By Sushil Kutty
After the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of Kamala Harris, the owner of the Los Angeles Times is looking to balance opinion pieces in his newspaper. This, when the Washington Post and the New York Times, continue to go for Trump’s jugular, criticizing his every move, picking warts on his cabinet picks. Publications like the Los Angeles Times have seen the writing on the wall and are adapting. Wisdom does not come to everybody at the exact same time. At the end of the day, it is “business”.
The Washington Post and the NYT believe they owe it to history to stick to the fine-print etched on their mastheads for donkey’s years and they shouldn’t be giving quarter to a man who they believe hasn’t learned from history. On the other hand, Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong wants to “balance opinion” after the defeat of Kamala Harris.
Los Angeles is in ‘California’ and California has historically always tilted in favour of Democrat. The Los Angeles Times had not endorsed either candidate and Soon-Shiong will be doing the “balancing” by hiring new recruits.
Soon-Shiong spoke of balancing opinion with somebody like Scott Jennings, lone conservative voice in the sea of left-liberal cacophony in CNN — ““So, I’m looking for people like Scott Jennings.”
Jennings was on Trump’s list of picks for White House Press Secretary, but Trump chose Karoline Leavitt, who was with Trump during his first term and has been with Trump’s 2024 campaign for the past two years. President-elect Donald Trump is not the one who hankers for “fair and balance”.
But the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times realises that “we need views from both sides” in California, which saw several counties, which were traditionally left-leaning blue bastions, turn red. The change has been “rather dramatic” — from “moving towards the right as well as being very liberal as before.”
Donald Trump’s showing victory in the elections have had an impact on the very fabric of the nation. Such that it would help both Washington Post and the New York Times to take a look at the 2022 California and the 2024 California, and see the sea change. The jaundiced eye is out the window — the views of all California readers have to be presented.
But just like one swallow does not make a summer, one news outlet without the jaundiced eye does not make all media “fair and balance”. Not when the headlines are like the Washington Post’s “How off were the polls in 2024?” Bet this wouldn’t have been the headline if Kamala Harris had swamped the polls.
Neither would “Are Trump’s cabinet nominations more like a car crash or a reality show?” if the Democrats had won? Mainstream media was deaf and blind to people and places. A large part of the blame for Kamala Harris’ loss is because the liberal media got it all wrong and ensured Harris also got it all wrong.
This is now dawning on the Democratic establishment, even on the left-liberal snowflakes, many of whom are mourning Kamala’s destiny, one even tearing off his t-shirt on Tik-Tok, streaming his screaming disappointment at Trump’s comeback.
The hell-bent on bias mainstream media painted Kamala Harris in colours of triumph when the enduring photo-op was that of Trump bleeding from the ear, fist raised, shouting defiantly “Fight, fight, fight!” Kamala Harris didn’t have the sense to differentiate one picture from the other, wrong from right.
The mainstream progressive liberal media pushed Kamala into the vortex of Wokeism, not that she needed much pushing, and while this went down well with the elite in their marijuana-induced sleep, it drove working class Americans nuts. Kamala Harris lost it when Trump told less than cool Americans what they wanted to hear — a better life than the one given to them by Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden.
The pro-Democratic Party media refused to see the writing on the wall and this was not because there were very few walls. The writing was on every wall, blue wall and red wall. Complacent media lost the plot and Kamala Harris and her “oh so masculine running mate” didn’t see the Trump signs dotting the countryside, painted on the rear-windows and flanks of trucks and sedans. ‘Trump-Vance 2024’ was on every garage door, from Ohio to California, New Mexico to Montana.
The media owe an apology to Kamala Harris. The media with little or no idea of what was happening around them cheated Harris of her chance to break the glass ceiling. So many “firsts” were attached to Kamala Harris’ bid for POTUS that it broke the heart of more than 70 million Democrats who had voted for Harris, watching President-elect Donald Trump at his Florida wake, thanking everybody but the miserably gone-wrong so-called progressive mass media!
Democrat Kamala Harris would have been “first woman President”; “first Black American woman President”, “first South-Asian American President” and “first Indian-origin American President” if the left-liberal media had guided her through the maze and told her a few home-truths, early enough for corrections to be made.
WaPo and NYT, Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe — The Hill — none of them had an inkling of the change that had taken place behind their backs. This wasn’t Barack Obama asking for “Change” in 2008. Then was different, now is different and if the American liberal media have sense, they would stop questioning Trump’s cabinet picks, whether it is Matt Gaetz for Attorney-General or Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary. And keep their words off Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s proposed Director of Intelligence, the only Indian-origin ‘Hindu’ American who can walk into the White House and not be stopped at the main door by a crew-cut Marine. (IPA Service)
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