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The Old Days of Yellow Are Gone
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
- This is thy lot, the portion of thy measures from me, saith the LORD; because thou hast forgotten me, and trusted in falsehood. (Jeremiah 13:25)
There are a few things I have observed in the last few days since June 27, 2024. Among them are the polling numbers showing an increasing lead by Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden. Reportedly, this is owing to a surprisingly poor debate performance from Biden. I really don’t think I need to ask this, but is Trump the only one who wasn’t surprised?
Another observation, is the increase in “fact-checking” claims by leading news organizations, including those from AP News, PBS, The New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, BBC, and The Guardian—just to name a few. Fact checking anymore, is like hiring the wolves to run security for the hen house.
Yet another observation is the level of mendacity emanating from the White House, most notably in the form of eye-popping excuses from Mr. Biden himself. They include having a cold, or not getting enough sleep. “I wasn’t very smart,” he told donors at a fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, according to several reports. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, going through I don’t know how many time zones—for real, I think it was 15 time zones… I didn’t listen to my staff.” What he said next probably didn’t help, “And then I came back and nearly fell asleep on stage.”
To say that the POTUS is in decline should, by now, be quite obvious to anyone—while perhaps not everyone just yet. We’re at that point where I think most people need to consider asking themselves, “Why weren’t we told this already?”
For that answer we need to turn to the media, and ask them, “Why didn’t you show us and tell us this was happening?”
The answer should be obvious. They can’t tell us anything other than what they are obliged to tell us. They can’t deviate from the script because they have sworn to a form of omertà, [https://www.dictionary.com/browse/omerta] much like the Mafia’s code of silence.
It’s not really about a matter of unbiased journalism either. It would be difficult indeed, to argue that journalism was ever unbiased. Like anyone else you care to name, journalists have always been biased. Biases are baked into them, and just as much as they are with you or me.
During the days of the Hearst newspaper dynasty, William Randolph Hearst contributed to his fortune from something called “yellow journalism.” The name was coined from “The Yellow Kid” (AKA Mickey Dugan) who was an American comic-strip character that first appeared from 1895 to 1898 in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, and later Hearst’s New York Journal. He was the main character in the comic strip Hogan’s Alley. It was one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips, although its graphical layout had already been thoroughly established in political and other, purely-for-entertainment cartoons. The use of word balloons in The Yellow Kid popularized their use in comic strips and comic books ever since. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism]
Hearst loved sensationalism as much as he loved the Yellow Kid. The Yellow Kid Journal was soon shortened to the Yellow Journal, and yellow (tabloids) journalism was established. A popular myth attributed to both Hearst and Pulitzer, is how yellow journalism contributed in sparking the Spanish/American War after the sinking of the Battleship “Maine.” Yes, it’s a myth.
It would be 90 years before journalism and news reporting would become the same thing. Both were unique in their relation to the industrial age and the population migrations and demographic shifts during that time. Today, both terms are now applied to the news media industry. News reporting, journalism, and opinion writing are all but indistinguishable from one another. If people read something in the papers—and fewer are anymore—or if they get their news from broadcast TV or radio, everything is assumed to be reliably newsworthy. The political class has wasted no time in taking advantage of this proclivity.
We might search in vain for the BBC newsreader to solemnly intone the news in the dispassionate, “nothing-exciting-will-get-me-to-change-expression” kind of demeanor for which they were once so revered. In fact, the closest we can get to those kind of broadcast journalists might be found on the CBS Evening News with… well, whoever has been given the assignment lately. The ratings for that august venue have been steadily dropping for years.
Walter Cronkite, (pictured) the most trusted name in television was, truth be told, a notorious left-wing liberal, eventually replaced by the likes of Brian Stelter, Chris Cuomo, or Jim Acosta. It’s obvious they’re little more than party hacks. It’s only a matter of time, before they too will all be replaced themselves.
So that’s why they seem a little panicked when they discover so many people are asking why they didn’t tell us the truth.
It’s really amusing to see that these people are shocked. Shocked I tell you, that only after the most important presidential debate in history, would they claim they had no idea Joe Biden had lost control of his mind. This is when the low watermark for trust became visible. Already tens of millions of only mildly observant people were seeing with their lying eyes for more than a year and a half. This is how the news media have become the most insidious of all the cast of characters attempting to rob our society of what few remaining virtues we still hold.
During the time courageous people have been speaking truth to power, the news media have been speaking power to truth.
This was the watershed moment where everyone actually sees the man behind the curtain. The news media have been carrying the water for the Democratic Party powerful for so long now, they have assumed they can fool us by sheer force of will. As a plan, it’s not all that much.
In paraphrasing from a Daily Wire broadcast, Andrew Klavan describes the problem where we can no longer remain free as a democracy—what Democrats will tell you they alone can save, “when power is allowed to coagulate.” Coagulate is a great term for the concentrated power of the progressive left. Democrats have coagulated after many decades of slow and steady progress to… well, progressivism. The news media have completely abdicated their responsibility of searching for the truth, finding the truth, and telling the truth.
What is truth? If you have to ask, you already have a problem with it. Especially if it’s staring you in the face.
- Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment. (Proverbs 12:19)
