we haven't had a free press that operates independently of government for some time;

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk kicked the hornet’s nest when he labeled National Public Radio “state affiliated media.” The howls of protest were amusing, and telling. While they like to pretend otherwise, the mass media in the United States operate much like the state-run media of autocratic regimes.

And it isn’t just NPR. The New York Times and CNN are preoccupied with the generation of propaganda, narrative making, the enforcement of dogmas (“woke” agendas on race, climate, sex, etc.), and the censorship of dissenters.

One knows where the state stands on every question just by assessing the volume and tone of discussion in the press. When something occurs contrary to the narrative, coverage is muted, perfunctory—assuming there is any coverage at all. But on pet issues like “white supremacy,” the breathless moralism of the media is no less crude and dogmatic than the propaganda of China or North Korea.

It was only weeks ago that an anti-Christian mass murderer killed six people, including three children. But shooter’s reported “manifesto” seems to have fallen into a black hole. The Biden Administration has the material, but it hasn’t been made public. If the Justice Department wanted this information out there, it would have been leaked to NBC or the Washington Post by now. If the media wanted it out there, they would seek it out.

Instead of information, we are flooded with propaganda. About the war in Ukraine we know virtually nothing, only that it is a battle for Our Democracy™ and that Ukraine inevitably will win. When a Pentagon leaker released authentic information exposing this narrative as a childish fantasy, the media helped hunt him down and called him a Nazi.

Recall that other Ukraine “whistleblower” behind the first Trump impeachment. The latter was lionized for leaking President Trump’s phone calls. This was a pretty serious violation under the Constitution, but the whistleblower was celebrated for “standing up” to the president the people elected.

During the Trump presidency, the state media LARPed as opposition media. In effect, they orchestrated a coup, working closely with intelligence sources and the Democratic Party to saturate the public discourse with leaks and innuendo that portrayed the president as a secret Russian asset. This was, essentially, a relentless “disinformation” campaign designed to discredit the 2016 presidential election.........more.......