One thing I’ve wondered a lot about in all of my years of writing about American political media is why the likes of The New York Times and NBC News don’t simply admit that they’re biased. They don’t bother to hide it anymore, so why insist upon carrying on with the nonpartisan journalist charade?
OK, part of it is that the dinosaur media types don’t realize that we’re in the 21st century and that the world is moving on. They still view themselves as if they’re in a 1940s movie and wearing porkpie hats that have cards that read “Press” stuck in the hatbands. The anachronistic yearning is more about nostalgia for the power they used to have than anything else.
The mainstream media hacks have been awful for decades, but have gotten exponentially worse now that they’re all chronic sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome. They’re serial abusers of their First Amendment rights, wrapping themselves in the Constitution while doing everything they can to unravel the fabric of the Republic.
There was a trick I noticed happening a lot in the early days of the first Trump administration, which I would frequently point out in columns then. I haven’t written about it much lately, but my good friend and partner in thought crime Stephen Green caught The Washington Post in the act and wrote about it yesterday:
“Not trying to create hysteria,” one worried mom sent out to the others, according to a Sunday report in the Washington Post. “They are in Forest Hills right now in full tactical gear and children are being left behind.”
The story continued: “As concern grew, neighbors lined the block. An elected official jetted to the Forest Hills playground. Immigration attorneys handed out know-your-rights cards in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole to any nannies they could find.”
It isn’t until after four solid paragraphs of teeth gnashing and hand-wringing that the paper admits that no such thing happened. There were no ICE agents, in or out of full tactical gear. No nannies were targeted. No child was left behind.
Wait, wut?
Yes, the fifth paragraph consists of a single line negating everything that came before it, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials later told The Washington Post that agents had not targeted nannies at that playground nor any other in the District this week.”
That’s the formula for our intrepid journalist class: Incendiary, misleading headlines across all media platforms that are refuted later in the article. This happens a lot. The big reveal always comes in the fourth or fifth paragraph. That gives them time to gin up the emotion with falsehoods.
These aren’t just cases of burying the lede for effect. They know that no one reads the whole article anymore, so they’re using headlines to create and perpetuate false narratives, and then sneaking in a kernel of truth to provide themselves a little cover. It’s akin to a trial attorney saying something inflammatory even though he knows the judge will order the jury to ignore it. The damage can’t be undone.
I mentioned that no one reads the whole article anymore, but it’s worse than that when it comes to the false narrative machines. When WaPo or The New York Times links to an article on X, they can editorialize in the tweet/post/whatever, safe in the knowledge that most people will never even click to get to the article, let alone read it.
It’s easier than it’s ever been for the professional liars in the American legacy media to be horrible. Fortunately, people like me and my colleagues are able to be a lot louder when we’re calling them horrible.
My efforts to turn up the volume will be unceasing.
NYT and WaPo need to be on the racks next to check-out at grocery stores, like the National Enquirer and whatever other gossip rags still exist.
With the NYT’s and WP the Tabloids are more truth and especially the Weely World News and Bat Boy