RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/national/one-one-issue-us-is-united-the-press-failed/91395/

Concerned about deep political divisions ripping apart the United States? Relax — there’s at least one issue on which there’s an emerging consensus across the political spectrum.

That is that the press has failed.

President Trump, in his remarks on January 6 before a mob of his supporters disrupted Congress, said, “We don’t have a free and fair press. Our media is not free. It’s not fair. It suppresses thought. It suppresses speech, and it’s become the enemy of the people. It’s become the enemy of the people. It’s the biggest problem we have in this country.”

It was not just Trump and the Republicans expressing this view. President Obama, in a statement on “today’s violence at the Capitol,” said, “for two months now, a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem has too often been unwilling to tell their followers the truth — that this was not a particularly close election and that President-Elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20.”The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, returning to the Senate floor after the disruption, denounced what he called “a demagogic president, the people who enable him, the captive media that parrots his lies.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times Magazine, tweeted, “Trump placed open white nationalists all throughout his admin from the beginning and we — mainstream media, polite society — normalized that and we should all be absolutely appalled.” She named one “mainstream media” outlet in particular: “MSNBC was running Trump’s speeches in full and giving platform to disinformation trolls from Trump Administration almost his entire presidency.”

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/charlie-martin/2021/01/17/why-was-parler-censored-by-its-competitors-n1390205

I’ve been a big fan of Medium, although I’ve learned quickly that there are certain “publications” — essentially sub-blogs — that it’s best to avoid. Today I saw a piece published two days ago, The Moderation War Is Coming to Spotify, Substack, and Clubhouse, that addressed how Parler was censored and destroyed by Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon, and then warned that Parler won’t be the last.

The given reason, of course, was that people were saying violent things on Parler and all the bien-pensants are, of course, shocked, shocked that this was “permitted.”

It might be different if the double standard weren’t so glaring. As Amazon was canceling Parler’s hosting — in apparent violation of their contract — they were selling “Kill All Republicans” tee-shirts, and it turns out that while Twitter and Facebook were canceling Parler, the actual mob was coordinating on Twitter and Facebook.Amazon sells “Kill All Republicans” shirts while censoring Parler.

Last year, before the election, Twitter and Facebook suppressed a mainstream newspaper for publishing the Hunter Biden story, as well as suspending hundreds of individuals’ accounts. Twitter eventually said it was a mistake weeks later and restored the New York Post account, and after the election, we found that the “Russian disinformation” story was a lie. But the damage was done and the story that might’ve turned the election went basically unpublicized, which Joe Concha at The Hill called “a dereliction of duty.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/democrats-outsource-political-repression-corporate-daniel-greenfield/

The repression will be televised. It will go better with Coke, it will promise to clear up your bad breath and make your toilet shine. It will be in the cloud, it will be digitized and monetized.

It will have a trademark, a brand, and it will be outsourced to the private sector.

Democrats love public-private partnerships and they outsourced political repression to the private sector. The Constitution has inconvenient things to say about freedom of speech and so the Democrat government of elected and unelected officials outsourced the problem of censoring and suppressing speech to the handful of Big Tech monopolies of the internet.

That same old document written by old white dead men, not to mention centuries of jurisprudence and tradition, prevents the government from kicking down your door in the middle of the night for wrongthink. But nothing keeps corporations from firing you for wrongthink, for being related to someone who committed wrongthink, or for insufficient political correctness.

The public-private partnership between big government and big monopolies is based on Democrats and corporations doing the dirty work of repressing each other’s opponents.

Corporations can’t write regulations that suppress competition from upstart rivals, and so the government steps in and keeps the marketplace under the control of a few cartels. And the government can’t censor, deplatform, fire, bankrupt, and bar its political opponents from speaking, flying, and doing business. But the monopolies it’s been partnering with can and do.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/parlers-website-back-online-with-a-message-from-its-ceo_3660235.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-01-17-4

Parler’s website suddenly appeared online on Jan. 17 with a message from its CEO, John Matze, who said, “Hello world, is this thing on?”

The message suggests Parler was able to find another hosting service, coming about a week after Amazon Web Services booted the social media website from its services, taking the site down. It came as Parler—billed as a “free speech” platform—was seeing an unprecedented surge in users as prominent conservatives, among others, were being banned from Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms.

Matze also issued a temporary status update.

“Now seems like the right time to remind you all—both lovers and haters—why we started this platform,” Matze wrote. “We believe privacy is paramount and free speech essential, especially on social media. Our aim has always been to provide a nonpartisan public square where individuals can enjoy and exercise their rights to both. We will resolve any challenge before us and plan to welcome all of you back soon. We will not let civil discourse perish!”

Amazon Web Services’ rationale behind jettisoning Parler was due to a lack of moderation, and came in the backdrop of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots. Parler, in a court filing, citing text messages between Matze and an Amazon representative, claimed Amazon was primarily concerned with whether President Donald Trump would migrate to Parler after his Twitter account was banned last week.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/fox_news_reportedly_considerin

If Fox News wants to restore its cable news ratings dominance, changes will have to be visible far lower in its organization than what is being reported.

Though I was angry over its election night coverage and have been dismayed at the behavior of a number of its on-air personalities, I take no joy in the ratings crisis that seems to be engulfing Fox News. For all its faults, its reach, resources, and stable of outstanding talent like Tucker Carlson make it an essential voice in a nation with a media scene that is getting scarier by the day. There is no doubt in my mind that, if FNC disappeared or lost its cable system distribution, as at least one of its rivals seems to be advocating, conservatism would be in a much weaker position.

Yesterday, The Daily Beast published an article with four authors, one of them a departed FNC staffer who charged sexual harassment and settled for an undisclosed sum, claiming:

Amid ongoing ratings struggles, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace are fighting for their jobs as their boss Rupert Murdoch has swooped in to take a more hands-on role at the network in recent days, multiple network insiders told The Daily Beast.

NATIONAL REVIEW TODAY

Try Him Now

By Matthew Continetti

Donald Trump has spent his life dodging the consequences of his misbehavior. For once, he must be punished.

An Impeachable Offense

By The Editors

The prudential questions shouldn’t be brushed aside, but this gross misconduct is what the impeachment clause was written to address.

The ‘Late Impeachment’ Question

By Ramesh Ponnuru 
Precedent and purpose cut against the argument that the Constitution bars lawmakers from holding an impeachment trial after Trump leaves office.

McCarthy Says Trump ‘Bears Responsibility’ for Capitol Riot, Advocates Censure Instead of Impeachment

By Zachary Evans 
‘The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,’ McCarthy said.

Shame
By Kevin D. Williamson

A paltry ten House Republicans mustered the guts and the patriotism to vote to impeach Donald Trump. By way of comparison, 139 Republicans in the House voted to overturn the 2020 election. If the American public concludes that this is a party of irresponsible crackpots who can no longer be trusted with power, it will be impossible to blame them.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/12/the-new-york-times-keeps-imitating-a-chinese-propaganda-outlet/

It’s gross that the Times and other outlets effectively carry out Chinese information operations. But maybe we should appreciate the inadvertent candor.

After the Capitol riots of Jan. 6 and the aftermath, you’d be forgiven if you missed the latest egregious example of The New York Times shilling for Communist China. Yet, on Jan. 4, that’s exactly what we got — the Times ran as straight news Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agitprop fit for the pages of The People’s Daily.

Imagine, that during the height of Stalinism, as millions died from a Communism-induced famine, an American publication ran headlines like “Russians Hungry, But Not Starving?”

Imagine, that during the height of Nazism, as Adolf Hitler worked to exterminate the Jewish people, an American publication consciously downplayed and buried coverage of the Holocaust?

The New York Times did precisely these things. Now, it appears it wants to complete the trifecta of effectively shilling for the world’s most monstrous regimes by glorifying that of Communist China as it seeks to supplant the United States as the world’s preeminent power.

“The [coronavirus] pandemic has upended many perceptions, including ideas about freedom,” wrote columnist Li Yuan in the Jan. 4 article. While Chinese citizens “don’t have freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom from fear — three of the four freedoms articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt,” she continued, unironically, “they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life.”

The idea that the Chinese people have the “freedom to…lead a normal day-to-day life” might be news to the Uighurs laboring in Xinjiang’s modern-day gulags, the Falun Gong practitioners facing forced organ harvesting, and the Christians seeing the Bible “Sinicized” while their churches are demolished and their pastors are detained. It might be news even to prominent CCP members like Jack Ma.