If you have heroes in journalism, your litmus test should be at least that they are not intentionally misleading or lying to you.
If you listen closely to older voters, they remember a time when Presidents were “more presidential” and “decent.” They remember that when Walter Cronkite reported the news, he did it the “right way.” He did it even-handedly and honestly, or that he almost singlehandedly walked America through the Kennedy assassination.
When he left CBS in 1981, he famously said, “Old anchorman you see – don’t fade away. They just keep coming back for more. And that’s the way it is … I will be away on assignment and Dan Rather will be sitting in here for the next few years.”
For “the next few years” indeed, Dan Rather remained at the helm until a scandal involving forged documents, George Bush and lying finally retired him at 83 in 2015.
Between age and credibility issues, one might think Dan Rather was finished. But old anchormen, “they just keep coming back for more.” So Rather is still around. He blogs, tries to work an audience at age 91, and tweets.
Recently Rather quoted the Clash song “Should I Stay or Go” on Twitter. He also tweeted, “Seems like a lot of people would move to a better Twitter. If you build it, they will come.”
Trust me Dan: Conservatives tried that with Parler. Staying is easier. Opposing views can coexist on one platform — if you let them.
Outside of shouting “fire,” intentionally libeling someone or encouraging violence – there is a certain element to American culture and the First Amendment that although you don’t have to like a statement — you have to deal with it.
Somewhere along the lines, America lost that. We ceded control of Twitter and public discourse to the tattletales from recess — regardless of whether their accusations made sense or if any of their accusations carried weight.
Enter Elon Musk. “A beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism—people are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias,” he tweeted after his massive financial upset.
That freedom and empowerment Musk alluded to is the beautiful thing about the internet in general, but Twitter in particular. The platform is the great equalizer for information and journalism. In real time, it enables the average citizen to have a “bird’s eye” view of history in the making.
Before CNN, Fox or local news outlets arrive on the scene, anyone with a smartphone can document history and the news.
So what explains the collective freak out since Musk took over Twitter? You would think a new dictatorship was being implemented.
“I am not a scholar on authoritarian history…This is the start of something that gets really really bad. If you get the guard rails off the truth….then that’s how you lose your democracy,” MSNBC’s Ben Collins said.
You represent the problem: journalists who think they are the only source of legitimate information. That’s the big lie.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022
Musk’s response to this kind of attitude was scathing, yet true. The “guard rails” of “truth,” is an Orwellian description for censorship. According to Collins, allowing more freedom of speech is the telltale sign of any authoritarian despot. And herein is the crux of the matter: Citizen journalists have ended the corporate media’s monopoly on news narratives.
Following Covid-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop story, you may wonder if your media heroes have always told you the truth. In journalism school you are often taught that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were the profession’s pinnacle. Watergate was America’s last great scandal. But I have my doubts.
Julian Assange awaits extradition to America. San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb shot himself in the head – twice. Edward Snowden hides from the reach of America’s national security apparatus in Russia.
When investigative journalists do their job digging up actual dirt on corruption in America, they often seem to get a CIA target rather than a Sunday morning slot.
It borders on journalistic heresy to insinuate that Woodward is not much more than a PR rep for establishment Washington. Yet, the day after the still unfolding attack on Paul Pelosi, Woodward was on MSNBC diligently performing the role of all Left Wing Media pundits, tying anything negative to Donald Trump and relating it to January 6th.
“Can’t prejudge who this person is… what the motive is,” Woodward said, before promptly offering up potential motives. “It’s reasonable and necessary to ask what sort of climate of violence has been created in this country and you can play tapes of Donald Trump… urging people on in a violent way… We create a climate as politicians, citizens, everyone, the press also. And the climate is violence—well look at January 6th.”
It’s hard to overstate the importance of reestablishing even a shred of free speech on a tool that was used to sway a Presidential election, that hid the Hunter story or who’s ex-CEO, Parag Agrawal, seemed to regard the Freedom of Speech as some backwoods relic of a bygone era.
“We should focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed,” Agrawal famously said.
Twitter pulled back the curtain on Oz and showed people how the sausage was made. Users watched live videos that told them buildings were on fire or people were being assaulted while CNN journalists called the scenes “fiery but mostly peaceful.”
Today, you must be able to reconcile the original source material versus what you are being told. If you cannot, you are being lied to.
The ghost of Bob Woodward is a Washington stenographer. Dan Rather is the “old anchorman” that “just keeps coming back for more.” NBC’s Brian Williams never took enemy fire in Iraq. Walter Cronkite is dead – and although he let a generation know that President Kennedy was shot, one could argue that he never did quite get to the bottom of it.
And none of these heroes are more worthy of free speech than you or me.
Matt Keener is a writer and small business owner from Ohio. His work has also been featured at The Federalist, American Spectator, American Greatness, RealClearPolitics, and American Thinker and WND. You can find him on Twitter @keenermb and on Truth Social @mattkeener
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.