Pining for a modern-day Alistair Cooke

A modern version of Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America radio broadcast is sorely needed today.

When I was young, my parents religiously listened to Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America radio broadcast. Each Sunday we would hear the considered thoughts of an Englishman reporting on events in the United States.

While Cooke worked for the BBC, I always found his observations poignant. Lacking any agenda – unlike most in the media today – it was always interesting to hear what was happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world.

Needless to say, this was long before the rise of political correctness, identity politics and woke idiocy, and so one got a fair reporting on what was actually happening in the United States rather than just an endless airing of often fictional racial grievances.

I am constantly reminded of Cooke’s objectivity and how much the world needs someone like Cooke today, whenever I see the Australian media’s latest “reports” on what is happening in the USA.

To understand why, it’s necessary to give a bit of background.

Unfortunately, most Australians wouldn’t be aware of the media landscape in the United States, nor how the Australian media tamely just follows the US media’s lead in reporting on what is happening in America.

In the United States, the New York Times (NYT) is known as “the paper of record”. Practically speaking, this means that it sets the agenda for most other media organisations. Whatever the NYT is reporting or opining on is followed verbatim by the mindless automatons working at The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC and the free-to-air TV networks.

Needless to say, these organisation tilt left, so much so that they often make Australia’s ABC network look like Milton Friedman.

So you can pretty much guess these media organisations’ views on any issue by simply asking: “What would the New York Times think?”

There are, of course, a few alternative media organisations who don’t blindly agree with the NYT, led by Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

But they are thin on the ground, both in number and in influence.

“How is this relevant to me in Australia?” I hear you ask.

Well, even though the Australian media has journalists stationed in America, they mostly seem to just look at the latest edition of the New York Times for instructions on how to report the latest goings-on and then “inform” their Australian viewers, listeners and readers accordingly.

And so what we see, hear and read about in America is often straight out of the New York Times and reflects its leftist views.

For some reason even The Australian seems to have a reflexive anti-American streak in its reporting, especially when it comes to covering Trump and his supporters.

The result of all this is a mundane uniformity in reporting on what is happening in the United States, with much of what is actually happening in the country not covered because it contradicts the New York Times‘ narrative.

Even worse, this includes the New York Times’ ridiculous obsession with identity politics and woke idiocy, something we should be doing the utmost to avoid being repeated here in Australia.

Frustratingly, though, it seems most Australians aren’t aware of this and so they believe the latest rubbish concocted by the New York Times.

I am sure the woke activists at the Times laugh uproariously whenever they consider how much power they have to shape the narrative both at home and abroad.

Or they would laugh if they didn’t think laughing was racist (hat tip: the New York Times considers virtually everyone and everything “racist” nowadays.)

So I pine for a modern-day Alistair Cooke to appear and objectively report on what is actually happening in the United States.

One can but hope!

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