Soon, they’ll make it illegal to criticize govt. if they’re not stopped.
“Stopping that” is what the 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan SCOTUS decision was about. It was a unanimous decision, with three justices wanting to go further. The Sullivan decision held that politicians, even judges, have a high bar to exceed in order to be able to sue for libel. That applies equally to Democrats and Republicans.But then, that is the same sort of “equal application” found in laws against sleeping under bridges - rich people don’t want or need to sleep under bridges, so the law’s applicability to them is moot. Likewise, a rule against suing for libel may apply - theoretically - to Democrats, but Democrats are never libeled. Whereas Republicans being libeled is a thing - indeed, a “Dog Bites Man” sort of thing.
The reason is that journalism’s emphasis on bad news creates a negative propaganda wind of criticism of society - and that inherently a pro-big-government message. Democrats are enthusiastic about big government (and the opportunities for graft inherent in it), so Democrats join themselves at the hip to journalism.
The reason “journalism” is ideologically unified is that
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776). . . and journalists “meet together,” virtually, via the AP “wire” (and any other news service). The resulting “conspiracy against the public, IMHO, is that journalists avoid the hard work of actually trying to be objective by forming a mutual admiration society in which a challenge to the objectivity of one is a challenge which will be met by all. Thus pro-Democrat propaganda is “objective,” don’t you know - and anti-Democrat reporting is “not journalism, not objective.”I see only one logical response: the wire services and the journalism outlets must be sued under antitrust law. Antitrust law was not raised at all in Sullivan, and therefore Sullivan would not constitute an adverse precedent in such a case.