As a 38-year-old American, I cannot recall a time in my adult life when the mainstream media peddled such blatant lies on a daily basis. As an amateur historian, I am also unaware of any period in modern American history in which the so-called news media routinely and unapologetically perpetuated falsehoods on such a grand scale.
Most Americans realize the mainstream media are biased. According to recent polls, Americans’ trust in mass media has hit all-time lows.
Before moving forward, perhaps we should review a few of the many lies perpetuated by the mainstream media over just the past few years.
Remember the years-long Russian collusion story that dominated the airwaves of CNN and MSNBC and the front pages of prominent newspapers such asThe New York TimesandUSA Today? Fake news. Never happened.
Remember the Covington Catholic High School story about a bunch of racist teenagers harassing an angelic Native American in Washington, DC a few years ago? Fake news. The opposite occurred.
Remember the bold-faced lie about Brian Sicknick being bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by a rabid mob of white supremacist insurrectionists? Fake news. Sicknick died of natural causes, due to two strokes, hours after the so-called insurrection. He was never hit with a fire extinguisher.
One more. Remember the tall tale about Georgia’s recently passed “Jim Crow 2.0” voting law? Fake news, again. The Georgia voting law has absolutely nothing do with Jim Crow and racism, but everything to do with ensuring electoral integrity.
I could go on and on, but the point is made.
So, why has the mainstream media abandoned all pretenses of political neutrality in favor of pushing lies?
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Well, it could certainly have something to do with the fact that the vast majority of those in the mainstream media (as well as those in high places in academia, Hollywood, and corporate America) unashamedly hold leftist views.
This is not a hypothesis. This is a fact.
Consider. As of 2014, a long time ago in today’s media environment, just 7 percent of journalists self-identified as Republicans.
The Media Research Council has prepared an exhaustive study on this subject, titled “The Liberal Media: Every Poll Shows Journalists Are More Liberal than the American Public — And the Public Knows It,” which unequivocally shows media members skew to the left side of the political spectrum.
So, the mainstream media lies relentlessly and most members of the mass media are leftists. What could go wrong? Sadly, everything.
The media, once referred to as the Fourth Estate, because it wielded such power and influence over society, has officially gone rogue.
The American media (and most of the international media for that matter) are wedded to leftist ideology. Instead of informing the public with the stone-cold truth, the modern mainstream media peddle narratives.
Of course, these narratives are not fact-based, but feelings-based. And these narratives fall under similar themes: systemic racism is everywhere, climate change will doom the world, “assault weapons” are the scourge of society, etc.
We also should keep in mind that mainstream “journalists” also exhibit their blatant bias by what they choose not to report on. We can call this bias by omission. A few examples: the current border crisis, the gang violence epidemic in urban America, the decline of the nuclear family throughout America, etc.
Over the past year, the mainstream media have arguably lost whatever smidgeon of credibility they had left. The mass media’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic has been downright abysmal.
This does not bode well for the “healing” and unification that our country desperately needs. Unless and until the mainstream media return to reporting the truth, based on facts, the American people will remain hopelessly divided and woefully misinformed.
Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is senior editor at The Heartland Institute.
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