Posted on 10/25/2019 1:06:13 PM PDT by Louis Foxwell
The Media is a Threat to America
And it’s destroying the country.
Fri Oct 25, 2019
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
It’s always bad news for the media.
Verizon is looking to dump the Huffington Post. It’s the latest bad news for the industry in a year that has already seen over 7,200 job cuts across the media spectrum from digital to old-fashioned print.
Why should the rest of the country care about what’s happening to the media industry?
Same reason you should care about what happens when a crackhead can’t pay for his crack.
Like the proverbial crackhead, the media has two survival strategies: stealing and going crazy. These strategies are happening all around us and they’re wrecking the country worse than a million crackheads could.
Unable to make its business model work, the media turned to cannibalism. The print media began merging into bigger conglomerates, and, lately, the failing digital media has gotten merger fever. But the media can’t actually outgrow its problems, and the bigger organizations, after cutting jobs and outlets, still can’t make it work. But the mergers also spurred unionization in print and digital media. While the media bowed to political pressure and signed off on the unions, the costs are killing the media.
Unions aren’t just making it too expensive for the papers and sites they work for to operate, they’re also wiping out freelance journalism. The furor over AB5, a California law that makes it all but impossible for freelance journalists in the state to find work, pitted freelancers against unionized media members.
Personalities from unionized media outlets, the Los Angeles Times and Vox, defended AB5’s attack on freelance journalism. The debate soon boiled down to accusations of “scab” being hurled at freelancers.
While media unions are cannibalizing the outlets they work for and wiping out freelance journalism to protect their own jobs, they’re also cannibalizing the entire internet and social media by demanding that Facebook, Google, and other big tech companies, censor and suppress content from non-media sources. The media’s demand that companies embed their ‘fact checkers’ as gatekeepers is an assault on free speech, and is triggering anti-trust investigations of the tech companies that surrendered to the media.
That’s the stealing. Then there’s the craziness.
The impeachment push has the fingerprints of the corporate media all over it. Clinton cronies secretly laundered the Steele Report through their media contacts to provide the supporting “evidence” that was used in the FISA application. The origins of the Mueller investigation meanwhile, according to a former New York Times editor, go back to an illicit affair between Ali Watkins, a 26-year-old, and James Wolfe, the 57-year-old who headed security for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The affair was conducted with the full knowledge of Watkins’ bosses at the New York Times, BuzzFeed, and Politico. Another media affair case occurred earlier this month involving CNBC and a DIA analyst.
The media hates Trump, but it also loves clicks. And Trump has been very good for business.
The 'Trump Bump' has seen massive growth at the New York Times, and the Washington Post, which are also the outlets pushing impeachment the hardest.
"We’ve seen that anytime you break away from the Trump story and cover other events in this era, the audience goes away," CNN boss Jeff Zucker admitted. "Right now, Donald Trump dominates.”
The media’s 92% negative coverage of Trump serves a small slice of the country. But it’s a wealthy and engaged slice that will pay for subscriptions and engage with media content on a daily basis. The Dems, as a political party, spend all their time catering to this wealthy lefty fringe, and so does the media.
Follow the money to understand why every other word in the media is “impeachment”.
The media doesn’t actually want President Trump to go away. That would be economically devastating. And House Democrats know that they don’t have the votes for impeachment. That’s why they haven’t held a vote to begin impeachment proceedings. And why Pelosi has said that she isn’t planning to hold one. Instead, she’s giving the media what it wants, a circus of hearings that the industry can repackage as impeachment to its gullible audience that’s barely able to get through the day without crying jags.
This scam isn’t a victimless crime.
The media’s lies are radicalizing and dividing the country. They’re pitting Americans against each other. And if the media were to bring down the President of the United States, it would not only kill the goose that laid the industry’s golden eggs, its greed could bring the entire country to the brink of civil war.
The media is cannibalizing its own industry, it’s cannibalizing the internet, and the country.
The desperation of people trapped in a dying industry is understandable. But, instead of trying to understand and adapt to a changing world, the media went down an ideological dead end. And, in the face of extinction, it launched a high-stakes war against half the country and the internet.
This is a war that it’s destined to lose.
The entertainment industry lost its war against the internet. And its demands were far less grand. The media’s plot to transform into a fact-checking cartel that will control all content on the internet is doomed. And its doom will spread to Google, Facebook, and any monopolies that embrace its vision.
But, in the pursuit of this cause, the media increasingly advocates against free speech and spreads lies.
The media embraced Hillary Clinton’s nonsensical claim that she lost the election because of Russian bots, and made these paranoid claims go mainstream because they served its financial interests. The media used claims of Russian bots to demand that tech companies put its ‘fact checkers’ in charge.
That’s Plan C. And C stands for Crazy.
The media’s desperate effort to stay relevant through a non-stop campaign to bring down President Trump has produced a blizzard of lies that is tearing apart Americans, not just for ideological motives, but for the financial motives of the industry. The media doesn’t care how much damage it does, as long as its metrics go up, and its jobs and its business model survive. That’s why it’s a threat to America.
It’s not just compromising national security. Instead, it’s compromising the existence of America.
The media doesn’t have a long-term plan anymore. All its plans are short-term. It doesn’t care what happens a decade from now or even a year from now, as long as it hits its numbers this month.
And if hitting its numbers means convincing a chunk of the country that our elections are illegitimate, that everyone who disagrees with them is a Nazi, or that we have to eliminate free speech, that’s fine.
The media has gone from taking part in a political debate to turning into a James Bond villain.
The problem is not, as the media insists, the First Amendment, or Russian bots, or Facebook. The problem is an industry that built monopolies around investments in outdated technology. These technologies, from the printing press to radio to cable news, were revolutionary at the time.
The internet killed their monopolistic power and they’ve been trying to rebuild it ever since.
The media would rather have a monopoly in a broken country, than live in a thriving country where internet content is too diversified to support traditional media organizations. Like Milton’s Satan, it would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. And it’s turning the country into its own private hell.
The First Amendment was meant to protect speech, not industries. The media industry is trying to kill speech and is willing to kill the country to make it happen. But it’s the industry that needs to die.
I am posting Greenfield's articles from FrontPage and the Sultan Knish blog. FReepmail or drop me a comment to get on or off the Greenfield ping list.
I highly recommend an occasional look at the Sultan Knish blog. It is a rich source of materials, links and more from one of the preeminent writers of our age.
FrontPage is a basic resource for conservative thought. Lou
I wish a class action suit could be filed against MSM for malpractice. There are malpractice suits file against doctors all the time.
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.To get on or off the Greenfield ping list please reply to this post. About Daniel Greenfield >Daniel Greenfield
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Louis Foxwell
/echo
“CUT THE CABLE”. Their survival depends on bundled cable.
I have been curious about the impact of DJT’s cancellation of NYT and WAPO in all executive government offices. This has got to be a big slice of the pie. Could be a million subscriptions or more. That should leave a mark.
That's a bold prediction and is not at all a guaranteed outcome. George Gilder makes similar noises, a bright guy who is often wrong.
Internet technologies enable free speech which is great. But they also enable Google's massive data collection and the monopoly of search.
It will be a long time before the law catches up to the business activities enabled by the internet, if ever. The likes of Google and the other giants can do a lot of damage in the meantime.
...”I wish a class action suit could be filed against MSM for malpractice. There are malpractice suits file against doctors all the time.”...
If I slander my neighbor, I get hauled into court. Why does the media and certain leaders in Congress get away with lying in our faces, knowing that we know they are lying? Why are they above the law, when so much is at stake? If I could have the bill of my heart’s desire, I would ask for every member of Congress to be drug tested on a regular basis, including alcohol. If any member is using drugs for Alzheimer’s, he/she would be required to resign because the country needs clear headed leadership and frontal brain lobes that are functional. We have so many problems and so little time to fix them before the insane take over. I have no doubt that Donald Trump was chosen (I believe in God.) to be our President at this time in history for no one else could have endured the pseudo assassination he has gone through on a daily basis just because he was elected President. If the greatest sin is pride, the next greatest has to be envy.
” There are malpractice suits file against doctors all the time.”
But they are usually for incompetence not for willful harm.
Wow! What a great column!
“The media would rather have a monopoly in a broken country, than live in a thriving country where internet content is too diversified to support traditional media organizations. Like Milton’s Satan, it would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.”
Scalia argued his view on “textualism” was the ultimate defense of the First Amendment. In March 2012, an Associated Press report said he told an audience at Wesleyan University that the Court’s early justices would be “astonished that the notion of the Constitution changes to mean whatever each successive generation would like it to mean. … In fact, it would be not much use to have a First Amendment, for example, if the freedom of speech included only what some future generation wanted it to include. That would guarantee nothing at all.”There is indeed something illegal about the MSM’s malpractice. It’s called “the law of libel.” As Justice Scalia asserted, the get-out-of-jail-free card of the MSM - known as the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan - is illegitimate. Scalia observed that the First Amendment - the entire Bill of Rights - was a promise by the Federalists to the Antifederalists, and had to be crafted to meet demands for stipulation of rights on the one hand, and had to be noncontroversial enough to readily attain ratification. Accordingly, the only enumerated rights in the BoR were those which tyrants of history had proven inclined to violate. It was far from a comprehensive list, and the framers knew it. The Ninth Amendment covered the rest of the waterfront by stating,That opinion didn’t prevent Scalia from harsh criticism of what is widely viewed as one of the essential court rulings protecting free speech and a free press — the 1964 decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
At the Newseum in the Aspen Institute 2011 Washington Ideas Forum, Scalia said the landmark ruling meant “you can libel public figures without liability so long as you are relying on some statement from a reliable source, whether it’s true or not.
“Now the old libel law used to be (that) you’re responsible, you say something false that harms somebody’s reputation, we don’t care if it was told to you by nine bishops, you are liable,” Scalia said. “New York Times v. Sullivan just cast that aside because the Court thought in modern society, it’d be a good idea if the press could say a lot of stuff about public figures without having to worry. And that may be correct, that may be right, but if it was right it should have been adopted by the people. It should have been debated in the New York Legislature and the New York Legislature could have said, ‘Yes, we’re going to change our libel law.’”
But in Times v. Sullivan, Scalia said the Supreme Court, under Justice Earl Warren, “… simply decided, ‘Yes, it used to be that … George Washington could sue somebody that libeled him, but we don’t think that’s a good idea anymore.’”
JUSTICE SCALIA: THE 45 WORDS — AND ORIGINAL MEANING — OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.The fact that "the [existing, as limited by libel law and pornography prohibitions] freedom . . . of the press” is enumerated. does not invalidate the right to compensation for libel. The Sullivan case did not bring up the fact that the wire services had instituted continual virtual meetings among all major journalism institutions - and that that had long since produced what Adam Smith would have predicted, “a conspiracy against the public.” That object of that conspiracy has been precisely to usurp the title of "a reliable source” while turning the meaning of “objective” from its denotation to, “agreeing with the journalism cartel’s consensus.”The remedy must be for Republicans to sue for libel, in the teeth of the Warren Court’s 9-0 Sullivan decision. And SCOTUS must require the “MSM” - under the title, “the Associated Press and its members” - to defend that suit on grounds of truth.
Excellent thought-provoking article.
Bkmrk
BINGO
It’s awesome. They deserve it.
Very interesting but the malpractice is going beyond libel. MSM Is purposefully misleading and misinforming people to pursue some agenda MSM supports or believes.
Like the mafia in America early on, the MSM “doesn’t exist.”The problem with that position, besides the nearly limitless quantity of “anecdotal” evidence to the contrary, is the fact articulated by Adam Smith in Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.Since before the Civil War there has been one or more wire services, and wire services function as continual, unending virtual meetings - fully equivalent to physical meetings for practical purposes - between the major journalism organization. Accordingly you have to be terminally naive to assume that a journalism cartel does not exist. The fact that journalists are absolutely unashamed over those meetings - which would be patently illegal to institute today, given antitrust law and the fact that minimizing the expense of telegraphy bandwidth is now a de minimus consideration - should not obscure the fact that they are illegal. The existence of “the MSM” is a violation of antitrust law.Accusing “the MSM” of "purposefully misleading and misinforming people to pursue some agenda MSM supports or believes” implies that journalists have a duty to be “objective” or to reflect “the public interest,” or some such drivel. "The freedom . . . of the press” recognizes that sorting the wheat from the chaff is up to the people.
Up to the people, that is, except for the right to compensation for libel. That right existed in Revolutionary times and, under the Ninth Amendment, cannot legitimately have been changed since.
You have good reason to feel offended by “bias in the media” - but not because an individual journalist anywhere has an enforceable obligation to be unbiased. Enforcing such a putative obligation would be problematic and directly contrary to freedom of the press.
The offense you have a right to feel offended over is the fact that “the media” is actually, functionally, a cartel for promoting socialist propaganda. And that the libel law which should enable Republicans to force that cartel to at least get their “facts” into alignment with reality has been a dead letter since 1964.
IMHO.
Ping to my #12.
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