Has the information age become the age of misinformation?

Or the age of disinformation?

It is pretty obvious that mainstream media has had a political bias for the past decade at least, and the days of Walter Cronkite have disappeared into history as news anchors create news rather than report news. For almost 20 years, Cronkite was the widely respected anchor of CBS News and you go take his reporting to the bank. Clearly objective and fact-based, he earned his reputation.

The old days of CNN when it was owned by Ted Turner were similar in that CNN had a worldwide reputation for objective and well-researched news from across the Globe and a viewership that included millions of non-Americans in virtually every country on Earth.

Today, CNN is a shill for the Democrats and patently so. That has cost the owners millions as viewers have flocked to other sources and recently seen the new leadership try to shift back to at least centrist philosophy if not objectivity. How is that working out? Not well, it seems since is remaining viewers are pretty well all left-wing and like the echo chamber CNN has become, and viewers are abandoning CNN for MSNBC despite new CEO John Malone’s efforts to get rid of the fake news nonsense that was destroying the company and many careers. The attempt to report the truth is seen by CNN subscribers as a “shift to the right” and they are jumping ship. “Boycott CNN” is becoming a Democrat rallying cry.

CNN and MSNBC have always envied the success of FOX News, labeling FOX as a right-wing medium and setting FOX up as a counterpoint to their networks. How has that worked? Not well. FOX has crushed both CNN and MSNBC in terms of viewship for the past 81 weeks. Based on the reported 2020 voting results, you would think there are more Democrats than Republicans among adults watching cable news and the FOX success is confusing. Why is FOX News so popular?

The answer may be that the management of FOX has always kept at least a handful of left-leaning anchors on its key programs and tried to get some degree of balance in its reporting. Screaming and crying otherwise (as many liberals do) doesn’t change the reality. Juan Williams was a popular FOX host and always an outspoken supporter of the Biden Administration. I admired his inputs since he never varied in being objective and fact based even thought he leaned left. Former DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile was a frequent commentator getting a lot of air time on FOX before leaving to join Disney. And FOX is searching for a replacement for Juan Williams who has decided to step down.

FOX’s success is that it is more balanced in its coverage of the political landscape than CNN, CBS or MSNBC. Period.

Social media have made no such effort to be balanced. Facebook is not only left-leaning but also an activist for the Democrats donating some $400 million to help elect Biden and suppressing the Hunter Biden lapstop story during the weeks leading up to Biden’s election. Facebook has a greater audience for news that any of the cable news networks and Zuckerberg likes to exercise Facebook’s power to filter what news Facebook users get to see, making sure they see only news that will increase their “engagement” with the platform. Facts don’t matter, and Facebook “fact checkers” are just a filter to weed out anything Zuckerberg doesn’t like.

Google is similarly biased to the left and uses its search algorithmns to control what stories are given priority in search results. Don’t believe me - search the same issues on Bing or DuckDuckGo and see how different the search results are. Here are the search results from Bing.

Google search results include the recent New York Magazine article but not the articles that point to a second laptop.

The second laptop, if it exists (and like the first is rife with dirt on the Biden’s), is an item deserving of in depth investigative journalism. With the mid-terms only weeks away, all matters that voters need to know to vote sensibly deserve coverage.

Facebook and Google were active during the 2020 election campaign doing their best to shuffle off the Hunter Biden laptop scoop as “Russian Disinformation” while they were the only sources of any “disinformation” at that time. They eulogized Democrat leaders and vilified Trump at every opportunity, ignoring the obvious politicization of the FBI and DOJ under Biden and the relentless attack on Trump who history will record as one of best Presidents (and unfortunately one of the most objectionable personalities) in recent political history. Biden’s only political asset is that he is “not Trump” and his leftist policies will ultimately impoverish millions of Americans as his obsessive but nonsensical embrace of “climate change” fears drives policies that will deepen the global energy shortage, fuel more inflation, and devastate many businesses not only in United States but worldwide.

Democracy suffers whent the Third Estate is unreliable but that is where we are today. Vivek Ramaswamy details the decline of America and the rise of the “woke” left that is destroying democracy in his excellent book “WOKE, Inc.” I recommend it to all readers.