“But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth.” —Thomas Jefferson (1805)

Imagine, if you will, what the American political landscape would look like if our national mainstream media outlets were actually neutral in their reporting – conducting themselves as journalists rather than ranting political puppets. It would look much more like what our Founders intended – a nation where protecting Liberty and the Rule of Law enshrined in our Republic’s founding documents, was chief among the concerns of our people.

Our Founders rightly asserted that the First Amendment protection of a free press should be a powerful check on statist usurpation — that a free press was the most promising assurance for extending Liberty to future generations.

Consistent with the views of other Founders, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.” He also noted, “No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free, no one ever will.”

Indeed.

However, after his first term in office, in his 1805 second inaugural address, Jefferson wrote: “During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.”

A free press was and remains essential to the protection and advancement of Liberty. But as Jefferson noted, the disingenuous adulteration of that sacred First Amendment trust, in which the media abandons its responsibility and colludes with partisans to become an instrument of their bidding, perilously endangers the future of Liberty. This now-rampant mass media malpractice constitutes a dangerous betrayal of the First Amendment. Defending against this threat is central to our *Patriot Post* mission.

In principle, our Founders’ advocacy for a free press was correct. In practice today, however, the collusion between the statist Democrat Party and its press outlets — the Demo/MSM propaganda machine, which now encompasses most of the mainstream media — has devolved into the most significant self-inflicted threat to Liberty today.

To counter that threat, our team launched The Patriot Post two decades ago, when the Internet was a lonely and largely uncharted medium. But we believed it would be, long term, the most effective medium to reach the largest number of grassroots Americans with a genuine conservative message. Today, The Patriot Post is the oldest news, policy and opinion digest on the Web, and a highly acclaimed touchstone of Liberty for Americans from all walks of life.

We didn’t attain that status on our own merits, however. When others observed that he was a “great communicator,” my mentor, Ronald Reagan, said humbly, “I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation — from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.” Any success we have experienced comes solely from our steadfast devotion to and advocacy for “the principles that have guided us for two centuries.”

From day one, we have remained sharply focused on our original objective — to counter the mainstream media (MSM) stranglehold on public opinion and to expose their corrupt collusion and obstructionist objectives. It was critical then, and now more than ever, that we effectively rebut and refute their statist rhetoric with our genuine conservative message “to Support and Defend” the inalienable Rights of Man outlined in our Declaration of Independence, and the Liberty and Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution.

The alternative, if we do not all lock arms in opposition to this growing menace, is, irrevocably, tyranny.

A recent Harvard study evaluating media “reporting” on President Donald Trump — or, more accurately, their echo chamber parroting of Democrat talking points — makes clear their Leftmedia prejudice.

Of course, that bias has been well documented for years, as repeated surveys find that more than 90% of “journalists” support Democrats — most of them leftist Democrats.

In 2014, The Washington Post noted the findings of an academic study, “American Journalists in the Digital Age,” that only “seven percent of journalists are Republicans … fewer than a decade ago.”

In 2015, The Washington Times affirmed the findings of a book on media bias, entitled “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” that “more than 90 percent of D.C. journalists vote for Democrats.”

In 2016, it was no surprise when the Washington Examiner reported the results of a Center for Public Integrity media study finding, “Of the 430 people CPI identified as ‘journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism,’ 96 percent gave money to Clinton, according to federal campaign finance filings.”

Of far more value to Hillary Clinton’s campaign were the “in-kind” contributions of her sycophantic media pool — who tailored their reports to favor her election.

And note that, just prior to Trump’s election, The Washington Free Beacon reported survey results that found, “Not a single White House reporter is a Republican.” (I know, you’re shocked — SHOCKED.)

Again, the leftward mainstream media trend has tracked with the leftward trend in the Democrat Party for three decades — but that trend has accelerated dramatically in the past year to the point of raw collusion. The consequence is an accelerated decline in journalistic standards.

The objective of this collusion was, originally, to bolster Clinton’s election prospects in 2016. But after the unexpected election of Donald Trump, the Left and its media partners transitioned from election-rigging to bald-faced obstruction and sabotage in order to block Trump’s agenda — which is wholly antithetical to their own. (Regrettably, on occasion he fuels their diversionary schemes with his own unforced communication errors.)

Since the earliest days of his campaign, Trump has condemned the “fake news” obstructionists and their deceptive trial by media tactics, including the use of media polling to reflect the bias they promote, what we coined as the “Pollaganda Effect.”

A week after his inauguration, he opined, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

Trump took a lot of MSM heat for suggesting the “news media” is the “enemy of the people.” But Trump wrote that “FAKE NEWS” is the enemy, and he is absolutely correct on that point. The Leftmedia has become the enemy of America Liberty and thus, the enemy of the people. As noted above, our Founders would agree that abandoning truth for licentious partisanship is a grave threat to Liberty.

A case study of what has now become an epidemic of fake news propagation by the Democrats’ partisan MSM outlets, is the timed release of “Trump/Putin news.” The New York Times and The Washington Post have been, and still are, holding Trump/Putin cards, and they’re timing the play of those cards to undercut any Trump agenda momentum.

Every Beltway and New York media “journalist” should be asking: “Beyond what the Post and Times knew about the Trump Jr. meeting, when did they know it?” (Memo to Bob Woodward…) Did the Times or Post have this information for weeks or months prior to making headlines with it, and if so, why did they not release it sooner?

But, there are few journalists remaining in either of those markets to ask such an important question — especially one that would challenge Leftmedia Goliaths.

This critical question would better be directed to the ombudsman at the Post and Times. Ombudsmen are those charged with reviewing the journalistic integrity of a media outlet, having sufficient independent authority to investigate cases of journalistic abuse and recommend the perpetrators for prosecution and/or termination – a media “independent counsel.” Unfortunately, after leftwing limo liberal Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post in 2013, they eliminated their ombudsman post. And…the New York Times eliminated their ombudsman post in May of this year…

Of course, the Democrat’s cable media outlets, most notably CNN are doing their part. The cable network, which sets the bar for Demo/MSM collusion (93% negative reporting on Trump and Republicans according to the aforementioned Harvard study), was caught in yet another counterfeit “anonymously sourced” report to further the Democrat Party’s phony Trump/Putin collusion delusion. Three senior CNN “journalists” from the “investigative unit,” including one Pulitzer recipient, resigned over this latest incident.

It’s notable that right in CNN’s back yard, just one day before the aforementioned fake news report was published in June of 2016, voters in Georgia’s 6th District handed a hotly contested victory to a Republican in a special election to fill the seat of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. It was the most expensive congressional election in history, and the Democrat outspent the Republican 7-1. But even with the full force and fury of the Demo/MSM machine, they still came up short. The Democrat “brand” is indeed toxic.

Conservatives, however, should take little comfort in such victories, because the Demo/MSM propaganda machine is gearing up and redoubling its efforts ahead of the 2020 election. In fact, in the declining cable news marketplace, MSNBC, the most abjectly biased of the news outlets, has just overtaken CNN and Fox News in the 25-54 demographic for its weekday prime time lineup.

The Demo/MSM demolition derby shows no signs of letting up — and it won’t, because it’s underwritten in large measure by socialist Hungarian billionaire George Soros and others, like socialist American billionaire Tom Steyer.

This mass media malpractice constitutes a perilous betrayal of the First Amendment.

In 1822, Thomas Jefferson wrote of those who subscribe to such blather, “Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.”

Of course, today’s brand of fake news has been around in one form or another since Gutenberg invented the printing press. In 1710, Irish essayist and cleric, Jonathan Swift, wrote in his work “The Examiner,” [I]f a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work… Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late…"

In more contemporary parlance, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on.”

All that said, there’s another factor that has an enormous influence on mainstream media bias, regardless of where on the political spectrum a media outlet’s editorial influence falls.

The least visible factor corrupting the free press is its dependence on paid advertising, which is the lifeblood of the print and cable MSM. Ad revenues thus dictate editorial policies — what news will be covered and how, and what news will not be covered. Dependence on ad revenue is also the reason the cable outlets run their ubiquitous shock alert banners 24/7, most often about news that isn’t worth a report, much less the shock banner.

The insidious ad-influence factor is constantly running silent in the background, unless it manifests in a threat to boycott advertisers for networks’ most influential ratings generator.

And that’s precisely why we made another critical decision when we started publishing in 1996 — to accept no advertising in our online or email publications or to our lists of Patriot readers. You’ll never have your senses assaulted on our website by pop-ups, browser hijacks or glittering unicorns, nor will you ever receive third-party advertising in your inbox because of us.

Our refusal to accept advertising is precisely why we note when asking for your support, “We are not sustained by any political, special interest or parent organization, and we do not accept advertising to ensure our advocacy is not restrained by commercial influence. Our mission and operation budget is made possible by the voluntary financial support of Patriots — meaning you!”

Rest assured that the invisible advertising influence, which inevitably shapes what other websites report and how they report it, has absolutely zero editorial influence on The Patriot Post.

Of course, we also chose a donor-based revenue model in order that our message could reach a wider audience — particularly young people on college and university campuses, and military personnel. (Notably, 100% of proceeds from the occasional Patriot Post Shop messages we send you supports our mission of service to military personnel and their families.)

Your Patriot team starts every day resolute in our mission to extend Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values.

The only thing that influences our editorial content is that mission in support and defense of Liberty. (Please join us in that mission by supporting The Patriot Fund today, so that we can recruit thousands of new Patriots to our ranks.)

Finally, there are two consequence of the constant media churn, Left and Right, that significantly undermine responsible citizenship and leadership. First, some consumers become so addicted to what passes as “news” that they are unable to discern truth from fiction. And second, the constant churn has created a devolution in political discourse, in that many of those elected to national office are now nothing more than spin generators, everything for political effect. The result is a serious erosion of the job they were elected to do, and a betrayal of their oath to “to support and defend” our Constitution.

Footnote: Assailing the abject bias which now permeates the New York Times, the Gray Lady’s former executive editor has gone public where her assessment: “I’ve resisted critiquing the place publicly, but this [expletive] is bad. It’s making horrible mistakes left and right.” According to Jill Abramson, the Times’s executive editor from 2011 to 2014, it has become “unmistakably anti-Trump.” In her upcoming book, Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts, Abramson slams the NYT’s unapologetic leftist bias. She writes, “Though [Dean] Baquet [her successor and current executive editor] said publicly he didn’t want the Times to be the opposition party, his news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump. Some headlines contained raw opinion, as did some of the stories that were labeled as news analysis.”

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis

Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776