Online free speech is once again coming under attack, as reported by the Washington Examiner this morning:
Regulators in Washington are showing increasing interest in tightening rules on political speech on the web, arguing that the dissonant voices enabled by "new media" have become too influential. If that effort is successful, experts wonder whether it could impact more traditional media as well, especially in how it relates to conservatives.
HELL STREAM MEDIA
In April 2016 the Associated Press reported that "Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of other institutions."
While that dismal six percent number made all the headlines when the poll results were released, another critical piece of data did not generate headlines. Democrats were more likely to trust the news media than Republicans or independents.
There is a very legitimate reason why Democrats/Liberals trust the mainsteam media outlets far more than Republicans or Independents - Over the years we have seen trust in the mainstream media erode to historic lows, but other surveys conducted throughout the last decade tell us that the general public see a "liberal" bias among traditional news outlets.
Over at Truth Revolt, we see some very interesting points highlighted, shown below:
----And self-proclaimed Democratic journalists outnumber Republicans by 4-to-1, according to research by Lars Willnat and David Weaver, professors of journalism at Indiana University. They found 28 percent of journalists call themselves Democrats, while just 7 percent call themselves Republicans.
----People’s voting patterns are influenced by which kind of media they follow, according to a study done by Alan Gerber, a political science professor at Yale University. Mr. Gerber offered people in the Washington metropolitan area a free subscription to either The Washington Post or The Washington Times for several weeks ahead of a gubernatorial election. The Post, by his estimation and work done before, slanted as much to the left as The Times did to the right. In a survey he conducted after the election, Mr. Gerber found those who were given a free subscription of The Post were 8 percentage points more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor than those assigned to the control group.
ENTER THE 'NEW MEDIA'
Due to the World Wide Web, known as the Internet, along with freedom of speech, the general public now has additional resources to search for information, such as Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, who links to what he feels is relevant, but with a conservative slant. Others such as InfoWars, Breitbart, Zero Hedge, Steve Quayle, The Hagmann and Hagmann Report, SHTF Plan, ANP and many, many more all offer less traditional news, highlight topics that the mainstream liberal media refuses to cover and in many cases forces issues out into the open that Washington, with the help of the liberal media, would prefer the general public not to focus on.
In other words, Alternative Media or Independent Journalism, whatever one prefers to call it, is the New Media..... who refuses to toe the official line.
As a writer with the New Media I will tell you straight up that we too have our bias. We see the persecution of Christians here in America by the U.S. government itself and we highlight it. We see corruption, we choose to report on it. We see veterans, those of faith, preppers, survivalists and many others under attack and we expose it. We see the government making decisions and taking actions we believe endangers us and we ask questions, we demand answers and we attempt to connect the dots.
The difference though is easy to see and prove.
Look at any New York Times article or Washington Post article, then compare it to any InfoWars article or ANP article or many of the other Alt sites, and what you will note is that the old media such as WAPO and NYT, will not provide you any links to investigate and research in order to make your own determination.
When they report of polling, or declassified reports, or any issue that offers a legitimate source, they decide how much to tell you about it, they decide which angle to "spin" it, they believe it is their job to tell you what to think, to decide what and how much you should know, and they do not think the general public should be offered a link to the originating source.
That alone tells you that the New Media wants you to click the links, wants to make it easy for you to see the sources, investigate and research for your self... in other words, we want you to use your brains while the old meda wants to lead you like a dog on a leash.
On May 9th, 2015, the Hill asked if Matt Drudge was the 2nd most influential person in America, behind only Barack Obama. Brent Budowsky, the self confessed liberal columnist who wrote the story tells us that Matt Drudge is by far the single most inflential person in the American media - a story the same day on Social News Watch corrected Budowsky when telling us that Matt Drudge has more influence on the American people than even our commander-in-chief.
This is why Washington regulators want to stifle free speech on the Internet and why they believe "dissonant voices enabled by 'new media' have become too influential," as quoted at the top of this article from the WT piece.
IT IS NO LONGER CONSPIRACY, IT IS NOW REALITY
Conservatives and the New Media are in the bullseye and under attack, not just by Washington regulators but by the U.S. government itself with the help of social media giants such as Facebook and Google.
We have all seen the Obama administration target and label conservatists as potential "domestic terrorists," compare religious groups with he KKK and al-Qaeda, calling constitutionalists "extremists," and declare that anyone pointing it out, meaning the New Media, are a bunch of "conspiracy theorists."
Well, conservatives, patriot groups and Tea Party groups were also called "conspiracy theorists" when they claimed the Obama administration, using the IRS were targeting them, until years later Lois Lerner openly apologized for doing just that.
For years conservatives claimed that Facebook was actively suppressing Conservative news and were once again called conspiracy theorists, until today when we find out it is no longer "conspiracy," but is in fact reality as Gizmodo reports "Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News."
The former curator was so troubled by the omissions that they kept a running log of them at the time; this individual provided the notes to Gizmodo. Among the deep-sixed or suppressed topics on the list: former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report; Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013; and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder. “I believe it had a chilling effect on conservative news,” the former curator said.
Another former curator agreed that the operation had an aversion to right-wing news sources. “It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” said the former curator. “Every once in awhile a Red State or conservative news source would have a story. But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.”
Stories covered by conservative outlets (like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax) that were trending enough to be picked up by Facebook’s algorithm were excluded unless mainstream sites like the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN covered the same stories.
It isn't just social media where conservatives and New Media is under attack, but we are reminded of a bombshell report from late April that the biggest name on the Internet, Google itself, "had at least 427 meetings at the White House," including Google’s head of public policy, Johanna Shelton who had more meetings with White House officials than any other Google employee.
The meetings data spans from the first month of Obama’s presidency in 2009 to October 2015. Aside from Google staff and lobbyists, the data also takes into account White House meetings with companies Tomorrow Ventures and Civis Analytics.
Tomorrow Ventures is the investment vehicle of Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, and he is the sole investor in Civis Analytics.
The numbers also show 55 times in which Google employees took jobs in the federal government, and 197 times when government employees went to work for Google.
BOTTOM LINE
From social media giants to the mainstream media to Google, freedom of speech, conservatives, and the New Media is under attack, it is no longer a "conspiracy theory," it is reality. It is no longer a question, it is a fact and only question left at this point is "when does the hammer drop" on all of us?
