Look who protects free speech - Billionaires now are doing the job that journalists quit

[Jan 6 Kangaroo Court - No Insurrection]

In my previous life as a newspaperman, I was rather smug about the
First Amendment. The press pleasured itself about its support of a
free speech. It stood up to allow Nazis to rally in Skokie,
Illinois.

But that was last century. In this benighted century, the press has
become insufferable HOA presidents who want the power to silence
people in the name of freedom. All you have to do is call someone a
liar to get him censored. It is the equivalent of calling a SWAT
team on a neighbor.

But the First Amendment and the God-given rights it protects are not
dead. New champions have arrived because nature hates a vacuum and
Americans hate a censor.

The new guys replace the ink-stained wretches of the Fourth Estate.
The new guys arrive just in time to sweep the press from burning the
Constitution, just as Cubs outfielder Rick Monday ran in and saved
The Flag from being burned in the outfield of Dodger Stadium. It was
voted the greatest play in baseball history. The Dodgers later
traded for Monday.

But first things first. Let us review the situation now as the
Fourth Estate pours lighter fluid on the Constitution.

One month after Republicans nominated Trump in 2016, the New York
Times — through a column by Jim Rutenberg — declared an end to
objective journalism.

He wrote,

“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump
is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and
nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American
dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United
States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?

“Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out
the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part
of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way
you’ve never approached anything in your career. If you view a Trump
presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your
reporting is going to reflect that. You would move closer than
you’ve ever been to being oppositional. That’s uncomfortable and
uncharted territory for every mainstream, non-opinion journalist
I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”

On and on he droned as he pretended he was taking the high road into
the sewer of censorship.

He ended the piece,


“It may not always seem fair to Mr. Trump or his supporters. But
journalism shouldn’t measure itself against any one campaign’s
definition of fairness. It is journalism’s job to be true to the
readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand
up to history’s judgment. To do anything less would be untenable.”

Rutenberg spoke for NYT because it abandoned its long standing
tradition of allowing conservatives to give their opinion through
opinion columns. We know that because after the paper ran a column
by Senator Tom Cotton, it fired the editor who ran it.

There is only one truth in Oceania and it is enforced by the
Ministry of Truth. Its list of lies since the election of Donald
Trump as president reflects the fascism of a deep-state government
using corporate America to do the things the state cannot.

The lies the press ran include:

The lie that Putin fixed the 2016 election for Trump.
The lie that ivermectin is just a horse medicine.
The lie that the riots of 2020 were peaceful protests.
The lie that the 2020 election was on the up-and-up.
The lie that a protest in the Capitol was an insurrection.
Hundreds of other lies are out there. Any disagreement gets you
banned online and eventually the deep-state and the corporations
will turn conservatives into non-persons who cannot bank or even get
an Uber driver as finger swipes replace credit cards.

But there is hope. I abandoned my Google blog for Substack because
Google kept demonetizing (and occasionally deleting) posts. So far,
so good.

As journalists abandoned their principles, others have stepped into
the void to protect free speech. Elon Musk has become the savior of
open debate online. He bought Twitter, which served the deep-state
in censoring stories such as Hunter’s laptop. Your tax dollars went
to Twitter to censor you.

Musk succeeded Jack Dorsey, the censoring CEO of Twitter. Before the
sale was completed, Dorsey lamented in a tweet,

“the days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing.
centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged
the internet.

“I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.”

Journalists call those the days when the Internet was the wild, wild
west — as if that were a bad thing. I get Dorsey’s remorse. The
power to censor is overwhelming and toxic. I hope he recovers, finds
and marries the woman of his dreams and they have babies by the
litter like a cat.

Trump, DeSantis and Ramaswamy stand up to the press.

Trump’s latest escapade was comical. In situations where a pack of
reporters cannot cover a candidate’s event, a pool of reporters
select one reporter to cover the story and share his notes with
everyone. He made the reporters whine on Sunday.

MSN reported:

Donald Trump’s campaign refused to agree to let an NBC News
correspondent travel with him on New Hampshire campaign stops today
as the designated pool reporter, leading to access being cut off for
the day.

According to a pool report obtained by Deadline, correspondent
Vaughn Hillyard was informed “that if he was the designated pooler
by NBC News that the pool would be cut off for the day.”

“After affirming to the campaign that your pooler would attend the
events, NBC News was informed at about 2:20 pm ET that the pool
would not be allowed to travel with Trump today,” the pool report
stated.

It’s believed by sources at the network that the campaign refused to
allow Hillyard in the pool because of his questions on Saturday to
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a Trump surrogate, about the E. Jean
Carroll case. A jury last year found Trump liable for sexual assault
of Carroll and later defaming her, and a trial is currently taking
place in New York largely to determine additional damages.

“Do you believe E. Jean Carroll?” Hillyard asked.

Stefanik said, “They are all witch hunts against Donald Trump and
the reason is he is pulling ahead of Joe Biden.”

She seemed to be irritated by the question and added, “The media is
so biased. This is just another example of the media being out of
touch.”

The story shows press bias. Where is the statement from Trump that
he banned the reporter over a question? He has for some time
criticized NBC and its MSNBC attack dog. Trump does not have the
right to pick and choose the pool reporter, but then again, there is
no right to access either.

Maybe I would feel more empathy if reporters had not cheered when
Dorsey kicked Trump off Twitter.

Free speech isn’t always pretty. I don’t think skin tone kept her
out of that beauty contest.

This goes beyond politics and spills over into something important,
the UFC — Ultimate Fighting Championship — founded and run by Dana
White. Back when White was starting out, no one would give him a
venue for his matches. Donald Trump did. And White is grateful.

He also is a defender of free speech. Collin Rugg, co-founder of
Trending Politics, tweeted an exchange between White and a Canadian
reporter:





The video is a little longer and worthy of your time.

The news media’s capitulation to the deep state comes at a price
called credibility. Modernity News reported:

https://floppingaces.net/most-wanted/look-who-protects-free-speech-
billionaires-now-are-doing-the-job-that-journalists-quit/