A funny thing happened on the way to the election. The Press, the Fourth Estate, the Commentariat, the watchdogs who work to keep government honest, an element of a free society deemed so vital to its continued liberty, decided of its own volition to become a state agency. Or, at least, an agency of the political party it prefers be in power.
The New York Post, the fourth-largest newspaper in the nation, founded two hundred nineteen years ago by none other than Alexander Hamilton, has been locked out of its Twitter account for the past two weeks. Its crime? Having the temerity to publish damaging allegations about Joe Biden. Allegations backed by substance and un-denied by the candidate.
That Twitter has the right to do so is hard to dispute. That Twitter is engaging in biased behavior is also hard to dispute (although many on the Left are desperately pretending otherwise). Twitter, a private company, will have to answer to the marketplace, and about all a libertarian should ask for is that Twitter not be afforded any special protections or preferential treatment by the government.
The failure at hand is that of the other major press organizations, which are ignoring this blatant attempt at scale-tipping by Twitter, after they ignored the Post’s revelations about the Bidens. All because they’ve totally thrown in with the Left. This behavior tells us what to expect from them should Biden win the Presidency: an utter abandonment of the Press’s role in monitoring, investigating, and exposing government and political abuses, misdeeds, crookedness, and criminality.
We are less than a week from Election Day. Many Trump skeptics of a rightward or libertarian bent are looking to reject Trumpism and rebuke the Republican Party by handing the reins of power to the Democrats. Were the Democrats offering a moderate message and sane platform, I might concur. They are not offering either. That the mainstream Press, which has long leaned left but would still serve its role to some degree, has made it abundantly clear that it has become America’s Pravda, providing cover for the Democrats rather than actually covering their actions, is even more reason to reject the Democratic Party this election.
Ask yourself, would you rather have a government that was constantly hounded by the Fourth Estate, or one that is aided and abetted by its purported watchdogs?
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A Fifth Column is more correct they claim to be on the side of the people and for free speech.
I don’t remember where but I heard or read that since they claim to be a forum for free speech, it does make their suppression of the same illegal. If they were to say that they were a news site or some other type they wouldn’t run afoul of this. As a forum they are protected from libel etc. on what appears on their site, but this means that they can’t suppress it. (This is why I think Yahoo has suspended their comment on articles, along with not liking having their article fact checked, in real time)
That’s the “Section 230” of the Communications Decency Acct distinction, about which there is much debate. That is, the difference between “publisher” and “platform.”
Some argue that, by curating content, they change from the latter to the former. Others argue that the distinction isn’t actually made by the legislation.
We probably need a test case, that gets to SCOTUS, to know.