There is one thing about social media that I actually really appreciate; one thing that has been painfully missing from traditional media for years.
The ratio.
That is, I appreciate the ability of the general public to respond and criticize the blatant bias and craven ideological posturing of pseudo-objective journalists.
For years, traditional, so-called mainstream media would post their misleading headlines, and write their partisan jabs couched as reporting, and all of us would have no recourse but to pen some abbreviated letter to the editor that would be printed weeks after the offense, if at all. In other words, journalists enjoyed no accountability from their audience. They answered only to their own insular newsrooms with bosses and editors who were just as ideologically driven as they were.
Now, with the advent of social media, willful hacks posing as journalists are no longer able to hide from public scrutiny. They are no longer able to pretend that the rest of us don't know exactly who they are and have, for so long, chosen to be.
Take Peter Baker of The New York Times, who last week put out this spit-take inducing complaint:
First, the media's shift to the "well Trump was bad, but DeSantis is really bad" posture was entirely predictable. Everyone knows their tired game of "the only good Republican was the last one."
- George W. Bush was a war criminal until he was out of office and became the respectable statesman that Republicans used to be before they became dangerous lunatics like John McCain.
- And McCain was a dangerous lunatic until he became the bipartisan war hero that Republicans used to nominate before they started pushing murderous Bain Capital psychos like Mitt Romney.
- And Romney was shoving grandmothers off cliffs in their wheelchairs until he became the stoic, reasonable gentlemen that Republicans used to nominate before they sold their soul to devils like Trump.
Everyone knows this game.
But what's amazing is that in the very tweet where he's demonstrating this dishonest, left-wing trickery of old school media like his own paper, Baker simultaneously tries to label their Democrat Party propaganda factory a "nonpartisan news outlet."
Remember when Barack Obama's administration shunned Fox News? Remember when they tried to push them to the back of the press room bus? They did so because of Fox's obvious rightward slant when it came to their editorial content. The Obama team saw Fox as an adversary, so they didn't feed them any morsels to help them grow.
That's what DeSantis appears to be doing with Republican adversaries – at The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, and so on. Honestly, if Republicans were smart, they would learn from him. Consider what Senator Ron Johnson just dealt with on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. After a hostile shouting match where Todd aggressively defended Hunter Biden's innocence, Johnson made this prescient observation:
Yes, that's correct, Senator. That's what this once mainstream media exists to do: defend Democrats and argue with Republicans. Thankfully, social media is exposing it on a much grander scale, and Republicans simply must begin making necessary and immediate changes like Governor DeSantis has done.
I certainly expect that to make folks like Chuck and Peter squeal in self-righteous indignation, but they have only their own lack of journalistic integrity and professionalism to thank for their plight.
