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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies partisanship

Measures of Desperation

news media, bias, propaganda, PSYOP

Desperate times call for desperate measures, the saying goes, but since the Hillary Clinton/​Donald Trump contest of 2015 – 2016, the desperate measures that Democrats and media newsfolk lurched towards have been extraordinary.

Yesterday, as one of our Weekend Updates, we considered the current pickle in which the corporate news media finds itself. 

Fearing that they had contributed to the defeat of Hillary Clinton by covering the news of her emails and other scandals, corporate newsrooms cooked up a new ethical rule: Do not report on stories based on data — no matter if confirmed — that may have been leaked by foreign malefactors, such as “the Russians.”

With that rule they suppressed, online, news about the Hunter Biden laptop and its contents, calling it “Russian disinformation.” Twitter banned the news source long enough to get Biden elected, and then the “Russian” story unraveled.

Now that same rule would, if consistently applied, work against reporting on Trump’s current email leakage.

But it’s not just media malfeasance that is desperate, as Stephen Cox explains at Liberty. Referring to the ousting of Joe Biden from the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket, Mr. Cox writes that while this variety of machination is new to America, it is very old, historically: this is “the kind of thing the Roman imperial families used to do. This is the kind of thing the Bolsheviks used to do. The difference, of course, is that the Democratic Party oligarchs have lots and lots of money to enforce their will.”

Enforce it they do. Consider how many in the news media played along with Biden’s senescence, right up until they all proclaimed it obvious and disqualifying. They “turn on a dime.”

“Fragile regimes have a way of bringing the house down with them,” notes Cox. But why is it Trump who sends Democrats into paroxysms of terror?

Twenty years ago, Trump might have been dismissed out of hand. He isn’t now, and neither is Kamala Harris — a woman with all the charm of Hillary and all the competence of Sleepy Joe.

Desperate times, indeed. And Americans know it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Stephen Cox

Like the Bolshevik system, the power politics of America now operates on a program of total obedience and conformity.

Stephen Cox, “Biden and the Bolsheviks,” Liberty (July 28, 2024).
Categories
Today

Patriotism & Protest & Ousting

On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. Earlier, British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-​imperialist Herbert Spencer (pictured), “Patriotism” (Facts and Comments, 1902).

On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, a crucial event leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 1999, a mass rally of Serbians demanded the resignation of Slobodon Milosevic.

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Update

The News Media’s New Rule

fake news, congress, ministry of truth, censorship, illustration

The old rule of journalists and the motives of their sources: “All I care about ‘are the documents verifiable’ and ‘are they in their public interest.’” 

Now, says Glenn Greenwald — that is, after the 2016 election, in which journalists repented of their reporting that sure seemed to have helped defeat Hillary Clinton, their dearly beloved candidate — the rules have changed.

“As the 2020 campaign began approaching,” Mr. Greenwald related on System Update (#315), “and all of these institutions and establishment sectors were desperate to ensure Trump didn’t win a second term and Biden won instead, they did something that is now screwing them. And they deserve it so much because what they did was so corrupt. What they did was they announced that from now on, ‘even if we got in our hands material we that we know is authentic … and even if they are of great public interest, even if they shed enormous light on one of the two presidential candidates … if they believe it comes from a foreign country and it’s designed to influence our election.” Greenwald says this is a brand new rule. Journalists “radically revised” the rules of journalism to protect their candidates.

But now there is a dump of emails from the Trump campaign. Oh, how they would love to release them, promote them, comment upon them, etc. But their new rule means they cannot. 

That is, if they honor it in a non-​partisan way.

Place your bets now. Will they repudiate their rule and go back to doing journalism (and also helping their party), or will they stick to their new rule which usually (but not in this case) helps their candidates? 

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Thought

David Crockett

We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

Davy Crockett, Speech in the US House of Representatives on April 2, 1828, as quoted in The Life of Colonel David Crockett (1884) by Edward Sylvester Ellis.
Categories
Today

Nineteenth on the Eighteenth

On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women’s suffrage.