Rant #2,473: Time of Remembrance

Newspaper obituaries are generally short reviews of a recently deceased person's life, and sometimes, these entries in our local newspapers features scars and all, mixed in with the person's accomplishments, triumphs, and yes, mistakes.

But an obituary should never, ever ... and I mean never ... be used as a weapon, be one sided, be used to pour gas onto an existing fire, but the other day, our local Long Island newspaper did just that with its obituary or Robert Trump, the younger brother of President Donald Trump.

The first four paragraphs of the obituary--which you could look at here for yourself at https://www-newsday-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.newsday.com/amp/long-island/obituaries/robert-trump-dead-1.48195476?usqp=mq331AQFKAGwASA%3D&fbclid=IwAR3llaw5DkuO6wD47yizCLpwRORCT4lzU6e5z93Rjw8ozxg3zCBs5AwmvgI&amp_js_v=0.1  --were pretty straight forward, the way an obituary should be written.

But once you get past about the fourth paragraph, you can obviously see an editorial slant in the obituary, the likes of which I have never seen before.

Using Newsday staff and wire reports to turn the entry into more of an attack on the President than a remembrance of his much lesser known brother, the newspaper--which as you know, I have attached before because of its anti-white crusade and obvious partisan leanings--commits what I believe to be a journalistic sin, stooping to the lowest of the low to make this entry into more of an editorial than an obituary.

"Both longtime businessmen, Robert and Donald has strikingly different personalities," the obit said in the fifth paragraph. "Donald Trump once described his younger brother as 'much quieter and easygoing than I am, and the only guy in my life whom I ever call "honey.""

Later, another paragraph stated, "The president, more than two years older than Robert, admittedly bullied his brother in their younger years, even as he praised his loyalty and laid-back demeanor.

"I think it must be hard to have me for a brother, but he's never said anything about it and we are pretty close," which the president said in his 1987 best selling book, "The Art of the Deal."

Yes, the president said all of these things himself, or at least wrote about these things himself, but the constant comparisons obviously make Robert out to be "good" and Donald out to be "bad." And, of course, these quotes are taken out of context, so the obit reader has no idea why these things were said and if they were done tongue in cheek.

"When he worked at the Trump Organization, he [Robert] was known as the nice Trump," said Gwenda Blair, a Trump family biographer to the Associated Press, in a later paragraph. "Robert was the one people would try to get to intervene if there was a problem."

Further into the obit, to make the President look even worse compared to his almost "angelic" brother, the entry talks about the period in the 1980s, when Donald chose Robert to oversee an Atlantic City casino project "calling him the perfect fit for the job."

"When it cannibalized his other casinos," the future president "pointed his finger of blame at Robert,"said Blair. "When the slot machines jammed the opening weekend at the Taj Mahal, he very specifically and furiously denounced Robert, and Robert walked out and never worked forhis brother again."

Yes, the obit does talk about Robert's support of the Marine Corps Toys For Tots program, his own dives into the society pages, his support of his brother and some other things specifically about Robert, but in general, the entry portrays in its own way--and with its own editorial stance--what a "tyrant" Donald is, even to his own brother.

This is just bad, bad journalism, some of the worst, most one-sided reporting I have ever read. 

And an obituary is no place to be editorializing.

But in today's world, newspapers, television shows--including the nightly network news--and all facets of the written or electronic word can editorialize anything they want, even if it is so obviously non-objective reporting.

The public must be aware of this, and whatever side you stand on, this type of reporting does not serve anyone, just feeds into the belief that the press is unfair, and is not the way to report the news.