"Journalism" has fueled the rise of bipartisan fascism in America

Journalists embracing disinformation—usually to serve Wall Street and the Pentagon—made democracy a predictable casualty

Discovering the corruption of professional journalism was much of what drove me to begin writing on this platform. While I’ve found many opportunities to drag editors and writers for their various recurring failures, few present examples as compelling as the myths embedded in reporting on the election currently underway.

The cults of personality built by journalists have not been limited to career politicians. The billionaires who have purchased mass media institutions only to effectively hamstring them did so not as their primary strategy to secure their political whims, but rather as a supplemental strategy augmenting their primary approach of buying elections outright.

Image by Gail Chandler. Prints are available at https://www.gallery1870.com/products/all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print-print

Building cults of personality allowing politicians to escape accountability

I’ve specifically criticized journalists for building cults of personality surrounding prominent Democrats. President Bill Clinton may have been the first beneficiary of the pattern, which allowed his skills on a saxophone to obscure his self-serving betrayal of working class Americans and ethical challenges.

Obama continued the pattern, exemplifying the cultural allure of a celebrity president. He played basketball, hosted lavish parties at the White House featuring Hollywood actors alongside recording artists and finance moguls, and appeared as often in pop culture as in Washington.

Who needs pesky accountability agents asking a groundbreaking president about why he chose to murder American citizens with no trial or charge based on nothing more than their speech? (If that sounds outlandish, that’s because it is. The assassination of Anwar al-Alaki and his son, who was born in Virginia, was as constitutionally scandalous an event as one could imagine, but drew nary a peep from the legions of journalists focused on the White House.)

President Biden—and Vice President Harris—have been no exceptions to the rule.