Propaganda vs expanded sources of news

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Cherie Zaslawsky’s article, “Trump Derangement Syndrome: A Misdiagnosis” starts off:

Listen to Fox News, and you'll hear phrases such as “Trump derangement syndrome” and “liberal heads are exploding” on a daily basis. 

Conservative newscasts are peppered with comments like these: “They're delusional!”  “The Democrats just can't seem to accept that they lost the 2016 election.”  “They've gone crazy!”

Crazy like a fox.

. . .

From the beginning of its “long march through the institutions,” the Left has been playing the long game.  That hasn't changed.  Leftists are playing it today.

Why did they take over the media?  The universities?  Hollywood?  To get their hands on the key levers of propaganda.  Add to this the leftward tilt of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and we're looking at a virtual lockdown on the primary sources of information and public influence.

. . .

What can be done?

I suggest that, rather than only responding to each of the Left's baseless attacks on our president, those on our side change the debate by exposing the radical leftists' use of propaganda — by shining a light into the dark recesses of their strategy.  This may wake up some of their followers and maybe even begin to free America from the dark power of the Left.

I have had limited success pointing the media’s corruption to people I know who still rely on The New York Times or NPR or CNN for their news. One suggestion that has worked a few times is to propose that a person expand their sources of news. Tuning in to conservative talk radio can be traumatic, but browsing through aggregators and at least comparing headlines has made a difference with some friends and relatives. These days my go-to sites are Politipage, Instapundit, Lucianne, and a few others (but not Drudge any more). Full American Thinker article is here.

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E-Censorship

 art credit: 2012patriot.wordpress.com

Most days I visit several news aggregators to find reports, analyses, and commentary. A couple of weeks ago, one of the aggregators, Lucianne.com, was down for several days. It wasn’t the first time it went down, and I wonder about why it happened. For the last two days, another aggregator, Politipage, has gone blank. Hmm. Maybe these were just technical crashes. Both these aggregators lean conservative.

In what are probably related developments, some prominent conservative voices have been demonetized or blocked from Facebook or other platforms. Among them are Diamond and Silk, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Avi Yemini.

Glenn Reynolds (Mr. Instapundit) has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today titled “When Digital Platforms Become Censors: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other tech giants say that they’re open forums. What happens when they start to shut down voices they consider beyond the pale?”:

Call 2018 the “Year of Deplatforming.” The internet was once celebrated for allowing fresh new voices to escape the control of gatekeepers. But this year, the internet giants decided to slam the gates on a number of people and ideas they don’t like. If you rely on someone else’s platform to express unpopular ideas, especially ideas on the right, you’re now at risk. This raises troubling questions, not only for free speech but for the future of American politics and media.

That’s his opener. The rest of his commentary is here.

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Blog Awards

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day usually prompt retrospectives over the past year, lists of “Best of” and “Worst of,” and other round-ups. Yesterday, Doug Ross’s Director Blue website announced its Top 50 blog awards for 2016. The full list plus reader comments is here.

One website singled out by a reader is Politipage. It’s a handy aggregator for accessing some of the top conservative-leaning blogs and sources of news & analysis. I just bookmarked it. Take a look.

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