Rita Panahi: Donald Trump’s critics may hate him but the joke is on them
Objectivity has become lost in the media’s attempts to invalidate Donald Trump’s presidency but this week’s latest example is by far the funniest, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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Next Friday will mark three years since the election of President Donald Trump. It also marks the start of what has been an unseemly, credibility-destroying, marathon tantrum from the bulk of the media which has lost any pretence of objectivity in pursuing their singular aim to invalidate Trump’s presidency.
Every week there are glaring examples of hysteria, hypocrisy and hyperbole in the relentlessly negative reporting of Trump but the latest example of this media malaise is perhaps the funniest.
It started with Trump sharing a photo of a hero dog that chased Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi down a dead-end tunnel shortly before the infamous terrorist blew up himself and three of his children. Trump accompanied the photo of the handsome belgian malinois with the words: “We have declassified a picture of the wonderful dog (name not declassified) that did such a GREAT JOB in capturing and killing the Leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi!”
It wasn’t long before the military dog, which was injured during the al-Baghdadi raid but is already back at work, was elevated to hero status, inspiring a number of memes and even featuring on the front page of The New York Post with the headline Zero Bark Thirty, a clever play on the military term “zero dark thirty”. US news site The Daily Wire tweeted a clearly photoshopped picture of the courageous animal receiving a canine medal of honour from Trump. On Thursday the President tweeted the picture along with the caption “American Hero!”
Cue the predictable meltdown from the usual suspects in the media who seem determined to prove Trump’s worst characterisation of their skillset, character and motives. First the media narrative was that Trump had engaged in deliberate deception of the public.
The White House was asked by multiple journalists to formally clarify whether the picture was real when even the simplest simpleton could tell you it was an obvious joke. Chief CNN clown Jim Acosta was among those to earnestly report that “a WH official said the dog is not in the WH”.
The New York Times devoted two reporters to covering the faux controversy of Trump using a “doctored photo”. The Huffington Post’s White House correspondent SV Date was beside himself accusing the president of “disseminating a doctored image”.
But when they and others were met with howls of laughter from the public, the narrative switched from Trump using a fake photo to fool voters to Trump using a funny photo to demean the military.
The New York Times did a stealth edit changing “doctored photo” to “joke photo” while the Washington Post published under the headline “Trump tweeted a photo of a Medal of Honour recipient — who was edited out and replaced with a dog”. New howls of outrage emanated from the media and Twitterverse.
One particularly triggered member of the resistance, that is to say, press, wrote that Trump was “shitting on vets again, but in a whole new way”.
Of course it didn’t take long for the Australian media to dutifully follow their like-minded US counterparts in putting the most negative spin possible on a funny, inoffensive meme. The Age, Guardian and ABC were simply aghast as they always are concerning anything Trump.
The muckraking even saw the man whose picture was photoshopped, retired army medic James McCloughan, contacted for comment. Disappointingly for the media, McCloughan was neither saddened nor offended. He found the image funny and was happy Trump was aware of the dog’s heroism. “This recognises the dog is part of that team of brave people,” he said. “They (dogs) are very courageous.”
I wonder what McCloughan or anyone who has served their country with valour would have thought of some of the media reporting of al-Baghdadi’s death. Among the worst offenders was the Washington Post whose headline read: “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48”. That is the headline they chose to announce the death of a mass murdering/torturing/raping monster responsible for the genocide and enslavement of the Yazidis, the slaughter of thousands more innocent people and the subjugation of millions at the height of the caliphate.
After being mocked relentlessly the Post changed the headline and apologised. But they then published a piece by the anti-Trump Max Boot who tried to fact-check the president’s account of al-Baghdadi death. Boot wrote: “The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured he blew himself up.”
So, I guess in the bizarre world inhabited by Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers, killing yourself and three children is proof of bravery? But the Post was not alone in its demented coverage of al-Baghdadi’s demise.
Bloomberg tweeted: “Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi transformed himself from a little-known teacher of Koranic recitation into the self-proclaimed ruler of an entity that covered swathes of Syria and Iraq.”
You’d think they were eulogising some inspirational leader rather than an evil terrorist who not only sanctioned mass rape and murder but personally raped a number of captives including Yazidi slaves and US aid worker Kayla Mueller.
If the US media want to understand why trust in them is at historic lows, then an objective look at their antics this week should suffice. It’s not Trump that has destroyed the public’s faith in the media, it’s an injury that is entirely self-inflicted.
— Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist