If you were only watching the mainstream media’s coverage of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, you weren’t getting the whole story.
That’s because when it comes to covering the Democratic presidential nominee, the MSM has gotten dangerously close to having the credibility of Pravda.
The big networks like ABC, NBC and CNN were all out in force at the Democratic National Convention, to the point of having their own separate tent cities near the “media center” stationed just outside Wells Fargo Center. They brought millions of dollars in equipment which included more than one camera.
So why is it that when Bernie Sanders supporters stood up and exited the arena as Hillary Clinton began to speak, they didn’t aim a few of those cameras at the dramatic events unfolding?
Why is it that they didn’t go out and cover what was happening in the halls, where these delegates were detained by the police?
You could’ve seen those events last night if you were following the right social media accounts or independent news sites. They would’ve given you a much more complete picture than Big Media did.
Keeping track of a wide range of sources on social media isn’t tricky. I was following Trump supporters like Mike Cernovich and Jeremy Segal a.k.a. Rebel Pundit and left-leaning Trump supporter Cassandra Fairbanks, as well as moderate left to hard left sources like Unicorn Riot, Luke, and Tim Pool to get as complete a picture as possible, in addition to what I was seeing on the ground covering the protests myself.
These citizen journalists – along of course with sources like Breitbart’s own LiveWire – were simply providing the information that the mainstream media could have but would not. And what they showed was vital to understanding the state of democracy in America today.
Disenfranchised Bernie Sanders supporters were justifiably angry about the way the Democratic National Committee treated their candidate, especially in the wake of the WikiLeaks dump showing specifically how the DNC kept their phones on the scales during the primary election season.
Remember, the mainstream media tried to keep a lid on that story as long as they could until Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign in the first of a series of humiliating developments that happened in the run-up to the Democrats’ convention.
Although individual journalist use resources like Twitter and Facebook’s new live video functionality to reach their audiences, it’s important to remember that these social media outlets themselves have started to become part of the political establishment. Note how Twitter buried the hashtag on WikiLeaks and Facebook admitted to openly censoring links to the damaging emails. It’s deeply disturbing that these conduits of information have become essentially shills for the political establishment, although we still are in an era where broadcasters are, for the most part, free to express their views – with people like Milo, Chuck C Johnson, and Stacy McCain becoming the “permanently banned” exceptions to the rule.
However, the establishment wants to keep its power and it’s no surprise that it would try to force these new technologies to conform. There are other methods of achieving the same goal, including what seemed like signal jamming outside the Wells Fargo Center while protests were going on.
While most of the political goals of the leftists who were protesting outside the DNC are repugnant to people on the right, it should be noted that these people were at least standing up for their own First Amendment rights and trying to be heard. Depending on how November’s election goes, it’s something that may not be optional for people who support liberty: it may become an absolute necessity.
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