The mainstream media complains about Donald Trump, but their biased coverage helped him get elected.
The MSM only has itself to blame.
Let’s begin with a survey by the American Press Institute that shows only six percent of Americans have faith in the corporate or mainstream media. Put another way, that’s a 94 percent rejection rate. My Lord. People have more faith in drug dealers, pedophiles and GMO food.

[Courtesy of Ramireztoons]
For hard-core liberals, I suppose it was. You can add to that list social justice warriors, bed-wetters and participant trophy winners. These people don’t live in the real world; they live in a bubble.
It was only ‘surprising’ and ‘unexpected’ because so many major media reporters, editors and publishers live in a bubble too. Had they been in touch with commonfolk Americans, they would’ve discovered that Trump, the flamboyant billionaire and TV star, had more than a fighting chance of becoming their next leader.

[Image courtesy of the CBC]
“Numbers released by Pew Research,” Jankowski goes on, “show that the major news channels like CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are in a decline of prime time viewers,” adding, “even reporters within the major networks have admitted that the media has been corrupted by political and corporate interests.”
Because of the Internet, people are more aware … and they’re more skeptical — about everything, including corporate media. They either know full well or suspect that mass media is a smoke-and-mirrors game.
FAIL: PUBLIC OPINION POLLS
Not everyone bought into the lie of what the election pollsters were telling us. Remember the polls that gave Hillary Clinton an insurmountable lead … and those exit polls that showed her way ahead of Trump? Bullshit, folks. For one candidate, exit poll took on a whole new meaning.
There’s a report that Clinton campaign workers in New York were sipping champagne before the first results came in. They had two reasons to celebrate early: Positive opinion polls and the mainstream media’s non-stop demonization of Donald Trump.

Hillary Clinton autographs an advance copy of Newsweek the day before the election. A slight embarrassment for a major publication. Great photo though. [Image courtesy of Business Insider.]

Courtesy of James Woods.
You can bet a $6.95 latte that on election night there was an air of giddiness in newsrooms across North America as well. It was supposed to be a slam dunk for Clinton. “Atta-girl, Hillary! … first U.S. female president! Wow!” But when the results started to appear on television, so did the long faces of the program hosts. “How could this have happened?” they asked. Others said, “We have to change the system … and Trump should be impeached!”
My favourite is ABC reporter Martha Raddatz weeping when Hillary lost. And Raddatz is still employed with a major news organization? Why’s that, you ask? Simple. The status quo needs fake news and it needs lackeys to deliver it.
AMERICANS WERE FED UP
Americans who voted for Trump were not only fed up with the major media but with all the corruption and lies of the career politicians. The electorate wanted someone who wasn’t a politician, and someone who wasn’t beholding to Wall Street.
Enter businessman Donald Trump.
From the time Trump jumped into the race for the leadership of the Republican party, right up to election day, few gave the guy a chance.
Trump proved everyone wrong when he nailed the Republican nomination. That should have been a lesson for major media but apparently, it wasn’t. Trump then proved them wrong all over again by becoming President.
Fingers crossed Donald Trump continues to prove ’em wrong — and that the man makes good on his promise to “make America great again.”Trump feels that Hilliary Clinton should be behind bars for breaking the law. If she’s guilty — as judged not by Trump but by the American judicial system — why shouldn’t she be in jail? Duh. And if she’s guilty, it would do Americans great to see her eat prison food. But if she’s guilty and given a pardon, Americans are back to having zero confidence in government. Why? Because most folk like the rule of law.
WE’RE OUTTA HERE!! [not]
Let’s hope reporters stop asking movie stars and other celebrities for their advice and insight unless it’s about divorce or substance abuse. Please. Because someone has starred in a make-believe movie doesn’t give them a special insight into how to run a country.
As for those demigods who threatened to leave the United States if Donald Trump was elected … let’s see if they’ll now become famous for walking the talk. Like I say, no one likes cheap talk. Time to start packing.
Here’s a sampling of those who promised to leave the United States if Trump became President: Neve Campbell, Bryan Cranston, Miley Cyrus, Lena Dunham, Chelsea Handler, Samuel L. Jackson, Keegan-Michael Key, Amy Schumer, Barbara Streisand, Cher, Ne Yo, Jon Stewart, Eddie Griffin, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Whoopi Goldberg, Omari Hardwick, Raven-Symone, Spike Lee, Chloë Sevigny, George Lopez and Amber Rose.

[Credit: Artist Glenn McCoy]
“I’m going to move to Canada with my entire family. I already have my ticket.” – Raven-Symone
“I’m moving if this is my president. I don’t say things I don’t mean!” – Miley Cyrus
Here’s a tip for celebrities the next time they want to sound off with a threat to leave the U.S. if somebody they don’t like runs for election: Try being a little more tolerant.
An easy assignment for the mainstream media: determine which celebrities have actually left the States — and who has stayed behind to feast on crow. Those with real conviction will pull out of Dodge. The fakes will stay.

[Courtesy of Ramireztoons]
BIASED COVERAGE? YUP.
My read on mainstream media coverage of the U.S. election was that it was biased against Donald Trump. Disappointing, of course, because that’s not the role of the media in a democracy. Just an aside here, I am a national award-winning radio and newspaper reporter who spent most of his career in the taxpayer-funded, so-called left-leaning, mainstream media. I’m not what you’d call a right-winger.
I won’t go on with a long list of examples of biased coverage, but this one was telling: Towards the end of the election campaign, thousands of supporters showed up for a Trump rally in Florida while Clinton’s running mate, at a rally in the same state, had only a few dozen people — and that included media. That’s a news story in itself. The alarm bells should have gone off but the mainstream media kept all that quiet because it was bad news for Clinton who tought for sure she’d be the first female president of the United States.
The coverage became so one-sided that Trump often made references to it during his election speeches. The upstart Trump had nailed it. If it wasn’t for social media and for people who didn’t trust the mainstream media, Trump’s point of view might not have been heard.
TRUMP QUOTES
Did Trump ever say he was against immigration? … or did he say he was against ILLEGAL immigration? There’s a huge difference, of course. As for the screening of Muslims wanting to immigrate to the United States, why wouldn’t that happen after the violence-prone, failed assimilation of Muslim immigrants in France, Sweden, Netherlands, etc where Sharia law apparently now holds court in parts of the land? The body count is climbing and why shouldn’t Americans be concerned? They’d be stupid not to.
Sharia law is a throw-back to the Middle Ages. Let’s be fair here, so too are some passages from the Old Testament. One would have to be smoking a ton of pot to think God would give a thumbs-up to sadistic, barbaric acts. God may be complex, but he’s not an asshole.
When Trump talked about immigration and law and order he was called a ‘racist.’ And those who supported his point of view were also labeled racists.
I found it odd that when I posted pro-Hillary information on Facebook, no one objected. But if I posted material that was pro-Trump, I got flak. It’s strange that in a democracy, civil people suddenly became narrow-minded and abusive with comments like “give your head a shake” — all because someone had a different point of view. I thought about these people on election night, sitting around their televisions … and giving their heads a shake.
“We’ve got to stop acting out hate,” writes Charles Eisenstein in Yes! Magazine. “We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil. This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary.”
“It is to offer acute political analysis,” he says, “that doesn’t carry the implicit message of, “Aren’t those people horrible?””

[Credit to forbes.com/cartoons]
‘A BILLIONAIRE ROBIN HOOD’
“Underestimate him at your peril,” warned Piers Morgan, the British TV show host, about Donald Trump on June 17, 2015.
In a recent opinion piece for Mail Online, Morgan wrote about his reflections of more than a year ago: “[Trump] has a big popular appeal away from the snobby halls of Washington and New York’s media elite. Regular Americans love the guy; he’s a fierce patriot, gutsy, and bursting with ‘can-do’ confidence. He doesn’t pretend to be something he isn’t. He’s big, bold, bombastic, loud, dynamic, compelling and a polarizing character who craves and commands attention … and who will electrify the tediously long U.S. election process with the same fearless aggression he goes after those who cross him in business or on Twitter.”
Morgan put it right out there: “[Trump] challenged all political convention and every single facet of the establishment. He took on his 17 Republican rivals, the Democrats, the print and TV media, Washington and Wall Street elites, and sneering foreign leaders.”
[And don’t forget, Donald Trump also had to defeat the ‘Never Trump Movement’ within his own party.]
Back to Morgan: “[Trump was] astonishingly effective in rallying support from the tens of millions of working-class Americans struggling to make ends meet, many of whom can’t even afford a train ticket to taste the rich and privileged air on the East and West coasts.”
“Trump was their billionaire Robin Hood.” — Piers Morgan
“The key issues in this campaign,” Morgan writes, “were not climate change, legalising marijuana or gay marriage. They were the economy, jobs, immigration, and terrorism.”
“[Trump] also positioned himself against the corrupt, self-interested, lobby group-infested political system that these same Americans feel strongly has enriched itself at their expense.”
“Hillary Clinton,” according to Morgan, “perfectly personified that system; a career politician who has repeatedly fleeced her positions of power to make millions of dollars for herself and her husband, and who carried with her a permanent smug sense of entitlement to be America’s first female president. Hillary herself dripped with haught, superior arrogance, referring to Trump’s supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables.’
“In the most obscene illustration of revoltingly elitist back-slapping,” Morgan points out, “Madonna even publicly promised to give oral sex to everyone who voted for Hillary.”
‘SNAKES, COVER-UP ARTISTS AND LIARS’
It can never be said that Jon Rappoport sucks up to major media.
“[Major] media presumed too much,” the San Diego, California-based journalist writes in his blog, NoMoreFakeNews.com. “They presumed they had us in the palm of their hand. We were their property. We were transfixed by their authority. All that is going away. Bye-bye. The big shift is accelerating. Independent media are in the ascendance. Understand that. Recognize it. The impossible is happening.”
“Fake news sites? Please,” begs Rappoport. “The major media are the biggest fakes the world has ever seen. Their anchors and star reporters are bloviating cranks. They’re dinner-theatre actors.”
“Understand this,” he says, “major media have a rock-bottom article of faith. It is: ‘We own the news.’ They can’t give it up. They’ll never give it up. It fuels everything they do. It’s the substance and core of their attitude. As their ship goes down below the waves, they’ll be chanting, “We own the news.”
“But they don’t,” he says. “In truth, they never did. For a time, they managed to sell that delusion to the people. That time is drawing to a close.”
“The great esteemed centers of American journalism [in reference specifically to the New York Times] are in the business of falsehood, omission, diversion, and obfuscation. The Times and other hoary media outlets live by the rule of limited hangout. In intelligence parlance, that means admitting a small piece if truth in order to hide the rest. “We’ll show you a tree in the forest,” he says, “but not the whole forest.”
For Rappoport’s take on a November 21, 2016 meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and major media stars in New York, [‘snakes, cover-up artists and liars’] check this out. It’s a lesson on how to put the media in its place.
PC GONE BESERK
Political correctness has gotten out of hand, but that also helped Donald Trump. I believe voters saw through the charade and said ‘screw you’ to not only political correctness, but career politicians, investment bankers, the elite, and the mainstream media.

[Image courtesy of CopsPlus.com]
Many a $60.00 pair of running shoes from a looted shop went for $60.00 off. Expensive work boots were left behind.
In three decades of reporting, I’ve found that the “liberal” media, more than any, wants to tell people what’s best for them — especially when it comes to political correctness.

[Courtesy of Facebook]
A BLOW FOR THE ELITES
It didn’t bother me one bit that Donald Trump stuck it to the ruling elite, the same outfit that controls mainstream and corporate media in the U.S. Good for him. We’re living in La-La Land if we think that those who control the purse strings of media outlets — whether it be private or public media — have no influence in what’s being put out there.
Same goes for government-funded radio and television stations. Do people really think any government is going to pour billions of dollars into a news organization just to “unite the people?” Think: protect the Status Quo.
More than 90 percent of mainstream media in the United States is owned by half a dozen companies. In Canada, there’s even more sleaze. Here, some big media companies are run by families where to be in the top managerial positions one must pass a unique test — a DNA test. “Thanks for the job, daddy.” “That’s fine, son. I knew you had it in you.”
These media companies have a lot of money — and that means power. But the issue isn’t ownership, nor money, it’s about control. They have the power to shape public opinion.
The job of the media is to report the news, not manufacture it. Or be robotic cheerleaders. Or shills. Put another way, it’s not the job of the media to slant news to influence public opinion. But it happens, folks, and it probably happens more than we realize. Both left-leaning and right-leaning news organizations are guilty of this. Let’s keep in mind that it’s the job of governments and advertising agencies, not newsrooms, to influence public opinion.
FOX News — considered by some to be “very right wing” — came out of the election looking better than their opponents because they did a better job of reading the pulse of Americans.
The Los Angeles Times also did a remarkable job of calling the election results. The same can’t be said for other big news organizations.
The publisher of The New York Times issued a public apology for his paper’s supposed biased coverage, pleading with readers not to cancel their subscriptions. Actually, that’s exactly what readers should do — kick them to the curb. Money talks. Give ’em a strong, clear message: We don’t trust you, and we don’t want you around unless your coverage is balanced, fair, accurate and complete.
IN CONCLUSION …
As for those violent protests throughout the United States following Trump’s win … question: did Republican supporters go nuts and behave like that when Barack Obama got in? Don’t think they did. If I recall, the Republicans behaved with class.
Another question: are these violent demonstrations purely spontaneous … or is someone FUNDING them? Could it be that powerful economic elites who supported Hilliary Clinton are paying people to protest and providing them with placards?
Here’s a kicker: Wasn’t Trump being bashed by the media because he said he might not accept the outcome of the vote?
It wouldn’t be hard for reporters to ask rioters if they’re part of the 50 percent who voted. The mainstream media should be asking the tough questions and not only reporting on who’s behind the demos, but leading with the story. Meanwhile, the social media is having a field day with this one.
If Washington is serious about fighting terrorism, here’s a suggestion: Investigate those ‘uncontrolled disturbances’ — and if there’s evidence of anyone having incited a riot — lay charges. And if there’s enough evidence, convict and send the sleazebags off to prison.
Same for the crooked investment bankers on Wall Street — the ‘too big to jail’ people. Let’s hope the new presidency in the U.S. does what Iceland did to its rogue bankers: take away their million-dollar homes, suits and cocktail parties and give them prison uniforms, handcuffs and behind-glass visits with relatives.
“The more the privileged elite sucked up to Clinton, notes Piers Morgan, the more determined it made Mr. and Mrs. Ordinary American to trigger Millennial Armageddon.”
He’s right. Monica Lewinsky wasn’t the only one dropping to her knees.

[Image courtesy of Randy Marshall]
Good article. I agree that politics is not working for the USA, so let’s see what President-elect Trump can do. It’s gonna upset a lot of people but I bet it works in the end.
LikeLike
I am almost liking Donald Trump more than ever and only because I am so fed up with the biased reporting.
I used to enjoy Anderson Cooper on CNN but I cannot stand him now. Actually I have probably pissed off most of my Facebook friends because of my postings or responses.
Trump has been elected. Get over it. Maybe, just maybe, he will be good for the U.S. He may not be good for Canada, but that’s our problem.
I don’t care what Trump said in the past. I would only care what he does for the people and country now.
LikeLike
You raise some valid points. What you say about the mainstream media is true.
My take is that American voters were faced with two of the worst candidates. ‘None of the above’ would have been my choice.
My concern about Trump is that he is unpredictable. Remember, he called his campaign a movement. He is not a Republican. It will be interesting to see what support he gets from the Republicans in the House and Senate.
For example, it is estimated that his proposed tax cuts to corporations will add $7 trillion to the debt. His wall could cost as much as $40 billion. Will Republicans want to spend that kind of money? We’ll see.
Keep in mind also that Hillary got at least one million more votes than Trump. Trump won the Electoral College, not the popular vote. America is a divided country. Trump tapped into two emotions: fear and anger. This has only served to divide the country even further.
Trump has appointed Steven Bannon as his advisor. We’ll see if he takes the advice of someone who is a racist.
Today, Trump appointed Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. It turns out that Sessions in 1986 was denied confirmation as a federal judge because of his racist remarks.
Americans voted for change and Trump is their change agent. The question is whether the change they are about to get will “make America great again”.
I will try to keep an open mind and give Trump the benefit of the doubt. As they say, time will tell.
LikeLike
Can you even name what the movement is about?
Also, how does tax cuts – which is nothing more than people keeping more of their own money – equal debt? Considering the tax burden to begin with, it sounds like a spending problem, not a revenue one.
“Racist”, we’re sick and tired of hearing that …
LikeLike
As always, you hit the nail on the head, Mr. Byron. Amazing article!
LikeLike
Refreshing article, It should be interesting to see how Mr. Trump and our shiny new, politically correct may I add, prime minister are going to get along. Well done!
LikeLike
Good article.
LikeLike
From a little old lady in a little old town … I love your input … now if you could write something about our love-himself Prime Minister that he may be good for our country, I might feel hopeful for the future and the youth of Canada.
LikeLike