First they came for the Trump supporters…

First they came for the Trump supporters…

With apologies to Martin Niemöller, the loony Left now has conservative news outlets in it sights. First Big Tech used the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as a pretext to ban President Trump and other conservatives from their platforms. Then they went after Parler, a “free speech” competitor, and attempted to knock it out of existence because they perceived it as a “dangerous” conservative social media platform.

Now corporate news outlets smell blood and are going after conservative cable news outlets — especially the up-and-comers like Newsmax.

On Sunday, CNN’s Oliver Darcy quoted former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos’s obervation that conservative cable news was a “problem” that needed correcting. We are going to have to figure out the OAN and Newsmax problem,” Stamos told CNN’s Brian Stelter. “These companies have freedom of speech, but I’m not sure we need Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and such bringing them into tens of millions of homes.” Watch:

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

 

Darcy followed that up with his own editorial comment: “Just a reminder that neither @Verizon, @ATT, nor @comcast have answered any questions about why they beam channels like OAN & Newsmax into millions of homes. Do they have any second thoughts about distributing these channels given their election denialism content? They won’t say.”

The fact is, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast don’t answer to CNN or any other media outlet. In order to remain in business they answer to their subscribers. And subscribers have made it clear they want something other than CNN — and Fox News.

MSNBC also got into the fray. “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski blamed social media for the Jan. 6 riot — before going after conservative cable news. “It’s also the cable outlets — Fox, Fox Business, the new ones — who promulgate lies, repeatedly every day,” she said. “Some of the hosts are being forced to apologize for lying to their viewers.”

The network’s Mehdi Hasan suggested that conservative activists are a greater threat than al Qaeda — because of conservative media. Last night, on his on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, he gave his “top five very simple reasons why” the far-right domestic terror threat is more dangerous than even al Qaeda after 9/11. “At number 5,” he began, “al Qaeda didn’t have cable news channels endorsing its world view.”

Very simple indeed.

To this day CNN and MSNBC have promoted the hoax that Trump was elected into office by colluding with Russian officials. At the same time, both avoided any coverage of what should have been the biggest political scandal of the year, one centered on information contained in a laptop computer belonging to Hunter Biden — the son of the soon-to-be sworn in president. The data implicated both father and son.

To this day they’ve ignored the story without apology. Meanwhile, they’ve repeatedly reported the “Summer of Love” riots as being “mostly peaceful,” despite being marked by looting, arson, destruction, injuries and even murder.

A year ago CNN settled a defamation lawsuit filed by Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandman over its coverage of the teen’s participation in a Washington, D.C. pro-life rally. Neither CNN nor any other news outlet that misreported the incident has apologized.

If they don’t want to do the honorable thing and offer an apology, that’s fine. But one thing they cannot do in a free society is to promote or even suggest that cable service providers de-platform competitor news outlets like Newsmax or OAN. The public is served by more points of view — not fewer.

Conservative columnist Mercedes Schlapp, who served as White House Director of Strategic Communications in the Trump administration, commented on the new development. “Here we go again,” she tweeted. “The left pressuring corporations to censor other news channels so that @CNN can continue to amplify its far left propaganda.”

By trying to drive competitor news services out of existence, they’re promoting a totalitarian society with only one source of news — a state-run media without the state having to actually run the nuts and bolts of the operation.

Darcy, Stamos, Brzezinski, and Hasan may like to call themselves progressives, liberals, or left-of-center — they may even believe it. But they’re far worse.

Scratch a liberal, reveal a fascist. Every. Damned. Time.

Michael Dorstewitz

Michael Dorstewitz

Michael Dorstewitz is a recovering Michigan trial lawyer and former research vessel deck officer. He has written extensively for BizPac Review.

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