Whatever Happened To the Fourth Estate?
I Swear, It Was There A Minute Ago
Before the media was owned by oligarch conglomerates, they had an axe to bear- the independence of the 1st Amendment. Along with that came a social responsibility to act with some integrity.
Now, you can cynically protest that the press was always a tool of the rich, but even with all of the perceived and revealed greed and corruption and whatever else you want to bitch about, there were a couple of major tenets that most of the press and media used to consider sacrosanct.
Networks were cautious, censoring racy material, shunning profanity and pornography, seeking to set standards for ‘wholesome programming’, while still promising ‘excitement’. To some extent, they still do, with bleeps and blurs.
But, that was the entertainment side. And sports.
News was a bit different.
News was supposed to be unbiased, honest, genuine, and outlets suffered for violating that. National TV news, especially, strove to maintain a high standard of objectivity and truth. Personalities like Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Mike Wallace and Huntley-Brinkley were the epitome of class, fairness and genuine reporting.
We didn’t have articles where some politician made up a bunch of ridiculous things that never happened and it was published nationally without someone saying, in the article, that he was wrong. As in, if the New York Times were to write one of today’s stories by 1967 rules;
“President Trump said that a giant faucet in the northwest that feeds water to the entire state of California had been turned off by Governor Newsom and the water diverted into the ocean in order to preserve a species of smelt.
The president, who maintains that this faucet takes ‘a day to turn’ and said it was raided and restored by the Army Corp of Engineers (ACE), could not name a location or physically describe the ‘faucet’.
No, such thing exists of course, and the Times has confirmed that there was a federal reservoir located in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, run by the ACE, whose pumps were turned off for maintenance for three days, and had just been restarted, and the smelt in question is an endangered saltwater variety in San Fransisco, far from the area of the alleged ‘faucet’, and has no connection and no impact on water circulation.
The White House did not respond to inquiries about the misinformation.”
This ideal, along with the fairness doctrine banning untrue or fabricated information from news outlets, assured people that their newspapers, radio and TV news were giving them as accurate information as was known. Yes, there were lots and lots of editorials and opinions, and some of them were just as awful as we see now, but, the core -what happened, real events and traceable history- could be reasonably relied on to be true.
Pundits and politicians could speculate, but reporters had to report.
And, a lot of things happened that we knew about because they did so. Imagine if we had not heard, objectively on the news, what happened in Selma. At Kent State. At My Lai. Watergate, for Pete’s sake.
Where would we have been without the 4th Estate’s sense of righteous independence, their responsibility to tell the truth, however inconvenient, and to not spread lies and hate, but to debunk and dispel them? (National Enquirer notwithstanding.)
No, no, really! They actually fucking talked like that and did that shit! Honest! I know!
Not to overly lionize them, but, when the law and accepted ethics standards called for straight reporting, they did it and left the arguing to the pundits.
Where the fuck is that now?
When civil rights, women’s rights and the Vietnam War were driving issues in the 60s and 70s, and Democrats were basically on the hippies’ side- against the war, against racism and sexism- and the Republicans were already mired in ‘god and guns’ politics, calling liberals communist, the press was willing to show the Democrats telling the truth about the war, and had correspondents on the battlefields who corroborated it.
They were willing to question Republican accusations of ‘communism’.
They had been willing to say what Martin Luther King Jr stood for and had done, not just that he was ‘controversial’ and had been shot.
They were all very quick in 1974 to call Nixon a liar when the tapes and testimony came out.
In other words, we beat fascism, chased Nixon, began to establish civil rights and ended the Vietnam War in good part because the 4th Estate was fucking there for us.
Where the hell is that chutzpah now?
With the fairness doctrine having been trashed by Reagan, TV and talk radio right wing propaganda bannered as ‘news’ grew exponentially. Let alone what’s it’s done to the inter-webs, ffs.
Trump now invents the most fantastic, ridiculous and clueless batshit crazy nonsense every damn day and no one in the mainstream legacy media will call him out on it.
The major media has been so incredibly shitty at their job in the last ten years that a near half of the population didn’t understand what a moronic, astoundingly stupid criminal asshole we had elected into office and elected him again.
As Bugs Bunny would say, “this you gotta see to believe”.
The Democrats are on our side. No one is letting them speak, anyone who does talk to them just asks them about their response to the Republican bullshit about Dems.
The last thing these people want is Rep. Jamie Raskin telling the public what the hell is actually going on in lucid, accessible terms.
They were happy to ask Biden to answer for Trump’s accusations of the ‘Biden Crime Family’. But, they wouldn’t ask Trump why he had 300-some classified NDI in his fucking house, or why Jared got $2 billion from the Saudi’s, or where the hell did you get that giant faucet bullshit?
(Side note- going to admit it here, and I hope you can, too- the two questions I most want to hear the press ask Trump are “Are you fucking high?” and “What the fuck is wrong with you?”)
It’s not just that the 4th Estate is letting us down- they are- it’s that it’s the most comically absurd situation in history and they’re buying into it 100%.
“It is the most ridiculous flood of lies we’ve ever seen. I mean, you’ve never seen lies like these. Incredible. Big, strong men with tears in their eyes come to me and say ’Sir, that’s the most lies I’ve ever seen, and I just, but, you know, it’s a lot lies. Really.”
It’s a Gish Gallop Rodeo.
The ‘Gish Gallop’ is the debate sabotage technique of throwing out so many lies so quickly that the subject is overwhelmed and can’t keep up to respond. It’s like when a comedian tells so many jokes in a row and you’re laughing so hard you can’t remember any of the jokes when they’re done.
Only, in Trump’s case, it’s lies.
Stupid, absurd lies about stupid things, like the big faucet, or windmill noise causing cancer, or magnets not working underwater, but batteries do, or raking the forests, or giving condoms to Hamas in Gaza, that the PRA lets him keep anything he wants, or, you get the idea.
And the media accepts them without batting an eye and spreads them all over the damn world.
We (humanity) only won the battles of the 60s because the press was objective enough to be frank and honest about both sides, which worked because it exposed the bad guys. They didn’t fall for the shit Trump is pulling now.
From McCarthy to Nixon, the major networks and newspapers were telling you what they saw, not what they were told to see.
Now, not so much.
But, we have to understand the gravity and depth of our situation. We’re in the throes of the most un-American political plot in US history.
The same oligarchs that help Republicans are also the ones that deny climate change because they want it to melt the polar ice sheet and open shipping lines through the Arctic, and they thwart alternate energy because they plan to ship more oil, gas and coal through the Arctic.
They want violent unrest in the Middle East because they sell them weapons.
They want crypto and stock trading unregulated because they’re playing craps with everyone’s money.
They fight universal healthcare because they’ve got their fingers in everybody’s, well, I won’t say it.-
And, now, those billionaires own all the top media outlets.
And, in turn, they all sane-wash, pander to and glorify Trump.
Which is the fuel in their fire- these outlets not only parrot GOP fascism, but they also denigrate and accuse the opposition of everything Trump has done and much more. Trump sycophancy drives all of their programming and narrative.
Between Fox News, OANN, AM talk radio and the internet, the average Republican voter has no idea what any Democrat has ever actually said or done, or how the government actually works, or, what the Constitution says, or, especially the arm’s length list of crimes Trump and the GOP are actively committing right in front of them.
In 2020, the press stated unequivocally that Trump was failing on the pandemic, that he was spouting nonsense, that he had shaken down the Ukraine and been impeached for it, and that Biden didn’t have all of that baggage.
And the result was Biden’s win, followed by Trump’s insurrection, which was faithfully reported that day, but afterwards, much less.
Only MSNBC seems to have retained its objective posture, and has, in fact, covered most all of the developments in Trump’s administrations and indictments accurately, and frequently allowed department heads and Democrats involved to answer legitimate questions about the issues, as well as had Republicans on and asked them pertinent questions. Some of their higher profile hosts are former Republicans, who left the party over its moral decline and embrace of Trump.
Yes, there’s opinions and editorializing from these major news stars, but, in the course of it, the information shown is real, both sides are quoted fully and in context, and there are no fabricated stories or misinformation.
Again, it sounds like I’m lionizing a liberal outfit. But, Maddow fits these terms and Hannity does not.
Come 2024, the MSM had turned almost completely around, blasting Biden as demented and frail, while ignoring true insanity coming out of Trump. Literally, allowing Trump to project all of his own crimes and faults directly onto Biden.
They plod this path even more ardently today, sane-washing even more outrageous statements and refusing to accurately print opposing arguments or interview Democrats.
These oligarchs aren’t just allowing their media to do this- they are demanding it.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the LA Times- all might as well call themselves ‘Pravda’.
Which is appropriate, because at the base of all of this fascist development in the States is one man, who has always needed the US out of his way, militarily and financially, and who has the conniving diabolical intelligence to create these kinds of political machinations, and the wherewithal to pull them off.
Yup. Vladdy boy.
Russia, that is, Putin, has long been playing deep financial games around the world wherever they can get their grubby paws in someone’s pocket. Buying foreign property is a common form of money laundering for Putin and the Russian mob. Investing through shadow corporations is another trick, and now also, PACs- dark money groups- offer them a way to launder and buy influence at the same time.
All of our high-profile sitting Republicans and oligarchs are neck-deep in these shenanigans.
Vlad wants military and shipping dominance over the Arctic. Trump now says the US needs to take Greenland and Canada. Coincidence? I think not!
But, the MSM isn’t pursuing these obvious points of corruption and treason.
And, why again, were we able to win the Cold War, seeing the USSR disintegrate and the Berlin Wall torn down?
Oh, yeah. The press. They covered the Cold War objectively, and we all knew what was going on as much as the government would tell us. But, also, they were able to sneak information into the USSR, slowly growing that resentment for oppression and longing for freedom that culminated in the communist party going down in flames.
With the media taking Trump’s side, we see now how really fortunate we were to have the independent free press backing us through the turbulent 60s. We easily could have seen much worse violent crackdowns on anti-war and anti-racist protesters. The riots of the late 60s could have been massacres.
I mean, try and imagine Fox News’ ‘the Five’ covering the JFK Assassination. On second thought, don’t. It will make you nauseous.
The freedom and objective truth of the press is of paramount importance to freedom, because there will always be bad actors, and the only thing that stops them is being seen acting bad and being called on it.
I mean, really, come on! If you can’t call out a guy who says there’s a giant faucet that feeds all the water to California, then who the flying fuck can you call out?
Oh, yeah, the Dems who voted for wildfire aid. Gotcha.
We want to say the MSM is timid, afraid of Trump, and they are, but this isn’t Trump’s doing. This is wicked mind-fuckery by the oligarchy.
They were just as relativity rich and powerful in the 60s & 70s, and didn’t stoop to this shit.
It’s bad enough that five billionaires, three of them foreigners, own major US media- Australian Murdoch owns the WSJ and Fox News, South African Musk owns Twit-X ffs, and Asian Soon-Shlong (not making that up) owns the LA Times.
The two Americans- Bezos and Zuckerberg- are severely overdrawn in the 1st Amendment bank. Their debt to the Constitution is unparalleled. They, in fact, owe it to the world to make Facebook a healthy town square and the Washington Post a reliable source of real news.
But, the real rub, the deepest insult, the one we feel intrinsically, is;
If a godamn American billionaire can’t stand against lunatic fascism out of sheer pride and love of country because it’s the right thing to do and he has more ability to fight and will never be poor anyway but he won’t do it because he won’t make billions more if he doesn’t suck up, then what the fuck are we doing here?
I mean, like 1200 billionaires, and not one wants to be Batman? WTF?
It’s past time for these billionaires who’ve taken over our social discourse to step up to the plate and hit one for the team for a change.
We need a better class of billionaires.
We need a Britt Reid, not a Jeff Bezos.
A Tony Stark, not an Elon Musk.
(Well, we’re learning that nobody needs an Elon, but, a Tony Stark would be bloody useful.)
But, mostly, we need our 4th Estate to be like it used to be.
These billionaires own the means, they have the wealth, and they owe it to everybody to use it wisely and to defend the country and Constitution that allowed their wealth and powers of free speech and commerce.
The 4th Estate can save the world.
And, they can save the 4th Estate.
If they want to.
c.2025 Cousin B
