The media alternates between shrieking that President Trump represents a threat to Freedom of the Press to calling for the censorship and suppression of conservative media.
This virally fascist BuzzFeed article is an example of the latter. It’s by David Klion, who has written for the New York Times, and was the op-ed editor for Al Jazeera, declaring that (unlike the Qatari terror front group he worked for), Fox News is illegitimate.
No it’s not just namecalling. It’s a call for action.
Fox News Isn’t A Normal Media Company. We Have To Stop Treating It Like One. Liberals have spent decades complaining about, mocking, and fact-checking Fox News. Instead, we should remove it from polite society.
What does that mean?
After paragraphs of primal screams about the evils of FOX News, we get this.
Complaining about, mocking, and pedantically fact-checking Fox is easy, and liberals have been doing all of the above since the Clinton administration. But removing it from polite society will be hard, and will require a nuanced conversation about the line between a free press, which most liberals cherish as an abstract ideal, and the reality of a far-right propaganda operation that has had a uniquely destructive effect on public life.
Nuanced conversations about why the political opposition is not covered by the protections of a free press are always fun. And a good reminder that the media respects the First Amendment the way that Bill Clinton respected women.
Boycotting Fox is also something that is within the power of consumers and activists to start doing at any time. It doesn’t require waiting for an election and it doesn’t depend on election results. It is well within the parameters of the law.
And when that election happens, perhaps some of those pesky laws can be changed.
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