Thursday, January 10, 2019

Media Consensus

     Sometimes it all seems just too terribly clear:

     After Tuesday night’s debacle in the Oval Office, television network executives should be spending the day in their spacious offices practicing a simple word: No.

     No, Mr. President, you may not break into prime-time programming to fundraise and mislead.

     They’ll need to practice because you can be sure that the request will come again. And again.

     Believe it or not, it gets even worse:

     I wouldn’t suggest, for a moment, that network television and the rest of the mainstream media should ignore what the president says. That would be irresponsible, not to mention impossible.

     Especially with 800,000 federal workers bearing the brunt of an unnecessary government shutdown, there is inherent news value in what’s going on. News organizations are rightly focused on that, including on the president’s attempts to justify it.

     But broadcasting him live and unfiltered — whether in an Oval Office speech, or an impromptu news conference, or at a campaign rally — has been a bad idea for quite some time.

     Instead, whatever news is produced can be presented in context with facts woven in from the start: Truth first.

     Now, no one expects the famously Leftist Washington Post to approve of a Trump initiative ferociously opposed by the Dishonorable Charles Schumer (D, Himself) and his ilk. But what Margaret Sullivan is suggesting in her op-ed is so radical a departure from actual news reportage that there’s no comparison outside such socialist paradises as Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea – and in those garden spots the media are under government compulsion to deny a platform to its opponents.

     And she’s not the first:

     On Monday night, CNN host Don Lemon suggested that perhaps President Trump's planned immigration speech should be delayed so that monitors can go through and edit it before it's aired to the American people. CNN and some other networks made a big show on Monday about whether or not they would air the speech at all, but in the end, decided they will run the president's remarks live on Tuesday night.

     So we have two respected (by some persons) media figures, employed by two nationally distributed organs, arguing that the President of the United States should not be permitted to communicate with the general public, except as filtered and edited by them! Could any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch imagine even for an instant that their attitude is not generally shared by the Legacy Media?

     Do any of you doubt that that attitude is equally strongly held by the operators of Google, Facebook, and Twitter?

     It’s not treason or sedition. It’s something even worse: a step toward an American Ministry of Truth.

     President Trump has spoken persuasively of the crisis of illegal immigration our weakly controlled southern border allows. The Border Patrol confirms his factual citations. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau does so as well. The directors of those agencies are agreed that a physical barrier along that border is necessary, if not sufficient, to stem the tide. Yet there’s an even bigger crisis looming: one which President Trump has not yet publicly addressed.

     That bigger crisis is the ongoing, malice-aforethought attempt to prevent data and sentiments that displease the Left, and their handmaidens in the Legacy Media, from being expressed where others can access them.

     In the age of the Internet, one would think that owing to its design such data and sentiments could not be censored effectively. However, the emergence of Internet giants that offer “free” communications services of high convenience has altered the equation. Too many persons are too dependent on the services those giants offer. As they appear to have been colonized and conquered by the Left, which bends its efforts toward all media of communication and interplay, we face a serious problem: a chokehold on our interactions that’s becoming progressively (pardon the pun) more constricting every day.

     Alternatives to the giants are desperately needed. This is especially the case with the Internet payments processors, which the Left has used to bludgeon free-expression alternatives such as Gab until it’s barely able to hold on. But of course to get established requires money, and therefore the (passive) cooperation of an existing payments processor. But the Left has succeeded in cowing Amex, MasterCard/Visa, and Discover nearly as effectively as it’s conquered Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

     This crisis is at least as large and threatening as the tide of illegal immigrants. But as usual, answers to the key questions:

  1. What can be done about it?
  2. Who is to do it?

     ...are hard to come by. Some of the suggested courses, such as closely regulating the Internet giants to ensure political neutrality in their provision of services, have unpleasant, far-reaching implications for free expression and freedom of commerce. That a great many Americans regard them as worth trying is somewhat chilling.

     A fellow on Gab has just suggested that citizens opposed to this trend can and should take personal action:

     Hey fam, how about we all pull our money out of the big banks and put it into credit unions, and then only use cash & checks to pay for everything from now on? Maybe we can weaken just a little bit the stranglehold that the credit card companies have and their ability to suppress free expression? Just spitballing here.

     I have no better ideas at the moment. Does anyone else?


Linda Fox said...

It would be difficult to do this, although not impossible. Even credit unions have the ability to issue debit cards, which use your own funds to pay for purchases.

I'm on board. The biggest advantage is that this could be a test case for the strength of the Liberty-Lovers. The down side is that many credit unions are controlled by Leftists (such as Union-affiliated ones).

But, yeah, sure. I have little problem with this. And, I'm like a lot of old fogies - I have considerable cash lying around, which would make this hurt.

furball said...

Fran, please read the following from today's Jewish World Review:

An appeals court ruled that an elected official can't silence a useer on a social media account set up to assist that official's job. But reading the article, it seems to imply that a dog-catcher from [insert name of small city here] could set up accounts and channels on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter and neither he - nor anyone else - could edit or delete anything posted there? And if Facebook (for example) tried to leave an "objectional" post from a "constituent" but ban the user, that would probably go to court.

I haven't thought this oot at all, but I read the JWR article shortly after yours and just thought I'd give you something to read.

Linda Fox said...

Just read the Margaret Sullavan post - what a tool! The fact is, most people would agree with his position, and the reasoning behind it. That's what the Leftists fear - that is they can't be in a position to TELL you what the Bad Man said, you might actually think for yourself.

The Horror!


Orwell wrote "1984" as a warning; the Left views it, and Huxley's drug-and-sex-distracted "Brave New World" as manuals.

They have LONG known Rules 1 and 2:
1. It doesn't matter what's true, it's what you can get people to believe.
2. If you control the information flow, you control what people believe.

Except now, Trump uses twitter and such to go around the gatekeepers, and they CAN'T STAND IT.

Linda Fox said...

If anyone else wants to get on board with this: