The definition of abdication is "failure to fulfill a responsibility or duty." A more fitting description of the modern American media cannot be found. The media in America is unique in that it is the only private enterprise having its own Constitutional guarantee of freedom to operate, devoid of government interference or control.
The Founding Fathers held the importance of a free press quite high indeed to carve out this unique Constitutional right. Indeed, the necessary role of a free press is to act as a check on power, and the need for the media to accept and cherish this special role is vital. When an institution enjoys great independence, it must hold for itself an equal measure of great responsibility.
A generation of secular-progressives, most of whom hold at least an affinity for socialism, came to appreciate the role of the media. However, the role they came to appreciate is not the one our Founding Fathers had in mind when they created the First Amendment. Instead, these progressives sought to dominate the media, and use it as a social engineering tool to manipulate information and control messaging, all for the purpose of advancing a narrow-minded set of political objectives, often harming basic human liberties.
To these controllers of today's media, truth and accuracy are only desired when they align with the message they wish to project. When that message is negated by the truth, then the truth is obfuscated, ideally wiping the truth fully away.
So, it is no surprise when major media outlets destroyed their credibility by parroting a chosen message, one given to them by government agencies considered in alignment with the secular-progressive aims the media shares. In taking strategic leaks of an FBI and CIA joint plan to infiltrate the 2016 Trump campaign, the media seeks to help this corruption, by providing aid to these government institutions. This aid is not to promote public understanding of what actually happened, but instead to allow the leaders of these bureaucratic institutions to minimize the damage to their careers.
What should anger us is that these media organizations betrayed their public duty. Sadly, this betrayal has happened before. At the turn of the 20th century, wealthy progressives purchased media operations with the intention of using them to actively champion for political causes they supported. Josephus Daniels did this back in 1894 when he purchased majority control of the Raleigh News & Observer. He immediately set the paper to work in favor of Democrats and against Republicans and Populists in North Carolina.
Daniels used his paper to undermine racial equality, in coordination with other forces that succeeded in undoing the racial advances made by Theodore Roosevelt. With the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson, blacks saw a terrible raft of racist laws and a new rise of the Klan. This dangerously infringed the human rights of blacks in America.
Daniels' paper was in full allegiance with this, as they launched what was called a "White Supremacy" campaign to assist in the election of North Carolina Democrats, knowing they planned to undermine black human rights by passing what became known as Jim Crowe laws.
It was not until fifty years later that Daniels expressed any remorse for his actions, shortly before he died in 1948. By then, generations of damage was caused to the nation, only reversing in the 1960's civil rights protests. So, again, harming the nation to advance political causes is something that comes natural to the American media.
Today, these same progressive media forces seek to undermine a duly elected President, by working with a single-minded and obsessed group of politicians and bureaucrats to undermine basic liberties such as freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Attorney client privilege infringed, daybreak no-knock entry into homes, and even spying on an opposition campaign -- this is what the media now seeks to defend!
If an opposition political campaign can have all of these basic rights infringed by bureaucrats within the executive branch, then what protections to liberty does our government truly represent! If the majority of the media chooses to ally with this corrupt effort, then the media has destroyed whatever mantle of protecting liberty they could claim!
Today a new populist movement is underway in America, one that seeks to crater corrupt government institutions. This is a necessary effort to defend liberty. Our Founding Fathers warned about the dangers of government that became too powerful.
There is perhaps nothing in humanity sadder than when people who enjoy liberty for themselves seek to destroy it for others. The only proper response to such abdication is for the people to extract their own measure of righteousness, ultimately undermining those in the media abusing their social contract by exposing the depths of their corruption.
-- Ken Stallings
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