The scandal eh? Citizens arrested at the Capitol Riot were collecting donations from fellow Americans to pay for lawyers when USA Today swooped in to “expose” the travesty of it. Imagine the presumption of innocence and the right to “a fair trial”?
Once upon a time the second largest masthead in the US used to expose corruption in the great halls of power, but now they just attack private citizens. USA Today was wielding its influential power to cut off avenues for powerless people to raise enough money to afford better legal protection.
BLM rioters got donations direct from Kamala Harris and 13 Biden staffers, but Trump supporters are not even allowed to use Paypal or Venmo to get help from fellow Americans to cover their legal costs.
In the battle between the little guys and The Establishment Rulers, the legacy media is picking the side of Goliath, then asking us to be gentle on them.
Glenn Greenwald lobbed a sarcastic reply to the lead author:
…
And she and half the profession were so enraged they briefly set twitter on fire –saying she was “just an intern”, it was only her first story, and he was a mysogynistic bully.
Thus do the media bullies pull the Snowflake Defence:
Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselves
Glenn Greenwald, Substack
Wow, what brave and intrepid journalistic work: speaking truth to power and standing up to major power centers by . . . working as little police officers for tech giants to prevent private citizens from being able to afford criminal lawyers. Clear the shelves for the imminent Pulitzer. Whatever you think about the Capitol riot, everyone has the right to a legal defense…
…increasingly, the largest corporate media platforms are used to punish ideological dissent and thought crimes by powerless, private citizens. They do not criticize or investigate real power centers, but serve them. And what makes it worse — so, so much worse — is that, as they assault, dox and harass private citizens, these journalistic bullies depict themselves as the real marginalized people, as those who are so fragile, voiceless, powerless, and vulnerable that criticizing them is tantamount to bullying, harassment, and violence.
Do you see what they are doing here? They are working to create a moral framework where it is always impermissible to criticize their journalism, no matter how shoddy, deceitful and amoral it is. They constantly concoct reasons why the journalist in question is too marginalized and too vulnerable to legitimately criticize.
Those who like monopoly-government like monopoly-media too:
This new journalistic tactic of weaponizing and misappropriating the language of marginalization, abuse, harassment and oppression and applying it to themselves — all to render any criticism of their work a form of assault and abuse — is one I have written about several times before. The last time was when a major front-page reporter at the most influential paper in the country, The New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz, got caught lying twice in six weeks, and those (such as myself) who criticized her for it — who criticized her journalism for the Paper of Record — were branded toxic, misogynistic bullies who were inciting dangerous hate mobs against her. And thus was criticism of this powerful journalist somehow manipulatively converted into an act of morally reprehensible harassment.
What these journalists are doing is as transparent as it is tawdry. They insist that you not treat them as what they are: people who wield extreme power and influence to shape political discourse, widely disseminate disinformation, wreck people’s reputations, expose the identity of private citizens, and propagandize the public. No, increasingly they are demanding that you treat them as exactly the opposite: the most marginalized, vulnerable, endangered and fragile members of society whose standing is so tenuous that publicly criticizing them should be barred as an act of violence, and those expressing critiques of their work must be consequently shunned as harassers and abusers.
Let there be Fame
…just like that, the real victims in America are not the jobless or the homeless or residents of addiction-ravaged communities or victims of violent crime but, instead, the rich, famous TV personalities for CNN. This is the fictitious melodrama — with themselves cast as the stars — that they are demanding you ingest to treat them with deference and respect.
Precious petals.