Dear Editor: In her attack on Trump, a letter from Patricia Kenney (March 11) asks when has the media engaged in dishonest reporting. Forgive me, but this is like asking when has the Atlantic Ocean ever contained moisture.
Catholic wisdom about human nature tells us that journalists are not a special category of humanity without biases. Everyone is fallible and sinful, and only the very saintly avoid living with the lies that enable us to blame evil in the world on people we think are unlike ourselves.
Shared prejudices and sinful pride create the mythologies that sustain ideologies that seek the comfort of living without humility while justifying hatred for those whose countering values threaten self-gratifying beliefs.
Consider the moral insanity of describing pro-abortionism as being “pro-choice” as though the essential human faculty of free will can only first come into existence through the validation of a feminist movement dedicated to the slaughter of babies.
The mainstream media is populated by political progressives, screened and hired by employers with the same prejudices, and progressivism, carried to its logical conclusion, is the exact opposite of religion. It is conceived in the idea that government will enact the salvation of the world, not the practice of individual noble virtues like charity and sacrifice.
Progressive journalists distort, withhold facts, and spin the news every day to affirm their false god of expanding government while targeting those they see as enemies of their illusions. Multiple surveys over years have shown that 90 percent of journalists identify as secularists and more than 80 percent regard religion a destructive force in society and reject the idea of moral absolutes. They lie about the Catholic religion constantly, not that most liberal Catholics notice or object.
Trump is not the perfect standard bearer of conservative or Christian values, but merely being perceived as a defender of continuously insulted religious conservatives is enough for the media to have no problem recycling dishonest narratives, like claiming he called Mexicans murderers and rapists when he actually said that the Mexican government has been complicit in aiding their criminals to illegally enter the United States, much like all politicians said about Castro’s boat people in the 1970s. They misrepresent his constitutional travel ban that targets unvetted terrorists, not Muslims, and they propagandize claims about collusion with Russia while ignoring the real collusion of the media with the Clinton campaign.
Why tell the truth when you can enjoy the smug dominance of exploiting a willfully misled audience?
KENNETH FARLEY, M. DIV
Boerum Hill