Just Saying
Have A Media Day
The recent attacks on Joe Rogan and now Zero Hedge reminds one of the attacks years ago on Rush Limbaugh.
Leftwing radio failed miserably in its run against their rightwing foes, see the bones of leftists like Al Franken who tried it. When you can’t compete you then seek to obliterate as in ban.
Some might suggest a more subtle term, censor.
CNN is just one more pathetic example as is much of MSM.
Anyone who questions or writes enquiringly about conventional-committee-room-table wisdom is labeled today a Russian spy or worse. For just how scared elected Democrats are see their proposal to roll back gasoline taxes temporarily as the mid-term election rolls nearer and nearer.
Going back to the Limbaugh era there were tons of Americans, including us, who never listened to the guy, were not affiliated in any way and never supported him and they still had questions about what the hell is going on.
And a good deal of them didn’t then or now belong to one of the major parties.
A former U.S. president said: “If you can’t stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen.” That’s a two way street.
Here is one more attack on those who simply express a different view.
While the collapse of public trust in the mainstream media is nothing new, with Forbes recently reporting that "Fewer Americans than ever before trust the mainstream media", it is only a much more recent phenomenon that members of the media's highest echelons - such as the NYT's Matthew Rosenberg - have started asking themselves and their (few remaining) readers the much more difficult question of why is public trust of media so low.
Unfortunately, instead of following up with some much needed top-to-bottom cleansing and fundamental reassessment of how the MSM pursues, analyzes and reports news, the media has simply fallen back to its traditional tactic of spewing baseless hit pieces against outlets they would rather see silenced and/or censored.
Most notably in recent weeks, this has been observed vis-a-vis Joe Rogan's incredibly popular podcast which has emerged as one of the biggest competitors to traditional media.
This morning, it is Zero Hedge that has again been singled out for pursuing non-establishment groupthink.
Echoing a false allegation we have repeatedly heard before, early on Tuesday the Associated Press (of "how Associated Press cooperated with the Nazis" fame) writes that "U.S. intelligence officials on Tuesday accused a conservative financial news website with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda and alleged five media outlets targeting Ukrainians have taken direction from Russian spies. The officials said Zero Hedge, which has 1.2 million Twitter followers, published articles created by Moscow-controlled media that were then shared by outlets and people unaware of their nexus to Russian intelligence."
Well, now we've done it - we've angered the CIA, and for what? For publishing views that challenge the conventional narrative, such as disputing that an invasion of Ukraine is actually "imminent" as the US State Department and its mainstream media conduits repeat day after day, or that the Covid virus was actually created in a Chinese lab, a view which has gained substantial prominence in recent months after it emerged that none other than the UK's Jeremy Farrar (also known as the UK's Doctor Fauci) played a pivotal role in stifling suggestions that this new virus might have come from a laboratory rather than emerged through natural zoonotic transmission from animals. Attacks.
Is it inconceivable that someone who reads Zero Hedge might also read the LA or New York Times? Is that today’s criterion? Is it either the Trudeau way or the highway?
Of course, there is no actual accusation that Zero Hedge works directly with anyone tied to Russia or its intelligence apparatus - as the AP admits "officials did not say whether they thought Zero Hedge knew of any links to spy agencies and did not allege direct links between the website and Russia", which is correct because - and we will repeat this once again for the record and for all future similar hit piece attempts to smear us - this website has never worked, collaborated or cooperated with Russia, nor are there any links to spy (or any other) agencies; instead all the AP notes, citing some unnamed "intelligence official", is that the US intelligence apparatus is unhappy that among our hundreds of guest publishing contributors is a website called Strategic Culture Foundation which US intel officials "allege" take direction from the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service.