This is what I wrote on Friday.
The Times drew a false equivalence between Zelensky’s accusation, which was speculative but rational and fact-based, and Trump’s, which was an angry spewing of unsupported propaganda. In fact, Trump’s echoed those very sources Zelensky accused of supplying the disinformation in the first place. In equating the two leaders in a side by side comparison, portraying this as a “simmering feud” between two individuals, rather than an existential crisis for Zelensky’s nation and the free world, the Times did a disservice to Zelensky, the gravity of the moment, the cause of honest journalism and ultimately, press freedom in America.
And they refused to call a lie a lie. Ukraine did not start the war - that reference by Trump should have been followed not by “Trump suggested,” but “Trump lied,” or at least, “Trump suggested, in a dramatic reversal of the truth.” People are, unfortunately, not smart enough for subtlety. Call a lie a lie.
Calling the new take on the history of the conflict “Mr. Trump’s revisionism” is akin to calling a schoolyard taunt a “doctoral thesis.” Please! The Times is not just insulting my intellect by calling Trump’s deliberate Orwellian distortion of victim and attacker a simple historical “revisionism,” it is insulting the whole idea of historical revisionism - the whole idea of ideas. Next the NYT is going to call this reversal a “Trump Doctrine,” when at best it’s a “Trump Capitulation” borne of a “Trump Fabrication.”
OK, that was then.
Here’s today’s front page. A bold step that should not be bold at all…
Thank you.
And you’re welcome!
No comments:
Post a Comment