“Y’all Just Don’t Hate the Media Enough”

When Throwaway Thoughts Cut Deep

By LONNIE KING

Recently, someone I’ve known for more than forty years shared a long political post.

We went to church together. Our kids grew up in the same halls. For most of my adult life, I’ve thought of this family as “our people,” even when we landed in different places politically.

The post she reshared wasn’t hers originally, but one of the opening lines was this:

“Y’all just don’t hate the media enough.”

Those weren’t her own words, but she chose to amplify them with commentary: “A worthwhile read…”

And I haven’t been able to shake that since. I hope she sees this post.

“The Media” Has a Face for Me

For some people, “the media” is an abstract villain. It’s a faceless force out there somewhere—cable news panels, headlines on a screen, anonymous voices on the radio.

For me, it’s different.

I have a degree in journalism. Never put it into full-time use, but it is useful to me in my broadcasting pursuits and I’m proud to have earned it. Plus, one of my sons is a television news reporter. I know his colleagues. I’ve met some of his mentors. I’ve watched him agonize over wording, sourcing, and whether a story is ready to air.

Every journalist is someone’s son or daughter, mother or father, sister or brother. They are the kids who sat next to yours in Sunday school, the young adults you prayed for as they tried to figure out what to do with their lives, the people trying to keep up with mortgages, medical bills, and car repairs.

Most of them aren’t famous. Most of them aren’t pundits. Most of them are just working reporters who get up every day and try to understand what’s happening and tell the truth as they see it.

So when a friend shares a post that says we “don’t hate the media enough,” I don’t hear a clever throwaway line. I hear contempt aimed directly, if unintentionally, at people I love.

Imperfect Humans, Not Political Combatants

Are journalists perfect? No. Do they have blind spots? Absolutely. You can find bad actors, lazy workers, and people with baked‑in bias in any profession.

But in my experience, the overwhelming majority of journalists are far more concerned with getting things right than with “protecting a political side.”

They argue in news meetings about verification, sources, wording, and balance, often more fiercely than the public will ever see.

Their work is messy and human and sometimes flawed, but to describe them as a group you should “hate” erases their humanity and flattens everything into team sports.

That’s what stung about that shared post. Not just the political content, but the casual comfort, on the part of the original writer and everyone who boosts it, with hatred toward an entire profession.

When the Critique Gets the Facts Wrong

There’s another layer of irony here.

The post my friend shared mixed a few real, complicated developments with a lot of confident misunderstanding and misinformation.

It tossed around references to international law and maritime borders as if they were simple, then scolded “the media” for not doing enough fact‑checking.

Meanwhile, the very people it attacked are the ones who spend their days reading court decisions, policy documents, and expert analyses so the rest of us don’t have to.

I don’t mind people critiquing specific coverage. Accountability is part of what journalism owes the public. Journalists expect that of themselves and their audiences. If you think a story is wrong or incomplete, say so.

Ask questions. Push back.

But there’s a difference between “I think this article got it wrong” and “you should hate the media.” That second move doesn’t correct error; it dehumanizes people.

The Cost of “Hate the Media” Rhetoric

Once you’ve decided you should hate “the media,” it becomes much easier to justify the way some people treat journalists: the threats, the slurs, the conspiracies, the pile‑ons.

I think about this as a dad.

I imagine my son doing a story that lands on the wrong side of someone’s outrage cycle. I picture a clip of his report being pulled out of context, dropped into a partisan echo chamber, and framed as “proof” that he’s part of the enemy.

And I know exactly who is most vulnerable to being swept up in the call to attack “the media”: people who’ve already been told, again and again, that journalists are not neighbors but opponents to be defeated.

That’s the part that keeps me up at night. Not just that strangers might go after him, but that people I’ve known for decades—people who watched him grow up—might unwittingly pass along the very rhetoric that fuels those attacks.

What Sharing Really Says

I want to be scrupulously fair: my friend did not write “y’all just don’t hate the media enough.” She reshared someone else’s post. That matters.

But sharing, and telling people it’s ‘worthwhile’, still says something.

When you click “share,” you are lending your credibility to the words you pass along. You’re telling your circle, “This represents something I think is worth your time.” You may not agree with every sentence, but you’re endorsing the tone and the thrust of it.

So if you’ve ever worshiped alongside a journalist, taught their children, hugged them in the church foyer, or watched their kids grow up, I’m asking you to pause before you amplify language that calls for hatred of “the media.”

Remember that, in your world, “the media” may include someone you’ve known for forty years, or a child you saw grow from the church nursery to a newsroom.

Choosing Something Different

You are absolutely free to disagree with reporters. You can turn off a channel you don’t trust, complain about a story you think missed the mark, or seek out outlets that better reflect your perspective.

What I’m asking is simpler and more basic:

Don’t let political frustration turn into a blanket call to hate people who are, at the end of the day, just human beings trying—however imperfectly—to tell the truth.

I can live with political differences. I can’t easily reconcile a call, even secondhand, to hate the people I love who happen to work in journalism.

So, be better.

Grace and grit to you! –LK