The press is supposed to be instant replay, not the cheerleading squad. In American politics, the people are the NFL audience. We invest our money in franchise swag and tickets. The opposing teams’ ownerships are the political parties that divide the big championship money in the playoffs.
The media should be referees with honest instant replay: cameras on the pylons and overhead, delivering rapid granular review so we can see what really happened. Writers who explain the genius and blunders of the coaches and players. That’s why our press is protected to a high bar.
Disastrously, too many “journalists” assumed the mantle of an oracle, determined to “make the world a better place,” instead of being “reporters.” They become a production crew of cheerleaders. Soft-light one team, bury their cheating, throw shade on the other team. They are no longer showing us the game. Manipulating the broadcast to gaslight the audience stokes resentment against the entire enterprise.
I’m just an old vet, writing for free to speak truth to power. I’m not looking to make a new enlightened society. It is not their place nor mine to pick winners or manipulate the audience. Their job is to break the story and put the unfiltered replay on the screen so that free people can judge outcomes free of intentions. Choosing narrative over evidence is faulty intel on the battlefield. The fog of war is cut by ground truth, not spin. Soldiers live and die by battlefield intel. Citizens are not children to be managed. We are the ones who pay all the costs of an arrogant, manipulative information system.
In the Dreyfus Affair, large parts of the French press turned a weak case into a national purity test. They defended institutional honor and treated dissent as disloyalty. It was unjust and degraded national resolve. France entered the 1930s carrying those scars. Concurrently, Winston Churchill rang the alarm about Nazi rearmament. Much of the respectable press treated him as a blundering warhawk and preferred the comforting story of peace. When the real threat arrived, the cost bankrupted and destroyed the British Empire.
The same pattern repeated here. The press largely looked past former President Bill Clinton’s personal sleaze. After 9/11, once American forces were on the battlefield, many outlets maintained a daily drumbeat of casualties and anti-war framing that undercut resolve rather than simply reporting the fight from every angle. That drumbeat quieted when the preferred administration took power. The Obama years were sold as “scandal-free.” Then the singular objective became “Destroy President Donald Trump.” Unverified claims from government leakers were amplified until nearly half the country believed Russia changed vote counts. When the story collapsed, the leakers were not held to account. The press awarded itself prizes for it.
Former President Joe Biden was shoved forward while his family sleaze and cognitive decline were minimized. Anthony Fauci’s fear campaign was amplified. Dissent was treated as dangerous. The Jumbotron kept showing the preferred version of the game.
“All the news that’s fit to print” was not. Democracy dies in darkness when the press refuses to turn on a forensic flashlight and instead protects the team it prefers.
The solution is not government control of the press. We just had that during COVID-19. The solution is journalists who remember their actual job, owners who value independence, and citizens who do their own research. A press that tries to make the world better by shaping the game is a taxpayer money-hole. Oh, you’re from Iowa? I got a bridge to sell you. The COVID-19 response was a big money hole.
OPINION — MEDIA MIND CONTROL: NEWS OUTLETS HIJACK NARRATIVES THROUGH DISHONEST LABELS
The NFL needs honest refs with clean instant replay far more than cheerleaders. Shame on the cheerleaders masquerading behind media credentials.
Indeed, we do have a republic, if we can keep it. But democracy dies in darkness.
Michael Breeden is a retired Air Force chief master sergeant with 29 years of service as a combat controller in special operations. He writes on sovereignty, culture, and institutional accountability.