Radio host and conservative activist Erick Erickson is no Trump fan, and spent much of the last election cycle warning conservatives not to fall for conspiracy theories and explaining why the Republican Party was descending into a dumpster fire. Thus, his recent piece laying out just how brazenly deceitful the mainstream media has become is extraordinarily damning:
For all the obsession over Donald Trump and his way with truth, just consider a few stories.
The New York Post was punished by social media giants, particularly Twitter, for its expose of Hunter Biden, his laptop, and other lurid details. Access to the New York Post’s account was restricted. The story turned out to be true.
Social media routinely allows pictures of celebrity homes to be posted and details about the neighborhoods in which they live. When conservatives exposed the Marxist BLM co-founder buying a million dollar house in Los Angeles, that was a bridge too far. The address was not listed, but using “privacy rules,” social media giants restricted shares of any story about the purchase. They even restricted stories about her other multi-million dollar property purchases.
This morning Latham Saddler launched his campaign for the Senate against Raphael Warnock. He is a former Navy SEAL and Trump Administration staffer who is running in Georgia. As of this writing, Twitter has restricted his account for…ummm…tweeting.
The media pushed out a number of falsehoods about Georgia’s new voting law and, only now, are walking back the wild claims about restrictions on early voting, restrictions on absentee balloting, etc.
The media ridiculed Donald Trump as a liar when he called the Russian bounty story a hoax. The Washington Post gave him four “Pinocchios.” It turns out he was right. Now that he is out of office, the media will tell the truth. The story is not believed by the Biden White House or the intel community.
Sixty Minutes continues to stand by its widely discredited story on Ron DeSantis. A social media that blocked the New York Post for its truthful story on Hunter Biden is unwilling to block CBS News.
Ron DeSantis had a discussion with doctors and experts who noted what European scientists were saying and advising European nations about COVID. YouTube took it down because it disputed what the Biden Administration claims, even though the scientific community actually has no settled consensus and European scientific advisors are advising their nations differently from the American health care officials.
Just read the original New York Times reporting on the Russian bounty program. It was reported as fact by Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, and Michael Schwirtz. There seemed to be no doubt about it in the original reporting. It was used by Kamala Harris in the Vice Presidential debate to attack Donald Trump. Who were the sources? At a time many conservatives believe the “deep state” was out to get Donald Trump, this just adds more proof to their theories and the media went along with it.
The media and left so internalized their claims that Donald Trump was an authoritarian tyrant that they now will behave in the same way. They will elevate their own lies and mistruth and embrace heavy-handed censorship to stop what they view as a menace. They have become the thing they claimed to hate and have convinced themselves it is for our own good. They’re happy to lie to harm those they see as less noble than themselves. They are happy to engage in cancel culture because they believe it is a civic good to cancel Trump and his supporters.
It is why the media is obsessed with Fox News. It is one of the few places to go for counter-programming. This does not end well and will push many Americans down rabbit holes like QAnon in search of truths they know the media is denying them. We need truth from the press and fairness from social media giants. We are getting neither from either.
We won’t, either. To find the truth these days, one has to wade through hyper-partisan progressive and/or conservative outlets and filter the mainstream press through an ideological filter to figure out what’s going on. Martin Gurri had a great essay on this subject recently in City Journal titled “Slouching Toward Post-Journalism.” When people become persuaded that the press is lying to them, they become much more susceptible to equally false conspiracy theories that play on well-grounded fears.
The media likes to barble on about our “crisis of trust.” They are the ones who created it.
