How Corrupt is a Corrupt Media?

The media has ceased to exist, and the public plods on by assuming as true whatever the media suppresses and as false whatever the media covers.

The current “media”—loosely defined as the old major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, the network news channels, MSNBC and CNN, PBS and NPR, the online news aggregators like Google, Apple, and Yahoo, and the social media giants like the old Twitter and Facebook—are corrupt.

They have adopted in their news coverage a utilitarian view that noble progressive ends justify almost any unethical means to obtain them. The media is unapologetically fused with the Democratic Party, the bicoastal liberal elite, and the progressive agenda.

The result is that the public cannot trust that the news it hears or reads is either accurate or true. The news as presented by these outlets has been carefully filtered to suppress narratives deemed inconvenient or antithetical to the political objectives of these entities, while inflating themes deemed useful.

This bias now accompanies increasing (and increasingly obvious) journalistic incompetence. Lax standards reflect weaponized journalism schools and woke ideology that short prior basic requisites of writing and ethical protocols of quoting and sourcing. In sum, a corrupt media that is ignorant, arrogant, and ideological explains why few now trust what it delivers.

Once a story is deemed antithetical to left-wing agendas, there arises a collective effort to smother it. Suppression is achieved both by neglect, and by demonizing others who report an inconvenient truth as racists, conspiracist “right-wingers,” and otherwise irredeemable.

The Hunter Biden laptop story is the locus classicus. Social media branded the authentic laptop as Russian disinformation. That was a lie. But the deception did not stop them from censoring and squashing those who reported the truth.

Instead of carefully examining the contents of the laptop or interrogating Biden-company players such as Tony Bobulinksi, the media hyped the ridiculous disinformation hoax as a mechanism for suppressing the damaging pre-election story altogether.

Sadly, even THIS article is out of date. It does not reflect the DRAMATIC SHIFT at Twitter since Elon Musk took charge. Here’s some of his tweets:

Twitter will not censor accurate information about anything.(https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588666492572553216?s=46&t=rccaOfsOn72-ezD1Mvd64w)

Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information in the world. That’s our mission. (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589413653190938624?s=46&t=rccaOfsOn72-ezD1Mvd64w)

There’s MANY more such consistent tweets about FREEDOM of the press, etc. I suggest going to Elon Musk’s Twitter posts and reading all his Tweets and Replies since he took charge. AMAZING!

Ping! Out to the Victor Davis Hanson list

Here are the "Chapters" in this excellent article:

Suppression

Fantasy

Chronological Manipulation

Asymmetry

Unethical Behavior

CNN Sums It Up

All fully documented by VDH. I am keeping this one close, to use when I get questions over the Christmas break.

FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR

Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall

American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness

His website: Victor Davis Hanson

Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.

As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.

Actually, there are laws against corrupt speech and corrupt publication. Those laws forbid slander, libel, and pornography, and they trace back to the founding era and before. They predate - and not legitimately touched by - the First Amendment.

In fact, the First Amendment was crafted not to touch such laws. Well, it would have been - making libel, slander, or pornography legal would have aroused fierce opposition in the 1790s, and the first ten amendments to the Constitution were proposed and ratified for no other reason than to eliminate controversy. Recall that the ratification of the Constitution was a close-run thing. And the Federalists - to whom ratification of the Constitution was a far higher priority than any thought any of them might have had about modifying libel law - had to promise the prompt inclusion of a bill of rights in the Constitution in order to get ratification of it.

“The” freedom . . . of the press” was understood by all to refer to freedom of the press as it already existed before the proposal, let alone ratification, of the Constitution. And that understanding was unchanged until in 1964 the Warren Court got its two cents in. Its justices held - unanimously, with some enthusiastic concurrences - that government officials couldn’t sue for libel without passing a high bar of proving “actual malice.” And ever since the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision was handed down, the corrupt publications which we call the MSM have been getting progressively worse.

I haven’t said anything which Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas haven’t said or implied, and if SCOTUS in its current configuration gets the right case, there is every reason to hope that Sullivan will be overturned. I certainly hope that Mr. Trump brings - is already bringing - that case. The MSM certainly continued to promote the “Russia collusion” hoax long after it had been officially debunked . . .

IMHO such a lawsuit would need to name the wire services and their members/subscribers individually, leaving the few innocent members of the wire services to argue their own innocence. And, IMHO, the wire services function as continuous virtual meetings of journalists - which, as Adam Smith noted, will always produce conspiracy against the public when performed by members of any trade, including journalism.

Well, you have to remember that about 93% of Americans are pretty damn stupid.

Yeah, yeah I know that almost all of them graduated from high school, but for about the last 40 years you could have graduated a carrot from high school as valedictorian!

Plus the fact that a high school graduate is on about the same level as a third grader (back to that carrot) now days.

STUPID PEOPLE ARE EASILY LED TO BELIEVE WHATEVER THEY ARE TOLD!

The more often it is repeated the easier they will believe it.

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