In the last decade, American media has undergone a monumental transformation. The Cold War era was brought to you by brilliant journalists conducting investigations; following troops into battle; revealing uncomfortable, and often dangerous, facts. Their goal was bringing people information to the best of their ability, encouraging honest debate, and following the facts wherever they led.
Today’s journalism is different. The whole essence of journalistic work may be condensed into one phrase: “EXPERTS SAY.” There are no clues to follow or stories to chase. The only daily task of a journalist is to find a cause of importance to the audience of The View and find “the experts” who concur with their views.
To do that, every journalist must undergo a proper training. They can easily fine tune their moral compass while attending any Ivy League university. There, they meet all the right connections – similarly “enlightened” young minds who live off their parents’ assets while taking classes in social justice and reading BuzzFeed. They are fully aware that they don’t deserve being where they are, and they feel sufficiently guilty. So, when they are done amassing “knowledge,” they use it to tear down “the system” they just took advantage of, and make sure nobody will ever have the same advantage that they did.
Any young journalist already reached all the “socially acceptable” conclusions on all issues that are important to the crowd congregating at a Silicon Valley Starbucks. They have no doubt that the only reason for existence of law enforcement is to kill black men; that doctors often make mistakes when “assigning gender at birth;” and that it’s every American’s responsibility to take care of the world’s poor. The people with real jobs may still be a little behind on reaching those conclusions – and that is where “the experts” come in to bring everyone up to speed.
In the morning, a young journalist writes an article on “the outrage of the day” with his thesis clearly stated. This thesis exactly follows from the consensus that was reached last night by the 12-people panel on CNN. Now, the kid’s task is to find a few “experts” who will sign off on his predetermined conclusion. The only useful thing the young journalist learned in college is where to find a couple of grifters with a PhD in social justice who will staunchly support his conclusions providing they do so “on the condition of anonymity.”
This condition is important. It speaks to the qualifications of “the experts.” You may remember that Einstein and Newton often published their work “under the condition of anonymity.”
Here is an example of the “EXPERTS SAY” journalism:
See below for this morning’s activism from @CNN. This isn’t journalism–it’s media malpractice.
— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) January 27, 2023
Taking a critic’s dishonest position, legitimizing it with unnamed Experts™, & writing with a standard of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ does absolutely nothing to inform the public. pic.twitter.com/gQYqvTwEyq
I am willing to bet a large sum of money that when collecting “sources” for his article, John Blake of CNN has not consulted anyone who actually studied the Holocaust. Nor has he approached anyone who survived it or knew someone who did – just to see if they really believe that rejecting “queer theory” from the required reading list is in any way similar to sending 6 million people to gas chambers. Young John was not interested in hearing from anyone who would not sign off on his story. Quite to the contrary – he carefully selected only those whose who listed “contempt for Ron DeSantis” as their main area of expertise.
The importance of “EXPERTS SAY” journalism over the last few years is hard to overstate. It brought us the joy of Covid “mitigation measures.” It brought us “everything is racist” dictum. It brought us “transitory inflation.” It brought us the Presidency of Joe Biden.
It also brought us a complete collapse of the American media.
