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Wow, how upsetting would that be? A long time ago on a different planet, America’s media would have expressed concern that a “rich guy buying a media outlet might enforce an ideological viewpoint,” the WSJ point out, and then asks, what’s happening now?
Now the Reign of Terror
Elon Musk and Twitter are putting it to the media pack, which is terrified that Mr. Musk won’t enforce an ideological view.
The great fear among the press corps is that the social-media platform might allow all consumer thoughts to be expressed.
Who’s to Blame?
As the WSJ asks, is it the fault of university educators for the amazing transformation of U.S. journalists from “stouthearted defenders of free speech to its most formidable domestic opponents”?
The new conventional media view is that the most important challenge facing Twitter is figuring out which theories to suppress and which nonviolent speakers to silence. The idea that one might allow an open forum is now treated by many prominent pundits almost as a reason to call the vice squad.
CNN/Media’s View from CNN’s Brian Stelter:
If you get invited to something where there are no rules, where there is total freedom for everybody, do you actually want to go to that party or are you going to decide to stay home?
On Hunter Biden, from the Washington Post:
Matt Viser, Tom Hamburger and Craig Timberg report:
The deal was years in the making, the culmination of forging contacts, hosting dinners, of flights to and from China. But on Aug. 2, 2017, signatures were quickly affixed, one from Hunter Biden, the other from a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong.
Within days, a new Cathay Bank account was created. Within a week, millions of dollars started to change hands.
Within a year, it would all begin to collapse.
While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.
Why We Need Twitter
Mr. Freeman believes the premise of Mr. Musk’s purchase is to rescue Twitter from the managers and staff who allowed the social media company to become not an open communication’s platform but an ideological enforcer.
And there is no better example of Twitter’s assault on free inquiry and open dialogue than its suppression of the New York Post’s 2020 reporting on Biden family business overseas, especially in China.
The New York Times and the Washington Post adopted a similar approach, generally ignoring the disturbing evidence uncovered by the New York Post about the Bidens and China except when they were actively disparaging it.
In James Freeman’s column, he asks about the interesting questions arising from Messrs. Bezos and Musk, as well as from the media, especially the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Let’s hope they can all be asked, answered, discussed and debated on Twitter.
