Rantz: Is it ever okay for DOGE or Trump to fire a government worker? Media says no

Apparently, local media doesn’t think it’s ever okay to lay off a federal worker.

Newspapers, websites, and television news reports have been filled with sympathetic stories from people who lost their jobs without any explanation as to whether or not the jobs should have been cut. The only context is that they’re out of a job due to the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The Spokesman-Review profiled Sam, a Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area ranger who apparently lost “his ‘dream job'” — one that he held for just a few months. He told the paper that he and his wife are now “on a countdown to homelessness.”

Meanwhile, The Seattle Times dramatically declared the firings “killed dreams, left big holes to fill in WA.” The feature highlighted five Washingtonians who lost Forest Service jobs.

The Seattle Times piece opens this way:

They empty trash bins at trailheads. Dig pit toilets at backcountry campsites. Cut down trees in campgrounds at risk of falling on unsuspecting campers. Carve up logs that have fallen across hiking trails — often with hand saws. They’re first on the scene responding to a hiker’s broken leg in a fall that happened 10 miles from the nearest road. They coordinate tens of thousands of volunteer hours annually to rebuild trails. They are the workers in the recreation departments of the U.S. Forest Service.

This is presented as news. But like The Spokesman-Review article, it’s an editorial masquerading as news. And it’s meant to frame all the firings as unjust, not offering any sense that the federal government is dealing with bloat and that something needs to be done.

Aren’t at least some terminations warranted? No? Oh, alright

Is it possible that it was the right move to terminate any of the 125 Forest Service employees who lost their jobs? The answer is obviously yes. It’s more obvious and less impactful when you realize the vast majority of job losses are hitting employees who have been on the job for months, not years. Yet neither The Spokesman-Review nor The Seattle Times can be bothered to acknowledge this.

It’s also obvious that cutting bloat means people will lose their jobs. So why can’t local media acknowledge that?

What do we get by way of news coverage? Puff pieces to engender sympathy with former federal workers without even a nuanced discussion on why they were terminated. We’re told in the The Seattle Times that, “As trails go uncleared and bathrooms overflow, their absence from the Forest Service’s workforce will undoubtedly be felt when you’re exploring Washington’s federally owned public lands this year.”

But, like many outlets, they don’t actually say this is happening. They say it can or will happen. They’re not even waiting for the chaos they claim is inevitable before reporting on it. They’re precog reporters, apparently.

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It’s not fun to lose a job, but sometimes cuts are necessary

While small businesses were forced into layoffs to deal with the inhospitable environment created by Democrats, local media pretended it wasn’t really happening. At best, they claimed the economy was strong because of Bidenomics. Meanwhile, the government workforce was growing and, again, local media didn’t say a thing. Surely local voices knew the U.S. government has a debt problem, right?

It’s not fun to lose a job. It’s not fun to report on job losses. But it is easy to be fair and balanced — or at least attempt to — in news reports that should at least explain the ‘why’ behind the cuts.

Readers don’t have to agree with or love the strategy, but they should be allowed to decide without media influence. But perhaps that’s why we’re getting such one-sided coverage. The argument in favor of the cuts makes sense to Americans, and the media doesn’t want us siding with the Trump administration they seem to loathe so sincerely.

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