The Eye Of The Beholder

Most days, I look at the Real Clear Politics website.  It links to a mixture of political articles from a wide range of sources.  The site tries to present both sides on issues, and it is generally successful.  That means that there are often articles which strongly disagree with each other.  Today, however, the articles listed seem to be coming from two different universes.  These are not disagreements on the proper way to replace Obamacare or the best way to negotiate a Middle East peace agreement.  No, today, half the articles talk about President Trump's masterful performance at his press conference yesterday while the other half talk about Trump's public meltdown at the same event.  Now I watched the press conference, so I know Trump didn't have a meltdown.  He did castigate much of the media for pushing fake news and phony stories.  He also denounced the leaks of classified information that the media then published.  Still, it certainly could not be fairly described as a melt down.  So how can these reports be so different?

The truth is that many of the reporters are really not reporting what happened.  They are publishing their preconceived narrative and merely using a few facts of the day to update the same story from yesterday.  The key here is not that some in the press tell lies.  No, it is that it seems as if many in the press don't even realize that what they are "reporting" is just their repackaged biases rather than the actual events.