Democracy dies in darkness?

The Washington Post (WaPo) famously claims that “Democracy dies in darkness” as a warning against the perceived threat by President Trump to journalism and the first amendment.

Writ large, this claim really reflects the Left’s belief that mean-old conservatives want to shut down free speech when it’s inconvenient for the Right.

Of course, this contention is silly on its face. Ninety-five percent of major journalistic outlets are openly leftist in their orientation. Roughly the same percentage of people in academia are leftist as are those in media/entertainment.

And yet because Trump merely criticized the media, they resort to hyperbolic whining to try and shut down his criticism and distract from the fact that the media, by being so partisan, is not doing their job to facilitate the proper functioning of our democracy.

However, if you want to see what journalistic suppression actually looks like, I give you two examples: ABC news and the Jeffrey Epstein story, and David Daleiden’s exposure of the selling of fetal body parts by Planned Parenthood.

It was recently revealed that ABC buried the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s serial pedophilia for 3 years due to pressure from various high-level political powers. Their guilt was magnified when they told CBS to fire the whistleblower, only to find out they fired the wrong person. The truth about elite pedophilia and sex trafficking died in darkness because friends of ABC quashed it.

And then there’s the case of David Daleiden, whose undercover videos clearly showed Planned Parenthood officials engaged in the illegal sale of fetal body parts. After PP and their allies in the media and government tried to dismiss the videos as being “deceitfully edited,” they turned to suing Daleiden for how he obtained the footage. (Daleiden also released the uncut video to show that no deception had taken place.)

This week, the judge in the case told the jury that their services were no longer needed because he determined that Daleiden had trespassed and so was guilty of all charges. He has been sentenced to pay $870,000 in punitive damages.

And yet undercover journalism, as a practice, is almost always heralded as courageous and necessary to reveal the malign behavior of various types of private and public organizations.

However, when that technique is used to go after the very powerful and well-connected PP, the journalist is punished and silenced by a judge who has been shown to be an ardent supporter of PP.

Can you imagine if a Republican judge had fined and punished an undercover journalist who revealed illegal behavior by, say, an oil company? The media and opposing politicians would be screaming their heads off!

So, WaPo, spare me your self-serving, disingenuous sloganeering. Trump and his allies sustain near constant media criticism. CNN and others don’t even try to pretend to have journalistic objectivity.

But victims of child sex trafficking and aborted children butchered for their body parts can count on no protection from media companies and instead will see their advocates buried in the real darkness of legal and professional persecution.

Trey Hoffman

Peachtree City, Ga.