The Patriot Post® · The Demos' MSM 'Fact-Check' Protection Racket
“We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty. … It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms, and in the end is its own enemy and the usurper’s ally.” —Fisher Ames (1807)
So, who is deciding what print and online news analysis you can read — filtering that content before it ever gets to you?
To understand how Leftmedia platforms like USA Today (USAT) and other self-appointed arbiters of truth are being utilized by the Democrat Party, under the umbrella of content “fact-checkers,” to suppress the content unfavorable to the Demo orthodoxy, read on.
Yes, we all know about the Democrats’ social- and mass-media collusion to defeat Donald Trump in November 2020 — most notably, the massive and unprecedented coordinated cover-up just before the election of Joe Biden’s indisputably corrupt ChiCom dealings. Only after the election, when it was safe to reveal the truth, did Leftmedia outlets begrudgingly admit the evidence they suppressed before the election was factual.
But the extent of collusion between the Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists is largely invisible to the end user.
What follows is a case study of how USA Today, which has previously targeted The Patriot Post with spurious so-called “fact-checks,” recently used its “authority” granted by social media giants like Facebook to suppress freedom of speech and the press — both our freedom as a producer and your freedom as a consumer.
In effect, the Democrat Party has privatized state censorship.
The trail of USA Today’s suppression started here…
A month ago, Silicon Valley Bank — America’s 16th largest bank — imploded in the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. After a panic run resulted in withdrawals of $42 billion, SVB was out of cash and thus was seized by the FDIC.
A day later, the FDIC seized control of Signature Bank in New York, which became the third largest bank failure in U.S. history. Notably, it was one of the crypto currency market’s leading bankers. I have warned our readers about the perils of the crypto currency cult.
As SVB’s doors were being locked, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was asked if there was going to be a bailout akin to that of the 2008 banking crisis, which was also seeded by Democrat policies. She declared: “The reforms that have been put in place means that we’re not going to do that again. But we are concerned about depositors and are focused on trying to meet their needs.”
In other words, a bailout of wealthy investors who made reckless decisions about where to park billions in cash is in the works, and within hours of Yellen’s assurance, a Federal Reserve/FDIC statement declared, “[Yellen’s action] fully protects all depositors.”
That was fast, and as we expected, it was Joe Biden to the rescue.
There are two major reasons Biden made sure SVB depositors were covered.
First, of course, was to cover his own political rear end. SVB is the choice banker for the Big Tech business sector that provides major campaign backing for Democrats nationwide. That would include California Governor Gavin Newsom, soon to be a 2024 presidential contender. (Notably, Newsom pushed for the SVB bailout while conveniently omitting mention of this direct conflict of interest: SVB backs three wine companies he owns.)
Second, SVB banked for the Demos’ favorite business constituency — more than 1,550 “climate change” technology firms developing solar, hydrogen, and battery storage. SVB issued them billions in loans, and many were profiting on the tax credits included in Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act. (What, you didn’t know that boondoggle bill was chock-full of Biden’s green machine profiteers?)
In order to avoid scrutiny, Biden insisted: “No losses will be borne by the taxpayers. Instead, the money will come from the fees that banks pay into the deposit insurance fund. Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them.”
In other words, the bailout will come from taxpayers — those who pay banking fees to cover their banks’ fees to the deposit insurance fund. The Wall Street Journal assailed Biden’s “sweeping $19 trillion implicit bank guarantee.” This is akin to Demos declaring that taxpayers are not ultimately paying for tax increases on corporations — who do they think pays for the price increases to cover those taxes?
So, how do the Democrats ensure that nobody questions Biden’s spin?
Enter USA Today and its brigade of “fact-checkers” who censor anyone daring to challenge Biden’s narrative.
Within 48 hours of running our analysis, we were contacted by “a fact check reporter with USA TODAY.” She said they are “fact checking the claim that taxpayers will pay the cost of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse” and said our claim that taxpayers were paying for the bailout by way of increased fees was not correct. She then asked, “Where is the evidence to support your claim?” Understand that had we not responded, that would have been tantamount to an admission of guilt.
Notably, we were hit the same day by Facebook with a claim that a humor meme we posted related to the ChiCom spy balloon did not comport with Facebook community standards. Just coincidence I am sure. However, recall that Facebook itself paid a record fine last year for its “lack of transparency.”
We responded to the USAT inquiry, noting, “Our point is that taxpayers will be picking up the expense through bank fees” not “through taxes.” However, in our response we included sources indicating taxes would be used for the bailout, including conclusive analysis from The Wall Street Journal: “By offering $25 billion as a backstop to the Fed’s lending program, the Treasury Department is committing public funds if banks don’t repay their loans.”
In other words, taxpayer bailouts.
We then turned the tables on the USA Today fact-checker, as we have done previously, asking her to “provide evidence that taxpayers won’t ultimately pay for this bailout,” citing their own article parroting Biden’s assurance “taxpayer money won’t be used to bail out SVB or Signature Bank.”
No answer.
We then drilled down with a follow-up question: “Would you please provide a brief explanation of how content to be fact-checked is brought to your attention? How is a social media image post elevated to USA Today for fact-check verification? How was this specific content brought to your attention?”
No answer, despite asking twice. However, in USA Today’s fact-check conclusion, our content was not mentioned.
So, let me answer the question we asked USA Today. “Offending content” is often flagged by a cadre of leftists who are paid to do so. Or, as may be in this case, it was flagged for review by a crew of taxpayer-funded digital media employees and contractors, who are tasked 24/7 to search out and destroy “offending content” that undermines the Biden administration’s agenda. Once “offending content” is flagged, then social media platform bots search for anything similar in a dragnet to complete the political protection detail.
So thorough was the dragnet in this case that USA Today fact-checked a Simpsons humor parody, “How the SVB collapse actually happened.”
When they are not busy protecting Democrats, they fill the time with critical fact-checks noting you should not drink urine. Actually, that is likely also to protect Democrats.
Notably, USA Today has no single comprehensive archive of “fact-checks,” so it is not possible to survey who it is checking to determined who it is targeting.
The great irony of a media platform called “USA Today” running interference for the Democrats is that it represents the degraded and corrupt state of mass media in the USA today. Leftmedia bias is now so pervasive that many of their “journalists” likely can’t discern the fact that they are shills for Biden.
Fact is, Joe Biden is a prolific lying dog-faced pony soldier, but don’t expect USA Today to fact-check his plethora of BIG Lies.
I should note that the other frontal assault on freedom of speech and the press is from self-appointed “news raters” like NewsGuard, whose ratings, like those of “fact-checkers,” are used to suppress reach on social media platforms.
In 1816, Thomas Jefferson declared, “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.” But the mainstream media press is no longer free, infested with “journalists” who infuse their leftist political opinion into what their platforms present as objective truth. They are a perilous threat to American Liberty.
As I have noted since we launched Patriot Post online 26 years ago, imagine what our national political and cultural landscape would look like if the mass media scribes and talkingheads were actually neutral and objective – as their professional standards once prescribed. “Journalism” is now an entertainment industry full of opinions masquerading as facts.
Fellow Patriots, The Patriot Post is under constant attack by Leftmedia hacks. Please
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