Thanks for the comments.
Look, I get where you’re coming from and why my comment might have taken you surprised but I think there might have been a misunderstanding between my comment, my actual stance and your interpretation of it.
At the end of the day, I’m neither left or right - I’m very centrist. However, for the last several years, like I pointed out, I have noticed a drastic fall in the quality of journalistic and the level journalistic integrity showed by American and British media outlets.
I’m sick to death of constantly being bombarded by newspapers that are trying to force me to take a Leftist or Rightist stand-point with almost no regard for the complex nuances of the current political spectrum. The only newspaper I ever bother with any more these days is The Financial Times and sometimes The Economist, because I genuinely don’t feel that I can trust The Independent, The Observer, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph etc. to actually tell the truth. Hell, even the Wall Street Journal has lost credibility in my eyes after the whole PewDiePie debacle (it sounds ridiculous, and I’d never heard of it until I saw a random VLOG about it yesterday but it is actually ludicrous to find the WSJ stooping so low for clicks and ad revenue).
Anyway back to the matter at hand: I think we’re both arguing the same point - that currently it is extremely hard for people to actually gain relevant, newsworthy facts from most of the mainstream media outlets without it being coloured by whoever the owner wants to support.
I’m not saying I support Trump or that I stand by his policies or that he’s going to make America great again BUT I appreciate the way he spoke to the press. For me, there has long been an air of smugness, arrogance and elitism surrounding journalists and the media outlets, in the way they approach and write about politicians and to the effect that they believe they can affect political outcomes. I haven’t seen a Western leader be so candid or abrasive to journalists before and actually call them out on the way they have been conducting their business. I just thought it was refreshing to see a President actually just go for them like that, rather than stand there and take it or give your usual, roundabout “answer without saying anything” politician responses that we usually get.
Again, I don’t think Trump is any better and I don’t like Breitbart or Fox any more than I like CNN, but literally from Day 1 the mainstream media were savaging and brutalising Trump and his campaign before he had even really started talking policy or anything. So I’m just enjoying watching a politician give as good as he got during the election, more from an entertainment perspective though. I obviously don’t believe having such a caustic relationship with the media is going to help anyone but I feel like the media has become far to self-important and self-indulgent, with a lack of quality investigative journalism. No-one has spoken like this to the media and the journalists before.
I don’t want things to become like they are in Russia or Belarus or Iran, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m just saying that I enjoyed watching a President drop the standard politician approach and go toe-to-toe. I do NOT want Breitbart to become the number one, state-certified purveyor of news just like I don’t want CNN or the Murdoch’s or anyone else to have a monopoly on it either.
My deepest wish is that everyone was just a bit more moderate and sensible, but until then I’ll enjoy all the drama and outrage unfolding.