I suspect I’m not going to rock anyone’s world with the well-traveled cliché that free speech is the bedrock of any functional system of representative government/free society. A related cliché, but no less true than the first, is that the answer to bad speech is always, without exception, more speech.
Censorship breeds contempt and distrust and, ultimately, hatred on the part of the censored against the censors. We have seen this dynamic particularly on the right in the past five years or so, as the multinational corporate state, which has identified the grassroots right as its primary ideological opponent, has clamped down fiercely on speech under the guise of combating “misinformation,” “Russian election interference,” and other contrivances.
Related: Ex-MSNBC Propagandist Keith Olbermann Calls For Government to Ban Twitter/X Over ‘Hate Speech’
Given how important free expression is — both as a tool for functional government and as a non-negotiable, fundamental birthright of a free people — I appreciate the opportunity PJ Media and Salem have given me over the past year and change to say (almost) anything I want, to speak the truth as I see it (mostly) unfiltered. Paula, the chief editor here, only ever pushes back in the mildest of ways, such as voicing her preference that I not refer to Anthony Fauci as a “COVID Warlord,” which she believes is uncouth/overwrought but which I believe is entirely accurate, and making factual corrections when I get things wrong — and yes, I get things wrong from time to time, as all human journalists do, especially we who do not enjoy the benefit of robust staffs and interns to do the legwork. But I never lie and I never intentionally get things wrong, because I respect myself and the audience. Lying ultimately destroys the liar, first and foremost.
Blessings often come in disguise, as learned philosophers have noted, and as personal life lessons of my own have imparted. Google routinely now demonetizes PJ Media content on everything from transgenderism to climate change, which has forced us to find alternative funding sources — namely, you, the reader. In doing so, it has only further decoupled us from The Beast and further freed us to say what we believe to be true without fear of financial blackballing. Until they literally start canceling bank accounts and credit card payments — which may not be so far off — there’s nothing they can do to stifle grassroots support from our readership.
The legacy media is dying because it has stultified into transparent, farcical propaganda. Whether Fox News or MSNBC will exist at all in a decade’s time — unless they are entirely propped up by corporate state interests as a fully realized form of state media instead of the current form of merely quasi-state media with the trappings of independence — is an open question.
As far as I can tell, the only impediment still facing us here in the free media is the pernicious phenomenon of audience capture, somewhat the inverse of a captive audience, defined as media figures becoming “captives” of their audiences, who come to expect a certain fidelity to whatever flavor of dogma they adhere to, often at the expense of the truth. Given the human proclivity to groupthink and tribal in-group/out-group dynamics, audience capture cuts across all political ideologies, and no one is immune.
My pledge to anyone who ever reads anything I write is that to the extent I am ever conscious of the influence of audience capture — and anyone in the media willing to be honest is susceptible — I will never sell out the truth as I see for the sake of any other interest, be it financial or social clout.
God bless and Merry Christmas.
