Over the past eight decades, there have many frauds promoted by the mainstream media.  Perhaps the most notable, and consequential, was the media persuading an overwhelming majority of citizens over the years that their brand of journalism is not only the epitome of a noble profession but one that always strives to be fair and balanced.  But the legacy of the mainstream media is that it has always been the cheerleaders and propaganda arm of the left and the Democrat Party.

The modern-day mainstream media can trace its beginning to the passage of the Communications Act of 1934, which created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), thus, placing de facto control of the electronic media under the federal government and greatly limiting competition.  Consequently, three networks had a national monopoly on the dissemination of news broadcast over the airwaves for the next 60 years. 

Additionally, the dominant members of the print media assumed even greater notoriety and dominance by cooperating with a fascist-sympathizing Roosevelt Administration and their heavy-handed treatment of the media. As radio and later television grew, metropolitan newspapers merged or ceased publication, leading to newspaper monopolies in all but a small handful of cities.  With the rise of the internet, many other less prominent publications were driven into bankruptcy or obscurity.  Thus, the mainstream media as we know it today was born.

As broadcast oligopolies and metropolitan newspaper monopolies advanced in the last century, the management of the leading newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks found it necessary to initiate the mantra that their profession was the epitome of credibility and integrity. This began when they were unabashedly promoting Franklin Roosevelt and his big government agenda, and accelerated dramatically during World War II when they eagerly embraced a partnership with the federal government to advance the war effort.  This marked the beginning of eight decades of the cozy relationship between the media, totalitarian causes, and the Democrat party.

But during the early years of oligopolistic consolidation, the dominant players in the media willingly became de facto accomplices with not only the Roosevelt administration but the despots in Europe, whom FDR refused to criticize or condemn.  During the 1930’s numerous puff pieces on Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin were published or aired by the mainstream media, even after the Communists and Nazis revealed themselves to be who they were.  

The New York Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times among many other mainstream media outlets published puff pieces defending and praising Hitler during the 1930s when he was overtly and brutally consolidating power and persecuting the Jews.  Mussolini was also the recipient of similarly sycophantic adulation.

On March 16, 1941, with Europe and North Africa ablaze and Jews and other deplorables being herded into concentration camps, the New York Times Magazine published a piece romantically describing Hitler’s idyllic day-to-day life at his mountain top chalet.  The Washington Post, The New York Times, other major newspapers, and the wire services as well as the broadcast networks buried or essentially ignored the reports of the Holocaust during and before the war.

Mark Levin in his book Unfreedom of the Press chronicles how The New York Times notoriously covered up the genocide of nearly 10 million in Ukraine by Stalin. Meanwhile, the Times and numerous other American publications during the 1930s lauded his “reforms” in the Soviet Union.  Time Magazine had Stalin on its cover 11 times.  Stalin’s genocides rival those that Hitler perpetrated but have never been widely exposed or reported on by a sycophantic mainstream American media.

The American media’s love affair with Fidel Castro knew no bounds as virtually the entirety of the American media complex promoted, protected, and gushed all over the communist dictator particularly as he was brutally ascending and consolidating his power.  Newsweek in April of 1959: “Castro is honest, and an honest government is something unique in Cuba…Castro is not himself even remotely a communist.”

In the 1970’s many mainstream media outlets slobbered over the rise of radical Islamic regimes and groups despite their determination to exterminate Israel.  In the 1980’s Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua received similar treatment as did Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in the 1990s.

Since the 1980s, the mainstream media has often criticized the Communist Chinese, but much of the criticism is “constructive criticism” (i.e., we want you to succeed -- this is what you are doing wrong.)  Confirming their first loyalty is to totalitarian ideology, over the decades the American media has accepted untold millions in payments from China for publishing articles and airing broadcasts not only favorable to Beijing but at their behest to overtly influence U.S. politics.  

Beginning in the late 1950s, television reporters and anchors assumed celebrity status, as they were in the homes of Americans on a daily basis.  As such their credibility was rarely if ever questioned.

While there were news anchors and reporters who tried to be impartial, most of them were not.  Walter Cronkite was portrayed and feted as “The Most Trusted Man in America.”  Yet, he almost single-handedly convinced a politically consequential chunk of the populace that what was, in reality, a significant victory by the American Army in Viet Nam, the Tet Offensive, was instead an overwhelming defeat and embarrassment, thus denigrating the valor of the soldiers and turning public opinion against the military.  Across the spectrum, his reporting, abetted by what stories the network chose not to cover, skewed significantly toward the Democrats, and sympathy with authoritarianism. 

"Black Rock," CBS's Eero Saarinen-designed 1964 Manhattan headquarters

The authoritarian leanings of the mainstream media have not been limited to international affairs.  At home, they have unabashedly promoted the transformation of the nuclear family, secularism, the elimination of federalism, socialist economic policies, and a permanent one-party oligarchy with themselves at the table.

The preponderance of the current generation of so-called mainstream journalists is more ill-educated and steeped in left-wing ideology than their predecessors.  These useful idiots have a platform constructed over the last eight decades to unabashedly promote leftist social and economic policies.  

Unlike some of their more balanced predecessors, they no longer attempt to hide or obfuscate their agenda or bias as the goal of transforming America is within reach -- with what they view as a temporary setback in the election of 2016.   A catastrophic event that precipitated a renewed determination by the American Left to obliterate conservative or Republican opposition by any means possible.  The mainstream media being the spear carriers in that effort.

And they are the ideal spear carriers as the vast majority of current mainstream reporters, editors, anchors, and columnists exhibit an inability to generate an original thought or comprehend basic concepts   Thus, they willingly regurgitate the fabrications, innuendos, and “fake news” given to them by their domestic and international masters.  

Among the more notable accomplishments of the watershed Trump presidency was exposing and marginalizing the mainstream media.   Donald Trump’s damn the torpedoes mindset in taking on and exposing them for the left-wing frauds they are (and have been for the past 87 years) has finally begun to awaken the American people.  In a recent Gallup poll, just one-third of the citizenry has trust and confidence in the media.  Further, 70% believe the media is pushing an agenda and not fairly reporting the news. 

A large and growing share of the American people assumes that virtually all news as presented by the current mainstream media is either a fabrication or an exaggeration to promote an authoritarian agenda.  By doing so they will ensure that the mainstream media will, in due course, no longer be mainstream.

Photo credit: Americasroof (talk) CC BY-SA 3.0 license

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