The political/cultural left by nature will push and push and push until they are stopped. They never know when to stop because they don’t know what is too far because they don’t actually have any principles that are not in a constant state of flux. There are no guardrails because there is no foundation to build them upon.
They went too far on social media, particularly highly influential Twitter, by censoring and banning more and more conservative accounts and then any that were critical of the State until Elon Musk stepped in, bought it, turned it into X, and restored a reasonable degree of free speech.
They went too far on LGBTQ issues, starting with tolerating homosexuality in the '80s, to accepting it in the '90s, to celebrating it in the 2000s, to gay marriage in the 2010s to the evil introduction of gay sex to young children, pushing a devastating trans ideology and ultimately a push for pedophilia. (Do not doubt that last step as every previous one was doubted.) Decent, traditional Americans are finally pushing back on multiple fronts because they went “too far” openly going after their children, from Moms for Liberty to parental rights laws in multiple states to an explosion in homeschooling.
And now they have gone too far in media, although in reality they went too far on this front a long time ago if the goal is a healthy, information-providing media for an informed electorate. They were biased, moved to partisan, then on to activist, and most recently added vicious attacks against anyone, including family members, speaking out against the State or leftist culture. Again, they won’t stop until they are stopped.
Earlier steps by the media resulted in responses such as Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, then Fox News, and on to an entire conservative media alternative. But other than competition — which essentially has bifurcated America into non-communicating information silos — there was little in the way of accountability. The standout was probably the Washington Post and CNN settling massive defamation lawsuits with Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann after their horrific coverage stories of what turned out to be a setup by a native American followed by their seemingly purposeful malice against a minor by members of the media.
Related: Billionaire Goes After Anti-Semitic Ivy League Presidents
But there has been nothing in the realm of truly systemic accountability until Business Insider went after hedge-fund billionaire tycoon Bill Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, a few weeks ago. Ackman became a leading voice to remove woke Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth after the trio refused to confront raging anti-semitism on their campuses during congressional testimony. Only Kornbluth is left, and Ackman is training his sights on her. It is a war to make universities accountable and he is now creating a think tank to do just that.
But the Business Insider responded by going after Ackman’s Israeli wife for her work at MIT. Ackman, who is by nature fairly aggressive but not a conservative, greatly upped the ante in a way that may result in many of us looking back and seeing BI’s outrageous hit jobs being the best thing to happen for media accountability.
Ackman explains the first wave of attack journalism on the above-mentioned irreplaceable X. Read it all, but the summation shows a likely malice by BI to badly cherry-pick information and leave almost no time for Oxman to respond. He ends by pondering if the actions of BI meet the four-fold test for defamation laid out by Cornell Law with this savvy inclusion:
I have two questions for the private equity and finance communities:
What is the net worth of Business Insider?
What is the net worth of Axel Springer?
He is making clear he is willing to put his money where his pain is, and he is worth an estimated $4.1 billion according to Forbes. When BI double-downed on Oxman with a horrific headline claim of her “admitting plagiarism” when she did no such thing, Ackman escalated and got about the biggest endorsement he could in the form of X’s owner.
His wife hired legal counsel and is planning to take a few weeks to “properly respond to all of the assertions and factual misstatements and errors,” Ackman wrote on X, to which Musk replied that he “recommend a lawsuit,” and Ackman following with: “Thank you Elon for your support.”
If Ackman is willing to go to the mat on this, he could sue the reporters, whom he has named, the editor, whom he has named, Business Insider, and perhaps even BI’s Axel Springer, though he has been talking with the German company’s CEO personally and is likely to avoid legal actions at that level.
There is no way to turn back the ideological poison in newsrooms, which is being replenished in real-time from the poison wells at American university schools of journalism.
But perhaps the best possible thing that could happen would be the beginning of a true, systemic financial accountability for reporters, editors, and their institutions of propaganda. Media members for too long have been able to report virtually anything (against the right people on behalf of the right people) with no accountability. They can even win Pulitzers for bogus stories — see the New York Times and Washington Post regarding the non-existent Trump-Russian collusion fiction. When they get everything wrong, they can go on their merry way — again, if it is on behalf of the status and leftist powers.
This must end, and maybe Ackman is the tip of the spear for puncturing their defense. Despite BI’s lies that Oxman is a “celebrity academic” — as if there is such a thing — she is not a public figure and so the standard is lower. Ackman should take any money he wins in these potential lawsuits (after reimbursing his own expenses) and invest them in a media accountability project that continues to use a form of lawfare to hold the media accountable. Winnings get plowed back into the project.
A few victories would likely do wonders to make media members be a bit more careful, nudging them back towards actual journalism.
And Congress could take the opportunity to help by passing legislation that codifies an overturning of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan that sets absurdly high requirements to “prove” malice and allows so-called journalists to get away with almost anything with no accountability.
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