As we have just crossed the midway point of 2023 it lead to me peering back and looking over the six months we already endured with the press complex. In January I had a podcast to start the year where I stated it could become a tough year for the press, as collectively news outlets and their journalists have been increasingly off-kilter in their work. In half of a year of activity, it has proven to be the case.
This displayed distemper has been a sign of diminishing influence as well as needing to cover for an administration the press worked to get elected and is now becoming a growing source of embarrassment. Were I a member of the hack major news outlets I would be breathlessly calling this “an emerging social trend”, a crutch they love to trot out to push some new narrative. But what I refer to as taking place is how desperation has led to the press taking positions most would have normally dismissed as repugnant.
As the year started we were embroiled in the controversy of the details exposed in The Twitter Files. Yet, “embroiled” is not entirely accurate; the press refusing to take those documents seriously precludes the use of that term. The exposure of a coordinated effort to silence the public in various ways has either left the press unbothered or defending the actions. An industry that subsists on the 1st Amendment is more than casual about the censoring actions on social media.
More than that, the exposure of the government coordinating these efforts has led to many in the press defending the government's actions. The manufactured threat of “misinformation” leads to the call to silence voices, and the press applauds these attempts. When a judge recently declared the White House cease from this practice some in the press decried the administration as the entity being denied free speech.
The media complex has shown itself to be fully in support of the trans movement, leading to a number of curious positions being staked out. The press today favors seeing biological males infiltrating female realms on the regular. They call for trans athletes to be accepted as women, after years of pushing for female access and Title-9 provisions to give females more opportunities. We repeatedly see trans females promoted in the military and government agencies, as well as Women Of The Year awards and even beauty pageants have males taking honors.
Decades of female empowerment and equal rights are becoming erased before our eyes in the name of acceptance and intolerance. Any woman who dares speak out - such as J.K. Rowling - in defense of the sanctity of womanhood is declared a monster in need of being canceled.
It used to be that shielding children from exposure of sexualized content was not only a norm, it was a third-rail type of issue where conversations halted. It was simply not done. Now the press is pushing for books with offensive content to be placed in school libraries. They defend drag shows performing sexualized acts in front of minors. Anyone who dares invoke the term “groomer” in relation to these lobbying efforts is pointed out as being the true danger to society.
These shifts in the moral standing of the press complex lead to deeply revealing contradictions unfolding. Recently the press which always seems to bray loudly about anti-Semitism was suddenly tepid on the matter when Rep. Primila Jayapal spoke in an unacceptable fashion about Jews. The bad actors in that instance were the Republicans who dared to speak out about her comments.
The hit movie “The Sound Of Freedom” was lashed out at as being a Q-anon conspiracy theory film, despite the fact that it was based on true events and shed light on the horrors of the child trafficking sex trade. Making the opposition to exposing this reality all the more disturbing was that the center of that story, real-life investigator Tim Ballard, had previously been hailed by this very same press corps for his heroic activities.
Jason Aldean is only the latest example. His song “Try That In A Small Town” has been called out for supposedly racist lyrics and the promotion of violence. The crux of his song is to call out the anti-social violence we have seen over the past few years across this country, violence that oftentimes is soft-peddled or excused away in the press. Why would a journalist be upset at someone being critical of activities like carjackings and spitting on police?
Making this Aldean outrage all the more asinine was the New York Times coming out in defense of a South African anthem literally titled “Kill The Boers”. Calling to cancel a country song where the lyrics never utter a racist or violent word is perfectly fine, and explaining why a politician singing a song promoting the murder of his citizens is acceptable is a paradox in the press over which they all nod their heads in agreement, treating these as normal results.
What is clear in all of this journalism dysphoria is that the press approaches every story anymore from a partisan position. The facts are secondary, and prior positions held on the same matter are dispatched depending on who is involved. Democrats acting in a previously unacceptable manner are excused and defended, and Republicans will inspire the press to take a contradictory stance to prior standards. This leads to news outlets promoting anti-social activities.
The recent news story in Nebraska of an 18-year-old mother charged with the death of her late-term baby was a shining example. The woman induced her own abortion, then burned the body and buried the remains to hide the action from the authorities. This repugnant behavior was covered by some in the press as a result of oppressive conservative abortion laws. The inability to call out the criminal behavior that would be seen as illegal in nearly every state exemplifies how so many members of the press approach things with a mindset of “Okay, who is doing these things?”
Right and wrong become secondary measurements. The political positions of the players are more important, and the coverage of the items is always weighed against the prevailing narratives. What is clear is that facts are not the priority, but the agenda is the focus. This leads to what we have seen playing out so far this year; we have a media complex operating with utter dysfunction.