'Noble Work to Preserve Democracy' -- Historian Panders to Reporters at WH Reporter Dinner





Chernow ripped into Trump repeatedly, as in this: "Donald J. Trump is not the first, and won't be the last American president to create jitters about the First Amendment. So be humble, be skeptical, and beware of being infected by the very things you're fighting against." He insisted "the press is a powerful weapon that must always be fired with reluctance and aimed with precision." 

Is he kidding? The press fires at Trump and the conservatives minute by minute, hour by hour, and "precision" gets lost in all the screaming about "democracy dying in darkness." In other words, it's a gun you can never control. You can't even criticize it without being accused of "creating jitters about the First Amendment." 

Chernow drew sustained applause by reminding the media of their "grand crusading [liberal] tradition," with the usual liberal journalism professor's list of greatness:

CHERNOW: You folks should always remember you are heirs to a grand crusading tradition that dates back to Ida B. Wells exposing the horrors of lynching. [Applause] Jacob Riis -- the misery of Manhattan slums, Lincoln Steffens, municipal corruption, Ida Tarbell, the machinations of Standard Oil, Upton Sinclair, the scandalous meatpacking industry, Rachel Carson, the dangers of pesticides, Woodward and Bernstein exposing Watergate, and the New York Times and Washington Post publishing the Pentagon Papers. This is a glorious tradition, you folks are part of it, and we can't have politicians trampling on it with impunity!

So the press is a "powerful weapon," with a "grand crusading tradition," and the liberals still want to pretend that everything they do is objective. Everything they do has precision, and integrity. Fighting to impeach Republican presidents doesn't show a liberal tilt. Why, it's "the noble work of preserving democracy." Or the Democrats. 

Government & Press
Tim Graham's picture

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