John Balentine’s prescription (“Making the media great again, Nov. 3) is to eliminate all news reporting and have only “direct feeds” of events, thus eliminating the rampant bias he claims we (he?) are all weary of. He encourages us to “thank Trump for exposing the media’s biases” (“Fake News! Unfair!”). Balentine implies that reporting to the American people on climate change, income equality, police shootings, coronavirus and unproven allegations regarding Joe and Hunter Biden are all biased. His choices of topics and news anchors to cite are a clear tip-off to his own biases. He doesn’t mention FOX News. Yes, there is more or less bias from various news outlets, but FOX pioneered going from “opinion bias” to outright propaganda (misinformation with a purpose) on a daily basis. News outlets with accurate reporting still exist and Balentine does not seem to give credit that the public is capable of judging bias and finding those outlets for themselves.

Bias exists but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Most Americans do not have time to sit in front of C-SPAN all day nor the expertise to put news in context. Here’s an “unfiltered” scenario: We would we watch a live feed of Donald Trump saying, “‘My call to Ukraine was fine,” when the transcript evidences an attempt at extortion. Or,  “Can we do something with injecting chlorine bleach?” and “I won this election by a lot.”

In Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel “It Can’t Happen Here,” a candidate espousing “traditional values” is elected U.S. president and institutes a totalitarian government that suppresses information critical of him; the local newspaper editor is sent to a concentration camp. News is the “enemy of the people.”

Jeff Christiansen
Gorham