How do conservatives get pulled into conspiracy theories and things like QAnon? Why don't they just trust the "experts"? Did they not hear what was just reported?
I've heard some variation of those questions asked a hundred times in the last several months, but the answer is obvious. If you want to see it, or perhaps I should say if you're open to seeing it, you will, because the Left is way past the point of caring whether or not they keep up the charade.
During a weekly press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was pressed to explain her inability to rally both lawmakers and the general public to support the gargantuan $3.5 trillion spending bill that she, President Biden, and Democrat party leadership are pushing. To Pelosi, the issue is a lack of propaganda. That is, she's frustrated over the lack of any effective public relations campaign that focuses on what the bill will give to people rather than what it will cost them.
Whose fault is that? A fair-minded person would say the responsibility for such an effort falls squarely on the shoulders of the leaders wanting to enact the legislation. But Pelosi's not a fair-minded person.
"Well I think you all could do a better job of selling it, to be very frank with you," the Speaker said to the press gathered in the briefing room.
If you've ever wondered how leftists in positions of power view the mainstream media, this is all you need to hear. They see them not only as allies, but as propaganda agents, who bear the responsibility to "sell" Democrat party policy to the American people. It's an astounding implicit admission from the Speaker.
Meanwhile, just a day later, The Daily Mail broke what should be scandalous news that then-reporter Katie Couric intentionally edited a sit-down interview she conducted with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Make sure you grasp the full shame of this admission. In the pivotal election year of 2016, Couric admits that she felt obligated to "protect" the late liberal justice from public backlash after she made comments that would be perceived as disrespectful to the race radicals the media was promoting at the time. Rational minds will be asking an obvious question: why does she feel such an obligation?
Couric wasn't employed by Ginsburg. She wasn't a biographer getting paid by the family's estate. She was not the hired reporter for the DNC or a left-wing judicial organization. She was writing for YahooNews at the time, supposedly churning out hard news stories, interviews, and features.
But she claims to have faced a "conundrum" when the 83-year-old (at the time) Ginsburg carried on about the racially motivated national anthem kneeling. Athletes participating in the protest like Colin Kaepernic, "probably could not have lived in the places they came from," had it not been for the government they were protesting, Ginsburg told Couric.
There's little question that such a take, including her assessment that "as they became older they realize that this was youthful folly," would have landed her a total social media/pop culture cancelling. It would have sent the Left reeling. So Couric decided Ginsburg's age likely prevented her from fully "understand[ing] the question." So rather than report honestly, she decided to largely bury that portion of the exchange.
Would she have done so for Donald Trump, the late conservative justice Antonin Scalia, or any other elected Republican? I can't even ask the question with a straight face.
Remember, the least pernicious form of media bias comes in what is actually said. Far more often, the worst bias is represented by what is not said, what is omitted, and what is buried for the sake of "protecting" favored figures.
It's no surprise that the same day the Couric story broke, the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell highlighted the real issue goes way beyond Katie's bias.
I know narrowcasting is a concern. I know the tendency we all have for seeking out voices that agree with us, that affirm our priors, and that augment our self-assuredness. I see how all that is a problem, but with a mainstream media that has so utterly disgraced itself as little more than proud propagandists for the progressive Left, conservatives have no recourse but to search out alternative sources of information.
That doesn't seem like it's changing any time soon.
