Where do you get your news, and have you stopped to think about the risk journalists can take to bring it to you?
Obviously, the crew here at Ark Valley Voice hopes that you turn to us for professional journalism on issues that are shaping the quality of our lives here in Chaffee County, as well as those local realities that are a part of national and global challenges that we face.
In some parts of the world, the very act of journalism is now called a crime. In totalitarian regimes across the world, from Russia to Turkey, from Myanmar to China, government transparency and truth are basically what the leaders say they are.
In Hong Kong in the past two weeks, the fiesty, democracy-supporting news organization Apple Daily shut down, as the Chinese government began to arrest their reporters and charge them with sedition against the government for reporting on government actions.
People in Hong Kong lined up the last morning of their publication to snag a copy of rigorously produced, fact-based truth about the growing crackdown on formerly free Hong Kong, before the organization’s lights went out.
This week, the totalitarian Chinese government arrested one of Apple Daily’s news editors at the airport as he was about to leave the city. So they aren’t just about shutting down the truth; they vindictively go after the truth-tellers.
Because that is the point; journalists are truth-tellers. We exist to hold our governments accountable, to shine a light in dark places. This is journalism that genuinely afflicts the comfortable, gives voice to the voiceless, and celebrates the best of the human experience.
Although we don’t face such extreme threats here in Central Colorado, that doesn’t mean we haven’t been threatened. We have.
Our nation’s founders were so convinced of the necessity of a free press as a watchdog on their fledging democracy that they wrote it into the U.S. Constitution in the First Amendment. That was bravery of the first order.
These days it can be confusing to sort out fact-based journalism from the growing plethora of commentators and thinly-disguised state and party-influenced “media” (I use that term loosely). One minute they declare their biased coverage as being “news,” the next minute they hide behind their status as “opinion-reflectors.”
Well – which is it?
A certain national cable station regularly plays with the truth. In states such as Georgia, newly-created, party-line news media is spreading disinformation as fast as it can be manufactured. The Nation reports that right-wing news media are actively participating in the attempts to undermine and destroy our democracy; a right-wing influencer web of deceit, and paid media outlets that are amplified conspiracies about ballots stuffed in suitcases and counterfeit mail-in votes. Benign-looking print media like The Epoch Times, pretend to do truth-based news. No, they are as much party-based dogma as Pravda was for the Soviet Union.
The attacks on what is referred to as “left-wing media” (translated: news media focused on fact-based reporting) aren’t just aimed at mainstream media. Some rabidly partisan outlets like Newsmax TV and One America News Network, declared Fox News a “Democrat Party hack” in the wake of its 2020 election results call in Arizona for Biden. It’s the far-right’s young eating their parents.
The Nation reported that “A video featuring two women claiming that poll workers in Maricopa County, Arizona tried to force voters to use Sharpies went viral on Facebook, then spread quickly on YouTube, Twitter, Rumble, TikTok, Parler, and Reddit. Conservative influencers and media shared the conspiracy theory.” So did members of the Trump family.
The Stop the Steal rallies spewing the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election (he did not), including the Jan. 6 insurrection that viciously attacked our nation’s Capitol, reveals something else about the role of the Fourth Estate in our nation’s growing divide. The American people and its media are in opinion silos and news silos; one side focusing on facts, the other side focusing on an alternate reality.
This is characterized on the right by an expanding web of outlets and platforms willing to entertain an alternative version of reality. It is amplified by social media companies, which — confronted with their role in spreading disinformation — are now scrambling to implement reforms.
Against this backdrop, truth-telling media faces an uphill battle. Why? because truth is up against right-wing misinformation marketing. I have nothing against marketing, but it exists to position a product, person, or service and when used in this manner, is practiced to deceive. The GOP is eager to weaponize the lies, not only to win elections but also to advance a Trump policy agenda (it is no longer a traditional conservative agenda – the agenda is what Trump and his clones say it is.)
Not only is old-fashioned marketing being weaponized, but it is also now amplified by state GOP legislatures; used to pass legislation that may allow state legislators to decide whether they like the results of an election — or claim the right to choose who they want.
This is not democracy — this is fascism.
All Ark Valley Voice can say is — When pigs fly.
Recent Comments