Politicos’ threats on press drive attacks on speech
Americans must wake up to growing lost freedom of speech, other rights
When elected or appointed government officials–at any level–believe they can threaten the press, lost freedoms are sure to follow.
It has been occurring with increasing measures. The federal government:
Hatched censorship on Americans exposed by the Twitter files, Missouri v. Biden case, and the newly-exposed CTIL program;
Violated civil rights of Americans with a mass surveillance program following the start of the war of terror; and
Threatened parents attending school board meetings at the request of the National School Boards Association, creating the cloud of parents as “domestic terrorists.
Where many contend “correlation does not prove causation,” I would argue “where there’s smoke there’s a five-alarm fire.” The attacks on the media by presidents and their FBI or DOJ, and lack of accountability for them, convinced officials they can do worse. It’s a basic understanding of human nature.
The media, which is protected by the freedom of the press in the First Amendment, no longer cherishes their role as the Fourth Estate, holding power to account. Relentlessly pursuing the truth has given way to agenda-setting narratives. All too often today, the media tells Americans what to think. This has spawned a deepening lack of trust in the media.
The American public’s trust in the media is near record lows, Gallup reported one month ago. While Democrats trust the media, Republicans and the growing number of Independents don’t:
Americans’ confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately is at its lowest point since 2016, when Republicans’ trust fell sharply. This low confidence reading for the fourth estate comes at a time when trust in each of the three branches of the federal government is also low.
That lack of trust in the media is well earned. The media were complicit in spreading the Hunter Biden laptop story being “Russian disinformation” from more than 50 members of the U.S. intelligence community in October 2020. That was a lie.
The Russia Collusion story made former President Donald Trump an agent of the Kremlin. Special Counsel John Durham concluded the FBI should have never started its Trump Russia probe. The media spent months covering this as a major scandal. The feds pushed the Crossfire Hurricane operation, which was a story to establish a lie.
These are just two stories where the media perpetrated lies to push a narrative. There are many other examples. In other cases, they don’t report the full story. This is why 58 percent of Democrats trust the media, followed by 29 percent of Independents, and just 11 percent of Republicans.
Every time they lie, the media damages themselves and the nation. Sadly, Democrats on Capitol Hill savaged two journalists who exposed the Twitter files: Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. Jonathan Turley wrote a column for The Hill on the March House committee hearing.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas) pressed Taibbi to say that Musk was a source. Taibbi again replied, ‘I can’t give it to you, unfortunately, because this is a question of sourcing, and I’m a journalist. I don’t reveal my sources.’
And that’s when it got ugly.
Democrats wanted an admission the source was Elon Musk, as if that matters.
Censorship of ideas is an egregious violation of civil rights. Democrats still don’t understand this concept in an exchange that unfolded Thursday on Capitol Hill. And yet, we have consistent attacks on the media to thank them for trashing cherished American freedoms.
The following is a partial history of the threats and intimidation directed at the press.
The Obama Department of Justice pursued then CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson for her reporting on Fast and Furious, a gun-running scandal in Phoenix and Mexico in fall 2009. Attkisson has sued the FBI and DOJ for intrusion of her computers and other devices. She is still engaged in her lawsuit, including specific people connected to her case. Her updates are here.
Team Obama also called former Fox News reporter James Rosen a “co-conspirator” for information received about North Korea. Here is a brief summary:
The administration prosecuted Stephen Kim, a former State Department official, merely for discussing a classified report about North Korea with Fox News reporter James Rosen. Moreover, the report itself was subsequently described in court documents as a ‘nothing burger’ in terms of its sensitivity. Yet, even with a coerced plea deal, Kim was given a 13‐month sentence in federal prison.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump frequently attacked the media, making “fake news” a common lexicon connected to journalism. During a leak investigation in 2017, the Trump administration secretly seized phone records of four New York Times reporters. Early in the Biden administration they also revealed Team Trump seized phone records of journalists connected to The Washington Post and CNN.
The Biden FBI, however, raided James O’Keefe, the investigative reporter for O’Keefe Media Group and previously Project Veritas. O’Keefe obtained the diary of Biden's daughter, Ashley. O’Keefe conducted an interview with Megyn Kelly about the FBI raid he endured.
On a lower scale, an East Texas investigative journalist has encountered repeated FBI door knocks. Sarah Fields, The Publica’s investigative journalist, had the FBI demand that she talk with them about her reporting of an alleged Hamas training camp on the US-Mexico border.
With these threats and other acts of intimidation against journalists, it is not a stretch to believe that the failure to hold presidents and their subordinates accountable emboldened them to do far worse–and they have.
If the founding fathers were alive today, we’d find ourselves in a new revolution–fighting our own government, not a foreign one.