Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, the man who revealed the corruption in the then-President’s call to the Ukrainian President, has the problem with the American free press precisely right:
Nevertheless, there are ways to dismantle the right-wing ecosystem of disinformation, an ecosystem that does not begin with insurrection but with more mundane lies. Like the many political elites driving insurrection to advance their political aims, the right-wing media is also motivated by a bottom-line calculation: viewers, market share and advertising dollars. Similar to the yellow journalism that flourished in the late 19th century, the right-wing media today is driven by the promise of profit. So why not hold the media accountable for the heinous insurrection where it hurts them most? By design, defamation law makes intentional, malicious lying an expensive habit, but this works only if people are willing to bring civil cases against the peddlers of disinformation.
When money is the goal and it can be obtained directly from viewers, the strategy is three-fold:
- Convince the audience the mainstream media is selling false news;
- Train the audience to accept news that plays to their preconceptions;
- Feed them that news without regard to accuracy or context.
A long time ago, I told my fencing coach that I was a member of the Instant Gratification Generation, and, related to that, is the Crazy Lazy Generation, the Boomers, mostly, who don’t think they should be considering the possibility that they are wrong in their expectations. This refusal to accept that they can be wrong, as reinforced by certain religious leaders and, based on the Mueller Report, national adversaries who benefit from a divided and polarized American polity, leads to a group certain the news is out to lie to them.
But it can also lead to disaster for the media that chooses to go down that path, as Vindman points out:
Accountability of the media is required, lest they sow the seeds of future insurrection. It is clear that both the political enablers and the right-wing media are now trapped in a vicious cycle in which their followers demand that their enablers dole out more outrageous lies. As historian Timothy Snyder noted in “The American Abyss,” the accumulation of little lies has manifested the Big Lie, and the right-wing media continues to feed the beast they helped create.
Keeping all the lies straight can be a nightmare, and as the semi-reasonable folks realized they’ve been misled, it leaves the cranks and crackpots, who’d rather come up with fantasies insane rather than entertain the possibility of being wrong. Much like the endpoint of RINOing the Republicans, this evolutionary pressure produces a Republican Party more and more pure in its belief that the mainstream media simply lies to them.
And I fear retiring Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) is far too late in executing his duties to reverse the flow:
“We don’t need to try and explain away or come up with alternative versions. We all saw what happened,” Blunt told NBC’s “Meet the Press” of January 6, when a mob of former President Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 election, clashed with law enforcement, ransacked congressional offices and threatened the lives of then-Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers.
Calling January 6 “a terrible day for America,” the Missouri Republican said, “I think it was absolutely unacceptable and we can’t let that kind of thing be repeated again in our country.” [CNN/Politics]
That time passed years ago.
