Recently the legacy media experienced yet another blow to their credibility when it was discovered by Elon Musk’s DOGE that Politico had received over $8 million taxpayer dollars. This is the same outlet that went to great lengths to bury the Hunter Laptop story while at the same time spreading non-stop misinformation about then candidate Trump. Needless to say, Politico’s days of being seen as an unbiased, fact-based news source are over (if that status ever existed); but are they just the tip of the iceberg?
In an interview with Marco Rubio, CBS host Margaret Brennan made a statement that, to be frank, is shocking to even the most jaded of political junkies. To elaborate, while discussing Vice President Vance’s recent speech in Munich, Brennan made the bold claim that free speech is what “empowered” the Nazi Party, allowed them to take over the country, and then commit genocide.
In essence, this is part of a larger intellectual lie known as the Weimar Fallacy, but you can look into that on your own time. The real story here is much more ominous than one host making an absurd claim. This is to say that, to any reasonable person paying attention, it seems more obvious every day that the legacy media—at least the people we see on TV and read on our computers/phones—are just puppets. Sure, sometimes they say/write things that are correct, but overall it appears very likely that there is someone else pulling the strings. The question we should be asking is who are these puppet masters? Why do they seem so desperate to control the flow of information through the censorship of information and speech?
Beginning with this first query, there are a lot of layers. We know the government is involved in these organizations, not only because of the Politico story but also because of Project Mockingbird, which is another thing you should look up in your free time. At any rate, even though the government is involved with the news—to what extent we cannot be totally certain—so too are massive corporations. For example, CBS is owned by Paramount Global, NBC is owned by Comcast, CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, and so on. The moral of the story: massive entertainment companies—all of which are markedly pro-state—own and operate the “news.” At least some of them—although, who are we kidding, it’s probably all of them—are getting your hard-earned dollars while doing it. In other words, it is a giant, crony system, comprised of government and big business.
When it comes to the second question, this requires some hypothesizing. Nonetheless, one can still make a fairly accurate assumption if they look at the “news” in a more up to date way. When I was in graduate school, a significant amount of my research was dedicated to studying the effects that the media has on the voting public. During this research I discovered a significant flaw with much of the 21st century academic literature around this topic. “News” was still a term reserved for only mainstream sources and explicitly political newspapers. Of course, this made sense before the internet and social media, but we do not live in that world anymore. Therefore, I posited in my writings that the term “news”—at least when it came to academic research—should be updated to include all of the mediums in which people consume political content.
After making this change and starting my research anew, it became very clear that podcasts, social media, Substack, etc. had all eclipsed the legacy media when it came to political influence. Put another way, when Cardi B posts a tweet about high taxes to her 37 million X followers, Joe Rogan interviews a doctor about the folly of transgenderism and gets hundreds of millions of downloads, or Ann Coulter writes an independent article for Substack about the border that goes viral, they all have a far broader and more effective impact on the voting public than the so-called “mainstream” media, and their funders/handlers know it.
This, it seems, is why people like Margaret Brennan seek to associate free speech with Nazism. It is also why places like CNN and Politico refuse to allow back and forth discussions on vaccine efficacy, and why every debate that is hosted by a major news outlet is so clearly one-sided in favor of their preferred candidate. They want to control what is said and how it is said so that they can control what you hear, and then what you think because this will determine how you behave.
Granted, there is a degree of speculation in all things and no one can say with one hundred percent certainty that this assessment is correct, but to anyone who has a healthy distrust of the state, the dots are not hard to connect. The government is in bed with the corporations, they both control the news because they both want to control you. Independent media, the internet, etc., are all tools that serve as supercharged vehicles for the dissemination of free speech and free debate. Such alternatives are their natural enemy because these mediums of influence give control over the flow of information, and subsequently our thoughts, back to the people and the free market. Ergo, let us not allow these rickety old monoliths to regain control over the flow of information. Rather, let’s all embrace free speech, free thought, and honest debate, while giving a hardy middle finger to those statists in the media and government who wish to enslave our minds and bodies.
