As Democrats give full sway to impeachment rapture, the establishment media are showing once again that basic standards of journalism are no match for Trump Derangement Syndrome. Special recognition is due to the Associated Press, which seems determined to tarnish whatever reputation for professionalism it still has left in the wake of the latest anti-Donald Trump mania sweeping the Swamp.
They Call It Journalism
Lurid verbiage such as “fury,” “frenzy,” and “plunge” has been a hallmark of AP’s over-stimulated “coverage” from the get-go. The news wire is especially fond of heavily loaded lead sentences that draw bright lines to the narrow scope of its reporting. “From the moment Donald Trump became a national political figure, he has been shadowed by investigations and controversy,” reads a lead to a Sept. 28 article. Of course, left unstated is that Trump has been “shadowed” by controversy in large part because media outlets such as the Associated Press constantly label him “divisive” and “contentious,” breathlessly trumpeting every accusation made against him by Democrats and establishment Republicans. Oh, but the headline accompanying this article assures us that this time it is really different. “Impeachment now a threat like no other Trump has faced,” the title reads. See, this is bigger than all those other times we told you it was really big.
“As Washington plunges into impeachment, Attorney General William Barr finds himself engulfed in the political firestorm,” says yet another overheated lead sentence, in a Sept. 29 article that came with the headline, “Trump blurs lines between personal lawyer, attorney general.”
When he’s not blurring the lines of legality, in the eyes of AP, the president is bunkered, Nixon-like, and lashing out on social media. “Trump tweets with fury, says impeachment push helps him,” reads the headline on a Sept. 25 article. “Fifty-eight floors above Manhattan, President Donald Trump watched his legacy change and his political future grow more uncertain,” the article starts in a dark tone. It did admit that administration figures were confident that the impeachment grenade would blow up in the hands of Democrats, yet reporters Jonathan Lemire and Zeke Miller couldn’t help carrying on in the Oliver Stone pop psychology. “But while the campaign set a confident tone, the angry tweets from the Trump Tower penthouse kept coming as the last light faded from the Manhattan sky,” the article concludes, making one wonder exactly when injecting subjective personality appraisals into what are presented as “news articles” for media clients around the world became standard practice at AP.
A few days later, that White House optimism was gone. “Trump allies in disarray as Democrats push impeachment,” the headline on a Sept. 29 article mournfully intoned. “As Democrats and the director of national intelligence worked out key arrangements, Trump’s allies erupted in a surge of second-guessing and conspiracy theorizing across the Sunday talk shows, suggesting the White House strategy is unclear against the stiffest challenge to his presidency,” yet another melodramatic pulp-novel-style lead sentence stated.
All this wouldn’t be complete without the requisite “fact check,” a favorite toy for biased media outlets and other leftists that doesn’t fool many in 2019. The lead once again says it all. “A whistle blew, an impeachment inquiry swung into motion and the president at the center of it all rose defiantly to his own defense, not always in command of the facts.”
Shameless Standards
Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Julie Pace
Then there is the outrageous bias casually tossed around by Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Julie Pace. A Sept. 24 “analysis” offers up a restrained headline, “Trump’s tough politics a challenge for Democrats.” Sounds fair, until one begins reading and Pace’s antipathy for the president’s style of “politics” comes immediately to the fore. “In 2016, Donald Trump blew through the guardrails of American politics. In his bid for reelection, he’s poised to blow them up,” the article begins. “This time around, he’s aided by the power of the presidency, with its unmatched megaphone and resources. And his latest provocation — prodding a foreign leader to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden — suggests he sees little issue using his office for his personal political interests.”
Whatever follows after that is meaningless. Pace has crafted her “expert” DC news hawk analysis completely around the rabid anti-Trump caricature of the power-mad bully willing to do anything to hurt anybody. This may be mother’s milk to left-leaning newspaper editors across the country, but it provides nothing worthwhile to anyone who doesn’t already bring a fully baked Trump loathing into the subject.
A tweet on Pace’s personal Twitter account promoting the article displays the stereotypical anti-Trump talking points:
The Dem dilemma: Fight back against Trump and risk running a campaign on his terms and elevating his baseless attacks. Ignore him and allow his arguments to percolate unchecked through the conservative media ecosystem. https://t.co/EcDxZsRfvi
— Julie Pace (@JuliePace) September 23, 2019
Pace similarly cast any notion of impartiality to the winds during the 2016 campaign, when she reaped significant attention for painting candidate Trump as a threat to American democracy a few weeks before Election Day. AP proudly reported that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow herself had personally read Pace’s overheated lead sentence on the air. “Threatening to upend a fundamental pillar of American democracy, Donald Trump refused to say Wednesday night that he will accept the results of next month’s election if he loses to Hillary Clinton,” the Oct. 20, 2016, article starts. “The Democratic nominee declared Trump’s resistance ‘horrifying.'”
Pace openly defined Trump as an existential threat to American liberty while advancing the argument that he would refuse to accept a Clinton victory. All this in a “news” article. The AP fan-girl squealing over the Maddow plug certainly goes a long way to explain all those inflammatory lead sentences in the wire service’s impeachment coverage today. A once-mighty institution has been reduced to hoping it goes viral again on leftist cable news talk shows.
But the greater disgrace by far comes with the fact that Pace slandered candidate Trump in 2016 with the very thing Democrats are doing today. Instead of now honestly covering what she should consider “her” story, she feeds the flames of that nullification movement through her flagrantly biased “reporting” instead.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is back in the news, inspired by the impeachment madness to amplify her repeated claims that Trump is an “illegitimate president.” “I believe that – look there were many funny things that happened in my election that will not happen again,” Clinton told CBS News on Sept. 26. “And I’m hoping that both the public and press understand the way Trump plays the game.”
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Pace or her trusty colleagues at the Associated Press to look into whether Hillary and her fellow Democrats are destroying “fundamental pillars” of democracy for still refusing to accept that they lost the 2016 election. That would take integrity and a true lack of bias. Besides, who has the time for that when there are other spicy words to describe the “fury” and “frenzy” of the hunt for Trump?
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