By Stephen Smoot
Most of those with even a passing interest in American popular culture remember the Emperor Commodus as portrayed in the epic motion picture Gladiator. Almost no one, however, remembers the real history of what came next.
Many elites had benefited from the licentiousness and poor decisions of Commodus. The ascension of the reluctant Pertinax to the purple promised a better government, especially for the common people. Edward Gibbons in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire stated that “a hasty zeal to reform the corrupted state . . . proved fatal to himself and his country.”
One institution had gained in wealth and power – the Praetorian Guard. Its primary function was that of the Secret Service today, protect the head of state. Its power, wealth, and influence, however, made it a power player in itself, desirous to protect its prerogatives.
Commodus’s successor Pertinax, however, threatened the corrupt with his mandate to clean up the Augean stables. Pertinax met them like a man, face to face, which resulted in “his head separated from his body, and placed on a lance, was carried in triumph . . . in the sight of a mournful and indignant people.”
Gibbons explained that their “licentious fury was the first symptom and cause of the decline of the Roman Empire.” He added that “in the luxurious idleness of an opulent city, their pride was nourished by the sense of their irresistible weight” and “the best established princes were obliged to . . . flatter their pride, indulge their pleasures . . . and purchase their precarious faith.”
After Pertinax, the Praetorian Guard quite often took a hand in elevating and/or disposing of a number of Roman Emperors, always to their benefit and rarely to that of the Empire.
The American media, starting decades ago, slowly evolved from an institution that covered and informed about politics into one actively manipulating them.
An egregious example happened in 1988 when Vice President George Bush appeared on the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather for what he was told was a simple profile of the man and his work.
“If this is a political profile for an election, I have a very different opinion of what one should be,” Bush said only a few minutes in, calling it “a rehash and a little bit of a misrepresentation on behalf of CBS”
Rather started asking pointed questions about Bush’s possible role in the Iran-Contra debacle, hoping to get him to either speak poorly of President Ronald Reagan or himself.
But Bush refused to cooperate.
The Vice President smiled and sternly rebuked every point made by Rather, saying “I’m asking for fair play,” then took the fight to Rather, talking over interruptions, and saying“I want to get my share in here other than something that you want to talk about.” He then said, “I want to talk about why I want to be president.”
Bush’s famous mic drop moment, that likely helped him several months later in the election, was “it’s not fair to judge my whole career on a rehash of Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York? Would you like that? I have respect for you, but I don’t have respect for what you’re doing here tonight.”
Rather later ended his career on a ham-handed and provably false expose attack on President George W. Bush and his service in the National Guard.
After the press in 2012 famously covered at length Mitt Romney’s placement of a dog carrier on a car roof and scuffles with classmates in fifth grade, Republicans learned one lesson. Even the kindest, most civil, and least offensive in the GOP will always be accused of being the worse. Joe Biden thundered, with no rebuttal from the mainstream media, that Romney “will put you all in chains!”
Imagine Mitt Romney putting anyone in chains.
Few remember that the press created the Trump campaign, much as the Praetorian Guard manipulated those they saw as pawns.. They knew that the Republican Party rolled out its most accomplished in 2016 to prevent “Her Turn.” The primary featured the best libertarian (Rand Paul), the best conservative (Ted Cruz), and the best moderate (Jeb!)
With media saturation driving him, Trump bested the field, then toppled Hillary Clinton on her way to what she believed was a coronation.
On to eight years of continual coverage of President Donald Trump, but fast forwarding to October 2024 for the sake of brevity. Otherwise, it would take a three volume tome to cover the subject.
Scott Jennings of CNN explained “the revenge of regular old working class America . . . who has been crushed, insulted, condescended to, they’re not garbage, they’re not Nazis, they’re just regular people who get up, go to work every day, trying to make a better life for their kids, and they feel like they have been told to just shut up when they have complained about the things that are hurting them in their own lives.”
Jennings called the election results “an indictment of the political information complex.”
The Praetorian Guard of Democratic candidates and Leftist ideals repeatedly pressed themselves to the back of a historically awful and incapable candidate She was surrounded by supporters who seemed dragged down by the Harris effect – the odd way that association with her makes normally brilliant people say and do foolish things, as when Barack Obama called black men misogynist for voting their own minds.
ABC News rigged the presidential debate, cheating in a bald-faced fashion on behalf of Harris
CBS News turned an almost incomprehensible 60 Minutes interview into a Harris campaign advertisement.
NBC flouted fair access rules to allow Harris a puff appearance on Saturday Night Live.
One need go no further to prove the point, but countless egregious violations of the ethics and even purpose of journalism took place. The X platform and Joe Rogan stand out among the few that tried to provide honest ways for voters to inform themselves. Even though Musk spoke his own mind, he did not limit the expression of others who disagreed.
Jeff Bezos, a businessman who happens to own the Washington Post, has had enough. In making the proper decision to not allow his paper to endorse a candidate, he admitted that endorsements affect the perception of the newspaper more than the election itself.
He added in a column “we must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement.” Bezos then noted “most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality.”
“We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility,” he concluded.
Credibility starts with basic respect of both the readership and also those covered. No media outlet can be perfect, but all those who strive to conduct themselves with respect should eventually enjoy the trust of the readers and build legitimacy well beyond that.
The American free press should focus on informing the world so that individuals can make educated decisions, not trying to reshape it by directing their actions and trying to shame those who will not comply..
