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Recently in Toronto the ongoing and often worthwhile Munk Debates turned their attention to the mainstream media and why people no longer trust it. Arguing the affirmative were Douglas Murray and Matt Taibbi, the latter currently airing internal Twitter communications mined from the social media plaform’s pre-Musk email archive.
Those revelations — censorship at the behest of Democrats, banning right-leaning tweeters but none on the left, ruthlessly deep-sixing the Hunter Biden story — are jaw-dropping in their brazenness yet have gone rigorously unreported by establishment media organs. If further proof were needed that the mainstream can’t and shouldn’t be trusted the treatment of those three stories alone constitutes an iron-tight case for the prosecution.
On the other side, the New Yorker‘s Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times opinionista Michelle Goldberg. Listeners who have enjoyed some of Gladwell’s early books, The Tipping Point, for example, may find their admiration considerably diminished by his red herrings, evasions and bitchy obfuscations.
Video of the encounter is supposedly available only to the Munk Foundation’s financial supporters, but someone has nevertheless posted the full debate on YouTube (below). Should that bootlegged clip be taken down, the audio — this link goes straight to the embedded file — can be heard free of charge.
As in all Munk debates, the audience was polled before the event, with a 54-48 majority saying their trust in the mainstream media is not misplaced. Polled again at evening’s end, the division was 67-33 in favour of Murray and Taibbi. — roger franklin
>” … his (Gladwell) red herrings, evasions and bitchy obfuscations …” [Roger F, from the article here]. An accurate description of the vanity-driven egoism Gladwell displays.
As for Goldberg, she clearly believes that talking loudly over the top of someone is not just simply rude, but is indeed a winning tactic.
Andrew Murray scythed through both of them and one could easily see the unease within them as a result of this. Accurate self-insight is not an MSM trait; they will not have it.
There is no greater battle for conservatives and anyone who puts a premium on rationale truth seeking than the dismantling of the stranglehold MSM or legacy media has on the dissemination of information, always delivered in the form of a never-ending construction and maintenance of an agenda driven narrative, no matter how removed from reality. We are no longer dealing with the fourth estate when it comes to the MSM, rather the fifth column. And it is this battle that needs to be won first before the unravelling of institutional neo-marxism and postmodernism (wokeism) can be successfully redressed. If Covid has taught us anything, surely this is one of its most prominent lessons.
Whilst I agree that dismantling the “fifth column” would be helpful, it should be seen as merely a part of a concerted effort to undo the damage wrought by the Left in their largely successful ‘march through the institutions’.
However effective the media might be in helping drive the agenda, even they would struggle if it weren’t for the fact that pretty much all the key institutions, such as law enforcement, the legal system, higher education and the public service are pretty much entirely controlled by the Left. This results in extremely effective control of what citizens see, hear and are allowed even to think.
Add to this the Left’s success in capturing all the major online platforms, which we might call ‘the new media’ and it’s all over, Rover. It will take a military mind to defeat such a massive alliance.
While it is true that all the significant institutions you mention above have been captured by neo-marxism and cultural postmodernism, it was formally the role of the fourth estate to hold such institutions to account not simply be a flag bearer. A MSM that re-engaged in its true raison d’etre would provide an avenue in which the disengaged public could be re-empowered to challenge such institutions. This is infact how revolutions and the overthrow of corrupt regimes, regimes that controlled all the major institutions you mention, has historically occurred (on occasion ) throughout the 20th century. Control the dissemination of information and you control the whole box and dice. Openly challenge captured institutional power through quality journalism and the seeds of change are cast over fertile ground. If that had actually occurred during the Covid response it may have played very differently.