Amid the oppressive, choking miasma of lies incessantly and unaccountably belched by this sock-puppet administration, which is amplified, massaged, and muted as necessary by its lapdog media, dissent is essential and must be heralded.
Therefore, one should recognize and laud the Wall Street Journal for its revelatory report, “Epstein’s Private Calendar Reveals Prominent Names, Including CIA Chief, Goldman’s Top Lawyer.” The article endeavors to resurrect interest in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking ring. Whether it can facilitate justice for the survivors (many of them minors at the time), or spark further revelations about the predator Epstein’s connections with the global elite, is perhaps unlikely. The odds are stacked against such a just outcome. (Some outlets, such as the Daily Caller, have helped further the article’s reach, and these outlets also are to be commended.)
Yet, the Journal story did accomplish one goal resoundingly. By proving the exception, it proved the rule: a free press has devolved into regime media.
The default response to the economic stresses the communication revolution’s democratization of information has placed upon traditional news outlets has been more partisanship in reporting. Confirmation bias is big business. And, yes, the bias being confirmed is almost always a liberal or leftist one, given the ideological disposition of liberal older management and woke younger reporters. Yet, because of public expectations, not even the most biased outlets can patently express their partisanship. After all, our largely for-profit media’s goal is to survive and thrive.
Leave it to the Left to justify its departure from objective reporting into ideological proselytization. Welcome to the skewed world of “accountability journalism,” which is neither accountable nor journalism. As previously explained in American Greatness, accountability journalism
allows the Left to ignore any claim of objectivity in their reporting, in order to serve a ‘higher truth’ and ‘greater good’—specifically, the leftist agenda. It assumes one’s leftist ideology is the only acceptable one; and, ergo, its premises and conclusions are infallible. Any challenge to their personal partisan premises and conclusions are ipso facto erroneous—i.e., ‘disinformation.’
Accountability journalism is the seminal deceit in the Left’s effort to preserve its “fiefdom of the press.”
Oblivious to the irony of a morally relative ideology purporting to identify “the truth” (or is it “a truth,” or “my truth”?) when ideologically necessary to advance a political “narrative,” accountability journalism reaps what it purports to stanch: the erosion of public trust in the media.
This lack of public trust stems from a second factor: the media’s transmogrification from objective journalism to “accountability journalism.” The latter is merely a pretext for leftist journalists to eschew objectivity and insert their own biases into the “news.” The result? Over the past five years, much of the public recognizes the leftist media as the biggest manufacturer and purveyor of misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.
We’re left with a regime media, one fully in sync and beholden to the administrative state upon which it is dependent for the leaks that advance careers and prop up sagging ratings and circulation.
While it is relatively easy for objective citizens to recognize the regime media’s lies of commission dissembled to serve and advance the interests of the administrative state, it is more difficult to identify the regime media’s lies of omission. But not impossible.
From the question of who leaked the Dobbs decision to the comprehensive listing of coconspirators of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, in many instances the public is well aware of what it is not being told. The public seeks to learn more about these predators who could hold powerful positions in society. Yet, counterintuitively, the media shows little effort to provide it, or at least express outrage at the appropriate authorities for stonewalling them. Why? Because the regime media abets the stonewalling, hoping the public’s attention span moves on to matters that, if reported upon, are less perilous and more helpful to advancing the administrative state’s agenda.
The Daily Caller’s James Lynch makes the case in “Why Hasn’t Anyone from Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Little Black Book’ Been Arrested Yet?” He cites the chief legal counsel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), Benjamin Bull, who was a former prosecutor of obscenity and child pornography cases:
‘Any serious prosecutor worth his salt would be all over this little black book,’ Bull told the Daily Caller. ‘It’s a roadmap leading to the people guilty of trafficking children among Epstein’s friends and benefactors, such as Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and other prominent but culpable perpetrators,’ he continued. ‘The scandal waiting to explode is why law enforcement has ignored this ever-growing sex trafficking ring. We need an explanation for why people are not being charged and prosecuted. Is this an instance of classic influence peddling corruption in law enforcement? Why no action? The silence is now deafening.’
One would think a media struggling to monetize its content to survive would be champing at the bit to bring this story to its audience. Instead, one only hears the deafening silence in the divide between the public’s desire for information and the regime media’s effort to ignore them. Thus, as the regime media’s fourth estate serfs obediently toil on behalf of their administrative state lords, they combine to abet Jeffrey Epstein and his unnamed and unpunished co-conspirators to claim their latest victim—the public’s right to know.