Veronika Kyrylenko: In Defense of Beautiful Melania Against the Media Bullies
Not a day passes in the American information space without toxic attacks on first lady Melania Trump. The hatred that the establishment media, leftist celebrities and a legion of commentators channel is almost palpable. Their attacks also expose their unbearable hypocrisy.
The people who call themselves feminists and rave about woman rights express a bitter resentfulness toward Melania’s successful modeling career. The people who condemn objectification of women, who passionately propagate a global sisterhood, compassion and “body positivity,” shamelessly sexualize Melania’s gorgeous looks and “poor” fashion choices.
With a sadistic pleasure, they speculate on her “unhappy marriage.” Those who claim to be the most welcoming and goodhearted people when it comes to immigration policies, who want America to accept hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from the Middle East and illegal aliens from Central America, mock Melania’s accent and “broken English.”
The media also loves comparing Melania to her predecessor, Michelle Obama. Ultimately, they turn a beauty into a hideous beast.
All of it made Melania once admit with a smile that she is “one of the most bullied people on Earth.” And she’s right. In a recent interview with Fox News in December, she said the most difficult part of her job is “opportunists who use my name or family name to advance themselves… The problem is, they write history, and it’s not correct.”
As expected, the media erupted, blasting Melania for not understanding her role as first lady, and for selfishly making it about herself instead of focusing on the challenges of ordinary Americans. Therefore, she needs to “stop whining” and do her job.
Ironically, there is a grain of truth in this narrative — haters are going to hate no matter what. It doesn’t matter how many children’s hospitals and schools Melania would visit or how many lives she would help save from opioid addiction, or how many children’s wellbeings would be improved thanks to her “Be Best” campaign.
The media, this ultimate bully, will always pick on her. It will either under-report, or twist, or simply smear her like it always does. Thus, as the media says, there really is no use to complain.
Another reason for the media’s bullying of Melania, as psychologists note, is people’s desire to criticize, ridicule, attack, hate, and even destroy the most powerful and famous ones. Again, the wisest approach would be to ignore the haters.
Does it, however, mean that Melania is wrong by pointing out the unfair coverage of her activities? Or the entire Trump’s presidency, for that matter, that the media paints pitch-black every single day?
Undeniably, if Melania is one of the most bullied people in the world, her husband takes first prize. For example, according to the Media Research Center report based on analysis of ABC’s, CBS’s and NBC’s evening news stories, over the summer and the beginning of fall of 2018 (on the eve of the Midterm Elections), the Trump administration got 92 percent negative coverage vs. 8 percent positive.
At the same time, some two-thirds of the coverage came from five topics, including the Russia investigation, immigration, the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, North Korea and U.S.-Russia relations. That’s what the media chose to focus Americans’ attention on, the most important things — but is there anything missing? Oh, that’s right — an overwhelmingly positive topic for the president, a booming economy. Ridiculously, less than 1 percent of the coverage was dedicated to the economy. To be more precise, it was 0.7 percent of the entire coverage, or 14 minutes out of 32.7 hours. We’re in the middle of an economic boom we were told by the very same media “experts” was impossible, but now this miracle apparently doesn’t deserve reporting!
Media people who assert Melania doesn’t understand her role as first lady clearly do not understand their role as journalists. It is hard to overestimate the media’s role in the democratic process since people used to rely on objective and factual information provided by a free press that was once called a “democracy’s watchdog.” The power of media in shaping people’s minds and opinions is enormous, and the establishment media uses all means to diminish the Trumps’ achievements while overblowing, misrepresenting or even creating the failures.
Despite the unseen informational war on Trump, his administration and family members, the president’s approval rating stays relatively high, while public trust in the media keeps declining. A major poll from Gallup and the Knight Foundation confirms that Americans don’t trust the press: 69 percent of Americans say their trust in the media has decreased in the last decade; 94 percent of Republicans, 75 percent of independents and 42 percent of Democrats agree.
Some leftist commentators argue that the Republicans have a strong prejudice against the media, as if they’re unintelligent people who simply hate the messenger for bringing bad news. But the messenger here doesn’t just bring the news, but intentionally and blatantly lies, cherry picks and twists the facts, as reflected in the “Covering President Trump in a polarized media environment” report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and many others.
Melania is right — the media writes the history, and it’s not correct. The rise of alternative news sources is merely a reaction and indicator of the degradation of most mainstream news outlets. So keep it up, dear Melania, and, as ironic as it sounds, take the media’s advice and just ignore them.
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