Our President ostensibly sets the government’s tone, and so does America’s MSM, with The New York Times as its lead dog. The NYT, which calls itself America’s Newspaper of Record, sets the tone for something even more significant than the government: public opinion. Public opinion drives the government more than the other way around. Advocacy journalism defines the NYT today. A constant reality within the paper is the creation of fake news, the unimportance of objectivity, the lack of coverage for consequential stories, and progressive advocacy.

A good example of the relentless advocacy press in the New York Times appears when its advocates (once called “journalists”) work to advance a progressive agenda. This is especially true when it comes to the all-important and fiendish belief in DEI.

For example, in this article, ostensibly about micro-schools, the Times subtly decries parental choice in managing a child’s education. You can smell the fear and self-righteous indignation oozing from the article. Written by Dana Goldstein, the vibe is that parents who abandon public schools are boobs who are ill-equipped to make choices for their children, while the government and teachers’ unions are tried and tested.

Image: The New York Times building by Ajay Suresh (edited). CC BY 2.0.

An older but more consequential example of the outlet’s relentless push to set public opinion rather than to report on the news occurred in 2020, at the height of the George Floyd riots. Back then, Bari Weiss, who later founded the centrist-conservative Free Press, was an opinion editor.

Weiss abruptly resigned after savage pushback from her coworkers. Her transgression: Supporting a story that appeared on June 7, 2020. The Times editorial page editor, James Bennet, had published an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, who was troubled by the idea that “rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy.” He suggested that soldiers should be sent as backup for the police to end the violence.

After more than 1,000 staffers signed a letter protesting the editorial, Bennet was forced to resign. Weiss publicly characterized the internal controversy as an ongoing “civil war” between what she called young “social justice warriors” and what she identified as older “free speech advocate” staffers.

Nellie Bowles, who is Bari Weiss’s partner, also worked at the New York Times and, like Weiss, she made the break from woke to intellectually free:

“I had a friend from college who reached out to me and said I need to publicly disavow Bari, that in order to stay in the good, if I want to keep dating her, I need to publicly disavow her. And I was just like, ‘What are you talking about?! Like in what world?!’ Like, it was so insane.”

[snip]

“I lost friends immediately, friends who were demanding that I post [the tweet],” Bowles said. “Anyone who didn’t post that was seen as very suspicious from that day onward. In retrospect, it was so nuts.”

The mindset at the New York Times raises a troubling public policy issue: How do we put forward unpopular questions when internal policing mechanisms within our media ensure that only the purest progressive thoughts will be tolerated and allowed within any debate? We actually know what the resulting society looks like.

The Soviet Union was big on message control. It had an entire Directorate to enforce its message. The Ministry of State Security was charged with “a policy of supervision and surveillance to keep control and to prevent disloyalty.” Those who violated its policies did not fare well. Firing was the least of their concerns.

So far, our directorate—the DOJ and FBI—isn’t yet executing thought-crime enemies as the Soviets did, and Russia, China, and other totalitarian nations still do. However, they have already started going down the imprisonment route.

The media outlets also have weapons. They can and do ostracize, blacklist, and spotlight those who were and are disloyal to a system of messaging that has a similar chilling effect on those employed. The NYT, after all, was not alone in conducting a conformist campaign highly tilted to progressive aims. Similar big city outlets such as NPR, The New Yorker, Atlantic Magazine, Boston Globe, Washington Post, San Francisco Times, MSNBC, and CNN, and social media outlets such as Facebook and Instagram, preach from the same script. Witness how their reporting often uses identical words, phrases, and ideas.

Most Americans receive their news from one of the above-mentioned sources. The lens through which they view this information is frequently uncontested. The aim of the game is mind control. They win if they can limit your knowledge and your ability to formulate logical questions.

The power to control narratives is the power to control your thoughts. By squashing logical debates that should be conducted non-stop but don’t happen lest someone label you a racist, see them winning again. The most consequential hill to die on is the ability to think for yourself and access truthful and relevant information, allowing you to make thoughtful deductive and inductive decisions. That frightens the other side to the point that they literally condemn Trump’s followers as needing an intervention. This also should scare us all.

God Bless America.

Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com