Media folks agree that theirs is the finest profession in America

By Andrea Widburg

The American leftist media establishment is, without a doubt, extraordinarily powerful. It can shape reality in ways that are always deleterious for America and for ordinary Americans. It diminishes Republicans and elevates Democrats. Now, according to several journalists, we learn that the only thing that held America together immediately after 9/11 was the media talking heads. It wasn’t President Bush, Mayor Giuliani, or America’s shared horror and values. It was Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather.

And no, I’m not reading between the lines. AP, to honor 9/11, decided that the best way was to elevate the status of its own profession—and certainly, it is true that, in those pre-“everybody is on the internet” days, the television was the only way for people to see what was happening. But were the slurring Brokaw, supercilious Jennings, and self-aggrandizing Rather really America’s moral center and guiding stars?

Before social media and with online news in its infancy, the story of the day when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people unfolded primarily on television. Even some people inside New York’s World Trade Center made the phone call. They felt a shudder, could smell smoke. Could someone watch the news and find out what was happening?

Most Americans were guided through the unimaginable by one of three anchors: Tom Brokaw of NBC News, Peter Jennings of ABC and Dan Rather of CBS.

“They were the closest thing that America had to national leaders on 9/11,” says Garrett Graff, author of “The Only Plane in the Sky,” an oral history of the attack. “They were the moral authority for the country on that first day, fulfilling a very historical role of basically counseling the country through this tragedy at a moment its political leadership was largely silent and largely absent from the conversation.”

Think about it: Three men who did nothing but read aloud from a teleprompter are now characterized as “national leaders” and “the moral authority for the country.”

One man who thought this assessment was just right is Brian Stelter, a chubby, squeaky-voiced 36-year-old who has never held a job outside of the media. He has never created anything, fought for anything, or been responsible for anything other than his own career.

Nevertheless, this little man whom Kurt Schlichter rightly characterizes as a human potato, is worth a lot more than you are—estimates say he’s worth around $10 million. No wonder then, that he was happy to relay via his Twitter feed the “fact” that America’s real leaders and almost god-like figures were television anchors—that is, talking heads just like him:

Network TV anchors were "the closest thing that America had to national leaders on 9/11. They were the moral authority for the country on that first day," especially with political leaders in bunkers or otherwise out of sight... https://t.co/j12NRPr2BM

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 11, 2021

Others on Twitter, unhindered by the narcissism that sees the media constantly aggrandize itself, were not amused:

Network TV anchors were "the closest thing that America had to national leaders on 9/11. They were the moral authority for the country on that first day," especially with political leaders in bunkers or otherwise out of sight... https://t.co/j12NRPr2BM

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 11, 2021

Oh man. I saw hundreds of moral and courageous leaders with me that day saving lives and running back into the Pentagon to save more, over and over. We didn’t leave until the job was done. None of them were in your anti-American media cabal Potato. #NeverForget
— рџ‡єрџ‡ёCol. Rob Maness ret. (@RobManess) September 11, 2021

IT. IS. NOT. ABOUT. YOU.
— LibertyJ (@LibertyJen) September 11, 2021

Eventually, Stelter was so beleaguered he tried to back out of the egomania he presented by blaming the AP article—ignoring that he was the one who approvingly retweeted the article, along with that hagiographic quote about leftist talking heads:

I remember. Please send your objections to the author of the story or the person he quoted.
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 11, 2021

That second to last tweet—the one that says “IT. IS. NOT. ABOUT. YOU.—really gets to the heart of things. In 2021, journalism is entirely self-referential. Reporting straight facts is passé. What’s important is for journalists to report on their thoughts, fears, reactions, knowledge, and morals values—and to discuss all these things with other journalists...and then to call their chats “news.”

I graduated from Cal in 1983 and have spent the last 38 years suggesting that America would be a better place were that institution razed and the ground sown with salt. It was an unhealthy place intellectually. I should have extended that suggestion to the rest of academia, as well as to American journalism.

That did lead me to a thought—a depressing one—that explains so much. I hate the idea of revolutions and civil wars, for they are so terribly destructive. I’ve noted that the only bloodless revolution in history was England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688 when James II voluntarily ran away. However, I realized today that America has also had a bloodless revolution, one extending from around 1968 through to today.

By using academia to indoctrinate generations of American young people in anti-Americanism, cultural Marxism, and “democratic socialism,” and then sending them to Washington, the media, and America’s corporations, the leftists achieved a bloodless revolution. They have successfully remade America.

We older folk have no other role than to say, “It was better when I was young.” I guess we should be grateful that the revolutionaries haven’t yet started doing what Rush Limbaugh predicted, which is to kill off the old people, who have good memories of pre-revolutionary times. And if we want to live another day, we’d better install busts of the media gods in our homes.