Amid all the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments among liberals about Biden’s debate performance, something is being ignored.
Donald Trump told a non-stop string of lies last night and wasn’t called on it.
The reason is there are two media in this country.
- There is a media of the right, created and subsidized for political reasons, which prints and says only what its owners want heard.
- There is a mainstream media, created and run for profit, which is frankly dying.
This is precisely what faced the Founders’ generation, in the 1790s. There was no “mainstream media” then. Politicians (and by extension those wealthy enough to hire them) ran the press, and decided who would be heard.
What happened next was predictable.
Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans were wealthy southern planters. They hired James Callendar to write scurrilous pieces about John Adams’ Federalists. In response, Adams passed a Sedition Act in 1798, but that was quickly repealed, staining Adams’ reputation for generations. Jefferson’s side was able to control politics, and it took a bloody Civil War to dislodge them.
What that press did to its people is described by Erik Larson in The Demon of Unrest. It created impunity, men and women who believed they had a divine right to control everyone else.
This was exemplified by those who started the war, the planter class who called themselves “The Chivalry.”
James Hammond, for instance, was a poor man who married into wealth. He wound up not only screwing his slaves, but diddling his own nieces, while pretending to be a noble man, honored by his peers. When the war began, he was a Senator from South Carolina.
Is he all that different from Donald Trump?
A Partisan Press
For the last 50 years, even before the Web was spun, Democrats have pretended there is something called “balance” available to them.
There isn’t.
The newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters of the 20th century, the so-called “mainstream media,” have all collapsed in the Internet era. Their business models don’t work.
Advertisers have moved to 21st century media that cares only about cost. Bang for the buck is what Facebook and Instagram, Google and YouTube, and TikTok deliver. No one gets paid there except for traffic. That’s where things are sold.
As a result, 20th century media can’t get advertising, and when it puts up paywalls it loses most of its audience.
This has left “free media” to politically subsidized operators. If the left wants to be heard, it needs to step up. There are such things as liberal millionaires and billionaires, but they have only been courted for campaign contributions.
Media, news, reporters, editors, graphics departments – these are campaign contributions. Solicit them instead. Build them instead. Because politics is the only viable business model for political information in the Internet Age. As it was 230 years ago.
Being right doesn’t matter. The left needs its own media universe. If truth is behind a paywall, it never gets its pants on.
