Sharyl Attkisson: Media plotted to destroy Trump, cover for Biden
The national media has been on a long path of replacing straight news with a biased, liberal narrative pushed by executives and TV anchors, but it came to a crescendo with President Trump, according to an award-winning journalist.
Once eager to live up to straight-reporting Walter Cronkite’s “That's the way it is” motto, former CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson said that ethical and bias standards have been junked in the media’s war on Trump, led by CNN and the New York Times.
“Today, things are different. The media have unsheathed all their daggers to destroy Donald Trump,” she wrote in her upcoming book, Slanted: How the News Media Taught Us to Love Censorship and Hate Journalism.
In her book from HarperCollins Publishers, due for a Thanksgiving week release, Attkisson charts what many in the industry have seen going back to the Reagan administration, a growing urge by news executives, and eventually reporters, to push a liberal bias.
She reveals several cases at CBS when her stories were killed or watered down because they were not negative enough about Republicans. She highlighted a recording of a New York Times staff meeting where an anti-Trump campaign was put into place. And she demonstrated several examples of media hypocrisy in covering Trump vs. Democrats.
Attkisson, herself a former White House reporter, charted the dozens of “mistakes” the press corps has used to beat up Trump and led the president to accuse the media repeatedly of “fake news.” She included the list in the book, provided in advance to Secrets.
Just reporting a straight story on Trump, she said, has brought criticism. “Since mid-2015, the dominant press narrative has been decidedly anti-Trump, so much so that if an independent reporter remains objective and takes no particular personal position on Trump, that reporter is accused of being pro-Trump,” she penned.
Spinning the narrative of a biased storyline has become the rule, and it has become obvious in the coverage of Trump and the 2020 presidential race.
For example, she wrote about how the media covers verbal flubs by the president and Joe Biden. When Trump messes up, it is a “lie” to be added to the media’s long list of them. When Biden appears confused, it’s a verbal slip-up.
“So, although it is a legitimate pursuit for the press to examine and call out false statements by political figures, we destroy our own credibility by not treating similar false statements equally. Contrast Biden’s ‘gaffes’ with what is said about Trump. Biden is a ‘gaffe machine,' Trump is a ‘congenital liar,’” she wrote.
And in the case of some outlets, notably CNN, she said, it may be impossible to return to a neutral tone because that audience is gone.
“Walter Cronkite would roll over in his grave,” one of CNN’s original anchors, Lou Waters, told Attkisson, who also worked for CNN and is now the anchor of Sinclair's Sunday morning TV program Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.
“I can’t watch CNN,” he added.
In her book, Attkisson also nailed the woes of most media polls during the 2020 election. “Just as the prevailing wisdom never saw a Trump presidency coming, the same players incorrectly declared Biden to be dead in the water early on,” she wrote.
And she highlighted Rasmussen Reports for getting 2016 correct and fighting other pollsters who stuck with a losing model — and then attacked Rasmussen’s results. “Though Rasmussen Reports came under rapid-fire attack, you typically will not see such criticism of other polls that are actually wildly wrong. When their results support The Narrative, even when they are incorrect, they are widely defended.”
Overall, Attkisson isn’t hopeful for the future. While she said that there are many straight news reporters still working, the trend favors the biased kind.
“A new breed of reporter is dominant at many news organizations: the kind who think it is their job to convince you to believe whatever they personally believe, the kind who don’t look for original stories, seek out research, or open their minds to opposing views. They are the kind that spin the news according to what they want you to think. They ignore facts that contradict their story line. They get their ideas from other reporters, quasi–news media, PR firms, political operatives, and talking points pushed out by special interests. In other words, their sources are those in the business of pushing narratives,” she wrote.
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