In what can surely not have been the Founders’ intention, NPR, PBS, and other government-subsidized so-called “news” agencies extract portions of their budgets from public coffers. They then, in a sick inversion of how things are supposed to work, put our own money to work socially engineering us to embrace whatever the narrative du jour happens to be.
Just as a handful of examples, they promote abortion on demand, COVID terror, and child transgenderism with a zeal perhaps unrivaled even by the most hardcore leftist media in the private sector — always, without fail, from a leftist perspective.
Related: NPR Releases Hardcore Abortion Porn Audio to Savor on Your Morning Commute
The government, in my view, should be involved in no way in shaping public opinion one way or another — either by engaging in its own ideological speech or by censoring private speech it disfavors — a prohibition which could easily be extrapolated from the First Amendment.
Would-be state censorship czar Nina Jankowicz, the disgraced former executive director of the defunct Disinformation Governance Board, appeared recently to offer congressional testimony on her role in censoring Americans’ speech on behalf of the state under the Biden regime.
(In her opening statement, she claimed that “the so-called censorship-industrial is a fiction.”)
Rep. Will Self attempted valiantly to extract an answer from Nina about the exact issue of the government’s proper role, or lack thereof, in shaping public opinion, which she pretended not to understand.“The government has a First Amendment right to free speech as well… The role of the government can express its free speech, right? And citizens have a right to their free speech as well. I’m not… I don’t really understand your question, sir. I’m not sure the point,” Nina protested.
Bless the representative’s heart, he tried again and again to extract a real answer from Nina about what role the government should play in forming public opinion — to no avail.
The problem, of course, is that Nina and her ideological kinfolk absolutely believe the government should be manufacturing consent and setting the narrative — but she’s also been aware, and has probably been advised, that saying so out loud is a non-starter as of now.Trump, to his credit, has been doing a hell of a number on various state media entities.
You may have already heard of the threats and cuts levied against NPR and PBS, but underreported is the axe he has taken to the Voice of America, the objectively and unapologetically propagandist government media apparatus aimed by law at the rest of the world — but which, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, also illegally targets American citizens.Via BBC (emphasis added):
US President Donald Trump has signed an order to strip back federally funded news organisation Voice of America, accusing it of being "anti-Trump" and "radical".
A White House statement said the order would "ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda", and included quotes from politicians and right-wing media criticising the broadcaster.
VOA, still primarily a radio service, was set up during World War Two to counter Nazi propaganda. It says it currently reaches hundreds of millions of people globally each week.
Mike Abramowitz, VOA's director, said he and virtually his entire staff of 1,300 people had been put on paid leave.
This is all well and good, but what I’d like to see is a hard ban on all government funding of media ventures, full-stop. The state has no rightful role in manipulating public opinion; let its actions speak for itself and leave the information warfare to the private marketplace of ideas.
Related: Yale ‘Fascism Professor’ Flees Country to Escape Trump’s Fourth Reich
(I’m even wary of allowing the White House and various executive departments and agencies to have their own press shops, although I understand the argument that they’re necessary for the government to publicize what it’s up to.)
Of course, the problem is that much of corporate media is de facto state media — hence the admittedly clunky term I prefer to use for it: corporate state media. Disentangling the state from ostensibly private media is a much more insidious and harder-to-fix problem than simply gagging the government from weighing in on contentious political issues.
At any rate, hacking apart NPR, PBS, et al. is a laudable start.
