Calling Out the Propaganda Media

The reputation of American journalism has reached all time lows. CNN ratings have been flushed down the proverbial toilet. It’s media maven, Brian Stelter, a reasonable facsimile of the Pillsbury dough boy, wrote a book that failed to sell. The New York Times has become a propaganda organ for the Democratic Party, as have, more menacingly, social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. 

Dare we say that we applaud those Congresspeople who have voted to break up the social media monopolies. And that we disdain the Republicans who have taken to defending them. It takes a special kind of stupid for Republicans to defend the monopoly status of corporations that, if anything, are doing their best to destroy Republicans. 

Today, Jack Dorsey might be willing to pay lip service to Twitter’s dereliction in suppressing the Hunter Biden scandal before the election, but using a media platform to influence an election feels an awful lot like making a campaign contribution. Naturally, no one in the Justice Department is looking into this-- which tells us the extent to which the media has become a corrupt propaganda with the connivance of government authorities.

So, while we are all inveighing against Communist Party control over the media in China, we ought to look a little closer to home. If we did we would figure out that our press is free in name only.

Of course, some voices on the American left-- voices that have manifested considerable courage-- have called out the leftist media for completely compromising its principles. We have followed them whenever possible, because we ought to praise those who have stood up against their fellow leftists. We should praise integrity, wherever we find it.

Among them, is Glenn Greenwald. As you know, this gay British socialist has now been excoriated by the political left for the high crime of consorting with Fox News. 

He has been undeterred. In the unkindest cut of all, he recently declared that CNN and MSNBC have become worse than Fox News. The following is from The Daily Mail:

Firebrand journalist Glenn Greenwald has slammed mainstream media outlets including CNN and MSNBC for their 'dangerous' failure to investigate important issues while praising Fox News as the only channel willing to present differing opinions.

Greenwald launched his attack in an appearance on Aidan McLaughlin's podcast The Interview, saying: 'I do think that the Trump-era has transformed liberal outlets like CNN and MSNBC in a way that I do think makes them worse than Fox.' 

He said that during the Trump presidency, mainstream media outlets began to put more faith into security agency reports, and have not done their due diligence to investigate contrary claims.

'Mainstream media outlets are far too reliant upon and trusting of the security state agencies that exist in order to deceive and manipulate the public, and to disseminate propaganda and lies,' said Greenwald, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Edward Snowden NSA leaks in 2014. 

And then, Greenwald takes out after the NeverTrump resistance:

'To watch these Bush-Cheney operatives - like Nicole Wallace and Matthew Dowd and so many other ones, the Lincoln Project scumbags, but also all those security state operatives like Michael Hayden ... or John Brennan, who was working with the CIA, and especially the neocons who were the worst of the worst from that perspective - like Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jen Rubin, Max Boot - now be turned into icons and leaders of American liberalism,' he said. 

'I can't find the words for how damaging and stunning that is.'

And then, Greenwald had previously said this, a few months ago:

'A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance,' he wrote in February.

'They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers...so settle on this penny-ante, trivial bulls*** — tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing.'

'These examples of journalism being abused to demand censorship of spaces they cannot control are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle.'

He added: 'They do it in part for power: to ensure nobody but they can control the flow of information. They do it partly for ideology and out of hubris: the belief that their worldview is so indisputably right that all dissent is inherently dangerous “disinformation.” 

'And they do it from petty vindictiveness: they clearly get aroused — find otherwise-elusive purpose — by destroying people’s reputations and lives, no matter how powerless.'

Consider that last to be a startling accusation. The leftist propaganda media lights are out destroying people’s reputations and lives because it makes them feel empowered, and because it arouses them. Seriously?

The fault, he continues, lies in Democratic Party political operatives who threaten the social media giants into canceling whomever they want to cancel. Recently, YouTube removed a discussion with Dr. Robert Malone, the man who created the technology that is at work in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines-- because they did not accept that he might have some authority to speak about the vaccine. 

One notes that Malone considers the vaccines experimental and does not recommend them for everyone. This runs completely counter to the Biden administration push to vaccinate everyone. Ergo, YouTube deplatforms him, for having a contrary opinion-- an expert opinion, dare we say.

Dare we note that we do not know anything about vaccines, and so do not offer an opinion. We do favor open public debate, something that the American left and their satraps in the media, mainstream and social, are now actively opposing.

The fact that these platforms are imposing groupthink on the American people is terrifying. And you were worrying about media constraints in China.

Greenwald continued:

He has also called out Facebook for censoring posts about the COVID vaccine, telling FOX News host Tucker Carlson in February that the social media giant did not want to take down posts about the vaccine, but did it due to pressure from liberals.

'They would rather stay as far away from censoring and arbitrating and intervening and kicking people off their platforms - not because they are noble or nice, but it's in their best interest not to do it,' he said.

'They are being pressured to do it. By CNN and NBC and The New York Times who are saying: every time you allow information over the platform that we think is wrong, we're going to shame you, disgrace you.

'And they have partners who are the Democratic Party who control the entire government were right or along with them, saying we demand you censor more.'

As you might guess, Greenwald is hardly a Trump supporter. For the record, we include a paragraph to that effect from the Daily Mail:

Some liberals have since called him [Greenwald] out for his remarks in recent months, claiming he must support former President Donald Trump, despite calling Trump a 'game show host and a charlatan, a real estate salesman' who 'ended up being a weak president, incapable of doing much of what his rhetoric suggested he intended to do' in the interview this week.

Like it or not, Greenwald counts today among the leading voices on the American left calling out the media for having become a propaganda machine.