Since before the November presidential election, the mainstream media has made it their mission to slander the president in every way possible, utilizing increasingly fallacious arguments toward the ultimate goal of impeachment. Following the New York Times’ initial claim that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election, other news sources have climbed onto this lucrative, but costly, falsehood about his administration. Although it is the media’s job to hold government accountable, their vindictive actions come with a cost.
This waste of Congress’s time has cost taxpayers 10-months worth of the FBI’s time, in which they could be handling real criminal matters, plus the time since late January that Congress spent investigating alleged Russian ties to the president. The Russia probe has shed light on many disheartening facts. It has shown us that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on the incoming Trump administration; that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch directed James Comey to refuse to call the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server an “investigation”; and that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates both denied evidence of collusion of the Trump campaign and Russia. Furthermore, Comey testified that President Trump did not, at any time, order him to stop the investigation into Russia. One senator, Lindsay Graham, who “usually does not see eye to eye” with the president expressed his distrust in the media, saying he doesn’t “trust this story as far as I can throw it”.
The investigation into Russian ties to the Trump campaign implies the possibly devastating tampering of our representative republic’s election. However, it is one that ought to have been cleared up by the FBI much sooner than June 8th when Comey was questioned if the original article published by the New York Times was true or not. To that end, Comey denied the validity of those claims. Although the FBI is not allowed to reveal classified information, the agency should have refuted the claims much earlier than the first week of June, before congress had the former director of the FBI testify. Such inefficiency in communication is costly to taxpayers and breeds mistrust of government throughout the duration of an investigation such as this.
Former President John F. Kennedy once said, “But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to reexamine his own standards and to recognize the nature of our country’s peril”. Although our country is not in a cold war, it is still very much in a state of crisis with all the political tension that exists today. Although Trump isn’t exactly sincere in his words when speaking about the press, no kind words would change the mainstream media’s spite for the president. The media’s job is to serve as the truthful watchdog of the nation. It’s time for a sincere media, which begins with all publishers and editors re-evaluating what is more important: trashing the president or writing for the betterment of the nation at-large.
