Unthinkable: Journalists Demand Censorship
Last week I wrote a headline: “You Don’t Hate Journalists Enough.” I was writing about the legacy media giving Kamala Harris a communal tongue bath instead of the scrutiny befitting a presidential candidate.
Looks like I jumped the gun.
Just when I thought the press had shed all of their dignity and self-respect and couldn’t possibly sink any lower, this happened: A Washington Post reporter essentially begged the White House to block an upcoming interview between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Unthinkable.
The ‘reporter” asking for this Soviet-style intervention: Cleve Wootson.
Say his name. Let’s make him famous.
I once worked at The Post, back when it was an excellent newspaper. I like to think that thanks to Wootson, Ben Bradlee is rolling over in his grave right now.
Not only is this member of the press pleading with the White House to censor an interview that Wootson - did I mention that he’s supposedly a newspaper reporter? - fears will contain “misinformation.” But Wootson is asking for prior restraint.
He wants the broadcast blocked before it’s recorded.
This is a shocking betrayal of the First Amendment. The fact that it’s being proposed by a reporter from one of the nation’s largest, most established newspapers is a horror show.
If you’ve ever wondered just how much damage covid restrictions did to our nation, Wootson’s question about “misinformation” is a direct result.
Remember when the press and social media platforms merrily censored “misinformation” during covid? They haven’t stopped.
And what was that covid misinformation?
That the virus was probably due to a lab leak, that masks didn’t work, that the vaccines were experimental, that the vaccines had terrible side effects, that the vaccines were ineffective, that children weren’t at risk of severe illness, that closing schools would result in learning losses and tragic increases in social isolation and depression.
We were right. About all of it. Those of us espousing those heretical ideas were deplatformed and attacked.
We’re still waiting for apologies.
Not that misinformation isn’t out there: Democrats continually spread the lies and out-of-context statements that purport to show that Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville riots, that Trump told Americans to inject bleach into their veins to cure covid, that he led an insurrection on January 6th, that he said he’d rule next time as a “dictator.”
Call me old school, but I don’t believe government censorship is the way to counteract the lies.
I agree with Justice Brandeis who once said the only cure for bad speech is more speech.
Speak up!
