Chris Wallace, Free Press, and Political Collusion

President Donald Trump, just like Candidate Donald Trump, is being very critical of the media.  He should be critical.  The liberal media can’t be trusted.  Chris Wallace of Fox News takes issue with that.  He considers it a generalization.  All of the media can’t be fake news, is his contention…after all, he’s a part of the media.

The headline reads: Fox News’ Chris Wallace Defends Free Press Against Trump WH: ‘You Don’t Get to Tell Us What to Do.’

• In a fiery interview with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Fox News host Chris Wallace challenged the Trump administration’s carte blanche characterization of the press as “the enemy of the American people.”

“I don’t have any problem with you complaining about an individual story,” Wallace said Sunday. “But you went a lot further than that — or the president went a lot further than that. He said that the ‘fake media’ — not certain stories — the ‘fake media’ are an ‘enemy to the country.’”

The Trump administration is not telling the media how to report, or what to report.  Trump’s team is simply saying that the information is often false, and politically skewed.  While Chris Wallace thinks that Trump is attacking the idea of a free press, the contrary is true.  Be free.  Report freely.  All we ask is that you report the truth.

At what point does the free press cease to be a free press, and instead is a media that practices political collusion with a particular ideology?

From a constitutional point of view the federal government has no authority to pass any laws interfering with the freedom of the press (and that includes the leftist idea of the “Fairness Doctrine” which was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission which required that all media be required by federal dictate to present contrasting viewpoints; it was a leftist knee-jerk reaction to the rise of conservative talk radio).  Trump is not calling for any legislation restraining the press.  He’s simply saying that based on his experience, the reporting is skewed, and often false.  It chases a leftist narrative.  How can voters be informed when the information is hidden behind “fake news”?

While I applaud Chris Wallace for his attention to liberty, let’s not get carried away and believe that criticism is somehow the executive branch making a law against the freedom of the press.

And, don’t worry.  Most of the public doesn’t trust the leftwing media, anyway.  As the level of trust worsens, the liberal media will be killed off as a means of gaining information, and will fade away…or at least that is what I am hoping.

Then again, leftism is like the current under your boat.  It never really ever goes away.  They just change form, and attack from a different direction.

Eternal vigilance is key.

– Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary