From Distortion to Farce

The American News Media in the Past 8 Years

I was an undergraduate in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected. I did not vote for him but (like basically everyone I knew) I was not enthusiastic for a Hillary Clinton presidency. I remember his initial moves in office being encouraging: a proposed infrastructure bill, some interesting cabinet appointments, a new and exciting relationship with the academic and nonprofit parasite that suck many billions of dollars from the citizens through its benefactor, the government.

Very quickly the media took an adversarial and often dishonest attitude toward Trump, which persisted for his entire presidency. The Russia collusion hoax is only the most notable example of this stance (others being gross misquotes and specious allegations of racism).

The journalists covering that election continuously represented his voters as baffling and misled creatures, often insinuating that racism and xenophobia were primary motivators (on the basis of almost no evidence). I knew many Trump voters and NONE of them were apparently motivated by racism. I thought this was odd and an illustration of the detachment these journalist and commentators maintained, living completely separately from regular people living in the exurbs.

in 2020 COVID hit and the media failed to publicize the current science on the possible origins of the virus, and the data on masking, and the possible policy implications of shutting down schools and businesses… for years in some cases.

In 2020 a wave of civil unrest inflamed in America’s cities. The media crafted a dishonest and sensationalistic narrative about police violence and racism, and fed this emotional script with each new incident, regardless of how awkwardly it fit or what the actual circumstances were. They persisted in this for several years… until the fickle public eye roved elsewhere. The (misdiagnosed) problem is no bigger or smaller than it was in any year for the past two decades, yet we never really hear about it any longer. Strange, no?

Meanwhile the dozens of people killed by civilians in this unrest, not to mention the billions of dollars of property burned to ash, were granted very little attention. Similarly situated were mass shootings, a tragic constant in American life these days it seems. If the shooter was a disaffected young autist or a racist or some inscrutable or hostile white man the coverage was widespread. In cases where the shooter was black or trans or anti-Trump the coverage was generally more muted and ideological motivations are barely discussed. In some cases we could watch the shift in real time, as news emerged that a shooter was anti-police or non-binary the narrative would suddenly change course and on-air discussion would quickly disappear.

Conversely, skyrocketing and sustained urban violent crime rates after the summer of 2020 received very light coverage, despite it affecting many hundreds of times more people.

As increasingly drastic and naive policies for bail reform, decriminalization, and police defunding were enacted (with frankly horrible-but all too predictable-results) again… the media was largely silent.

Information emerged that the intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement organizations colluded with the White House and tech companies to suppress thousands of American citizens’ voices, sometimes ruining their careers and livelihoods, often in support of dishonest claims. This information was spottily covered and treated with skepticism by the legacy media.

The increase in young people presenting with symptoms of gender dysphoria has increased exponentially. There are now over 100 youth ‘gender clinics’ in the United States-whereas 20 years ago they simply didn’t exist. Tens of thousands of minors have been prescribed experimental sex hormones or given surgery, despite there being no firm evidence of any long-term psychiatric benefit (including in suicidality statistics). As this massive legal and medical and ethical change has swept across America (and tangential changes have seen biological males placed in women’s prisons and athletic competition) the media has reacted with silence or rank dishonesty. You will simply not hear this issue debated or see a critic honestly quoted on this issue in the media between 2016-2023. Such a thing does not exist.

Our immigration system is in total collapse. Our Southern border is effectively open for penetration by masses of people seeking work or bearing diseases, or planning terrorism, or dedicating themselves to criminal careers. THAT is the point (and the reason the Hispanic voting districts along the border have shifted toward Trump by 20-30 points): we have no idea who is entering. If this is a policy goal it is strange that no one will openly advocate for it. If it is a policy failure why is the media rarely mentioning it?

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I could go on and on… I could write hundreds of pages in this account, providing encyclopedic supporting data in support of the idea that our media has a serious problem. They grew an audience around criticizing Trump, and this (along with other hiring decisions and changes in their revenue-gathering avenues) deformed their coverage. This deformation persisted into Biden’s presidency and now it has been exposed for the tragic farce that it is.

I want to pose some hypotheticals: imagine that there was credible evidence of Biden cabinet members donating to Antifa members who then went on to commit arson and assault. Would this be fairly covered, do you think? If members of the administration were caught, on video, admitting to manipulating the public with lies do you think this breaking news would actually break… or would it be restricted to the world of Substack and independent YouTube creators and conservative media outlets? If it emerged that Biden cabinet members had communicated between one another saying they wanted an open border as a long-term political strategy… how many shows and papers would break this story? If you think the media would treat these (made up) scandals fairly consider the many mega stories I already listed, and the hundreds more that I did not.

The divide between media representations and reality has now become glaring and impossible to deny as the fact of Biden’s rapid degeneration becomes obvious. It is equally obvious that this has been going on for some time… and yet the commentariat has barely reported on it. Certainly the voices who have raised the issue have been outnumbered by those who have denied and minimized. Remember: there is an entire press corps of dozens of elite full-time journalists who stay on site at the White House and accompany the president to speeches and conferences. The media has quickly pivoted to feign shock and indignation but very few spectators are buying this. Several days ago I wrote:

Biden is now a kind of frightening zombie politician, stripped of agency and coherence and babbling mistruths and deflections and empty promises. His presence now can only elicit a grimacing sorrow… or rage. Rage that this elderly puppet has proudly assumed a mantle of collapsed border and hollowed-out cities and institutional rot. In his senile conceit he is operating purely by reflex: grin, joke, exclaim, boast. It all rings hollow because whatever intelligence lay behind those eyes is fading quickly. For our sins we have been given a shambling and immoral incarnation of gerontocracy, corruption, and elite hypocrisy.

Remember: for YEARS now the media has completely suppressed and ignored the mounting failure of public schools. They have mostly downplayed the disastrous situation on our Southern border. They misrepresented and sensationalized (and then forgot) the issue of police training and violence. They attacked a film (The Sound of Freedom, 2023) for being “Q-Anon adjacent” simply because it shone a sorrowful spotlight on the issues of sexual trafficking and child abuse. They have routinely misrepresented quotes and events and decisions to create the appearance of racism or threat or violence when it simply did not exist. They have completely ignored the holocaust of young black men dying in our cities. Why? Why have they done all of this? This events and films and facts are not convenient for their narrative. They will make their journalists uncomfortable and might upset their viewers will be resisted by editors… and so they are quietly memory-holed… or never honestly reported at all. We are the first society in history in which free and educated people have brainwashed themselves, have erected a massive structure of sentiment- and prejudice- and delusion-driven propaganda production.

Unfortunately reality is changing quickly. As soon as you decide to base your ideas and decisions upon an ideology reality begins to separate from that ideology and the belief system’s rigidity requires more and more violence or seduction or dishonesty to maintain its integrity in the face of facts-which are apparent to everyone. It is shocking to me that there are still millions of people who treat MSNBC or CNN as honest brokers of information (or who are so consumed by anger or resentment that they effectively do not care) but I am sure that there are fewer and fewer every day.

If the media companies were intelligent they would expose themselves and attempt a drastic repentance and rebranding tour. They would see their viewership spike. They simply can’t do this though. This contradicts their worldview and their self-image, and so they will continue to massage and distort information as it appears. That’s the other thing about ideology: it doesn’t just corrode your worldview, but also your soul.

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