President Trump purportedly called the press the “enemy of the people.” Recently, Jim Acosta, a reporter with CNN, suggested in a White House press meeting that presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders set the record straight by saying those in the press “are not the enemy of the people.” When he got an answer he did not like, he walked out in protest.
The takeaway in that incident for me is there are those within the national news media who are as thin-skinned and narcissistic as Trump. If they cannot manipulate the answer they want to hear then they pout-out. Am I supposed to think such a person will be objective in his reporting?
A working definition of a friend or enemy is; a friend is someone I can trust to tell the truth and an enemy is someone I cannot trust to do the same. I think there is more to being a friend or enemy than this definition describes, but the element of truthfulness and subsequent trustworthiness is certainly an element of friendship and lacking in an enemy.
I expect a friend to not “bear false witness,” Exodus 20:16, nor to exaggerate or slant the truth to the point that what is said is no longer the truth, but “fake news.” President Trump claims to have coined the term “fake news,” but according to other sources that may be fake news itself. Who originated the term is not important to me; the fact that it exists and is practiced is a concern.
Tweeting on an interview of LeBron James by Don Lemon, Trump said, “Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart which isn’t easy to do.”
James and Lemon are black, prompting retired CBS anchorman Dan Rather to tweet that what Trump said was a “disgrace. It’s racist.” I would agree that our president tweets some disgraceful things, but racist?
I don’t think a Twitter spat between ego-laden celebrities, even if one of them is the president, is real news, and then to call the president racist when he did not say anything racist in his tweet is an example of fake news. Trump may harbor some racist prejudice in his heart, but I cannot see inside his heart and neither can Dan Rather.
But our president is something just as bad as a racist; he’s a narcissist. He will attack anyone simply because they disagree with him; it has nothing to do with the color of one’s skin or ethnicity.
I know we still have race issues in this nation, but making something a race issue that isn’t one does not help anyone and is racist itself. I pray the day will come in this nation that we all realize there is only one race, the human race; we are all in this together.
Until then, journalists like Rather should not slant the truth and needlessly inflame prejudices to win some popularity points. Only an enemy does that.