Free speech is protected by the Constitution but is it protected in practice? The misappropriations scandal at USAID suggests it might not be. Here's why.
Well done Amanda. It was during Bush Ws second term that I noted the turn. My local big city newspaper... one that had been a pretty solid center-right leaning publication, began to leak left. What I noted was the position of stories... where those inconvenient to Democrats would be pushed to the latter pages, and those inconvenient to Republicans would get front page headlines. There was also the "but" reporting... where if there was truth beneficial to Republican view (as in, the Republican policy resulted in positive results), it would be diminished with a "but, these negative things should be considered". There we general zero but reporting on articles that benefitted Democrats.
I eventually canceled the subscription noting the drift.
Something was happening then. We called it liberal bias. Today that has morphed to left influence/propaganda. It seemed to me that this change was due to a couple of macro changes.
One - the advent of cable news and then Internet media was reducing subscribers and ad revenue and causing the newspaper management to replace higher-compensated experienced journalists with cheaper young staff. Young staff are idealistic and have their campus brainwashing still fresh.
Two - we stuffed many more kids through the higher-learning factory so that we had a higher percentage of people indoctrinated in left views. We used to have a larger competing population of people that leaned more right from gaining their worldview from real life and not tweeded malcontent teachers and professors.
The editors use to be the gatekeepers sending the overly energized "change the world" idealistic writers back to rewrite their first and second attempts. Those editors retired or were replaced by other idealistic people that started welcoming this change to journalistic ethics where influencing rather than reporting was right, ethical and moral.
I had been encouraged that independent media was the tonic for this, but on Substack it is being flooded with these left propaganda purveyors who come in with thousands of subscribers.
I think we are going to need some policy definition for what is "news media" and what is political activism. The 1st Amendment should apply to news media. If really operating as a political propaganda enterprise... a PAC if you will... then the entity should not be considered the same and other rules should apply.
Of course there is the problem of how we account for that, and how that can also be abused. I am not a fan of government rules for media, but maybe all qualified news organizations require an editorial board made of of half registered Democrat and half registered Republican.
So many good points here. I agree, we need to distinguish what is news and what is political activism. Because only covering one side of a story will never be objective.
The point about indoctrination is interesting. This is always something I resented when people told me I was indoctrinated, but now I'm looking back and wondering if that indeed did happen.
It's been jolting. I can't help but wonder how much of my life has been built on a lie and how much of it is real.
I see a lot of young people with bylines who have not experienced the real world and are eager to prove themselves. It's difficult to critically think about the facts you're reporting if your baseline belief is that they aren't really facts to begin with. That makes it hard to trust journalism.
I'm skeptical the USAID scandal will have an impact on the media, but one can hope.
I think DOGE is going to dismantle the Democrat NGO industry, and also pull back funding for PBS, NPR... and other left-biased "news" organizations and it will have some impact.
The education system has always leaned left. However, there were more conservatives previously to help prevent too much drift. Today there are not enough conservatives and the left is not challenged. Kids would always get the left treatment, but it is much stronger now. It is like we have reached a demographic tipping point where too many now have done out into society and overwhelmed the part of the population that would pull them back to pragmatic and common-sense worldviews. I hire bright college grads for my business... I will not hire any that are severely woke-damaged, but almost all of them have a left ideological worldview that got planted into their impressionable heads by their socialist, malcontent, radical, left teachers and professors. It is similar to Islamic Madrasa.
There is not an easy solution to this, but I think these things will help...
1. Stop the Democrat government money flow supporting Democrat political propaganda.
2. Remove DEI and possibly any critical theory text, curriculum and instruction from K-12 and possibly higher learning that gets federal funds.
3. Support more school choice for K-12.
4. Bring back industry, manufacturing and a small business ethos and shift students from fake laptop job preparation to jobs where they invent, make, build, grow and fix real things.
But I agree that we will not see any immediate change... it looks to me that the Democrat media machine is doubling down on the propaganda.
Well done Amanda. It was during Bush Ws second term that I noted the turn. My local big city newspaper... one that had been a pretty solid center-right leaning publication, began to leak left. What I noted was the position of stories... where those inconvenient to Democrats would be pushed to the latter pages, and those inconvenient to Republicans would get front page headlines. There was also the "but" reporting... where if there was truth beneficial to Republican view (as in, the Republican policy resulted in positive results), it would be diminished with a "but, these negative things should be considered". There we general zero but reporting on articles that benefitted Democrats.
I eventually canceled the subscription noting the drift.
Something was happening then. We called it liberal bias. Today that has morphed to left influence/propaganda. It seemed to me that this change was due to a couple of macro changes.
One - the advent of cable news and then Internet media was reducing subscribers and ad revenue and causing the newspaper management to replace higher-compensated experienced journalists with cheaper young staff. Young staff are idealistic and have their campus brainwashing still fresh.
Two - we stuffed many more kids through the higher-learning factory so that we had a higher percentage of people indoctrinated in left views. We used to have a larger competing population of people that leaned more right from gaining their worldview from real life and not tweeded malcontent teachers and professors.
The editors use to be the gatekeepers sending the overly energized "change the world" idealistic writers back to rewrite their first and second attempts. Those editors retired or were replaced by other idealistic people that started welcoming this change to journalistic ethics where influencing rather than reporting was right, ethical and moral.
I had been encouraged that independent media was the tonic for this, but on Substack it is being flooded with these left propaganda purveyors who come in with thousands of subscribers.
I think we are going to need some policy definition for what is "news media" and what is political activism. The 1st Amendment should apply to news media. If really operating as a political propaganda enterprise... a PAC if you will... then the entity should not be considered the same and other rules should apply.
Of course there is the problem of how we account for that, and how that can also be abused. I am not a fan of government rules for media, but maybe all qualified news organizations require an editorial board made of of half registered Democrat and half registered Republican.
So many good points here. I agree, we need to distinguish what is news and what is political activism. Because only covering one side of a story will never be objective.
The point about indoctrination is interesting. This is always something I resented when people told me I was indoctrinated, but now I'm looking back and wondering if that indeed did happen.
It's been jolting. I can't help but wonder how much of my life has been built on a lie and how much of it is real.
I see a lot of young people with bylines who have not experienced the real world and are eager to prove themselves. It's difficult to critically think about the facts you're reporting if your baseline belief is that they aren't really facts to begin with. That makes it hard to trust journalism.
I'm skeptical the USAID scandal will have an impact on the media, but one can hope.
I think DOGE is going to dismantle the Democrat NGO industry, and also pull back funding for PBS, NPR... and other left-biased "news" organizations and it will have some impact.
The education system has always leaned left. However, there were more conservatives previously to help prevent too much drift. Today there are not enough conservatives and the left is not challenged. Kids would always get the left treatment, but it is much stronger now. It is like we have reached a demographic tipping point where too many now have done out into society and overwhelmed the part of the population that would pull them back to pragmatic and common-sense worldviews. I hire bright college grads for my business... I will not hire any that are severely woke-damaged, but almost all of them have a left ideological worldview that got planted into their impressionable heads by their socialist, malcontent, radical, left teachers and professors. It is similar to Islamic Madrasa.
There is not an easy solution to this, but I think these things will help...
1. Stop the Democrat government money flow supporting Democrat political propaganda.
2. Remove DEI and possibly any critical theory text, curriculum and instruction from K-12 and possibly higher learning that gets federal funds.
3. Support more school choice for K-12.
4. Bring back industry, manufacturing and a small business ethos and shift students from fake laptop job preparation to jobs where they invent, make, build, grow and fix real things.
But I agree that we will not see any immediate change... it looks to me that the Democrat media machine is doubling down on the propaganda.
4. Continue