George Rebane
Equity is the enemy of liberty.
In the days of yore we had a national institution called the Fourth Estate – professional journalism. It was staffed by reporters taught by their editors to be ‘curious, hard-bitten skeptics’, always seeking alternative sides to what they were being told. In a recent piece (here) by national columnist Gerard Baker, “The good reporter doubted whatever he was told, even what time it was. He’d weigh competing accounts and explanations and actively seek out alternative versions. Read the bios of great reporters from the past and they’ll be scattered with adjectives like ornery and insubordinate.”
More than ever, today the country is faced with major crises, manufactured and managed in the media – Covid pandemic, open borders, unbounded debt, preventable man-made climate change, catastrophic crime rates, race relations, CRT school curricula, accelerating dumbth of the electorate, rogue ‘deep state’ departments destroying businesses and lives, retreat of US hegemony, and on and on. In any sense of the word, facts about these are no longer reported. “‘Reported’ is a misnomer. They aren’t facts; (instead) they are sacred revealed truths, unchallengeable arguments invested with epistemic certainty and moral clarity.”
“Journalism is no longer about trying to tell us what happened; it’s about telling us what we must believe, on pain of moral peril. On every major topic, … every story blares out at us with censorious didacticism, the journalist’s smug disdain for the unbelievers pouring through (their) prose.” (Full disclosure – as declared here years ago, I am NOT a journalist.)
With journalism in the bag, it didn’t take long for other national institutions to corrupt everything that they were supposed to inform us about. Everything coming out of our law enforcement agencies, public health institutes, justice departments, the judiciary, legislatures, environmental bureaus, commerce, elected politicians, …, everything they declared, stated, published, etc had a short half-life as truth. Many of the lies today are so blatant that they scarcely last through the news making interview.
Leaders in this downfall are what we here label as the lamestream media. These are broadcast, internet, and hardcopy outlets that overwhelmingly toe the Left’s progressive narrative, and serve as the reliable trumpet of the Democratic National Committee and leadership elites. They package and embellish only the part of the news that serves to cement leftwing talking points du jour. This is easy to tell from both these pages and simply comparing news items (no matter how reported) from both rightwing and leftwing outlets. As the liberals here daily confirm, the lamestream covers only a subset of items that are found on rightwing outlets like Fox, Newsmax, OAN, Epoch Times, and associated websites.
(The latest tactic to assure that the future generations of voters are compliant double dummies, anti-education Democrats, led by Oregon governor Kate Brown, who has now surreptitiously signed a law that makes reading and math proficiency optional for the state’s high school graduates. One can never have enough uncritical, true-believing constituents. I expect this initiative to be replicated in other Democrat led states – more here.)
Rightwing outlets, led by Fox, claim to be “fair, balanced, and unafraid” of the censorious Left and their rampant cancel culture. But unfortunately that also is not true. There is plenty of evidence that rightwing outlets have a healthy fear of political incorrectness and retribution. A timely example should suffice to spread the blame. MyPillow’s Mike Lindell is a longtime staunch Trump supporter, and a leader in the rightwing movement claiming that the 2020 election was stolen. Lindell is sponsoring a limited attendance 3-day Cyber Symposium in Sioux Falls that started today (more here). Almost every leftwing outlet of any stature has been dunning and denigrating the conference as another rightwing attempt to once more convince the country of the fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. Lindell has been a big advertiser on Fox News and also wanted to advertise his symposium on the network.
FN said no, and not only no, but it didn’t even include mention of this otherwise covered conference in its news broadcasts. For a change, you had to watch CNN and MSNBC to learn of Lindell’s latest effort to keep the election fraud pot boiling. Not only did FN’s news programs shun Lindell’s gathering, but so also did that king of conservative commentary on Fox, Tucker Carlson, “the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink.” Carlson has taken on the Left on some pretty controversial and damning issues. He advertises himself as being Mr Balls-to-the-floor himself when it comes to reporting what others hide. But Tucker has been too scared to even mention Lindell or simply report the massive vituperation thrown at him on the lamestream. This reflects poorly on Carlson and doubly so on his colleague Bret Baier, FN’s lead news anchor on their flagship news program. I am saddened by all this duck-and-cover fear in a network I used to hold in high esteem. (We’ll see what Tucker says tonight.)
Gerard Baker concludes his piece with – “The modern journalist is different. His primary ambition is to be part of the expert class, to identify as a member of the cultural elite, happily swaddled in all their shared nostrums. He’s most content when he’s wagging a finger at the selfish fools who continue to doubt climate extremism, express skepticism about vaccines, or deny their innate white sinfulness. … His virtue thus signaled, he luxuriates in the knowledge that he’s on the side of the chosen ones. It’s just a pity it’s no longer journalism.”
So, who are we supposed to believe today?
[Later] Neither Bret Baier nor Tucker Carlson on Fox News made mention of Mike Lindell's Cyber Symposium which continues for two more days.
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