Old News, New News

The Sunday Sesh... on a Monday!

(Getty Images)

Joel Bowman, surveying the scene from Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Welcome to the Sunday Monday* Sesh, that time of the week when we gather at the virtual watering hole to thresh out the quandaries, queries and conundrums of the day.

Whether you’re a new patron, or you’ve sitting atop a well-worn barstool in front of a bronze plaque with your very own name on it, please feel free to like, comment and share these Sesh articles. Unlike our colleagues in the mainstream media, we are open to – and actively encourage! – dissenting views. 

Our subject for this week is a slippery one: truth.

Dear readers will search the pages of the mainstream press in vain... scour the evening news without satisfaction... plumb the Internet’s murkiest wormholes, only to emerge empty handed.  

Long the guiding light of philosophers, theologians and scientists, truth used also to rank highly on the list of desirable attributes for members of the once-proud fourth estate. Alas, in the go-go age of instant information and infinite scrolling, firm facts give way to fast falsehoods, verity yields to vice, principal pales to pretense. 

Not that the media is solely to blame. Everywhere we look we see acts of staggering deceit and barefaced cunning... in the faux promises backing up our piddling paper monies... in the droopy mouths of those claiming to embody The Science... and of course, in the vacuous sloganeering of the shame-free political caste. 

Liar in Chief

Even the leader of the free world is not immune to the allure of cheap deceit. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. once claimed to have gone to law school on a full academic scholarship, where he graduated in the top half of his class. Not the kind of man to tell a single lie when given the opportunity to tell multiple, Mr. Biden fell victim to the facts not once, not twice but three times in one compound claim. Quite the feat, even for an aspiring politician!

Turns out, the future commander in chief was only awarded a half scholarship... and then owing to his sagging finances, not his bulging cerebrum. Indeed, when it came to intellectual horsepower, Mr. Biden was only able to muster 76th place in his class... out of 85 pupils. Now, your editor is no Fields Medal contender, but even we can recognize that as nowhere near the “top half” of the class. (And that’s to say nothing of the chap’s apperant poverty of imagination. As long as he was jettisoning the truth in favor of fiction anyway, why not invent something creative... “upper decile,” say, or “top 5%,” or “second in the class”? Even the man’s lies are drab.)

Of course, we take it as read that politicians enjoy a somewhat polyamorous relationship with the truth, keen to lie with whatever narrative buys them a stiff drink and most flatters their ego. Indeed, it is in recognition of this observable predisposition that the public came to rely on the media as a check and balance in the first place. Our fearless journalists were supposed to be soldiers of objectivity, speaking truth to power and ensuring that democracy remains bathed in disinfecting sunlight. 

And yet, as we’ve mentioned in these pages before, trust in media is at multi-generational lows. Scarcely a week goes by without some riotous scandal emanating from the once-vaunted fourth estate. This week, we fit some more pieces of the puzzle together. Please enjoy...

* These Sesh essays usually appear on Sundays, except when we’re celebrating our daughter’s birthday or some similar such family event. (Happy B’day, Frida!) Expect a return to our regular schedule this coming weekend. Cheers ~ JB

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Old News, New News

By Joel Bowman

“...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...”

~ From A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

If you’ve been following the news here in Substacklandia of late – or as apologists for the legacy media call it “cavorting with nazis,” “fomenting conspiracies” or “peddling transphobic, anti-science misogynoir” – you’ll have noticed the accelerating divergence between what we might call “old news” vs “new news.” Truly, it is a tale of two medias; for one, it is the best of times, for the other... well, you know the rest.  

Few stories better illustrate both the rise and rise of the alternative media and the commensurate decline and fall of the establishment monolith quite like that of former National Partisan Radio (NPR) veteran reporter, Uri Berliner, and the subsequent, all-too predictable treatment he received at the hands of both his ex-boss and the mainstream media he served for the past quarter century. 

A loose recap of the salient points, in case you missed the story...

A couple of weeks ago, long-time reporter, Uri Berliner, published a thoughtful, measured article in The Free Press, lamenting the plight of his beloved NPR from a sensible, mostly fact-based source of left-leaning news (Mr. Berliner is a self-confessed Subaru driver...) to full-blown fabrication factory for woke messaging, political bias, activist journalism and wanton lies of both commission and omission.  

Berliner described, with attention to detail and journalistic integrity unseen at NPR for years, how the outlet slanted its coverage of practically every major event of the recent past, from the election of Orange Man Bad to his alleged, ultimately unproven collusion with Russia, to the origins of Covid-19 and the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, through to the ubiquitous specter of “systemic racism” engulfing the nation, from sea to shining sea, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd (and the “mostly peaceful protests” that followed).

Illiberal Bias

Indeed, scarcely was there a story worth printing over the past decade that NPR did not rush to scramble, reframe and invert... all in the name of social justice, of course. Mr. Berliner’s essay is worth a read in full, especially if you rely on NPR for anything close to “just the facts, ma’am.” 

Readers of these pages will be unsurprised by the outlet’s bias, although the sheer velocity of its descent into outright partisan hackdom may stoke some additional consternation. Wrote Berliner:

“Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.

“By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.” 

Troubled by the lack of what he called “viewpoint diversity,” Mr. Berliner checked the voter registration record of NPR’s newsroom. Get ready to not be shocked. 

“In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.” 

Common sense members of the public must have sensed the political drift, as trust in the once-hallowed, now-hollowed institution all but collapsed. Berliner cited research from a Harris Poll, which found that only “3-in-10 audience members familiar with NPR said they associate NPR with the characteristic ‘trustworthy.’”

That such a dismal rating was enough to put NPR ahead of both CNN and The New York Times in terms of trustworthiness ought to tell you all you need to know about the abysmal state of the mainstream news, even beyond NPR’s walls. 

Alas, Mr. Berliner’s story barely registered a “meh” from the self-assured angels manning (and womanning, and they-ing) news bureaus around the country. What little mainstream coverage the story received initially was mostly repackaging the narrative as some version of “angry white heterosexual male storms out of faultless NPR, blames company for not being sufficiently ultra-far-hard-extreme MAGA.” 

CNN made sure to append “anti-establishment” to The Free Press outlet, in case readers were tempted to take the story seriously...you know, like the stories in the “real press.” They also disparaged Berliner’s accusations as little more than a “sweeping conclusion” and complained that any right-leaning coverage of the story was really just designed to “demonize NPR.” 

Some Things Considered

Naturally, the public broadcaster’s recently appointed CEO, Katherine Maher, to whom Berliner was impudent enough to extend a word of genuine encouragement in his article (“I’ll be rooting for her”), took the opportunity to listen, to reflect and to, in true NPR fashion, consider all things...

Wait. Scratch that. Berliner was instead suspended for five days without pay, while Maher dashed off an angry tirade, in which she accused Mr. Berliner of being “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” 

Like a jihadi who responds to criticism of intolerance with death threats, or a jilted lover who turns hysterical after their partner leaves them on grounds of emotional instability, Maher’s letter confirmed exactly Mr. Berliner’s complaints against the broadcaster. There would be no room for dissent in Mrs. Maher’s NPR. And why should there be? Mrs. Maher already knows the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Scanning her twitter feed, as

Matt Taibbi

did in this hilarious article, we discover that Mrs. Maher is one of those rare humans whose mind is unclouded by a single doubt, who lays her perfectly-coiffed head down to sleep at night with the immaculate conscience of an infant child. Here is a woman who arrives at her desk each and every morning with a degree of certainty that would be the envy of the self-immolation community. With such unvarnished conviction, who needs “viewpoint diversity”?

Needless to say, Mr. Berliner resigned shortly thereafter with a note that read, in part, “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”

Were this story an isolated incident, it might not be cause for such concern. However, not only is this kind of event not a rarity, it is so banal as to read like an AI generated script. We know the characters even before we’ve heard the details. The sensible center-left/center-right citizen who finds himself politically orphaned by the increasingly powerful lynch mob on the outskirts of his own party... the dowdy scientist who wakes to find his Wokepedia bio smeared with labels like “conspiracy theorist” and “denier” because he dared publish data that runs counter to the “settled science” (whatever that is)... the school teacher who finds herself without a job because she prioritized reading, writing and arithmetic over her pupils’ gender identities, melanin content or newfound furry fandom… are but a few of the familiar roles.

Feature, Not Bug

And yet, far from being cause for despair, the public’s well-earned skepticism is really a feature here, not a bug. NPR’s (and CNN’s, the NYT’s, etc.) dismal ratings for trustworthiness means our BS-o-Meters are still functioning. That only 30% of the general public trust NPR (a puddle that has surely evaporated further in the wake of Mr. Berliner’s tales from the woke crypt) means the majority of people recognize a partisan agenda when they see one. Indeed, it would be problematic if, after the smorgasbord of mistruths, Newspeak and pork pies served up these past ten years, the public retained any appetite for more of the same.

Instead, they satisfy their needs elsewhere. In this way does the “new news,” rush to fill a real and growing market demand for truth, credibility and genuine “viewpoint diversity,” just as free market stores of wealth – gold, crypto, collectibles, etc. – tend to rally when confidence in government-issued fiat falters. The same week that The Free Press ran Mr. Berliner’s piece, they announced that they had hit the #1 spot on Substack. The outlet, just a few years young, now has 25 full time staffers and runs bicoastal bureaus, in New York and Los Angeles. Perhaps we’ll see more articles there with Mr. Berliner’s byline. 

In the end, people’s thirst for truth and beauty doesn’t magically vanish because they’re smothered in lies and ugliness. On the contrary. They only desire more that which they are denied. As long as the self-appointed panjandrums of the old news world remain unable to adapt to the demands of their audience, as long as they prioritize their own moral crusades over facts on the ground, as long as their imagined ends justify their shabby means, alternative voices will continue to flourish. 

For old news, it is the season of darkness; for new news, the season of light.

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And now, for your Notes from the week just gone…

And that will do for our this week’s Sesh, dear reader. As always, feel free to have your say in the comments below. While you get amongst it, we’ve got bags to pack, bills to settle and one last steak lunch to enjoy before we set off on our journey to Australia and beyond.

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

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Speaking of the rise and rise of “new news,” our own humble Notes publication is now #25 in World Politics here on Substack…a mighty run given that we only began our little project this year!

Thanks again to our dear Notes members, old and new, for your generous support. Your membership helps us spread the ideas of liberty from our far-flung post down at the End of the World to more than 120 countries around the globe.

If you’d like to join our growing community of folks interested in free markets, free minds and free people, please consider getting involved by becoming a Notes member today. Cheers! JB