Letter from America: with KENNETH MUFUKA
“If we thought we had a captured media, hold on a minute and watch US Cable News Network (CNN) and the so-called mainstream media being brazenly and nauseatingly anti-Trump in their coverage of Covid-19. I have been watching CNN. It’s sickening,” a Zimbabwean reader sent me an email.
I agree that watching the US media at work, or reading the once venerable newspapers, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, causes excruciating pain. When we were studying journalism, we worshipped these media houses, and all we had to say about a historical fact was to quote date and page of the New York Times.
I have chosen this subject because African governments are probably already at the mercy of hostile internal media as well as foreign media houses. The cost to Africa, as it is to the US, is the assumption by media elites that it does not matter what voters say about their leadership, they are the true opposition and will overthrow a government they don’t like.
I shall explain the arguments in favour of this intolerance later in the letter. For now, and for reasons of space, I will use examples from two dedicated media houses, CNN (already mentioned above) and MSNBC. The last one is an offshoot of National Broadcasting Corporation of New York.
Don Lemon, a gay brother and senior anchorman at CNN, has taken the role of opposition spokesperson-in-chief. During the coronavirus epidemic, he proposed that US President Donald Trump’s daily briefings should be taken off the air.
His argument: “Trump is never going to tell you the truth. (His press briefings) are a plot. (They) are orchestrated (to deceive).”
Journalists have an obligation not to give press coverage to such nonsense. It is not only Trump’s messages that CNN wishes to prevent from airing. There are such people, like Reverend Franklin Graham and industrialist Michael Lindell, who “mouths’’ God-stuff and regard Trump highly.
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Last week, Trump brought Lindell to the press conference. Lindell, a former cocaine-addict, lost his family and was homeless for a while. He recovered, started a pillow company and now manufactures 80 000 pillows a day. Lindell was witnessing a change in direction of his company to manufacture 50 000 protective mouth devices for medical personnel.
Mike Bliztzer of CNN apparently regards Lindell as a “hater”. When Lindell took the microphone, he was cut off from CNN.
Graham, son of the great evangelist Billy Graham, heads the Samaritan Purse. Answering a call from New York for help, he brought in 70 doctors experienced in fighting diseases worldwide and set up a 500-bed makeshift hospital in New York City park.
It was an impressive performance, their quick response, in the name of Jesus, he said. It is Graham’s reference to Jesus and God the Father and the Holy Spirit that marks him as a “hater”. He was given time of day at CNN and NBC except in “excerpts” and “snippets”.
The rising star at NBC is Rachel Maddow, a gay fighter and practitioner. She too suggested that Trump be excluded from airing.
“If experience tells us that day after day the president of the US makes false and misleading statements about the pandemic… We should, all of us, stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it is going to cost lives.”
Maddow accuses Trump of lies without end. They have employed people who count lies on a daily basis. So far, they say in 900 days of his taking office, he has lied 15 000 times.
One of these supposed lies was Trump’s attempt to “inspirational” (bad English) Americans. First, all the “power of the US” including two gigantic navy ships, Mercy and Comfort, will be ordered to do civilian health tasks.
Maddow thought that Trump was “telling people a fairy tale… cruel and harmful — irresponsible in anyone on any leadership position. There is no sign that the Navy hospital ships, Comfort and Mercy — they will not be there next week. That is nonsense.”
As I speak, Mercy floating hospital, with 1 000 beds, is in New York harbour and awaits orders to take civilian patients. It is amazing and impressive.
The president has the authority to order the US Navy to help out in civilian emergencies.
Maddow is shameless and unapologetic as they are all.
The greatest lie that Trump is accused of is again “inspirational”. French makhulu doctors, with experience in tropical diseases, had noticed the similarity of corona virus symptoms to those of malarial patients.
Their application of chloroquine and other concoctions usually reserved for malaria had been tried on 40 patients with encouraging results.
Trump had (I watched the press conference) indicated that he had requested the director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to speed up the process (called off label). If this French experiment proved its worth, Trump said, this could be a “game changer”.
An elderly couple in Colorado is said to have taken a mixture of sugar with chloroquine phosphate. The husband died and the wife survived.
The fake media had a field day. Surely Trump never suggested that one mixes a spoon of sugar with chloroquine phosphate (used for swimming pools).
In any case, there are people in Florida who have survived because their doctors tried the French experiment.
The seriousness of coronavirus was only realised in government circles about December 15, 2019. Democrat candidate Joe Biden criticised Trump for the announcement which referred to a Chinese virus from Wuhan city.
CNN took up the fight indicating that Trump was a racist war-monger. In their own tweet, CNN, January 21, wrote that: “A new Chinese coronavirus, a cousin of SAS virus, has infected more than 200 people in Wuhan, China.”
Kugocha kunoda kwamai, kwemwana kunodzima moto. [So only CNN is allowed to be mean?]
The explanation of this poisonous relationship between government and the media can be traced to the early 1960s years when black civil rights were gaining prominence.
CD Heath, a publisher of educational materials in California, judged correctly that given 50 years of “re-education” and re-orientation of the juvenile mind, these juveniles would one day curse their elders for ever having practiced superstitions like racism.
These resisting elders were found in religious fellowships, arguing that racism was God-inspired in the same way that gay expressions found unrelenting opposition among religious groups. Former president Barack Obama expressed the view that the resistance to progressive ideas can be found in the irredeemable who place trust in their bibles and guns, the retrogrades. They belong to the dustbin of history.
I have had a long-range discussion over the years with my journalist brother Joram Nyathi. I confess that it never occurred to me that such institutions like US media houses regard themselves as kingmakers. One does not occupy the White House without their permission, at least their acquiescence. If not, they are serious, they will attempt to overthrow a legitimate government.
They have no conscience. If Trump has lied 15 000 times in 900 days, he lies at least 1 000 times a day. I think you get the message.
l Ken Mufuka is a patriot who writes from the US.
