Democrats Declare War on Conservative Media

[Right_in_Virginia]

Democrats Declare War on Conservative Media
American Spectator, Feb 25, 2021, David Catron

Henry Ford famously quipped, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” The Democrats take a similar view about what the public should be permitted to see on broadcast and cable networks. A Wednesday hearing conducted by the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology made it abundantly clear that they believe we should be free to view anything we like so long as it fits the Democratic version of the “facts.” Titled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media,” the hearing was primarily devoted to testimony from “media experts.”

Among the “experts” who provided testimony was Kristin Danielle Urquiza, who lost her father to COVID-19. Urquiza’s opening statement includes this assertion: “The primary person and entity responsible for my father’s death … is Donald Trump and his administration.” She then indicted the cable news industry as Trump’s “accomplices” and inevitably singled out one network: “Cable news channels like Fox News are complicit.” In other words, Trump’s “lies” killed her father and Fox abetted the crime. Urquiza was presumably invited to tell her dad’s story in order to put a human face on the testimony of former CNN “journalist” Soledad O’Brien, who discussed what she calls truth decay:

I have both feet planted firmly on the media landscape — and this is what that landscape looks like. Media disguised as journalism has been spreading lies for years, elevating liars, and using the ensuing slugfest to chase ratings, hits, subscriptions and advertisers.… In fact, the elevation of liars has accelerated, with radio, broadcast and cable TV in particular, repeating and reenergizing lies that harm all of us. The bombast that accompanies these lies, has also set the stage for an alarmingly xenophobic and racist narrative that has taken hold in this country.

O’Brien’s solution to this metastasis of prevarication is surprisingly simplistic considering how long she has worked in media: Don’t book liars or advance lies. The problem here should be obvious. Who decides if a particular statement or narrative is a “lie”? They aren’t always easy to spot, as O’Brien herself clearly demonstrated last August. On August 6, then-President Trump suggested it was possible that a COVID-19 vaccine could be developed “around November 3.” This comment inevitably made its way to Twitter, where O’Brien denounced it thus: “This is a lie.” As it happens, she was wrong. The first serious vaccine candidates were announced only six days after Trump’s hypothetical date.


More: https://spectator.org/democrats-war-on-conservative-media/?utm_source=LibertyNation