A President at War with the Media, Who Can Check the Unrestrained Expansion of the Media’s Power?
Hello, everyone, welcome to “Inconvenient Truths”. I am your host Jennifer Zeng.
Today I will talk about a very important issue: the constitutional crisis in the US and the unrestrained power of the fourth estate, or the fourth power, the media, and how we can deal with it.
Petitioner Trump
First, let's watch two funny cartoons created by Chinese netizens.
This first one shows Trump carrying a child, a family photo, a blanket, and a plastic bag, like many other Chinese petitioners on their way to Beijing to seek justice. The Chinese caption says, “I am on my way to petition. See you at the court!”
Petitioner Trump: “See you at the court!”
Maybe only Chinese people can fully understand and feel the humor and the bitterness behind this cartoon.
In China, because of lack of justice, rule of law, and because of the corruption found with local CCP officials, many Chinese people have to go to Beijing, or the capital cities in their provinces to try to see if they can have their cases heard by higher authorities. Some of them spend years, even decades on their way to seek justice, but still can’t get it. Some become bankrupt and lose their homes. Some even end up in jail. That’s why they need to carry a blanket with them on their way to petition, as they don’t have the money to stay in a hotel, and have to sleep on the street.
So, in some Chinese netizens’ eyes, President Trump's situation and the treatment he got are very similar to that of the Chinese petitioners.
Another cartoon looks very similar, only what he holds with his right hand is a piece of paper with a Chinese word “wronged”. The Chinese words on the bag in his left hand are “documents”. The caption also says, “I am on my way to petition. See you at the court!”
I am not sure if you find the cartoons funny and laughable. They are widely circulated among many Chinese netizens to reflect their understanding of President Trump’s situation.
For me, they do make a lot of sense, as like some of the Chinese petitioners, what Trump is up against is huge.
The First Instance of the “Almighty” Media
So, what exactly is Trump up against?
First of all, it is the “almighty” media.
I witnessed the first instance of the “almighty” media in April 2016. I was working as the news director for the Los Angeles branch of New Tang Dynasty Television, NTDTV. At that time, Trump was very early in his presidential candidacy, not many people took him seriously, or thought that he had any chance to win. He was yet to beat the other 15 Republican candidates, some of them looked far more qualified than him.
Anyway, on April 28, 2016, Trump went to Orange County in Los Angeles to do a rally, and I sent a crew to the rally to cover the event.
Hours before the rally started, some people, perhaps nearly 100, started to protest outside. Several people jumped onto a police car, trampled all over it, and did a lot of damage. Several so-called mainstream media sent helicopters to the site and did a live broadcast of the protest.
Seeing that the helicopters were live-streaming their actions, those protesters became more excited and did more damage.
I watched the live streaming for hours, without knowing what exactly happened inside the venue.
After my reporter came back, I asked him what happened with the rally. He showed me some interviews he did with the supporters, with each of them expressing eagerly why they were there to support.
So, what I saw from my crew’s footage was a totally different story from what I watched from the “mainstream media.”
This instance impressed me so much that I could never forget it.
Watching the Wrong Media
So, on November 10, 2016, several days after Trump won the election, when many, many people were still feeling very much shocked by the result, I posted on my Facebook such a post:
“Why were so many people so shocked by Trump’s victory? Why were the polls so wrong? Because people have been watching the wrong media.
Here is an example:
For the same event of Trump's on April 28, 2016 in California, if you watch the typical western ‘mainstream media’, you pretty much only see the violence and turbulence; you fail to see that Trump has a lot of supporters; and why they support him. On that day there were more than 8000 supporters and only 100 plus protesters.
If you watch NTD, you get different and fair coverage.
NTD’s news title: Trump’s rally in orange county attracts 8000 supporters”
And here are some news titles from other media I listed in that Facebook post:
“Trump Rally Protesters Damage Police Cars, Block Roads
Police car smashed during protest outside Trump rally
Police car smashed during anti-Trump protest outside rally in Orange County; nearly 20 arrested
Protests /ˈprəʊtest Get Violent In Costa Mesa As Trump Rally Draws To A Close
More Than a Dozen Arrested As Protests Turn Violent Outside California Trump Rally
The Latest: Hundreds turned away from Trump rally in OC
Protesters Swarm Donald Trump Rally In California
Trump supporters, protesters clash in California, 20 arrested”
From that day on, I knew how wrong, how biased the so-called mainstream media could be, and eventually, I stopped watching or reading them at all. I had been persisting in reading at least one news piece and one commentary every day to learn what was happening, and to improve my English.
No Lesson Learned
Now, the situation is even worse than 4 years ago. After getting it very wrong with the previous election, instead of reflecting on why they got it wrong, the so-called mainstream media have almost become activists or active players in the battleground, and they want to dictate the course of events so that they can turn their wrong reports into right ones.
Yes, that’s what the mainstream media has been doing in the past four years.
Not only the mainstream media but also the major social media platforms. Because they have the power, they started to censor people’s speeches, delete and suspend people’s accounts, including President Trump’s account. They can just willfully flag or censor anybody’s posts or tweets according to what they like or don’t like. They become the standard of what is right and what is wrong, what can be said and spread, and what can not.
Remember in March and April, after having a meeting with the WHO, these social media platforms also censored any views, news, facts about the COVID19 pandemic if what you said didn’t agree with what the WHO said. Almost all my YouTube videos during that period of time were given a yellow flag, which means “limited for ads”.
But what happened a little while later? We all found out that the WHO had been helping the CCP to cover up the pandemic. If it had not, the world would have not been misled so badly, and so many lives could have been saved, instead of being killed by the virus.
And what did we learn from that lesson? It seems that nobody has learned anything. These social media platforms continue to play God and make judgments on everyone. If anyone has something to say about the election that they don’t like, they either delete your post or suppress it.
What will we have to lose this time?
Alarming Similarity
Yesterday I retweeted a tweet by Chinese dissident Tang Baiqiao. He put three pictures of newspapers from China, Hong Kong, and the US. And his text goes like this, “The style of media on both sides of the Strait is becoming more and more consistent - in this case, both sides refer to the US and the CCP’s China. Who says that the US media can't learn from the CCP’s media?”
And my retweet says this: “American newspapers are looking like the CCP's, with similar/uniformed headlines and photos. In CCP's #China, the propaganda department (sometimes @XHNews) provides the standard scripts/photos to all the media. Who is providing the same stuff to the #US media?”
Frankly speaking, I was a little shocked to see how so many different western newspapers were using exactly the same headlines to report about the US election. I only saw this happen in China before. That’s why both Mr. Tang Baiqiao and myself became very alarmed when seeing this happening right in front of our eyes in a country that is supposed to be “the great beacon of liberty”.
Three years ago, in 2017, I wrote a Chinese article entitled “The President and The Media Are at War. Who Has the Upper Hand?”
I said, “As far as I can see, the media has a bigger advantage in this war. First, the media has a much larger audience than the President. Second, the media can look very professional and respectful. They can do damage to people without swearing or using dirty words.
“On the other hand, if the President picks up a fight with the media and uses nasty words, people will say that he is not graceful and generous, and he will be criticized like hell.
“And why do I choose to criticize the media instead of the President? In a democratic country like the US, the media have accumulated a great deal of invisible public power and voice over hundreds of years, thanks to the guarantee of freedom of speech. In the West, journalists are called the ‘uncrowned kings’, and from this perspective, they have even more ‘power’ than the presidents, or at least the same amount of power.
“How does the media use such invisible public power after they gain it? This is a question that every media and journalist with a conscience should ask themselves. ‘Have I become too “arrogant and prejudiced [ˈpredʒədɪst]” because of this power? Can I honestly look at the big picture instead of going off the deep end and getting involved in trivial things endlessly? Can I distinguish between true good and evil? Can I speak out when I see injustice? “
Who Can Check the Unrestrained Expansion of the Media’s Power?
Many people are saying and worrying that the US might sink into a constitutional crisis because of this highly contested and controversial election.
According to Chinese scholar Zhang Ping, who is a professor at Tel Aviv University in Israel, the West is experiencing four crises including political correctness, racial division, the disappearance of the middle class, and the unrestrained expansion of the media’s power. While the other three powers of the society, legislature, executive, judiciary, can be checked and balanced among themselves, the fourth estate, or the fourth power, the media, has nothing that can check or balance it.
Like in this election, before any state certifies the election results before the lawful institution makes the decision while knowing that lawsuits are still going on, almost all of the media have announced their “winner”. Sasha Gong, a former Voice of America, VOA journalist posted a “guideline on Joe Biden as the President-elect” of the VOA on Twitter, which says, “If it wasn’t clear previously, VOA is projecting Joe Biden is the President-elect...You can say there are still votes to count and lawsuits to file, but Biden is the election winner.”
Sasha Gong says in Chinese that every reporter has to stick to the guideline, and anyone who disobeys can be punished.
It is really dangerous if, while we are already in the middle of a constitutional crisis, the fourth power, the power of the media can expand without checks or balances.
Maybe the only power that can check and balance it is “we the people”. While the media can brainwash us by making up stories and control what kind of information we can get, we the people can use our common sense and better judgment to beat them. If we the people, we the reader, we the audience, boycott the biased media, look for and support alternative voices like myself, they will lose their power, or even collapse in no time.
That’s all for today. Please make sure you subscribe to and share my channel, and check out my other videos.
Thank you. See you soon!
11/12/2020
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