What is the function of the major news media corporations? Too often, it's not to tell us what is happening. Rather, it's to tell us what to think. Here's a recent case discussed by Aaron Mate and Katie Halper on Useful Idiots.
Someone blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline. On Dec 26, the New York Times wrote a long article calling this a "crime." On Feb 8, Seymour Hersh gave us detailed evidence that Joe Biden committed this crime. The NYT has refused to even mention Hersh's blockbuster investigation. Here's the chronology.
Feb 7, 2022: Joe Biden promises that Russia invades Ukraine, the Nordstream 2 Pipeline will not be operational: "We will bring an end to it."
Sept 26, 2022 - The Nordstream 2 pipeline is destroyed.
Sept 28, 2022 - Washington Post scolds Tucker Carlson for reporting that the U.S. destroyed Russia's pipeline.
Sept 30, 2022 - White house denies U.S. involvement in destroying the pipeline. Accuses the Russians of lying. Claims that Russia destroyed its own pipeline. Mass Media gaslights U.S. Citizens that Russia purportedly blew up its own pipeline (see video below).
Feb 8, 2023 - Highly respected investigative reporter Seymour Hersh issues news article detailed how the U.S. blew up the Nordstream 2 Pipeline.
Feb 8, 2023 - The White House claims that the article by Hersh, a well-decorated reporter, is "utterly false and complete fiction."
As of Feb 12, 2023 - The New York Times refuses to discuss Hersh's blockbuster findings.
Jonathan Turley is concerned many people in the news media business now consider it a bad thing to be "objective." His article is titled, “'Objectivity has got to go.': News Leaders Call for the End of Objective Journalism."
We previously discussed the movement in journalism schools to get rid of principles of objectivity in journalism. Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media even as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting. Now, former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward have released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Notably, while Bob Woodward and others have finally admitted that the Russian collusion coverage lacked objectivity and resulted in false reporting, media figures are pushing even harder against objectivity as a core value in journalism.
Those who claim that objectivity is impossible often advocate the vague notion of "social justice" as the only alternative. Just because objectivity is difficult is not a reason for giving up on trying to find common ground on many facts. Giving up on trying to describe things objectively opens the door to mob rule based on feelings of what justice requires, feelings that are unanchored to a mutually-shared understanding of what is going on. Giving up on objectivity is giving up on the Rule of Law. Throwing the quest for objectivity overboard is one of many modern-day examples of violating the principle of Chesterson's Fence, explained here by Shane Parrish of Farnam Street:
Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place. Chesterton went on to explain why this principle holds true, writing that fences don’t grow out of the ground, nor do people build them in their sleep or during a fit of madness. He explained that fences are built by people who carefully planned them out and “had some reason for thinking [the fence] would be a good thing for somebody.” Until we establish that reason, we have no business taking an ax to it. The reason might not be a good or relevant one; we just need to be aware of what the reason is. Otherwise, we may end up with unintended consequences: second- and third-order effects we don’t want, spreading like ripples on a pond and causing damage for years . . . Many of the problems we face in life occur when we intervene with systems without an awareness of what the consequences could be.
Imagine that a newly published comprehensive review of mask-wearing by a prestigious medical publication concluded that mask wearing offered us significant protections from COVID. You'd see those findings echoed by most major news organizations. Biden's attorneys would trumpet those findings in Biden's attempt to reverse the 11th Circuit ruling, so that he could make better arguments requiring airline passengers to put their damned masks back on. Well, the opposite has happened.
I personally know Dr. Kristen Walsh. She is a dedicated pediatrician. She is one of the many practicing physicians who read the January 30, 2023 Cochrane Library review of evidence as to whether masks prevented the spread of COVID. Walsh's Feb 1, 2023 article is titled: "New meta-analysis should end discussion of mask mandates in schools." An excerpt:
From where I sit, as a primary care doctor practicing in an academic clinic setting, this review was big, huge science news. It gathered and studied 78 randomized controlled trials, both pre- and mid-COVID, and addressed COVID, flu, and other respiratory viral illnesses. I was surprised (and not in a pleasant way), therefore, to see almost complete media silence after the review was released. I didn’t see anything about it on cable news; no articles in well-known newspapers. The tweet from the Cochrane Database announcing the review only had 68 likes and 24 retweets after 24 hours. “How is this possible?” I thought. “Why does no one care whether masks work or not?” Probably because the answer was pretty much: not.Upon reading Walsh's Substack article, I did my due diligence, searching the websites of the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC and NPR. As of today, you will not find a single word about the Cochrane Review declaring that there is no evidence supporting the use of masks to prevent COVID.
Why the silence? I would start my answer with the COVID edition of the Twitter files. I would add that we are looking squarely at a sad example of the sunk costs phenomenon: Most legacy news outlets (and their pals in the U.S. Government) are determined to keep riding their severely flawed COVID narrative because they fear the ridicule they would face if they did an about-face. They have shown themselves to be obedient servants to the stern dictates of the Trusted News Initiative, to the Biden Administration and to the U.S. Security State, which has dedicated at least eighty FBI agents to the task of making sure that highly decorated doctors and researchers (and ordinary people) stop thinking for themselves for safety's sake. We are being protected from facts regarding the failures of masks for the same reason that we are being protected from other COVID-related facts and opinions, including the recent shocking revelations of Jordon Walker, Pfizer's Worldwide Director of R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning.
Walsh is not alone in recognizing the import of this comprehensive Cochrane review. Dr. Vinay Prasad's Feb 2 article is titled: "The Cochrane Review on Masks is Damning: Masks have no good data to support them: It is a religion, not a science." Here is an excerpt from Prasad's article:
Let me be clear: The science did not change. Public health experts started lying. We never had good data that mask mandates help, or that mask advice (a softer policy) improves outcomes. Yet it was widely pushed— most likely to distract from true federal failures. After vaccination, not only do we not have evidence. . . Here is the big summary finding. With 276,000 participants in RCTs or cluster RCTs, masking does nothing. No reduction in influenza like or Covid like illness and no reduction in confirmed flu or COVID. That’s stone cold negative. . . . This is why Fauci said what he said initially on 60 minutes. He wasn’t lying. The best evidence showed no benefit. That was before we saw a concerted campaign to promote cloth masking— a bizarre way to treat anxiety. People routinely wore cloth masks outside— something that was less 21st century and more 3rd century, akin to animal sacrifice, and dancing to make the rains come.
These are excerpts from Part I of Jeff Gerth's Four-Part series at the Columbia Journalism Review, who previously worked for decades with the NYT.
Today, the US media has the lowest credibility—26 percent—among forty-six nations, according to a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. In 2021, 83 percent of Americans saw “fake news” as a “problem,” and 56 percent—mostly Republicans and independents—agreed that the media were “truly the enemy of the American people,” according to Rasmussen Reports. . . .What follows is the story of Trump, Russia, and the press. Trump’s attacks against media outlets and individual reporters are a well-known theme of his campaigns. But news outlets and watchdogs haven’t been as forthright in examining their own Trump-Russia coverage, which includes serious flaws. Bob Woodward, of the Post, told me that news coverage of the Russia inquiry ” wasn’t handled well” and that he thought viewers and readers had been “cheated.” He urged newsrooms to “walk down the painful road of introspection.” . . .
On the eve of a new era of intense political coverage, this is a look back at what the press got right, and what it got wrong, about the man who once again wants to be president. So far, few news organizations have reckoned seriously with what transpired between the press and the presidency during this period. That failure will almost certainly shape the coverage of what lies ahead.
The title of Gerth's article: "The press versus the president, part one"