Dave Griffiths: Media thrive on conflict | Lewiston Sun Journal - The Bethel Citizen

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I find Fox News so repulsively propagandistic that I can’t watch it for more than five minutes. But now Mark Shanahan, Boston Globe reporter, has binge-watched it for 24 hours. Guess what?

He saw Fox News hosts demeaning Dr. Fauci’s “expertise” on the coronavirus, hardly surprising given that Trump is the most anti-science president in modern times. But Shanahan also watched the network’s stars downplay and, in some cases, ignore the news that intelligence professionals had told the president that Russia was offering a bounty to Taliban fighters who killed American soldiers.

First, isn’t the GOP that Trump is leading so disastrously supposed to be the party of strong national security?

Second, infamous non-reader Trump couldn’t even be bothered to read a one-page presidential briefing document warning him that ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin wanted to take out young American men and women by proxy. Is he afraid of angering Putin, who, according to several U.S. intelligence agencies, ordered his minions to interfere in the 2016 election on Trump’s side? To admit the truth of those findings, of course, would be to raise further doubts about the legitimacy of the election results (which he lost by nearly three million popular votes anyway).

Any Trump supporters reading this will complain that “mainstream” media are just as biased against their party. Fact: The New York times broke both the Clinton Whitewater scandal and Hillary’s email problems. CNN was all over both stories.

Conflict, not bias, is what journalists thrive on.

Dave Griffiths, Mechanic Falls

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