Lies, Damn Lies and the MSM

In the battle of ideas, it's faux news vs. new foes...

(Source: Getty)

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” 

~ Mark Twain

Joel Bowman, with today’s Notes From the End of the World...

We read the newspapers just like you do, dear reader, with a skeptical eye, a furrowed brow... and our passport close at hand. 

A few days ago, we were invited by The New York Times to renew our subscription. We were on the verge of declining their courteous offer when we were reminded of the laughter, albeit inadvertent, that the Old Gray Lady still inspires. 

Let us recall, for instance, during #45’s presidency, when that most venerable paper ran a full-throated excoriation of Mr. Trump’s mental health. 

So confident was the “paper of record” in its diagnosis that, as the headline pronounced, no further examination was necessary. Imagine our lack of shock, then, when right as the dark clouds of doubt were gathering over Mr. Biden’s empty braincase, with a special council calling into question the president’s mental acuity, the very same paper rushed to remind readers that psychological diagnoses demand rigorous scrutiny. So say scientists and experts. 

Your editor is old enough to remember when the news pretended to be serious and the comics were actually funny. Now, it’s the other way around. Only satirists dare question the prevailing narrative... and then only within the narrow, prescribed limits dictated by the self-appointed keepers of the cultural realm. 

Bullhorns and Presstitutes

Of course, The New York Times is far from alone when it comes to reliably unreliable reporting. CNN Business deserves a special mention, too. The very same establishment bullhorn that ran the November 2021 headline: 

Why Joe Biden can’t do much to ease gas prices

Followed that one up with:

Oil prices are finally falling. Thank China and Joe Biden.

Surely one doesn’t need a psychology degree to recognize that such headlines... written by the very same “journalist”... less than ten days apart... suggest either a very feeble memory indeed or else more nefarious motives. 

Then there’s the shameless cabal of race-baiting presstitutes running the once-relevant Newsweek Magazine, now a husk of its former self. A month ago, the outlet lambasted criticism of one politician... because, as all self-described “anti-racists” understand, the only relevant factor when considering one’s performance in any imaginable situation here on planet earth is their skin color. 

Here’s the relevant headline (Jan. 9, 2024):

Calls for Defense Secretary Austin to Resign Are Attacks on Black Success.

Of course, melanin content promptly ceases to matter when said minority does not align with the accepted, “progressive” narrative. Which is why, just last week, the very same magazine ran this headline (Feb.12, 2024):

Clarence Thomas is Not a Black Hero. He’s an Enemy of Black People.

Again, what clinical qualifications does one need to recognize editorial schizophrenia when one sees it? The Newsweek authors appear as confused as then-presidential candidate, Joe Biden, when he remarked, with his trademark rhetorical eloquence:

“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Yes, dear reader, in the contest to see which octogenarian gets to handle the nuclear football (if elected, Mr. Trump will turn 82 while in office; Mr. Biden will turn 86), the information landscape is awash in a muddy confusion of lies, damned lies and mainstream reporting. 

Newspeak and Groupthink

Needless to say, it is no more in the legacy propaganda machine’s interest to have a well-informed public than it is in the pharmaceutical industrial complex’s interest to have a happy, healthy population. Any wonder, then, that the toady press is not exactly keen on you doing any research/thinking/reasoning for yourself. Far from it, actually...

It’s a funny kind of truth that is so flimsy it cannot withstand scrutiny by a few fringe-dwelling crackpots out here on Substack… just as it is a strange type of Capital S “Science” that cannot tolerate competing hypotheses and open inquiry… and an odd brand of liberal democracy indeed where courts, rather than voters, pick the candidates and information is either prohibited…or mandated.

And yet, mankind’s thirst for knowledge and search for truth didn’t cease just because the editorial board at WaPo decided members of the general public couldn’t be trusted with their own thoughts. Adult humans desire – and deserve – the freedom to hear opinions with which they both agree and disagree, even vehemently so. When they feel they are being lied to, manipulated, directed to believe what they’re told, and not what their “own lying eyes” tell them, they will tend to seek truth on safer ground.

Is it little wonder, then, that establishment bullhorns are losing readership faster than the candidates are losing their proverbial marbles… 

To be clear, we do not mean to suggest that journalism itself is suffering some kind of inexorable decline... only that, you could confidently burn down the headquarters of practically every mainstream outlet in the country and not endanger the life of a single honest reporter.  

Fortunately, it needn’t come to that. As you can plainly see from the chart above, most of the major news organizations are busily self-immolating, leaving us independent authors to put the matches and kerosene to better use.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. If you value our independent writings and would like to support the work we do, please consider joining the growing Notes community today…

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