Victor Davis Hanson: How corrupt is a corrupt media?

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GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
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THE MEDIA HAS CEASED TO EXIST, SO THE PUBLIC ASSUMES THAT WHAT THE MEDIA SUPPRESSES IS TRUE, AND WHAT IT COVERS IS FALSE

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON | AMERICAN GREATNESS

The current “media”—loosely defined as the old major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, the network news channels, MSNBC and CNN, PBS and NPR, the online news aggregators like Google, Apple, and Yahoo, and the social media giants like the old Twitter and Facebook—are corrupt. 

They have adopted in their news coverage a utilitarian view that noble progressive ends justify almost any unethical means to obtain them. The media is unapologetically fused with the Democratic Party, the bicoastal liberal elite, and the progressive agenda. 

The result is that the public cannot trust that the news it hears or reads is either accurate or true. The news as presented by these outlets has been carefully filtered to suppress narratives deemed inconvenient or antithetical to the political objectives of these entities, while inflating themes deemed useful. 

This bias now accompanies increasing (and increasingly obvious) journalistic incompetence. Lax standards reflect weaponized journalism schools and woke ideology that short prior basic requisites of writing and ethical protocols of quoting and sourcing. In sum, a corrupt media that is ignorant, arrogant, and ideological explains why few now trust what it delivers.

Suppression

Once a story is deemed antithetical to left-wing agendas, there arises a collective effort to smother it. Suppression is achieved both by neglect, and by demonizing others who report an inconvenient truth as racists, conspiracist “right-wingers,” and otherwise irredeemable. 

The Hunter Biden laptop story is the locus classicus. Social media branded the authentic laptop as Russian disinformation. That was a lie. But the deception did not stop them from censoring and squashing those who reported the truth. 

Instead of carefully examining the contents of the laptop or interrogating Biden-company players such as Tony Bobulinksi, the media hyped the ridiculous disinformation hoax as a mechanism for suppressing the damaging pre-election story altogether.

Joe Biden’s cognitive state was another suppression story. The media simply stifled the truth that 2020 candidate Biden was unable to conduct a normal campaign due to his frailty and non-compos-mentis status. Few fully reported his often cruel and racist outbursts of the “lying-dog-faced-pony-soldier” and “you ain’t black”/“terrorist” sort. 

The #MeToo media predictably quashed the Tara Reade disclosure. In fact, journalists turned on her in the manner that they previously had insisted was sexist and defamatory “blame-the-victim” smearing. 

Joe Biden has long suffered from a sick tic of creepily intruding into the private space of young women and preteen girls: blowing their hair, talking into their ears, squeezing their necks, hugging in full body embraces—all for far too long. In other words, Biden should have expected the Charlie Rose or the Donald Trump Access Hollywood media treatment. Instead, he was de facto exonerated by collective media silence. To this day, despite staffers’ efforts to corral his wandering hands and head, he occasionally reverts to form with his creepy fixations with younger women. 

Ask the media today which administration surveilled journalists and they will likely cry “Trump!” Yet their own sensationalist reporting that the IRS was weaponized by Trump was proven a lie when the inspector general notedTrump never went after either James Comey or Andrew McCabe. And it was an untruth comparable to the smear that “nuclear secrets” and “nuclear codes” were hidden away at Mar-a-Lago or that Donald Trump sought to profit from the trove. Nor does anyone remember that Barack Obama went after the Associated Press reporters and Fox News Channel’s James Rosen. Nor do they care that Biden sought to birth an Orwellian Ministry of Truth censorship bureau.

Read the rest of this column at American Greatness.

How Corrupt Is a Corrupt Media?

28 COMMENTS

  2. It’s all-the-way-corrupt.
    One would think that truth would be the stock-in-trade for a media entity, but those days are long gone. This is the Age of the Lie, and the bigger the lie, the more people it consumes. We now have our legacy media as nothing more than a branch of our spy agencies, and the main targets of those agencies now are its citizenry, not foreign adversaries.

  3. Great piece by Victor Davis Hansen, Suzanne!

    Also, Mark Levin in Liberty and Tyranny/American Marxism provides further insight into a corrupt media as well as weaponized federal agencies administering selective justice and equality.

    Wish we could get RINOs and right of center conservatives to listen to the VDH and Levin, especially since others gleefully endorse the widespread corruption and dishonesty.

  4. Anchorage Daily News funded by Pro Publica and employing yellow journalists from far and wide. You don’t have to look anywhere else to see this in action. ADN needed a savior but it all comes at a price.

    The staff has no idea. They are pawns in the matter. Hired based on ideology to carry out their job generating clicks through slanted controversy. In the end though, the long game is about one thing and one thing only in Alaska: control of the Senate. Funding a paper in our territory is a small price to pay.

  5. As we see with FTX and there are many many more just like it. Our own hard earned tax dollars are funneled to these places that are by no means operating with a profit. Does anyone here think that “news “paper in Anchorage ( can’t remember the name “ tuns a profit?

  6. I just told a friend today it was time to burn the media down. They thrive on mis information. Let’s throw it back in their face. They are criminals. They love chaos war and death. They are nothing but a demonic force. Boycott them.

  7. ‘How corrupt is a corrupt media?’ is a phrase that rates right up there with ‘slightly pregnant’ or ‘acceptable level of abuse’. The media is a place where ANY amount of corruption is unacceptable let alone the level we see on a daily basis. If we were stuck in the era before the internet and cell phone cameras we wouldn’t have a chance of digging for the truth.

  8. Only a completely dumbed-down idiot believes the major media gives accurate and truthful news anymore. Michael Avanatti was the media’s hero during Trump’s stay in office. Avanatti thrived on the attention and even boasted he was going to run against Trump in 2020.

  9. One of the biggest cover-ups in Alaska media history: silence by the ADN of Bill Walker’s decision to pull out of the 2018 governor’s race, because his running mate, Byron Mallott, was messing with underaged girls in the Capitol. Never a word about it by the illustrious Bill Walker. Only some fake excuse. And of course, it cost Walker the 2022 election, inter alia. Bill, your dishonesty precedes your reputation. The voters knew.

  10. Victor is a very smart man. Been watching him for years.

    If you’re interested, you might read his book “The Dying Citizen” ~ pretty much explains it all.

  11. How corrupt is a corrupt media?
    Well for the last 10 years if you said anything negative about pro publica on a “mainstream” website it caused an instant permanent ban.
    What is it about a non profit free media site that caused such a draconian effect?

  12. Today just like in my great grandma and grandpa past time, if a citizen cares to get real news what is the current events, then he tunes into what and who is administrating over the town, state, and nation. Third party news -medias- has always had challenges telling news *accurate. Better to get the news directly through your own local engagement sitting at a town’s gates among the elders, you know being engaged with district meetings just as I encouraged three of my non voting co workers, saying,
    “you like that money from your paychecks? You must care about voting and voting for leadership whose economic policies and budgets can continue the money flowing cause we are work in the service industry. our pay is directly impacted by leaders foreign and economic policies and budgets.” they never heard voting put like that but they were more interested in voting and governence after. One replied we need to watch more cnn, i said no. Then we need to watch fox news, i said no. Because the media is second or third party (including little sites as mrak), you need to directly plug into your neighborhood council, district representatives, the mayor, the legislature, the governor, congress for news to know what leadership will be better helping our employer so they have hours, supplies for us to do our job and collect a paycheck.

  14. Ask Lucinda and she will tell you they only report the truth just like the laptop story let alone the Covid lies.

    • Yes, exactly.
      .
      It is always difficult for me to judge whether those like Lucinda are truly as ignorant and naive as they appear to be, or are merely paid shills and bots for a desperate and flailing power establishment.

  15. Thank you, Suzanne, for bringing us Victor Davis Hanson. I really like his strong point of view, and his incise analyses. He speaks for a lot of us. As someone mentioned above, his recent book “The Dying Citizen” is well worth reading.

    I look forward to seeing a lot more by him in MRAK.

  16. Outstanding MRA, you have really upped your game by bringing VDH on board.
    Emily I agree “The Dying Citizen” is one of many great books by Mr. Hanson.

  18. As corrupt as you let it be. Stop buying…..they’ll stop selling. Rules of business are more resolute than the rules of politics.

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