NY Times Tells on Itself in Story on Republican/Democrat Approaches to the Flow of Information

One of the left’s/media’s/Big Tech’s favorite talking points – especially in an election year – is on how we “must” contain the flow of “disinformation” ostensibly on grounds that our country is best served by a public that is well-informed and can cut through the bull.

While our country is indeed better served by people who know what they are talking about and who know when they’re being lied to, the truth of the matter is that the people who preach about “disinformation” the most are the ones who are routinely found to be engaging in it – usually in coordinated efforts to further their political/social agendas.

We’ve seen it with media outlets like CNN and CBS News routinely peddling fake news about Gov. Ron DeSantis (like the fraudulent story about how DeSantis allegedly “fired” a disgraced Florida Dept. of Health IT staffer after she supposedly “refused” to favorably massage COVID dashboard numbers) and, during his administration, former President Trump (the Russia/Trump collusion hoax is a classic example).

We’ve also seen it with Joe Biden, who back in September smeared the border patrol agents at the center of the fake “whipping” scandal and who has yet to apologize since they were cleared of that vile accusation. We also saw it with Twitter’s and Facebook’s deliberate suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop emails story in October 2020, which they and former “intelligence officials” explained away by falsely declaring it “Russian disinformation.”

And, with just four months away, the New York Times is raising the “issue” of how Republicans and Democrats have differing approaches to combating disinformation. But their blatantly biased spin gives the game away very early on. Note how they frame the different approaches:

Several states run by Democrats are pushing for stiffer rules on the spread of false information, while Republican-run states are pushing for fewer rules. In this deeply polarized era, even the fight for truth breaks along partisan lines. https://t.co/AkSl6ATt20

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 11, 2022

LOL. So Democrats are supposedly “fighting for truth” while Republicans are all in favor of keeping “false information” out there? Right.

The entire piece was a gift to Democrats, who the New York Times repeatedly portrayed as valiant heroes who were using their power as elected officials to clamp down on speech they declared “false,” while Republicans, in their view, were trying to counter such measures with legislation aimed at protecting conservative speech from censorship.

In the Times’ view, those attempts by Republicans were meant to keep the flow of so-called disinformation related to issues like COVID and election fraud alive, but left out of the piece was how often that false information comes from news outlets like the Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and others, and also how often the Biden administration and other Democrats routinely pass off false claims as factual.

Further, the Times failed to explore the core objection Republicans have with Democrat/media/Big Tech attempts at “fighting for truth”: Though some would disagree, “truth” is oftentimes in the eye of the beholder when we’re talking about government officials and their allies in the press and at popular social media platforms. When they work together to spin a false narrative, as they did with the Hunter Biden emails story, nobody wins – outside of the politicians who they’re trying to protect, their mission in the first place, which is exactly why Republicans don’t trust any of them to “regulate” or advocate for regulating political speech.

The shorter version of that: “Who determines what is ‘misinformation’?

A better approach for the New York Times with their piece would have been to frame it this way:

Shorter Times: "Democrats believe in approved speech, Republicans believe in free speech." https://t.co/rl7d79Jcud

— Phineas Fahrquar (@irishspy) July 11, 2022