by Don Surber
In my previous life as a newspaperman, I was rather smug about the First Amendment. The press pleasured itself about its support of a free speech. It stood up to allow Nazis to rally in Skokie, Illinois.
But that was last century. In this benighted century, the press has become insufferable HOA presidents who want the power to silence people in the name of freedom. All you have to do is call someone a liar to get him censored. It is the equivalent of calling a SWAT team on a neighbor.
But the First Amendment and the God-given rights it protects are not dead. New champions have arrived because nature hates a vacuum and Americans hate a censor.
The new guys replace the ink-stained wretches of the Fourth Estate. The new guys arrive just in time to sweep the press from burning the Constitution, just as Cubs outfielder Rick Monday ran in and saved The Flag from being burned in the outfield of Dodger Stadium. It was voted the greatest play in baseball history. The Dodgers later traded for Monday.
But first things first. Let us review the situation now as the Fourth Estate pours lighter fluid on the Constitution.
One month after Republicans nominated Trump in 2016, the New York Times — through a column by Jim Rutenberg — declared an end to objective journalism.
“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?
“Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, non-opinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”
On and on he droned as he pretended he was taking the high road into the sewer of censorship.
He ended the piece,
“It would also be an abdication of political journalism’s most solemn duty: to ferret out what the candidates will be like in the most powerful office in the world.
“It may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s definition of fairness. It is journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”
Rutenberg spoke for NYT because it abandoned its long standing tradition of allowing conservatives to give their opinion through opinion columns. We know that because after the paper ran a column by Senator Tom Cotton, it fired the editor who ran it.
There is only one truth in Oceania and it is enforced by the Ministry of Truth. Its list of lies since the election of Donald Trump as president reflects the fascism of a deep-state government using corporate America to do the things the state cannot.
The lies the press ran include:
- The lie that Putin fixed the 2016 election for Trump.
- The lie that ivermectin is just a horse medicine.
- The lie that the riots of 2020 were peaceful protests.
- The lie that the 2020 election was on the up-and-up.
- The lie that a protest in the Capitol was an insurrection.
Hundreds of other lies are out there. Any disagreement gets you banned online and eventually the deep-state and the corporations will turn conservatives into non-persons who cannot bank or even get an Uber driver as finger swipes replace credit cards.
But there is hope. I abandoned my Google blog for Substack because Google kept demonetizing (and occasionally deleting) posts. So far, so good.
As journalists abandoned their principles, others have stepped into the void to protect free speech. Elon Musk has become the savior of open debate online. He bought Twitter, which served the deep-state in censoring stories such as Hunter’s laptop. Your tax dollars went to Twitter to censor you.
Musk succeeded Jack Dorsey, the censoring CEO of Twitter. Before the sale was completed, Dorsey lamented in a tweet,
“the days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing. centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet.
“I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.”
Journalists call those the days when the Internet was the wild, wild west — as if that were a bad thing. I get Dorsey’s remorse. The power to censor is overwhelming and toxic. I hope he recovers, finds and marries the woman of his dreams and they have babies by the litter like a cat.
Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswamy stand up to the press.
Trump’s latest escapade was comical. In situations where a pack of reporters cannot cover a candidate’s event, a pool of reporters select one reporter to cover the story and share his notes with everyone. He made the reporters whine on Sunday.
Donald Trump’s campaign refused to agree to let an NBC News correspondent travel with him on New Hampshire campaign stops today as the designated pool reporter, leading to access being cut off for the day.
According to a pool report obtained by Deadline, correspondent Vaughn Hillyard was informed “that if he was the designated pooler by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day.”
“After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the events, NBC News was informed at about 2:20 pm ET that the pool would not be allowed to travel with Trump today,” the pool report stated.
It’s believed by sources at the network that the campaign refused to allow Hillyard in the pool because of his questions on Saturday to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a Trump surrogate, about the E. Jean Carroll case. A jury last year found Trump liable for sexual assault of Carroll and later defaming her, and a trial is currently taking place in New York largely to determine additional damages.
“Do you believe E. Jean Carroll?” Hillyard asked.
Stefanik said, “They are all witch hunts against Donald Trump and the reason is he is pulling ahead of Joe Biden.”
She seemed to be irritated by the question and added, “The media is so biased. This is just another example of the media being out of touch.”
The story shows press bias. Where is the statement from Trump that he banned the reporter over a question? He has for some time criticized NBC and its MSNBC attack dog. Trump does not have the right to pick and choose the pool reporter, but then again, there is no right to access either.
Maybe I would feel more empathy if reporters had not cheered when Dorsey kicked Trump off Twitter.
Free speech isn’t always pretty. I don’t think skin tone kept her out of that beauty contest.
This goes beyond politics and spills over into something important, the UFC — Ultimate Fighting Championship — founded and run by Dana White. Back when White was starting out, no one would give him a venue for his matches. Donald Trump did. And White is grateful.
He also is a defender of free speech. Collin Rugg, co-founder of Trending Politics, tweeted an exchange between White and a Canadian reporter:
Reporter: You obviously give a long leash to your fighters about what they can say… you are getting into territory of homophobia, transphobia.
White: I don’t give anybody a leash. A leash? Free speech. To control what people say? Gonna tell people what to believe? I don’t fucking tell any other human being what to say, what to think. And there’s no leashes on any of ’em. What is your question?
Reporter: I was asking that question. I’ll move on though.
White: Probably a good idea. That’s ridiculous to say I give somebody a leash. Free speech, brother. People can say whatever they want and they can believe whatever they want.
The video is a little longer and worthy of your time.
The news media’s capitulation to the deep state comes at a price called credibility. Modernity News reported:
Cover him fairly. Cover the facts. Report the truth. Then maybe, just maybe, you might have a personal discovery that your “belief” was wrong all along and your honest reporting revealed the truth. But, that’s not what the left (and the Ministry of Propaganda IS the left) seeks to accomplish. Their version of “journalism” is to create the reality the left wants and needs.
Journalism’s job is to reveal the facts that most people don’t get the opportunity to see. Like Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden’s corruption, for instance. Or Trump’s Presidential successes. It’s not their job to prop up a failing political party that has been taken over by a degenerate ideology. But they’ve decided that without their propaganda, their party of choice, one chosen out of tradition rather than merit, will utterly collapse. If the truth were told about the Democrats, they would be rendered down to their far leftist elitists who depend so completely on their useful idiots.
By telling people that, while you’re still free to do so.
Since you mentioned being free, you might want to look at what’s coming out of our “elite” colleges. It’s not the “right” or Trump to be concerned about. The Ivy league is producing a high percentage of those believing we have too much freedom.
You mean “by LYING“.
Both he and Sean Strickland do not take American prisoners from the woke media.
This guy has obviously taken too many hits to the head and wasn’t too bright to begin with.
Where is he wrong?
Intended to say any prisoners, not American
You’re not witnessing the rise of free speech. You’re witnessing the rise of stupid speech, enabled by social media. People are losing the ability to think analytically and to think for themselves. They’re being herded together into social media mind-control corrals for more effective manipulation. The average IQ has dropped more than two points since the coming of digital social media. It will continue to do so. Freedom of speech won’t matter when no one is capable of thinking outside of their assigned boxes.
Riiiigggght. From the person who bought into Russian collusion for years. The same person who claims this one is a purveyor of facts. You are already in a box.
The old MAGA geezers who post here continually rail against the supposed disappearance of critical thinking among the young, but older Boomers seem to be the most easily duped by the most transparently bogus bullshit imaginable. I know that they see themselves as deep critical thinkers, but the reality is far, far, far from that. They push conspiracy after conspiracy, flying in the face of easily-demonstrated facts.
Such as?
Yeah, like those who believe you can just select your gender and change it from day to day. Like those who believe we can bring in 30 million people that cannot sustain themselves and not suffer a financial burden. Like those who believe we can just do without the police. Like those who believe Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden got 81 million votes. Like those who believe there is no evidence of Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden’s corruption.
The left has chosen to lower its IQ. It is a prerequisite for supporting Democrats.
When Trump first ran, if reporters wanted to ask him questions, he’d stay and answer them all.
Once he was president, he’d have press conferences often.
When he did he outlasted the reporters, answering every question until they were all out of questions.
Not so with joe.
Joe has gone weeks, even months between press conferences.
Even when he has one, it usually ends after only a couple of canned questions by him turning away and heading for a door.
What happens when reporters surprise joe with a question not on his approved list?
He turns into an a$$hole.
Witness: