What Australians should understand about Donald J Trump

It appears that most Australians get their U.S. news indirectly from CNN and The New York Times, barely filtered by the local media, or directly, via the internet.

They seem not to realise that CNN is not to be taken seriously at all, and that The New York Times has caught dementia in its old age.

Rather than the source of all the news that's fit to print, the Times has veered off the beaten track, hired a ton of fabulists as its staff, and allowed them to run its operations.

The New York Times no longer produces high quality journalism it was once known for. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Three examples of the Grey Lady's dottiness.

The 1619 project, by Nikole Hanna-Jones (for which she received a Pulitzer in 2020, thus demonstrating that media dementia is catching) seeks to recast the founding of the United States as the date when slaves first arrived.

Great for supporters of the myths of systemic racism, but not so much for accurate history.

Then there was the resignation of the opinion page editor, James Bennet, in 2020 because he had published an op-ed by a sitting U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), which, amongst other things, suggested the use of the National Guard to suppress the riots that were engulfing U.S. cities at the time.

This unremarkable observation gave rise to a mutiny amongst the staff, so obviously the editor had to go! (If only they'd hired Elon Musk as an HR consultant they might have taken it as an opportunity to shed the 70 percent of staff that don't produce anything worthwhile).

Last, there was the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the final days of the 2020 election campaign.

The legitimacy of the laptop has since been confirmed, not least by Mr. Biden, and it was obvious at the time it was genuine.

Again, the Times was not alone, it was in the majority, but that shows how damaged journalism in the US has become.