University of Illinois to Offer Journalism Students 'Pop-Up Course' on 'Trumpaganda'

Nick Kangadis | October 15, 2018
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People often wonder if journalism could ever return to just reporting the facts without any personal bias by the writer or the publication the writer reports for. That’s a little difficult to do when indoctrination centers, also known as colleges, offer clearly biased courses for aspiring journalists. Here’s just another example of why I say journalism is dead.

A new course will be offered at the University of Illinois where associate professor Mira Sotirovic will lecture prospective journalists about the ills of the Trump administration where it concerns the media.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

Taught by associate professor Mira Sotirovic, the course will examine how the president has cultivated a facts-averse, anti-mainstream-media strategy during his candidacy, and escalated such tactics through social media and official statements during his first two years in office, according to the course description[…]

The course will also seek to put the Trump administration’s relationship with the news media in context with the relationship of previous administrations. “Previous American administrations have had a contentious relationship with the news media, but the Trump administration’s conflict with the press is different in strategies and tactics, challenging Americans’ tendency to think of propaganda as something that doesn’t happen in democratic societies,” the course description said.

“This particular course is the first of what we hope will be a series of what we’re thinking as pop-up courses, where we’re trying to identify things that are very in the news and build an eight-week course around it that would be of interest to the broader University community, not just journalism majors,” head of the journalism department at the university Stephanie Craft said, according to school newspaper The Daily Illini.

Of course Craft would say that she doesn’t just want journalism majors to take this upcoming series of courses. Brainwashing of young, impressionable minds can’t be limited to one group of people. Everyone needs to think the exact same in the eyes of “academics.”

“As a candidate, Trump employed the most common propaganda device, name-calling, to define, degrade, discredit and destroy his primary opponents as well as the ‘fake’ news media,” the course description reads. “By the second year in his presidency, President Trump’s rhetorical attacks on mainstream media continue — he has labeled them the ‘enemy of the people’ — and not only dominate his tweets but also are a centerpiece of his every press conference and public statement.”

Is it, to elitist "academics," that Trump actually thinks all of the media are the “enemy of the people? Or are university journalist professors, as well as the media, just upset that Trump has opened up the media bubble to news organizations that might challenge the establishment media’s talking points?

The fact that people like Craft and Sotirovic don’t see anything wrong with teaching journalism students to only view things from one particular point of view is the exact reason why if journalism isn’t already dead, it’s certainly on life support.

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