The media sycophantic coverage of North Korea and its leader’s creepy sister, Kim Yo Jong—the Vice Director of North Korea’s “Workers’ Party of Korea Propaganda and Agitation Department” was unreal. It’s got to be tough to be that wound up about Trump, that you would praise a leading member of a regime that tortures, starves, and murders its own people. Bethany Mandel offers a good list of the fawning over at the New York Post.

This topic has been covered to death so there’s not much more I can say but it is worth noting that while the press praises this murderess, they can’t spare one ounce of kindness for the women in the Trump universe.

Just yesterday, there was breaking news that Vanessa Trump, the wife of Donald Trump, Jr., was hospitalized after opening an envelope that contained white powder (which has been found to be non lethal).

What….you haven’t heard about it? Sadly, that makes sense since there's been minimal coverage of this terrifying attack on the first family (there was far more coverage of Barack and Michelle Obama’s paint-by-numbers portrait unveilings).

But at least there’s some measure of kindness in silence. Others weren’t so charitable.

 

 

 

 

At some point, one hopes the media will look back at this time with embarrassment and likely an understanding that this is when America’s proud tradition of a free and impartial press ended. That’s a dangerous reality to contemplate and one that opponents of Trump should realize only secures and strengthens his power.

And over at Commentary, Noah Rothman explains (and has more good examples of press fawning: “a sprinkling of freckles,” and a “prim, young woman with a high forehead and hair half swept back quietly gazes at the throngs of people pushing for a glimpse of her,” and the equally gag-inducing press report that the sociopath propagandist kept her “head held high”) that there’s a cost to all this favorable coverage of North Korea:

What began as a cautious appreciation for the contempt the North Korean delegate cast in the vice president’s direction quickly transformed into something more menacing. To retroactively justify what was at first a partisan reflex, the press fabricated a narrative in which Kim Yo-jong was depicted as the belle of the Olympic ball.

Pyongyang has one goal: to decouple Seoul from Washington and weaken the U.S. military presence on the peninsula as a prelude to reunification on their terms. That is achieved through public opinion. You are the battlefield on which this struggle is being fought. Journalism that sees North Korean efficacy in blinkered South Korean credulity helps Pyongyang. Journalism that conveys the idea that the Republic of Korea is ungrateful to the United States helps Pyongyang. Journalism that glosses over North Korea’s sadism, criminality, and the threat it poses to world peace helps Pyongyang. Journalism that glamorizes the head of North Korea’s propaganda and state security apparatuses simply because she’s not Mike Pence isn’t journalism.

The mainstream American media's glowing coverage of North Korea and of it's propoganda chief puts into sharp relief not just the double standard at play in covering this White House, it reveals that the press has lost its moral compass and is willing to ignore true brutality, suffering and diabolical human rights abuses if it hurts the current President.