The Truth Will Set You Free: Journalism as Cancer

By John Sykes

I had, for some strange reason, hoped all along that the main street media’s extremely lopsided treatment of the news, in particular its coddling of Obama and its avoidance of any real news from his opposition, was just a trend, a benign condition that would eventually cure itself. In the last few days it has become obvious that this condition is in fact a very malignant cancer, intended to wrongfully ravage journalistic truth by seeking out and destroying opposing elements with misdirection and stealth, with Alinsky-like tactics.

This journalistic disease is far more evil, more malignant, than the often sickening but sort-of-acceptable political posturing and scheming and misdirection of today’s political class. We wink at our politicians but expect the media to tell us the truth. They have decidedly not been doing so!

The following quotes, from the Wall Street Journal, are to the point.

From Radio commentator Dennis Prager, writing on the NAACP's attack on "racist elements" of the tea party at RealClearPolitics.com:

“The charge of racism leveled by liberal organizations, whether black or white, is now regarded as the politically motivated falsehood that it is. It is rightly seen, along with its six siblings—sexism, xenophobia, intolerance, bigotry, homophobia and 'Islamophobia'—as the Left's way of avoiding argument by demeaning its opponents. . . . One day, the charge loses all its moral power. That happened this past year as a result of the liberal attacks on conservative opposition to Obama as racially based. Every conservative knows that opposition to the Obama and Democratic agenda has nothing to do with the president's color. Does any liberal honestly believe that if Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid were president and pursued the same Leftist agenda Obama has, there would be less conservative opposition because Pelosi and Reid are white? So, something good has come of this: the de-fanging of the 'racist' label. It no longer intimidates conservatives as it once did.” - Radio commentator Dennis Prager, writing on the NAACP's attack on "racist elements" of the tea party at RealClearPolitics.com:

Byron York, writing yesterday in the Washington Examiner:

This morning I asked Rush Limbaugh what he thought of references to him on the private left-wing journalist discussion group JournoList. As reported in the Daily Caller, Sarah Spitz, producer of the KCRW public radio program "Left, Right and Center," which is heard on a number of NPR stations across the country, wrote on JournoList that if she witnessed Limbaugh dying of a heart attack, she would "laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out." . . . "Not having wished anyone dead, nor having fantasized about watching someone die, I cannot possibly relate to this," Limbaugh responded.

"I can only surmise. I think most people on the left live in a world where merit is irrelevant. Theirs is a world in which connections, networking, kissing ass and obedient sameness are rewarded. I am the antithesis of all that. I am a legitimate, achieved and accomplished Number One and I've made it on my own and without them and without having followed their proscriptions. . . .
"Funny thing . . . a number of my friends sent me the Daily Caller piece and the most shocking thing to them in the story was the advocacy of having government shut down Fox News. That the left wants me dead was not a big deal to them because it was nothing new to them. I think that's hilarious. And about that: how about the LAW professor who thinks the FCC can pull Fox's license? Fox does not have a license. The FCC does not grant Fox its right to exist."

I don’t know what the fix is. I don’t expect the media to suddenly cure itself. It may be that the free market of truth will prevail, that those who offer truth will survive and eventually flush out those who only lie and misdirect and attack with harsh but unfounded accusations. I only pray that our country has the fortitude and the staying power to defeat this journalistic cancer that would destroy us, that would metastasize into a statist abyss of nanny-state entitlements, that would deny us our God-given freedoms and the goals of individual responsibility.

Related cartoons