Media Narcissism and Narcissism by Proxy
Reporting is no longer a calling, it is a means to an end.
Frustrated with incredibly biased news coverage from the mainstream media? Fed up with being told what you saw, heard, or read wasn’t really what you saw, heard, or read?
I’m sorry to break the news to you (no pun intended), but it isn’t going to change any time soon.
The media is filled with narcissists (and narcissism by proxy). It has been since Woodward and Bernstein led a left-wing political coup by capturing Richard Nixon’s scalp. Since Nixon climbed on that Marine helicopter on the White House lawn in 1974, and Woodward and Bernstein penned “All the President’s Men” in the same year - and were portrayed by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the movie in 1976 - every single journalism graduate saw activist journalism as their ticked to fame and fortune.
Of course, there have always been the Edward R. Murrow’s and Ernie Pyle’s out there, but these men were dedicated to getting the story right by seeing it in person and getting it to the people. Murrow and Pyle spent time in the trenches with the troops in WWII, sharing the danger of battle with the soldiers.
Most reporters today are at least once removed from what they report on, maybe more. There is so much reporting on other reports that it is no wonder the “news” has transformed into a global game of Telephone. A crowded, ultra-competitive market for news is ripe for vampiric reporting, elevating dead news to undead status as something not quite human, not quite real.
The news market is flooded with so much of this kind of reporting, it is unbelievable. If the Soviets had been this good at rewriting history, they might still be around.
There was a NYT story that fits this process incredibly well, told in a series of tweets on Twitter (or X, if you prefer).
Did you know the outrage over the Loudon County School District keeping quiet about the rape of a girl in a girls' restroom by a boy in a skirt in 2021, was not about transgenderism or rape? Why, it was about conservatives “pouncing” on the story just to score a win in the culture wars.
If you didn’t know that, let Benjamin Ryan, a contributor to the Times who tweeted out the article (he wasn’t the author) learn you some knowledge:
“…conservatives leveraged a sexual assault committed by a skirt-wearing boy in a girl's bathroom at a public school in Virginia as fodder for culture war victories, despite the fact that the boy was not trans and the skirt was incidental to the case.”
So, there you go ignorant rubes. Let Bennie tell you what the story is REALLY all about. Forget that conservatives were never arguing the boy was transgender, rather that transgender “protections” put in place by the Loudon County schools that allowed a male to access the girl’s restroom just by wearing a skirt were.
But Bennie is just the tip of the iceberg. CNN, MSNBC, and the dead tree media do it all the time. The media just did it to Jason Aldean and his song “Try That in a Small Town”, and even VP Kammie Harris did it to the Florida Department of Education.
It goes something like this:
Pick a story that has maybe aged a bit until the noise has died down or one that hasn’t really generated a lot of buzz.
Find an angle that supports you or a cause of which you want to be seen as their champion.
Redefine or rearrange the events – or simply misstate the targeted position or statement on purpose - until the story isn’t about what it is about but it fits your preferred narrative by saying “X was wrong about this story; Y is what it is really about”, even if it isn’t remotely about Y.
Make it about your stunning bravery to correct the record and how you or your cause endured the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and are the real stunning and brave winners for your suffering.
Additional points are awarded if you can say it not about Democrats, Democrat allies or protected groups Democrats favor screwing up, the story is the Republican’s reaction to the screw up that is the REAL STORY.
It truly is primary and proxy narcissism out in the open, designed to feed the mud brained drones who populate the left in America today.
And it is as dishonest and awful reporting and analysis as it comes.
When is reporting not real reporting...we have already arrived!