The Political Class and Mainstream Media Have Destroyed the People's Ability to Divine the Truth

We have all heard it and many of us have said it. We live in a moment in time when accurate, unmanipulated, and truthful information is at a premium. We cannot trust our mainstream media nor can we trust our elected class. Even advocates and activists are guilty of manipulating the truth to achieve their goals. Truth, it would appear, is dead in the information age.

Our media outlets routinely present a slanted and preferred narrative biased to one-sided ideology regardless of the facts. Great examples come in the coverage of the COVID event, catastrophic climate change, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

With COVID, the media hammered on the pro-vaccine message to the point it “canceled” physicians with opposing viewpoints and legitimate concerns, concerns that are now turning out to be warranted.

Critical data sets that are crucial to honestly explore the catastrophic man-made climate change theory (and science by definition is a theory; there is no “settled science”) are routinely omitted from models and algorithms used by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in support their argument, even as the media covers the pseudo-authority of Greta Thunberg.

In the Black Lives Matter issue, the agendized media never once equitably covered the criminal backgrounds of the catalyst victims nor did they explore the data that served to accurately countered the false narrative of there being an epidemic of law enforcement shootings of Black people in the United States. 

All three of these examples of journalistic malfeasance can be attributed to “advocacy journalism.”

Dr. Robert Malone, the chief architect of the mRNA vaccine therapy, writes in his excellent Substack newsletter:

“...there is yet another insidious form of attack on our educational system, driven by the corporate interests of large ‘non-governmental organizations’ (including the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation) which have used grants to journalism schools as a way to drive changes in how their graduates have been trained...another story of the gradual erosion of integrity due to the pernicious influence of massive accumulations of wealth by a few who weaponize that wealth to advance both their own power and various social agendas.

“Under the influence of large ‘grants’ (I think they would more appropriately be called ‘strategic investments’), many journalism schools have taken to teaching ‘advocacy journalism,’ which is basically a fancy term for propaganda. Apparently, news media now hire journalists specifically to report with skewed biases on topics of interest to these corporations (or governments), often with corporate sponsorship. Let that sink in for a moment. The advocacy journalists are often paid by an outside organization with an agenda.”

Malone goes on to identify some of these special interest deep pockets as the Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Foundation. These groups, Malone continues to say deeper into the article, “seek out ‘private-public’ partnerships (which, as previously noted, is basically another euphemism for what Benito Mussolini defined as Fascism). And they seek these relationships by using advocacy journalism-propaganda to sway public opinion.”

Back in the mid-2000s when I was Executive Director of BasicsProject – a 501c3 non-profit education initiative centered on fighting constitutional literacy and educating on the dangers of Islamofascist terrorism and the fifth column elements of the fascist Progressive movement, I had the opportunity to talk to a young journalism student attending the prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism. She made it very clear that she was being taught that the facts of any story were less important than emotionalizing the story to move the reader to a preferred viewpoint.

Today, according to Malone, this move away from traditional journalism (think: Who, What, When, Where, How) has been supercharged into the condemnation of fact-based journalism:

“...increasingly, journalism is taught by those who believe that ‘classic journalism’ – which required that both sides of an issue be presented, is outdated and deserves to die a quiet death.

“This is exemplified by a Wiki definition of advocacy journalism that is frankly astounding:

“‘Classic tenets of journalism call for objectivity and neutrality. These are antiquated principles no longer universally observed...We must absolutely not feel bound by them. If we are ever to create meaningful change, advocacy journalism will be the single most crucial element to enable the necessary organizing...’

“So, who teaches ‘advocacy journalism,’ and who funds such teachings? Well, for starters – let’s go to one of the premier journalism schools in the USA: Columbia University. How do they view ‘advocacy journalism’? At Columbia University, one of their programs proudly announces: ‘“Calling for Coalitions: Building Partnerships Between Journalists and Advocates’...”

And so it is that the information-consuming public, today – in the information age, has less of a chance to divine the truth and the facts than we did just 30 years ago. Disingenuous actors, including activists, advocates, and most all in the political class, exploit the propaganda-facilitating mainstream media to affect their preferred narratives.

Activists and advocates – like those who pushed the false narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement, the criminal Russia-Trump collusion hype during the 2020 General Election, catastrophic climate change, and the transformative “equity” narrative manufacture their own truths and use the agenda-driven mouthpieces – bought and paid for by the deep pocket taskmasters – to bully their ideology into the masses.

Our leaders – from local to national and addicted to attaining and maintaining power at all costs regardless of the lie, regardless of the tactics – think nothing of employing the Goebbels Doctrine of telling that “big lie” as often as needed to turn it into their truth. Here, too, they employ the agenda-driven, elite-purchased advocacy journalists to shop their manipulation to the people.

Why This Is Important

I have been truly saddened by a growing number of comments on social media forums, usually choke-full of rational thinking people and well-contemplated responses, that have rejected reports – corroborated and verified – that Russian President Vladimir Putin has used globally prohibited munitions in his march into Ukraine.

It didn’t matter that Putin had been proven to have used these munitions in the past on several locations – the last in 2021 in the Central Africa Republic, nor did it matter that the same information came from multiple independent sources to the level that sparked 39 countries to urge the International Criminal Court to open an expedited investigation into whether Putin’s orders constitute the commission of war crimes. These usually level-headed commentators exhibited a level of what could be justifiably termed “post-propaganda manipulation fatigue,” that they defended Putin in claiming that any reports of his use of prohibited weaponry in prohibited locations are suspect and should not be entertained.

One comment read:

“I think you need to do more research into what you are being lead to believe. If my crooked US government supports the Ukraine, then that tells me that Russia is the one in the right and I support Putin! The Biden's, Kerry's, Romney's and Pelosi's all have children making millions in Ukraine from oil, plus I don't believe for one second the news being reported to the US about the bombings and killing civilians. As long as our MSM is run by communists (and it is) then we will never know the truth! Wake up people,!!!”

While I agree with the commentator's points on the grafting political class and the disingenuous and biased coverage of the agenda-driven mainstream media, I cannot condone his irresponsible dismissal of the evidence that Putin is – and has – employing prohibited munitions in prohibited areas. Just because the messenger has a reputation of being corrupt (in this case the global mainstream media), that doesn’t mean that as sunlight is shined on the facts they aren’t forced to concede the facts.

Great examples of the media being forced to cover the truth come in the mainstream media’s lackluster capitulation on the many side effects associated with COVID vaccines, their error in condemning ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and their sudden realization that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was a false-flag operation of Hillary Clinton’s slash-and-burn campaign for the presidency.

But while I do agree with Malone that the overwhelming culpability for destroying honest journalism in the United States – if not the world – lies with the fascist Progressives who have executed the hostile takeover of our education system, there is additional culpability that rests with the consumer of information.

While our nation must bring accountability and radical reform to the education system – including the purging of the teachers’ unions from the classrooms and the culling of activists and advocates from the teaching realm, we must each reclaim informational integrity on a personal level.

We all – all of us – need to acquire multiple sources to craft a personal validation of the facts being presented before we embrace what is being reported as truthful; as fact. We are also responsible for making sure we are not propagating falsehoods. To accomplish these fundamental goals we must do at least two things:

1. Consume information on any particular issue from a variety of publications to divine the commonalities held within each so as to create a base rubric of the facts;

2. Read the entire article – instead of just the headlines and/or the first few sentences – before you convince yourself you know the full story; before you formulate an opinion.

In the end – and in the information age, the responsibility for divining the truth is a heavy one. And while it is easy to lump all information sources into one group, allocating them all to the same circles as the propagandists of The New York Times of The Washington Post or Pravda for that matter, it is lazy and irresponsible to label ingenuous and truth-seeking news sources and information gatherers (read: independent reporters) as propagandists without due diligence.

If we are ever to be able to trust the mainstream media again we must go through a “backwashing” of the educational system to purge the pollutants; we must expunge the deep-pocketed and ideological special interests activists from the process and once again teach traditional journalism.

Until then, we must embrace our personal responsibility to be discerning in the consumption and propagation of information. That means accepting hard facts when the evidence presents, and maybe – just maybe – not forwarding that funny meme for the reality that many will consume them as fact.

Today’s Headlines

• Biden Orders B-52 Bombers to Fly Over NATO Territory Neighboring Ukraine

• Civilian Evacuations Stop in Southern Ukrainian City As Russians Again Ignore Agreements, Violate Ceasefire

• Sky News Reporter Ambushed, Shot by Russian Soldiers While Covering Action in Ukraine

• Islamic State Celebrates Ukraine War as ‘Divine Punishment Against Infidels’

• Russia Wants Written Guarantee It Can Trade With Iran in Iran Nuke Deal

• Russia Proceeds With Efforts to Legalize Crypto Amid Sanctions Over Ukraine

• Swiss Authorities to Freeze Crypto Assets of Key Russians

• Ukraine Spends $15M of Donated Crypto on Military Gear

• Venezuela's Maduro Stands with Putin; Venezuelan People Stand with Ukraine

• Germany Advances Natural Gas Plans to Cut Russian Exposure

• Calls to Boycott Coca-Cola Grow After Company Refuses to Pull Out of Russia

• Wisconsin Special Counsel Alleges Massive Misconduct in 2020 Election

• Proof-of-Work Ban Removed From Europe’s Proposed Crypto Regulation

• Mexican Authorities Estimate Roughly 100K Victims 'Processed' at Cartel Extermination Site

• China to Raise Defense Spending by 7.1% to $229 Billion

• Apple Investors Stop Short of Demanding Report on 'Forced Labor' in China; Vote for 'Civil Rights Audit'