The Death Of Mainstream Media Credibility

If the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war has reiterated any one point – besides the fact that the Arab world will never leave the Israelis to enjoy peace in the land the international community codified to them in 1947 – it is this. No one, anywhere, believes anything the mainstream media (MSM) reports. No one. Anywhere. And it’s about time.

This is a result of the MSM’s abuse of the public’s trust, abuse of power, and the abdication of their responsibility to present truth to power. Today, thanks to a long march takeover of the journalism schools and – through them – the newsrooms and editorial boards by the Marxist-Neofascist Left, we have a propaganda system that advances a narrative preferred by those who align more with Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Alinsky, and Marcuse rather than the Founding Fathers.

This embrace of agenda-driven, narrative-biased public manipulation has been prevalent since the Cultural Revolution circa 1968, but it has existed for all time. From the Romans to the rule of Medieval royalty to the explosion of totalitarianism during the Progressive, fascist, and Marist movements and the Cultural Revolution, those in power have always struggled with having fidelity to truths that don’t support their biases.

The Malfeasance of the MSM

More contemporarily, we have witnessed the exposure of the MSM – and especially two of the most influential news sources, the Associated Press and Reuters – for knowingly advancing false information into the public lexicon.

A perfect example comes in a Washington Post story (consequently, the WaPo is estranged from its responsibility to remain objective) that read:

“The Associated Press on Monday fired a national security reporter who had provided erroneous information about a missile strike in Poland last week that resulted in a widely circulated but inaccurate news alert and story suggesting Russia was responsible for the incident…

“The Nov. 15 explosion in Przewodow, a Polish village near the border with Ukraine, killed two people and triggered global anxieties. Hours later, the Associated Press issued a news alert stating that an unnamed ‘senior US intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people.’

“That information was apparently incorrect. Officials in Poland and the European Union later said they believed a single missile fired by Ukrainian forces had gone off course and landed over the border in Poland.”

The media watchdog group AllSides.com rates the AP thusly:

“Types of media bias AllSides has most often detected in AP US political news coverage includes analysis presented as fact, subjective qualifying adjectives, word choice bias, bias by omission of views, and omission of source attribution…”

A 2006 Ynet.com report exposed the Reuters news agency for knowingly advancing a crudely doctored photograph from Lebanon:

“A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American weblogs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.

“The photograph showed two very heavy plumes of black smoke billowing from buildings in Beirut after an Air Force attack on the Lebanese capital. Reuters has since withdrawn the photograph from its website, along with a message admitting that the image was distorted, and an apology to editors.”

The use of the word “distorted” softballs a blatant attempt at photoshopping the image to make the smoke plume look worse than it was.

Additionally, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting & Analysis (CAMERA) documented an intrinsic bias at Reuters when it comes to the MiddleEast, writing:

“Reuters’ commitment to impartial coverage does not seem to extend to the Middle East. Here, the news service displays a pattern of misrepresentations and double standards in many of the photos it distributes. Reuters’ focus tends heavily toward images of Palestinians as victims, with few, if any, pictures of Israeli victims…”

The Kool-Aid Of The News Wires

I emphasize the transgressions of the AP and Reuters because they boast of being “newswires.” These newswires feed almost every other news publication on the planet. How many times have you seen “The AP contributed to this story,” at the end of a news article in other publications?

These newswire services serve as the template for other activist and biased news organizations to distort the truth and the facts about any given news story even further.

A publication titled StudentNewsToday.com, a 501c3 non-profit group that brands itself as a promoter of fact and critical thinking skills, chronicles a plethora of examples of media bias dating back to 2006. Its last entry is from April of 2021 so one must assume it has been vanquished in its pursuits.

From the AP and Reuters to the Alphabet Media to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the abuse of power and abdication of the mandate to speak truth to power by its First Amendment protection leads to two questions.

First comes a question we all are familiar with, perhaps too familiar. Who can we trust? The simple answer is this. No one. No media outlet is to be trusted; not one outlet of the MSM from any corner of the ideological arena.

Sadly, this makes divining accurate information a process for the citizenry; a process that requires each and every one of us to read multiple accounts of the same story so as to surmise the consistencies between each story, taking only those common points as truth.

But second, and more importantly and on a larger scale, is this question. If we are being bombarded by the MSM with agendized narratives and points of political opportunism – almost always constructed to advance a narrative sympathetic to the Marxist-Neofascist post-Cultural Revolutionary mindset – why should the institutions doing so (and for profit, I might add) be protected against reprisals for their malfeasance?

Dissecting The Revolution That Killed The MSM

Christopher Rufo alludes to a very significant reality that applies to the Western Mainstream media in his brilliant and well-documented book America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. I paraphrase the thoughts contained in the conclusion of this must-read book.

America’s Cultural Revolution is one of triumph and loss combined. The critical theories of America’s Cultural Revolution have become the dominant frame in academia. The “Long March” through the institutions has captured the public and private bureaucracy. The language of Marxist-Neofascist post-Cultural Revolutionary racialism has become the language of the educated class.

But underneath these apparent victories, there is a darkness; a moral void that threatens to reverse their triumphs and turn their revolution into a monster. The warning signs were there from the beginning. As a historical matter, the Cultural Revolution has been a failure everywhere it has been tried.

During the rise of what Rufo terms “the New Left,” Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, and Paulo Freire all expressed absolute support for the communist revolutionary movements which were putting their theories into practice. They lauded Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong,  Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Amílcar Cabral.

But this utopian (read: totalitarian) dream quickly changed into a nightmare within a few years of its emergence. From Beijing to Havana to Bissau-Guinea the “revolutionary classes” consumed themselves. Mao’s regime executed millions of its own citizens during the “Great Leap Forward” in pursuit of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Castro's regime degenerated into state tyranny. Cabral’s state fell into a decades-long pit of stagnation, failure, and dependency. Yet the critical theorists were unrepentant.

Marcuse defended his support for violent revolution, arguing that there is a difference between violence and Terror. Freire never disavowed the regimes of Lenin, Mao, or Castro, even as their atrocities had long been a matter of public record. Angela Davis never relented in her support for global communism claiming Marxism will continue to be relevant as long as capitalism survives.

But while these theorists were simultaneously wrong and their Cultural Revolution failed in the Third World, it appears to have succeeded in the First World. Although communism has all but disappeared from contemporary life, the theories that justify Marxism and the tools of fascism have taken power in the heart of capitalism.

In the United States, Marcuse's critical theory has diffused the Charters of Freedom – and especially the ideas of individualism and equal opportunity; the “revolutionaries” have succeeded in recasting the country's greatest heroes as the arch villains.

Why We Must All Engage

So, why is it important to understand and recognize all of this? Because the MSM – the Associated Press, Reuters, the Alphabet Media (in print, online, and streaming), The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times, etc. – and now the overlords of social media – are the potent remnants of the transformative Marxist-Neofascist post-Cultural Revolutionary movement that refuses to be vanquished in the West.

They are the purveyors of the Marxist-Neofascism. They have captured our education system, the media, and have made great strides in capturing the private-sector elite corporations, companies, and institutions.

Until we can hold the MSM’s feet to the fire – until we can starve them of the ability to propagandize for the politically opportune and the transformative elite, the march to the death of freedom and liberty; their long march to ending the Great American Experiment, will continue.

Today, they can see the goal line and they are breaking to cross it. We all must stand in their way.

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