To begin with, you can’t look at the mainstream media as a biased or out-of-touch entity. Instead, you have to look at the media for what it really is: a gaggle of left-wing operatives disguised as journalists who use objectivity and a near-monopoly to control the news and information-narrative all in an effort to damage the Right and promote the Left.
As we’ve seen since the rise of the Internet and the media criticism that has become much of its muse, the media cannot be reasoned with, made to see the error of its ways, or shamed into doing its job honestly. This is a corrupt institution and if you love your country, the only moral approach in dealing with it should be to do whatever you can to put it out of business.
And “business” is why the media fears the Supreme Court decision known as “Citizens United,” a First Amendment victory that allows individuals and corporations — through the use of the dreaded super PAC — the right to spend as much money as they want on electioneering. Because the “business” of the media is not the dissemination of information for the public good or even commercial profit, but rather the furthering of leftist causes, what most terrifies the media is the competition for the narrative these super PACS will hopefully create.
But to understand how terrified the media is of super PACs, you have to examine just how hypocritical and un-American their objections are.
First off, at its very core, the media is objecting to free and unlimited political speech — the very thing protected by the very first Amendment. The media’s outrage that there are now no longer restrictions on how much money a company or individual can spend to further a political cause, is the same as expressing outrage that that most sacred of American rights — unlimited political speech — is no longer limited by a tyrannical government.
But most hypocritically glaring is the fact that Obama, the Left, and the media (but I repeat myself) have always enjoyed many of the very same rights “Citizens United” has now given to everyone — but they wanted those rights all to themselves.
Prior to “Citizens United,” a private or public sector union (funded with our tax dollars) could pretty much spend as much as they desired on electioneering (almost 100% of it benefiting the left) — a right not extended to the company that hired these union workers or those among us not in a union.
Fact: In 2008, unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Obama.
Fact : In 2008, you heard almost no media outcry against all of that “outside money affecting elections.” Today, that’s all you hear, especially after a Republican victory like the one last week in Wisconsin.
Prior to “Citizens United,” the only corporations, big or small, allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money to push a political agenda were … media companies.
ABC, NPR, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, Politico, The Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, The New York Times, and on and on, are all corporations, and in some cases, part of gargantuan multi-national corporations — and yet before “Citizens United” not a single one lived under political spending restrictions.
In other words, while NBC could spend billions through the Nightly News, the Today Show, its entertainment programming like Saturday Night Live, and MSNBC to openly shill for leftist causes, every other corporation could not. While Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had a huge corporation (Viacom) amplifying their furthering of leftist causes, every other individual in the country had their free speech restricted.
Furthermore, if you were a General Electric and owned all or part of NBC, you could openly use that branch of your corporation to spend as much money as was possible to push for left-wing causes.
Think about this: pre-“Citizens United,” the system was so immoral and gamed, that the purchase of a newspaper, television network, or cable news outlet is what gave you a workaround the campaign finance laws.
Thanks to “Citizens United,” though, what you now have are mainstream media corporations forced to compete on a level playing field with other individuals and corporations, who can now spend as much money as MSNBC and Politico and The Washington Post, etc. to affect the outcomes of our nation’s politics.
And this is why the media so loathes “Citizens United” and those beautiful super PACs that have blossomed as a result.
This is also why the media’s reactions to super PACs has been panic, lies, threats, and bullying.
The media is not only openly coordinating its attacks on super PACs (with the Obama campaign), but it’s also coordinating attacks on those who dare run or donate to super PACs. Politico’s Maggie Haberman outing a Romney super PAC donor’s silly misdemeanor criminal record isn’t reporting, it’s blackmail and sending a message to others that there’s a price to pay for muscling into the business the corrupt media once had a monopoly on.
Rather shamelessly, the media is now openly lying about the effect “Citizens United” had on Wisconsin — lying through its teeth.
The New York Times, CNN, NBC, NPR, Politico, Comedy Central, unions, and all the rest are nothing more than super PACs, and now they’re mad as hell that everyone’s allowed in on the game.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC