Thursday 25 August 2016

The Canadian media’s view of the US Presidential elections



Many Canadians view Americans as arrogant, which may be true in many circumstances. But what we see in the Canadian media is the arrogance of Canadians who sincerely believe they are experts on Americans values and culture. The question is why?

The U.S presidential elections are getting much coverage in the media. Much of the reporting is biased towards support for Hillary Clinton.  Donald Trump has helped to damage his cause while committing many mistakes, which I define as ‘trumpicide” (the act of a neophyte politician who is unwilling or refuses to take advice from experts in the field). Despite the fact that some of these experts may be giving advice to either protect themselves or are believers in the status quo. Trump has made many statements which resonate with a large proportion of the people, but also alienates many people. Hillary Clinton on the other hand does not endear herself to many people either. For the first time in U.S electoral history both candidates carry more negatives than positives. Therefore it stands to reason that a leftist media finds itself in a real quandary:  How do we portray Clinton in a better light than Trump?

As the U.S media merrily obfuscates the Clinton past and demonizes everything that is Trump, it is the role of the Canadian media that I would like to discuss. Taking its information from liberal U.S media virtually every single Canadian media outlet continues to support a Clinton candidacy, because in their arrogant view it reflects an affinity to Canadian values. In other words more progressive and in tune with Liberal Canadian views. The problem with this type of reporting is that the majority of Canadian citizens get only one side of the story, and in essence makes Canadians more supportive of a Democrat than a Republican. This media approach automatically results in a continued aversion to conservative values, but in reality helps to import many dangerous progressive ideas from our Southern neighbours.

On immigration for instance, Canadian media has endorsed the Liberal government’s refugee policy, despite the fact that a majority of Canadians does not support massive acceptance of refugees from certain parts of the world, mainly because of the risk of terrorism. To support their position the media portrays Trumps’ immigration policies as xenophobic and racist, notwithstanding that a vast majority of Americans are seriously concerned about illegal immigration.

The debate on law and order goes even further. There is no doubt that the constant reporting of African Americans shootings by the police has become a source of major discussion. However, the Canadian media has taken the view to report many of these incidents as growing racial problems. They have often ignored that there is a real crime problem in many U.S cities; more importantly that the majority of gun related killings are Blacks on Blacks. More importantly that most of the killings happen in cities and States which have been under Democrat rule for decades. The result for Canada is that the media has given so much credence to a one sided story that now we have imported the Black Lives Matter organization suggesting that we have a real racial problem in Canada.

The progressive Canadian media in reporting the problems of the U.S as debated between Clinton and Trump is shaping a Canadian view that does not really exist. Comparing every Trump conservative view to a far right agenda they set themselves in the progressive Clinton camp; therefore automatically supporting Trudeau’s progressive agenda which is closer to that of Clinton’s.

While certain aspects of Trump’s campaign may not be good for Canada; e.g. trade, let us remind ourselves that a continuation of the Obama agenda by Clinton is not going to be good for Canada either. The climate change policies preventing the Keystone XL pipeline comes to mind as one detrimental policy for Canada. More importantly the media has not covered any of Clinton’s problems of erased e-mails kept on a private server, the co-mingling of the Clinton’s Foundation, the work of the of State Department and the influence of foreign government’s money.

In my opinion there seems to be a clear media plan to portray Trump in his worse light – they would love another extension to the progressive Obama’s administration, ignoring the fact that his presidency may go down as one of the worse since Carter. They ignore the dismal economy, the low rate of employment especially among African Americans. Obfuscation is great but statistics are real. The arrogance and bias in Canadian media reports of U.S issues are very dangerous in my view. While it is important to review and report the political climate of our neighbour’s, because of our proximity and economic ties, it is disingenuous to take sides and purport to know the psyche of the American population.

In supporting Clinton over Trump the Canadian media is making the same mistake that they made about the Brexit. The progressive bias ignores the reality that citizens are fed up with the liberal elite telling them what to do and how they should behave. The media’s arrogance in defining political correctness on virtually every issue tends to stifle debate and frees speech, and contributes to make the world a more dangerous place.

An unbiased reporting of the current U.S presidential election may well give Canadians a different perspective and may well reverse the huge adulation for Obama and the prospect of a Clinton presidency; ergo a less favourable view of Trudeau’s progressive government.

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