Soon enough, Big Media will find itself censored into a final act of self-destruction. It refuses to take an honest look at itself, and it fails to see how its lack of objectivity and outright bias is, as the Pied Piper showed us, leading to its own death.
Of course, whomever is in power accuses Big Media of playing unfairly. Donald Trump says, “fake media,” yet made himself constantly available to an extent far beyond his predecessors. Barrack Obama avoided live press conferences. Bill Clinton accused Rush Limbaugh and others like him of causing the deaths of Branch Davidian followers at Waco, Texas (1993). Richard Nixon notoriously and regularly groused about the press. Hating the media has almost always come with the job of President of the United States.
When I managed Alan Keyes’ for President in 1996 we were certain Big Media opposed us. Keyes, the first black American to run for President as a Republican, had a short fuse in press conferences. I share the following incident with you as an aside:
In December 1996 I met Gwen Ifill, the black PBS commentator who died in 2016. At the time I met her, she worked as an NBC correspondent. We had dinner together at a Harvard conference and were joined by other national “Big Media” correspondents. Ifill sat across from me – Thomas Oliphant (Boston Globe) sat appropriately to my left.
“We all wanted to cover Keyes,” Ifill said, smiling across the table. “In fact, some of us wanted to work for him” – she meant professionally, as on our campaign staff.
Ifill’s words shocked me. We believed mainstream media hated us. It made me think. In retrospect, Keyes received a lot of coverage in 1996, though no one considered him a plausible candidate. Granted, some coverage was negative, but everyone agreed he won every public debate in which he participated – media let Keyes’ words speak for themselves.
A lot has changed since that 1996 Presidential campaign. Consider media coverage of Donald Trump. This is a twofold problem.
First, the bitter, partisan media attacks on President Trump fed a powerful negative narrative about him and likely cost him reelection. This showed itself in the stories it covered, refused to cover, the words and images used, frequency of stories, outright censoring on social media, and in innumerable other blatant and nuanced ways. The negative media coverage of President Trump started when he came down the escalator in 2015, and continues today.
Secondly, I foresee a predictable militant government and cultural censorship of media once their political friends have secured their places of power. The time of celebration media now leads over Trump’s apparent defeat will soon enough give way to fear that will exact a regime of persecution of those in media who dare stray from the approved narrative.
Criticism of the Biden-Harris Administration will be limited to alternative media which will, in turn, be marginalized by the “mainstream media.” Soon, though, mainstreamers will find themselves censored and disciplined when they stray from government-approved messaging. This is sure to happen.
Newspeak (Orwell, 1984) is already here. You see and hear it in plain view, and more insidiously, in nuance. If you haven’t yet read 1984 or seen the movie, you will not quite see the urgency of my message. Think “thought police,” those who pay attention not only to what you say or do, but what you think – and then discipline you for thinking it. You see examples of it across a broad spectrum today in the cancel culture, forced phrases of gender-friendly approved language, accusations of white supremacy and racism, disputing global warming, and public shaming for not wearing masks or daring to gather for holidays.
My point is that Big Media, who pushes this “Newspeak” narrative will eventually lose its First Amendment freedom of the press. Then it will be too late. I leave you with three powerful reminders of why we need media that will openly cover all sides of issues at least with some political balance.
“Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.” ― George Orwell, Animal Farm
“It struck me that there is a reason James Madison put freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the very first amendment. If we can’t speak out, if we cannot challenge those in power, there is no guaranteeing the rights that follow.” ― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” ― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
