Trust me, I’m a journalist

One of the most enduring misconceptions about the press concerns foreign correspondents, generally assumed by those who have spent no time in a newsroom to be the best and brightest of the ink-stained lot who filter and package what is then presented as the important news of the day. Fairfax’s Paul McGeough is a foreign correspondent. See, it can’t be that difficult after all.

As McGeough demonstrates day after day, and once again this morning, if re-writing for a distant audience the accepted wisdom of the New York Times, Washington Post and other organs of the mainstream US media, then just about anyone might be a foreign correspondent.

This morning, for example, McGeough returns to the topic of Donald Trump, of whom it would be no understatement to say he detests, as do the US news organs whose coverage of the candidate the Fairfax correspondent favours and regurgitates. Just hours ago, Trump held a press conference (above) to answer criticism that the money he raised for veterans groups had not been distributed to the purported recipients.

The mogul’s performance can be be watched in full via this link, with his comments on the press starting about four minutes in. McGeough’s account of that same press conference can be read here. Those with the time and inclination might find it interesting to compare and contrast the actual event with the account McGeough has presented.

After that, further amusement might be drawn by re-visiting McGeough’s prognositications from April about the likely course of the presidential marathon. Sample: 

As the real prospect of a brokered convention looms, a second, behind-the-scenes round of elections is taking place that has huge implications for the eventual winner – this is for the selection of the individual delegates.

In this, Cruz reportedly is way more agile, with agents on the ground in every state that has voted, locking in the support of unpledged delegates and lobbying/cajoling/stroking to ensure that would-be delegates are predisposed to him, so that after the first convention ballot, when delegates no longer are obliged to vote in line with the outcome of their state primary, they will vote for Cruz.

Fairfax Media’s long-suffering shareholders might wish to bear the above in mind when wondering why the company is not merely circling the drain but halfway through the S-bend. It might just have something to do with a preference for reporting the world as some prefer to see it, rather than as it is. The latest example can be read via the link below.

— roger franklin

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