Don Surber
To survive, news media must be more like Twitter
JUL 23, 2024
David Sacks tweeted, “When LBJ announced that he would not seek reelection in 1968, he gave a 40 minute address from the Oval Office. Biden posted a letter on X and hasn’t been seen or heard from directly. MSM just applauds, doesn’t ask any questions. Very strange.”
The press asks only the question the intelligence community allows, which is why the press demanded that President Donald John Trump disclose his medical records on being shot.
AP said, “Four days after a gunman’s attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, the public is still in the dark over the extent of his injuries, what treatment the Republican presidential nominee received in the hospital, and whether there may be any long-term effects on his health.”
The demand was bogus. The public was not in the dark. Everyone saw him being shot from various angles via videos posted on Twitter. The long-term effect of the failed assassination is he likely will spend four years recuperating at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue beginning on January 20.
What the press has not demanded is an update on the FBI investigation of the attempt on a president’s life. My guess is the G-men are too busy destroying evidence to hold a press conference.
By the way, no one has seen our president since Thursday.
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One month ago, the press said Biden was unquestionably mentally capable and the press labeled any proof otherwise as a lie. AP said on June 21:
President Joe Biden’s simple act of sitting down while commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, gained more attention than the ceremony itself in some circles as social media users shared a shortened version of the clip to falsely claim he was reaching for a nonexistent chair.
The clip was the first of at least three out-of-context or trimmed videos shared widely over less than two weeks in June to fuel a narrative that Biden is mentally and physically unfit for office.
It’s long been standard practice in politics to spin real moments to make an opponent look bad. Yet the recent spate of misleading videos — which amassed millions of views and were picked up by right-leaning outlets around the world — shows how the reach of social media and real concerns about Biden’s age have made the tactic especially powerful in 2024.
NBC also had Biden’s back:
Misleading videos and false claims that President Joe Biden wandered off aimlessly from the G7 conference last week continued to go viral despite debunkings and fact-checks that tried to correct the record.
Google recommended false versions of the story as “top stories.” Deceptive video clips continued to accumulate millions of views on X. Copies of the videos were replayed on TikTok and YouTube with little context. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, applied fact-checking labels to some posts but not to all.
The persistent nature of the misleading videos illustrates how major tech platforms and partisan media are playing off each other in the 2024 election cycle, keeping viral stories in people’s feeds after they’ve been proven to be misleading or even false.
Of course, the videos were not misleading. AP and NBC were flat-out lying.
That is not new. In 2016, AP reported, “California’s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian-American U.S. senator.”
In 2020, AP reported, “Biden picks Kamala Harris as running mate, first black woman.”
She’s two — 2 — two minorities in one.
This is the filter our news used to go through before we were allowed to see it. That has changed. The power of the press is no more.
Lauren Boebert tweeted, “If Elon Musk hadn’t bought X when he did, I doubt Biden drops out. We’d probably have been banned off Twitter for posting clips of that debate.
“It’s pretty amazing how fast the discourse changed in this country once people were actually allowed to speak freely on this platform.”
She is correct. Twitter helped oust Biden by presenting the truth to the American people.
But don’t discount the role of the very sane genius in ending Biden’s political career. Trump’s acceptance of a debate that was clearly designed to favor Biden surprised the Biden campaign. Their candidate did so poorly that they hastily scheduled an interview on Disney’s ABC by Bill Clinton’s former spokesman. That went so poorly that a few weeks later, Biden dropped out.
On Twitter.
There was nothing presidential about his announcement. He failed to go on national TV. Perhaps he is too far gone. More likely it is a nod to the credibility of Twitter because a televised address would reach just as many people instantly. Likely more people would tune in if announced in prime time on a Sunday night.
But Biden can no longer pull off a 90-second speech. LBJ could do 40 minutes but he was 59 and while physically worn, he was mentally sharp.
Another factor is TV’s arrogance. There was no live fact-checking back when grownups ran network news. The respect for the office of president and more importantly, the desire to be impartial and show dignity, meant no one in the media would dare call a president a liar to his face — especially given the piss-poor track record of accuracy of such fact checks.
Obama indeed used the FBI to spy on Donald Trump, no matter how many times the press calls Trump a liar.
As is said in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
And the news media is dying. Newspaper circulation today is a joke and advertising is shrinking as national brands go elsewhere and local shops close down as the economy continues to reel from 15 Days To Flatten The Curve, which was supported by every newspaper in America.
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter was not altruistic. His was a remarkable business decision that wound up giving him the fastest and most accurate format for the broadcast of news and information. For a mere $44 billion he received more clout than AP, AFP, Reuters and every other Western wire service combined.
Even AP admitted that Twitter is still powerful among lefties despite allowing righties to use the platform freely.
Converting Twitter’s influence into cash flow and profit is another matter, but Huntley-Brinkley Report had no advertisers in 1957. By 1965, it was the most profitable half-hour on television. I have faith in Musk’s ability to solve a problem — any problem.
The rest of the media could learn from him. He took over a leftist social platform and opened it to all viewpoints again. He canned the censors of conservatives and quickly regained the credibility that Jack Dorsey had sold out to the federal government for a lousy few million bucks.
Newspapers should follow suit. The Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle earned accolades in recent presidential elections by divorcing themselves from their conservative roots and endorsing a Democrat for president. Liberal praise doesn’t pay the bills and their revenues are shrinking.
Why not endorse Trump this year? What do they have to lose? It’s not like Texas is suddenly going to turn blue because the local rag endorsed whoever Democrats nominate. Such an editorial, however, would inform readers that the paper no longer is an arm of the Democrat propaganda machine.
Here in Poca, West Virginia, not a single newspaper in the state has endorsed Trump in the last two elections. The state is second only to Wyoming in its support of President Trump. Nothing quite says out of touch like routinely dumping on the favorite president of your readers.
On Sunday, a president decided to not seek re-election. It was a shot heard around the world not through TV but through a tweet.
As for today’s poll, that really was Al Smith’s slogan.
POLL
In 1928, Al Smith’s slogan was “Make your wet dreams come true.” What should be Kamala’s slogan?
4:20 or Bust
2%
I Was Just Biden My Time
13%
I Will Go to the Mattress for You
62%
Live Free or DEI
19%
Dream Big, Sleep Late
4%
