Opinion Piece By Samuel Strait – November 9, 2016 –
I think that I was a bit skeptical, when last week my youngest son assured me that Donald Trump would win the election for President by a fairly healthy electoral margin.  As a reasonably tuned in reader of a fairly broad range of electronic, TV, and print media it seemed that this statement was on the order of a 100 to 1 long shot at the track.  When I asked why he felt that way, he pointed to the growing distrust of people with the TV and print media for the past twenty years or so culminating with current state of a nearly complete lack of faith in that media. While “experts” have downplayed much of this sentiment, it goes without saying that this has been a recurrent theme in the minds of many Americans, particularly when it come to discussing any politically related topic.

What can’t be made clearer, is the behavior of major media outlets during this past election cycle when it came to be discovered collusion between the media and the Clinton Campaign found in e-mails between the Clinton chief of staff and a large number of reporters.  While it is certain that this was not a new event during past campaigns where the appearances of even handed reporting have long since been jettisoned in the favor of partisan narratives and “news stories”.  This practice has come at a huge cost to many of those same TV and print media outlets in the form of outright distrust, declining circulation, and movement to alternative forms of news expression.   This has become no more evident, than in recent polls and their abject failure to read the voting electorate.

Negative reporting in a multitude of media outlets have made it difficult for respondents to express their true feelings without the fear of being branded some awful term of disparagement.  As a result poll respondents quite often refused to state preferences, or gave responses in line with the activist leanings of the source of the poll.  Consequently the largely negative reporting of the Trump campaign by media resulted in what is now known as a largely unknown number of voters disinclined to admit that they were voting for Donald Trump, and, what was to be a sure Hillary Clinton victory into a decisive lose.

Here at the local side of this current election cycle, it should be a huge wake up to the likes of Cindy Vosburg and Robin Fornoff at the Del Norte Triplicate to clean up their respective acts and go back to reporting news instead of the largely partisan narrative style that they have adopted over the last couple of years.  It should be made very clear to both Cindy and Robin  that the loss of faith in the Triplicate has grown tremendously in the past two years to the point that the Crescent City Times and their open editorial format has found a growing place in how news is delivered in this County.  If the Triplicate continues on its current path of narratives and selected editorial content, the current state of “egg on ones face” prominently displayed on the national TV and print media in this country following their mismanagement of the elections outcome will likely visit the Triplicate as well.

While I suspect that this very likely will require regime change at the Triplicate, Western Communication had better sit up and take notice.  The national press core didn’t and see where this has led.