Will Covington Be The Media’s Bane?

     There’s been a lot written about it. There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over it, both before and after the revelation of the monstrous injustice perpetrated by use of the first, deceitfully edited video clip. And there’s been no end to the attempts by the media to exculpate themselves, including incredible claims that the media themselves are the real victims.

     My Esteemed Co-Conspirator Linda Fox is rather tired out by it all:

     I’m gonna assume that most Normal People are like me – drained by the constant warfare, which has traveled from Washington, NYC, and Hollywood, all the way to Covington, KY.

     The Left really does seem to have a hate on for Catholics, don’t they? They won’t be satisfied until every one of us is converted to the Holy Church of Progressive, or dead.

     Preferably dead. Along with all like us.

     But the “constant warfare” isn’t new; it only seems so. Before the presidential campaign of 2000, it was of the “low intensity” variety in which guerrillas and saboteurs, the Michael Moores and Ward Churchills, were the principal combatants. It’s been escalating since then, quite steadily, and climbed sharply with the election of Donald Trump. We’ve entered the “countervalue targeting” phase, with each side straining to destroy the other’s will to continue fighting by striking the other’s “population centers:” traditional religions, traditional family structures, and regions in which those things hold sway. The casualty counts are higher than ever and are still increasing. But the war itself is an ongoing phenomenon. It derives from the motivations of the combatants, which have increased in magnitude but have never changed in direction.

     The question of the hour is what mechanism has brought about the sharp increase in magnitude. Whether for good or for ill, the answer is before us. Covington has made it plain.

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     The media, those never to be adequately damned bastards who claim to be “purveyors of facts,” are the reason for virtually all of America’s political strife. It was they who shaped the attitudes of the combatants. It was they who stoked the fires of political hostility. It was they who deliberately, with unconcealable malice aforethought, have taken ordinary Americans of traditional political preferences, and have portrayed them as monsters of illimitable evil. And all the while they’ve postured as being above it all, just innocent servants of the public’s “right to know.”

     Glenn Reynolds quotes an unlinked source:

     How could the elite media—The New York Times, let’s say—have protected themselves from this event, which has served to reinforce millions of Americans’ belief that traditional journalistic outlets are purveyors of “fake news”? They might have hewed to a concept that once went by the quaint term “journalistic ethics.” Among other things, journalistic ethics held that if you didn’t have the reporting to support a story, and if that story had the potential to hurt its subjects, and if those subjects were private citizens, and if they were moreover minors, you didn’t run the story. You kept reporting it; you let yourself get scooped; and you accepted that speed is not the highest value. Otherwise, you were the trash press.

     At 8:30 yesterday morning, as I was typing this essay, The New York Times emailed me. The subject line was “Ethics Reminders for Freelance Journalists.” (I have occasionally published essays and reviews in the Times). It informed me, inter alia, that the Times expected all of its journalists, both freelance and staff, “to protect the integrity and credibility of Times journalism.” This meant, in part, safeguarding the Times’ “reputation for fairness and impartiality.”

     I am prompted to issue my own ethics reminders for The New York Times. Here they are: You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will causally harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory.

     True, all true – but what bearing does it have on the state of hostilities? Are armistice talks on the horizon? Are they even conceivable? People’s lives are being shattered in wholesale quantities. The simmering animosity of the two years behind us has blossomed into ravening, lethal hatred. Present trends continuing, we’re within a couple of months of assassination attempts that will make James Hodgkinson look like a Boy Scout.

     And it’s about 95% the media’s doing.

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     Once again, Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics applies with full and terrible force:

Any organization not explicitly right-wing
Sooner or later becomes left-wing.

     The media were among the first organizations in America to be acted upon in this fashion. The Left knew them to be more valuable than any other target in our society. About a century ago, just as the first forms of broadcast publication were emerging, they embarked upon a program of infiltration of all the major information-dissemination organizations in the country. The infiltrators rose through the ranks, acquired the power to influence hiring, firing, and editorial policy, and over time gained the degree of control that would ensure that the conquered organs would emit only what suits their political preferences. That’s how Robert Conquest’s Second Law operates in practice.

     Yes, the Left targeted other, related institutions, especially education and entertainment. But those were adjuncts to its central drive: the conversion of the outlets Americans go to for news into founts of propaganda. As recently as the Sixties the schools were still essentially wholesome, if not particularly effective. By then, the media had already been broken to the Left’s harness.

     Perhaps none of this is news to you. Perhaps you’ve been watching as attentively as I, and reached the above conclusions on your own time and your own dime. There remains a question still: what to do about it. For men cannot sustain a free society in an unrelenting bath of Leftist propaganda, harassment, and conflict-stoking. We are not well armored enough for that, intellectually, emotionally, or morally.

     However, history speaks plainly on this subject: an institution once conquered by the Left cannot be reformed. Its internal dynamics will thwart any attempt to counter-infiltrate and return it to honesty. It can only be destroyed and replaced by something trustworthy.

     That’s why the media are desperate to get out from under the stain of Covington. That event has made the stakes clear. There’s no way to disguise the facts of that matter, and no way for the media to evade the odium for them. They cannot claim it was an honest mistake.

     Covington is a capital-punishment case. The media’s collective behavior, blatantly murderous toward those whose convictions it disapproves, has sentenced them to death.

     Whether that sentence will be carried out, by whom, and in what manner remains to be seen.