Rex Murphy:

The “fake news” theme is itself fake news. The election of Donald Trump has given life to a stream of rationalizations, from plausible to ludicrous, from news outlets and columnists who failed to predict his victory. Very many of these were so calamitously out of touch as to claim, right up to election night, that it was impossible. The gulf between the press and the citizens on whom they report was not only embarrassing, it revealed a deep incompetence. 

It is the first claim of the press that they know the subjects on which they report. How could a majority of the American media be fundamentally clueless about, fundamentally misread, almost half of the American electorate? How could an informed press be “shocked” at an election result, after covering the campaign for over a year?

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesHillary Clinton, accompanied by her husband former president Bill Clinton, pauses as she concedes the presidential election at the New Yorker Hotel on Nov. 9 in New York City. 

Well, they were shocked, and they messed up to an almost fatal degree. And after so huge a misreading there is no surprise that the press – in league with the failed managers of the Clinton campaign, and the candidate herself – have scurried furiously to find excuses for why they were so terribly wrong.

“Fake news” is the latest in an unimpressive list. Fake news is suddenly a big theme of much American reporting. Fake news didn’t throw the election; didn’t blind the poor silly voters to Hillary’s great virtues and Trump’s demonic appeal. So called fake news is the afterthought of the myopic press.

The real story is much simpler. An entire swath of the American media willingly, early, and determinedly locked themselves into a false or partisan reading of the campaign. In plainest terms they were overtly hostile to Trump, and overplayed his every fault and flaw. (And they were many) Contrarily they cossetted Hillary. It isn’t that they misread the election;  it’s that they gave to their partisan wishes the status of fact. How often, for example, during the campaign did you hear it was “impossible” that Trump could win? That he was done? That the election was over? That Hillary was going to win by a landslide?

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