the-top for even Loftus to stomach.

When Trump tweeted over the weekend that "the media is destroying the free press," he took the usual heaping of abuse from the left. Those of us who have watched the press destroy its own credibility for years knew exactly what he was talking about.