An Overdue Drubbing Of The Liberal Media
They walk among us
Links are at the end.1
Everybody knows that the press are a ravening horde of liberals who routinely intimidate and undermine their deservedly well-paid capitalist masters, but few are bold enough to point this out, other than truth tellers on the right.
One such voice in the wilderness is Hank Price. Writing at the influential industry rag TVNewsCheck—no, I’d not heard of it either—Price calls out CNN’s new hire, former BBC and New York Times honcho Mark Thompson, along with the executives who hired him.2
The disappointing thing about CNN throwing in the towel is that political polarization has become a cancer in our country. The loss of reasoned debate among people who disagree, yet still respect each other, is the great tragedy of the 21st century. CNN had a chance to build a small bridge over that chasm of partisanship, but the opportunity now seems to be gone.
Price says that during Thompson’s reign at The Times, then-executive editor Dean Baquet, a fierce defender of both sides-ism who single-handedly kept red state diners financially viable during his tenure, “famously declared that balanced political coverage was over,” and that Thompson raised no objections to the decree.
He also name-checks Margaret Sullivan and her parting column in The Guardian excoriating the political press for continuing to endanger our democracy (mentioned in yesterday’s bit, and which begs some obvious questions) because advocating for direct and accurate language is evidently not a balanced nor centrist stance.
If CNN can be said to have thrown in the towel, they did so in 1991 by presenting the first Gulf War as an entertainment and propaganda extravaganza, which additionally established the practice of presenting retired military brass second-careering as commentators on behalf of the war industries for which they now worked or anchored boardroom chairs.
Never a hotbed of leftist thought, CNN, is what I’m saying, and neither are any of our other mainstream-ish press outfits, emphatically to include the NYT. And to whatever degree any of these outlets ever hosted reasoned debate, the people who would be most deeply affected by the outcomes were inevitably excluded. (A grotesquely corrupted recognition of that dynamic was behind Dean Baquet’s manic determination to publish endless red state atmosphere pieces and interviews with Trump supporters.)
Price gives a nod to local news outlets which are, he says, “answerable to the communities they serve,” which is sort of true, but the far-right television news operator Sinclair Broadcasting dictates the editorial stance at almost 300 local stations, and they’re far from the only outside agitators boogering your local news coverage. One hardly need add there aren’t any socialist media conglomerates, but here I am adding it just in case.
Should you wish a regular and generally thoughtful view from the left delivered in handsome print and fulsome digital fashion, both Jacobin3 and Current Affairs4 can help with that—the latter more quirkily than the former—and for not a whole bunch of money.
Woodkid, “Woodkid For Nicolas Ghesquière - Louis Vuitton Works One.5” The piece begins to repeat somewhere around the 10 minute mark, so no need to watch beyond that unless you want a more complete understanding of resting model face.
And that, Comrades, is all I got. Share if you like, comment if you wish, subscribe if you’re impressed—it’s free unless you want to pay. Take care, be well.
Links are always at the end