It used to be the 1st Amendment was not only a cherished institution held dear by those in the press, but something of a third-rail entity. There could be disagreements on issues, even of a divisive nature, but when it came to stifling expression and treading on areas that appeared to threaten free speech then the press would rise up in unison and declare that to be off limits.
Shockingly, this is no longer the case. We have seen a rise in the ranks of the press industry of those who actually call for the silencing of voices, both private and professional, and it is a disturbing development.
To see how far afield the media have drifted on this matter there are currently two cases of direct threats to the sanctity of the press, and in stark fashion we see the press taking conflicting positions on each instance. To grasp why this dichotomy of standards can exist we need only understand that the press corps that loves to cloak itself with a veneer of unbiased objectivity actually harbors deep partisanship, and this then becomes justification for the calling of some voices to be silenced
In one case we have the small-town weekly newspaper the Marion County Record that has been launched into the national spotlight due to a police raid on its offices and officers. Local authorities took possession of equipment from the offices, as well as at the private residence of the publisher, and the home of one of the founders in her 90s. (She passed away in the days following this episode, possibly due to the stress from the invasion.) The purpose behind this was supposedly over the issue of a local business owner being outed for having a DUI on their past record, something that precluded their being granted a business liquor license.
What was suspected as the motivation though was that the police chief had been under investigation by the paper over a separate issue, and the deeply questionable raid was shown to be a sham, as the paper had never reported on the DUI matter and that the information regarding the individual was obtainable through access to public records. The news of the raid quickly became a national cause.
A coalition of dozens of news outlets signed a letter of objection to the police chief of Marion County opposing the actions and calling for all materials to be returned. The prosecutor of Marion County has since rescinded the warrant on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
While this is a good and proper response to an oppressive use of force on a journalistic outlet, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press does not exhibit a similar stance on this matter in regard to another instance of a news outlet targeted to be silenced. Currently, the FCC is fielding a request from the group Media and Democracy Project, a supposedly non-partisan watchdog group, that calls for the broadcast license of Philadelphia television station WTFX to be pulled.
The call for this is based on the settlement emanating from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit. The rationalization is that the settlement becomes tantamount to an admission of broadcasting fraudulent information, which is not then in the public interest and in violation of FCC standards. But why this particular station, if the matter surrounds what took place at the Fox News Channel?
The issue is that the FCC does not govern cable networks but Fox owns more than two dozen local stations which are broadcast on public airwaves. This is within the authority of the FCC, and it is therefore looked at as a foot-in-the-door attempt; if it becomes successful in getting a Fox affiliate off the airwaves over disinformation broadcasts then the net might be cast even wider, and the entire Fox enterprise could become targeted.
This particular call to pull the station’s license is being backed by names such as Bill Kristol, one-time Fox executive Preston Padden, and former FCC head under George Bush, Alfred Sikes. What is most striking is that any news report you can find on this matter carries no complaint or criticism about the effort to go after a news outlet with the intent of silencing it. The media complex is apparently comfortable with a push to have the government silencing a disfavored news outlet, because of the fact that Fox does not adhere to the same narratives.
This follows suit where we have seen similar calls to silence opposition voices. Info Wars was deplatformed years ago after calls from the media circles rose up to have Alex Jones and his outlet muzzled. Emboldened by this action CNN’s Oliver Darcy began a call for cable and satellite providers to begin pulling Fox News and other right-leaning outlets from cable packages. The silencing of the New York Post over its accurate coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop was only greeted with the barest pushback from news operators.
Most in the press circles have provided little more than a shrug over the details of coordinated muting of voices seen in The Twitter Files. When a judge recently ruled that the Biden administration could no longer coordinate with social media providers over controlling content, some in the press opposed not the actions of the White House but of the ruling limiting their effort to limit free speech.
It used to be that the old maxim of “I might hate your speech but I’ll defend to the death your right right to speak it” was supported by most people and was uniformly held in the media. These days the very industry that operates on the 1st Amendment sees that natural right as an interpretational standard, one that they are charged with policing.
The case of the Marion County Record shows they understand the import of that right, and the case of the attack on Fox News shows they do not understand the threat to that right by not protecting all speech from all sources. Our media complex seems content to usher in the very threats to their own existence by electing to attack the rights that they rely upon. It is a suicidal position based entirely on partisan blindness.
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