The legacy media continues to self-destruct, but they’re the only ones who don’t realize it.

From Accuracy in Media:

“A recent Edelman trust barometer released to Axios revealed that American trust in the news media has hit an all-time low of 27%. In the midst of a global pandemic, when citizens have relied on the media more than ever to bring them the facts, the media has failed to do that. Now 57% of Democrats and only 18% of Republicans have any faith in the media at all.

“To anyone who has been paying attention lately, the drop in trust probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise. What’s particularly galling, however, is the fact that the media refuses to take any responsibility for how we got here.”

Why should the legacy media have to take responsibility for something they don’t even acknowledge exists? They see the problem as disinformation and conspiracy theories spread by Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, and QAnon, and that they are the only ones who have a handle on truth. It is everyone else that is disconnected from reality and therefore must be silenced.

With that in mind, the Gray Lady and fish wrap of record has gone full Orwell towards that end:

“The New York Times is turning to the Biden administration to “help solve our reality crisis” and calling on the new president to appoint a “reality czar” to combat “disinformation.”

“Times technology columnist Kevin Roose sounded the alarm Tuesday about the popularity of right-wing QAnon conspiracy theorists, the unsubstantiated election fraud claims President Trump pushed ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, and what he called ‘the baseless theory that Covid-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab.’

“ ‘The muddled, chaotic information ecosystem that produces these misguided beliefs doesn’t just jeopardize some lofty ideal of national unity. It actively exacerbates our biggest national problems, and creates more work for those trying to solve them,’ Roose wrote. ‘And it raises an important question for the Biden administration: How do you unite a country in which millions of people have chosen to create their own version of reality?’ “

“Times technology columnist”? Color me shocked. With Twitter, Facebook, and Google the main actors in censoring speech that doesn’t align with the chosen narrative, and de-platforming any person or entity that doesn’t conform, it is no wonder they are using one of their media mouthpieces to push this agenda.

I wonder if Roose took his own paper to task when they fostered their version of reality with the Russia Collusion hoax? Where were Roose’s cries for clearing the “muddled, chaotic information ecosystem” for the past four years? I did a Nexis search, and came up with 47 New York Times news and opinion pieces with “Russia Collusion” either the focus of the article, or given huge prominence within the article.

If the New York Times is all people read—and sadly, that is all that some people do read—they not only formed conclusions from muddled information, but spread disinformation. The paper deliberately allowed people to build false hopes and false conclusions based upon false premises. But Roose doesn’t seem all that concerned about his paper’s role in the creation of this “ecosystem”; he’s only interested in disinfecting the areas of the ecosystem of which he doesn’t approve.

So many of these big-name national journalists have it better than just about anyone else: a very secure job, a mega-loud platform, the ability to work from home.

But they are so enamored of themselves & their status that they regard criticism as abuse, disagreement as violence.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 31, 2021

Since we are on this subject of the legacy media and reality, Andrew Cuomo’s unmasking (pun intended) is another great example. A year ago, New York Governor Cuomo was the golden child. Every media outlet couldn’t get enough of writing glowing puff pieces on how Cuomo was handling the pandemic in his State, and the daily press conferences that showed off his leadership accomplishments. There was plenty of evidence to the contrary with record hospitalizations and deaths, an almost-empty Javitz Center, and USNS Comfort ship, while nursing homes were being crammed full of COVID-19 patients, and the subsequent death tolls covered up. Fox meteorologist Janice Dean, who lost her in-laws who were in nursing home care, was one of the few who would not accept the media’s narrative on what a great job Cuomo was doing. Dean was accused by many in the legacy media of creating her own reality and spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories. After all, she worked for Fox News!

Enabled by his own brother on CNN, as well as the New York Times and other legacy media, they continued to push the narrative of roses and unicorn farts, because “Orange Man Bad”/”Andrew Cuomo Good” needed to be what people believed. The sociopathic governor even published a book on leadership to polish his already stellar credentials, and the media did not blink an eyelash or consider this beyond the pale.

We now know for sure what many suspected all along: Andrew Cuomo's coronavirus performance involved incompetence, followed by deception. https://t.co/3xnvajw8qU

— National Review (@NRO) February 3, 2021

One year later, the Cuomo “leadership” narrative has not only imploded, it’s as viral and deadly as those early Cornavirus infections. POLITICO’s Chris Cilliza recently had a revelation that those tales of Cuomo acing COVID-19 may not have been reality. Bearing Arms Managing Editor Cam Edwards administers him another dose.

And you think the credibility of the media didn’t take one as well? https://t.co/tVDGXLl97I

— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) January 29, 2021

But these inconvenient facts do not prevent Roose from expressing his opinion that if your facts don’t line up with his and the rest of legacy media, you live in a different reality, that reality is wrong, and it must be corrected for the sake of saving the planet from violence and unrest… or something:

“ ‘I’ve spent the past several years reporting on our national reality crisis, and I worry that unless the Biden administration treats conspiracy theories and disinformation as the urgent threats they are, our parallel universes will only drift further apart, and the potential for violent unrest and civic dysfunction will only grow,’ Roose explained.

When you paint 74 million Americans as terrorists and seditionists for simply being in proximity of the January 6 unrest, you yourself have created a parallel universe, and the whole “unity” argument goes up in smoke. Heck, the unity argument went up in smoke the minute Biden started signing executive orders that put 11,000 pipeline workers out of work, and created a reality that boys can compete against girls without consequence.

Roose and his ilk confuse “unity” with “conformity”, and as long as Roose’s opinion on what is reality, and who has a handle on it conflicts with actual facts on the ground, you’re going to have citizens who will not only push back, but will draw their own conclusions.

“Roose said he spoke with ‘a number of experts’ who weighed in on what the Biden administration should do to ‘help fix our truth-challenged information ecosystem, or at least prevent it from getting worse.’

“ ‘Several experts I spoke with recommended that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a ‘reality czar,’ Roose wrote.”

I wonder who those “experts” are, and if their last names are Zuckerberg, Bezos, Dorsey, and Pichai? These Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse led the charge to grasp control of what people think and what platforms they could use to express their thoughts. This direct assault on the First Amendment was cheered on by everyone in legacy media, because, after all, they were the ones on the side of reality. When you take it a step further and color certain speech as violent, and that certain people foment that violence because they critically think, question, and call for proper inquiry, then your version of reality will always be the right one—the only one—that leads to peace and unity.

Roose and his “experts” are intent on this being the law, and they want the Biden administration to sanction and codify it.