It Is Way Worse Than Fake News
Donald Trump seems to have invented the term “fake news.” If not, he has been the most influential in advancing the concept.
For years, Conservatives have complained about biased news and how certain important news was often spiked. Those old enough might remember Reed Irvine, a former Marine and Fulbright Scholar from Oxford who founded Accuracy in Media in the 1980s. And then there was L. Brent Bozell, the college debate partner of William F. Buckley, later his brother-in-law, who also was actively opposing the “mainstream” media. Today, his son runs the important Media Research Center, which continues to do great work exposing media lies, deception, and bias.
Thus, complaining about the bias and inaccuracy of “lamestream media” has a long Conservative pedigree, including Rush Limbaugh.
However, the last few days have more than confirmed Conservative conspiracy narratives regarding the news. We would say it is far worse than fake or biased news. What we have seen is not fake. It is not made up. It was not randomly biased. It is more than just liberal bias because of brainwashed education. It was a systematic attempt to warp and distort the news Americans and others consume, using public funds to advance the cause of insiders within our government.
Now, the press in US history has often been adversarial. Political parties frequently used to own newspapers, and politicians have always had both their favorites and their enemies. But no one thought it was a good idea for the government to use taxpayer funds to supplant private journalism. Citizens could choose which point of view they wanted, perhaps getting both.
The term “fake” is not as precise as we would like it to be. It does not mean”fake” in the sense of the tabloid Weekly World News, which often promoted outlandish stories about space aliens or made-up stories about celebrities. No, today’s fake more properly means managed or created narratives by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and political operatives within the shadow government of the United States to advance a political agenda or harm political opponents.
Through USAID, DOGE has found Reuters, BBC, New York Times, Politico, and other news organizations have been receiving US government money. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, USAID supported upwards of 6,200 journalists, 707 news outlets, and 279 media sector civil society organizations in 30 different countries.
This agency controls the media in Ukraine.
The Left would like you to think there is nothing wrong with this. For example, the New Republic responded by saying, “The far right, including Elon Musk, are pushing a conspiracy theory that the U.S. Agency for International Development secretly funds several mainstream media outlets, including Politico, the Associated Press, and The New York Times.
It is not a theory that USAID has been funding mainstream media organizations. Besides, how would TNR feel if they found out tobacco companies secretly funded the Associated Press? Would they argue the news agency could objectively cover stories related to tobacco?
No, this is a wholesale attempt to control public opinion on a global scale. No wonder the International Left has such power, and why various social movements all seem to take place at the same time around the globe. Is that a proper function of our government?
How long has this been going on?
This may explain the lack of journalistic ethics. He who pays the piper plays the tune, and most journalists are just members of the band. Whatever ethics they might have disappeared while cashing their government checks.
Michael Shellenberger traces money directly to the second attempt to impeach President Trump, the one where he is “overheard” by third parties asking Ukraine to investigate the Biden family criminal enterprise. According to Shellenberger, “the CIA analyst relied on reporting by a supposedly independent investigative news organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which appears to have effectively operated as an arm of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which President Trump has just shut down. The CIA whistleblower complaint cited a long report by OCCRP four times.”
Whoa Nelly! Not only was our own government interfering with the news, but they were also meddling in foreign AND domestic elections! In short, government funding was behind at least one impeachment proceeding.
Evidence indicates that USAID gave money to Black Lives Matter and the New York Times, which heavily promoted and produced the educational warping 1619 Project.
Wow, our government is promoting civil unrest within the country? Where is the authorization to do that?
This agency also interfered in the election process and attempted to unseat a duly elected President twice, cooperating with Democrat Party insiders and intelligence officials.
USAID also appears to have provided hundreds of millions of dollars to George Soros.
More data is constantly coming out, so it is hard to keep up with every piece of news as this scandal unfolds. Details aside, it sure looks like we had a government under Biden (likely Obama from the sidelines) attempting to change the political landscape through corrupting journalism, changing American history, and directly interfering in foreign and domestic elections. All of this was done with our tax dollars.
This could be the most significant political/corruption/intelligence scandal ever.
And we have to listen to lectures on democracy from these people?
Liberals now argue that cutting funds to USAID will do little to reduce the deficit. That is true, as far as it goes. But the real point is we need to cut off the funds to those seeking to destroy the country. The phrase “defund the Left” must no longer be a slogan; it must become a reality.
This whole story supports the position of Trump and MAGA Republicans that our elections have been tainted, the press has been lying, and the Democrats have been complicit in all of this.
It also vindicates the position of Trump and MAGA supporters that the vital role of the free press has been seriously compromised.
It is one thing for a billionaire like Jeff Bezos of Amazon to fund the Washington Post. That is private money for his business and political purposes. But our government should not use taxpayer money to promote partisan political goals or overthrow duly elected Presidents. Having a partisan press is fine. It just should not be paid for and manipulated by the government.
The Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses of the 1970s, found that the CIA recruited journalists and secretly funded certain newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets to promote propaganda or suppress dissenting views.
The Committee recommended many reforms to preserve the independence of the press, most of which seemed to have been violated by USAID.
At the time, Liberals were outraged by the behavior of the CIA. Today, it seems any questioning of government motives is an attack on “our democracy.”
