The press betrays its mission

In all the shock and outrage about how the June 27 debate revealed the full extent of “Resident” Biden’s cognitive decline, one class of parties has thus far escaped the punishment they deserve. That class is the press, the freedom of which finds a direct guarantee in the First Amendment. This represents an important social contract, especially in a republic with democratic elections. Under that contract the press must protect the people by speaking truth, not only to power but also about power. But the American press has done neither, about an issue of vital national importance. That issue is whether the President of the United States can do his job. Mounting evidence indicates that the legacy media, at least, have known the President can’t do his job. And they’ve been hiding this fact.

The facts on the ground

Biden’s appallingly weak performance in his June 27 debate has started all the hand-wringing, blame-gaming, and speculating. He shuffled onto the stage, slack-jawed, mouth agape. Whenever he tried to speak, his raspy voice trailed off and barely got started again. Even so, his opponent, and viewers across the country, found him hard to understand. At program’s end, the First Lady and a male employee helped him down the three shallow steps of the stage.

Alternative media organs have recorded more incidents suggesting Biden’s lack of physical and mental fitness than even they can count. He’s fallen off his bicycle (after stopping), tripped over a wire stretching across a stage, stumbled while mounting the boarding ramp of his aircraft, and lapsed into word salad mid-speech. The media organs reporting this have taken to calling him “Sleepy Joe” or “Dementia Joe.”

And yesterday, at the White House Independence Day celebration, he did it again. In the middle of the speech he wriggled off into a confused and confusing ramble. He spoke of seven thousand people waiting in line to see him, a propos of nothing. After he seemed to get back on track – paying tribute to veterans’ military service – he teed off again. His remarks went from opening a gate, to a bald assertion that highway traffic congestion was a thing of the past. (Which it is not.)

One last thing. I used to think when I was a senator, there were always congestion on the highways. There’s no congestion anymore. None. We go on the highway, there’s no congestion. And so the way they get me to stop talking, they’ll say, We just shut down all the roads, Mr. President. You’re going to lose all the votes if you don’t get in. But anyway, I’ll be back out. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you. Thank you. I’m…

What does the press have to say about this?

What they started saying last weekend, was that Biden was going to drop out of the race. They also talked about their shock and surprise at the extent of Biden’s cognitive difficulties. Vice-President Kamala Harris tried to put a brave – or brazen – face on Biden’s performance. CNN’s Anderson Cooper almost shouted back at her to stop lying. MSNBC’s Joy Reid spoke openly, in a panel discussion, of the “panic” in Democratic Party circles. The Economist put a walker with the Presidential seal on its cover, saying this was “no way to run a country.” Inside, The Economist accused the White House of covering up for the impaired President. (Any cover-up at the White House is clearly unraveling. Anonymous employees compare the situation with Biden to the movie Weekend at Bernie’s. In that film, two friends try to pretend that their dead friend is still alive.)

Indeed Biden has so much staff surrounding him that he has “lost all independence.”

New York magazine’s Intelligencer section reveals the “conspiracy of silence to protect Joe Biden.” But immediately after the debate, reporters guessed he was “forty percent dead.”

That’s not what they were saying before

But none of these people were saying that of Biden before. The New York Times, for example, said it was just Biden’s style to appear to show his age. Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit had Joe Rogan’s post embedding a photograph of an incredible headline to that effect.

Beethoven? Wagner? Martin Scorsese? Please. Hoft also used a term for newspapers that your editor thought he was the only one to use: fishwrap.

Yesterday, Bob Unruh at World Net Daily asked why legacy media never reported on Biden’s condition before the debate. Then he answered his own question: the right-wing media was doing a good job reporting it without them. He also quoted Jonathan Turley as confirming that the legacy media avoided the story because the alternative media were all over it.

Not that the legacy media appreciated the alternative media’s efforts. Remember “cheap fakes”? That expression came from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. It referred to videos demonstrating Biden’s cognitive decline. But, to the disappointment of the White House and the legacy press, those videos were raw footage. No one spliced bad moments together. After that debate, no one dared suggest that anymore.

But one can readily see the problem. The legacy press resented the coverage by the alternative media. And instead of saying, “We’ve been scooped; we have to do better than this,” they were asking how to shut their competition up.

A worse problem: the press has an agenda

Jonathan Turley revealed a worse problem: the legacy press doesn’t even pretend to be objective any longer. For instance, consider this statement by Prof. Ted Glasser at Stanford University, in an interview with the university’s newspaper.

[Journalism must] free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.

“Social justice” is the latest iteration of “political correctness.” This goes to show that the legacy press has embraced Marxism. “Resident” Biden is today the highest-ranking government officer in the United States for a Marxist agenda. Therefore he deserves the highest protection the press can give: its absolute silence on matters touching his competence.

So now America has two presses – advocates for Marxism and advocates for freedom. The legacy press chose to become advocates for Marxism – if they haven’t always been since Marx became popular. (Consider Walter Duranty covering up the famine in Ukraine during the Thirties to protect Stalin.)

The problem, for consumers of the news, isn’t that these legacy organs have an agenda. Rather, the problem is what that agenda is. Most agendas fail before the bright light of Truth – so serving the agenda requires lying. That is what Prof. Glasser at Stanford actually told his students to do, without saying the actual word. So what we get from these organs are name-calling, insults, phony testimonials, and half-truths – the very elements of propaganda. That’s why Darrell Castle, attorney, podcaster, and former Presidential candidate, said:

The real question that needs to be addressed is not who will replace him. Because at this point it’s impossible to have any confidence in any Democrat politician. The real question that the news media should be asking but isn’t asking, is how long have you known and why didn’t you tell us? That question is being avoided instead of asked. So it’s obvious that the captive media is in league with the devil. It is serving as his assistant instead of reporting his actions.

What to do about it?

Again, America has two presses – possibly more – and they don’t agree even on basic facts. In examining the problem critically (i.e., as judges), the people must test each press’ version against known facts. Fortunately (in a narrow sense), the facts are no longer in dispute. “Resident” Biden made a fool of himself on national streaming television, and everyone knows that. Everyone also knows that the legacy media have known of Biden’s incompetency from the start and refused to cover it. In contrast, the alternative media insisted all along that Biden was neither physically nor mentally fit for the office. In fact, ever louder voices are calling, not for a temporary removal under Amendment XXV Section 4, but for impeachment.

The problem for news consumers is far simpler. Don’t trust the legacy media anymore. They, who relied on freedom of the press, broke the social contract. (To say nothing of their calling explicitly for the abridgment of freedom of speech.) A new press now exists, and consumers should get their news from them from now on.