Half of our population are nuts …

And we can thank our politicians and media for that. 

The crazies only watch the media outlets that confirm what they already believe. In a bizarre form of codependency, ratings – and ad dollars that follow ratings – increase for those outlets by pandering to conspiracy buffs, instead of reporting factual news. 

The constant barrage of half-truths and fake news only feeds the collective insanity.  And make no mistake, there’s a lot of intentionally misleading “news” put out every day. Reporters and their bosses know much of it is unverifiable and quite possibly entirely untrue, yet they run with it anyway.  It’s what their respective audiences want, facts be damned.

So much for ethics in journalism and objectivity.

Now, “ethics,” “journalism,” and “objectivity” have been non-sequiturs in this country since the founding of the nation. Even in my Journalism 101 class decades ago the instructor made clear that no one can be completely objective when they write the news; at best a “true” journalist should always strive hard to maintain as much objectivity as possible when reporting news.

Very few bother anymore. Objectivity makes for boring news.  And boring news – however factual and valuable to public discourse – doesn’t get the ratings advertisers demand. 

Conspiracy theories, no matter how outlandish, do. 

When Obama was running for President – and later when he was President – conservative media focused on conspiracies about him. Was Obama a U.S. citizen?  Did he have something to hide in his college transcripts? Was he really a Muslim? Did he bow to the Saudis?

And for the online black-helicopter aficionados:  Did he have Federal agencies try to buy up all the ammunition so gun owners here couldn’t get any?  Did Obama secretly plan to create a parallel para-military force he alone controlled?  Oh boy. 

Today we have the Russian conspiracy to hack and alter the results of the last election. Was Trump’s campaign working hand in hand with the Russians?  Is Trump refusing to release his tax returns because he has something to hide?  Do the Russians have damaging info on Trump involving sex with prostitutes? Is Trump a sexual predator?  Is he possibly insane?   

It’s all unverifiable bullshit. But it helped build ratings. The crazies eat this up.    

Ratings for Fox News and conservative talk radio soared during Obama’s term.  Now that Trump is in office, ratings for CNN and MSNBC are way up. The reason for both surges is simple:  Fox News and conservative talk radio catered to audiences that didn’t like Obama and his policies, or the more progressive direction in which he was pushing the country.  CNN, MSNBC and most of the major urban newspapers now cater to the mirror image: people who don’t like Trump and his policies, or the direction in which he apparently wants to push the country.

While Fox News and conservative talk radio focused on Obama’s failures during his term in office, CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times and Washington Post now do the same to Trump. 

That’s not surprising.   

However, in fairness to Fox News in particular, I don’t think Fox’s reporting about Obama’s failings was nearly as harsh as what we’re seeing from CNN and others about Trump. There’s a new nastiness, pettiness, and vindictiveness, and at times wanton disregard for the facts, from the more liberal media about Trump that’s unparalleled in my memory. 

While most Americans take what CNN, Rachel Maddow and the New York Times and Washington Post report with increasing skepticism, this isn’t the case overseas. Their bias may be obvious to many Americans, but it’s not apparent to many international media outlets.

That’s causing us serious problems internationally. 

Every now and then you see a poll of Europeans about Trump. Spoiler alert – they think he’s a buffoon. So do many world leaders. 

And here’s why: Almost all the “news” they get about America is from CNN, the Times or the Post.  Having just returned from Europe, I can tell you that the BBC and practically all the other “international” news broadcasters extensively and almost exclusively draw from these three American media outlets for the “American perspective” they report. Whether you are in an airport or hotel in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, or any of the other major European cities, or on a European cruise, the only English-language channels you’ll see are CNN or BBC.        

If you watched enough Fox News during the Obama years, especially the commentators rather than the straight-news reporters, you came away concluding that Obama was an ultra-progressive ideologue who abused his power and ran roughshod over the Constitution, and in the process tried to shift America away from what conservatives thought of as our traditional values. There was never any talk about his mental stability or that he should be impeached, however. 

If you watch enough CNN or MSNBC or read the Times and the Post now – from the commentators, as well as the tone of the “straight news” – you get the distinct impression that Trump is nothing less than a racist, sexist, unbalanced barbarian who unlawfully stole the last election only because the Russians helped him. It’s not a stretch that their audiences would then see Trump as wholly unfit and not entitled to be President, and someone who must be driven from office by whatever means necessary – including impeachment. 

Or even a military coup or assassination as suggested by some Hollywood celebrities. That’s exponential nuttiness I haven’t seen before.    

The looney left’s preferred media outlets are more than happy to feed this narrative with unproven conspiracy theories about Russian tampering with the election, behind the scenes financial dealings with Russian operatives, sinister meanings behind every tweet Trump issues, and various pop psychologists recently purporting that he may in fact be clinically insane. 

There’s absolutely no proof whatsoever that Trump is the monster portrayed by CNN, MSNBC and their liberal allies in the newspaper business. Despite all the leaks from our own intelligence community, and the breathless hyping of specious claims about ties to Russia, nobody has been able to find a single thing – financial or otherwise – that proves a untoward link between Trump and the Russians. 

And he’s certainly not insane – he couldn’t have built a multi-billion-dollar empire if he’s as bat-shit crazy as they suggest.   

Sure, he’s at times crass and childish – well, maybe too many times – and he’s certainly not like our other Presidents. I’m sure he’s scared the crap out of the Washington establishment, and especially the bureaucracy, and some in the international community as well.  But he’s a reflection of a desire by enough voters to overthrow the way Washington has been operating here and abroad, so in effect he’s delivering what his supporters wanted. 

By using Twitter as a direct conduit to the people he’s also challenging the power of the mainstream media to unilaterally shape the news we see and read to support their preferred narrative, instead of objectively reporting what’s demonstrably true.  

His use of social media to counteract and disparage reporting he finds “fake” and unfair has allowed him to put some liberal-leaning media outlets on the defensive. This is extremely hard for the media to take, accustomed as they are to believing their profession has the unbridled right to attack anyone with little fear of push back. If anything, they expect modern-day politicians to cower before them and curry their favor.  Trump’s not doing either.  So it’s not surprising that many in the media have the long knives out for him.

So far, except for the nuts on the far left, and unfortunately too much of the foreign media, our left-leaning media’s antipathy toward Trump isn’t making much of a difference. Those here on the far left – politicians and media alike – engage in wishful thinking that there’s fire because they see smoke; those here on the right only see falsely manufactured smoke, but no fire.   

There’s no middle ground. That’s not all that unusual in this day and age; the polarization of the American public has been accelerating for many years now, fed by scorched-earth politics from the far left and far right, magnified by a gleeful media thrilled to report every insult and smear.

Sadly, we’ve become so accustomed to this that it’s almost impossible to discern what’s true and what isn’t anymore, and, frankly, increasing numbers among us don’t care.  

Distrust of the media is at an all-time high. That suggests to me that while ratings are going up for far-left outlets such as CNN and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and far-right media such as conservative talk radio, those numbers reflect mostly extremists on the left and right, respectively.

Meanwhile, because ratings are up especially for left-leaning media they think they are on to something big. Except they aren’t.

Only half the population believes any part of what they are being barraged with. And only about 34% of the public – including both left and right as well – trusts the media at all.  So even the nuts aren’t wholly convinced. The media can keep on the way they’re going and the only folks buying it are others in the media and the lunatic fringes; certainly not the broader American public. 

And that’s where the other half of our population is.  Benign indifference.  Personally, I think we’re all busy living our lives and consider the current hoopla background noise, somewhat like elevator or supermarket music, but more annoying.

You can only take so much of it before it gets on your nerves.  Or you just tune it out. Like most normal Americans did after months and months of the Clinton-Lewinsky mess, despite the wall-to-wall media coverage, the endless Congressional hearings, and the ceaseless pontificating.

Only the nuts hung on.  And that’s what’s happening now.