Bias in Trump reports adds to us against them scenario

RECENTLY the Gold Coast Bulletin has printed a number of opinion pieces and letters supporting the US President Donald Trump.

I am disappointed with pieces by commentators like Rita Panahi (‘Trumping the naysayers, GCB, 6/8/18).

In spewing a variety of statistics without explanation or understanding or quoting in their view hysterical anti-Trump rhetoric to support their argument, conservatives are helping promote the ever-widening gap of public opinion they accuse the opposition of causing.

By simply reviewing the actions of Republicans and neoconservatives during the Obama administration one can see exactly how this divisive campaign began.

Supported by aggressive propaganda, conservative media have been able to push their agenda and attract massive amounts of profit from businesses and advertisers keen to tap into the “red neck” market or eager to see regulations reduced or removed in their favour.

Words like “socialist and partisan Leftist media” used to describe anyone with an opposing viewpoint is the exact “fake news” these propagandists and apologists accuse Democrats of using against Trump.

Of fake news, Panahi says: “It has become a catch cry of conservatives to describe the falsehood, half-truth and deliberate omissions of ‘news’ reporting that is boldly biased.” What exactly does she consider her own article? Non-biased? Hardly.

It is this hypocritical attitude that intelligent thinking Americans oppose.

By creating this “us against them” scenario Trump’s supporters are pandering to an angry, easily manipulated population listening only to what they want to hear and unable to tell truth from fiction, news from opinion and propaganda from advertising.

Sadly Panahi is using the same tactics devised by the likes of Carl Rove and Steve Bannon: accuse your opponents of the very thing you are doing. Repeated often enough, your unquestioning followers will believe it.

The American Civil War started in much the same way.

Fortunately without much bloodshed another Civil War is being fought between the farright religious Free Market Capitalist Republicans and the left factions of the Democrats. Observing that, few if any Democrats are the Socialists the Republicans accuse them of being.

Moderate middle-class Americans are caught in between with little or no chance of surviving the conflagration of a dangerous despotic leadership by the likes of Trump.