George Rebane
Reading this morning’s (28apr22) Union, I was both startled and disappointed when I came to the paper’s weekly Hits & Misses column (here). Publisher Don Rogers usually places his contributions at the bottom, and there we saw –
MISS (from Publisher Don Rogers): To the kind of free speech as uttered by bullies, liars, abusers, propagandists, trolls, rumor-mongers, gossips and other asses lurking in social media, including the new owner of Twitter.
Now, it’s been no secret for decades that there is a great asymmetry between the reportage from our neighbors on the Left and Right. (The published literature on that could fill a library.) We have covered this phenomenon going on 15 years now. Recent leftwing journalistic atrocities include the multi-year unabashed and still ongoing reporting of the Great Russian Collusion for which there is not a shred of evidence. In a similar vein, material events of national importance are thoroughly buried in what is now correctly known as the lamestream media. An example of that is the Hunter Biden laptop scandal which revealed influence peddling that included payoffs to the “Big Guy” principal, now in the White House, whose influence was peddled.
Such evidence-free, evidence-hiding journalistic behavior is to be expected in the national press, but not so much from local outlets in markets where the writers and readers know each other. This is why I was surprised to read Don’s pre-emptive swipe at Elon Musk.
Readers may recall that I consider Don Rogers a respected friend, among the many I have on the port side. However, his published Miss is so out of character of the man I know on two counts. First, Musk’s stated intentions to open up Twitter to uncensored free speech should be welcomed by all who support our First Amendment, especially those who supposedly deal in ‘Truth’ as journalists claim in their code of ethics. And second, Musk has yet to do anything at Twitter that would justify anyone to categorize him on Roger’s list of misfit communicators. So why launch such a pre-emptive editorial attack that looks so much like gratuitous pandering to the county's growing progressive faction?
In expressing all this consternation, I am reminded that The Union is a privately owned enterprise, and has wide latitude in what kind of news and editorial content it is free to publish. I don’t think that the above Miss crossed any libel lines, but I do think that Don Rogers does step over the bounds of editorial prudence when he joins the ranks of the country’s leftwing lemming chorus, all howling their imagined portents of Elon Musk single-handedly about to bring American democracy to an end by opening up Twitter to free speech.
Addendum: Leftwing journalism cannot survive as a co-equal in an open market of ideas. In such an environment, collectivist thought withers away into a dry shell of an echo, infrequently encountered and never taken seriously by those open to the greater wash of ideas that inundate the public square. This is to be corroborated by the establishment of a very visible crutch that will henceforth support the already limping lamestream. The Biden administration will seek to ensconce a permanent Ministry of Truth (aka Disinformation Governance Board) to oversee and variously censor ideas, opinions, happenings, and facts that counter the neo-Marxist narrative of socialism that has become the dissonant chorus from the Left. (more here and here) The leader of these quenchers of free speech will be Nina Jankowicz, a renown incompetent in all but partisan zealotry, which she has demonstrated throughout her career (more here). This woman is the carefully chosen poster-child for fettered discourse in the land.
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