The Patriot Post® · The Threat of 'One-Party Control of the Press'

It’s not often that a federal judge takes direct aim at the mainstream media for its obvious and rampant partisanship, but Judge Laurence Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit did just that in a recent dissenting opinion.

“There can be little question,” wrote the appointee of Ronald Reagan, “that the overwhelming uniformity of news bias in the United States has an enormous political impact.”

In fact, he argued quite specifically that the nation’s leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, serve as little more than “Democratic Party broadsheets.” He said that’s also true of “The Associated Press and most large papers across the country.” But it’s not only print. “Nearly all television — network and cable — is a Democratic Party trumpet,” Silberman added. “Even the government-supported National Public Radio follows along.” And it’s not only traditional media. Big Tech “has an enormous influence over the distribution of news” and “it similarly filters news delivery in ways favorable to the Democratic Party.”

Generally, the judge observed, the media’s “bias against the Republican Party” is “rather shocking,” even if “it is a long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ‘70s.” Importantly, he declared of social media, “Repression of political speech by large institutions with market power therefore is — I say this advisedly — fundamentally un-American.”

Of course, this isn’t news to Patriot Post readers, but it’s remarkable to find such pointed analysis coming from the federal bench, even if it is the same judge who gave the Supreme Court the foundation for its Heller ruling on the Second Amendment. Silberman wrote his opinion in an unrelated defamation case, but he used the media examples to explain why a Supreme Court precedent in the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan should be overturned. That ruling established the requirement of proving “actual malice” in defamation suits, which Silberman argued has allowed the press to become partisan and dishonest with “near impunity.”

Why does that matter? For one thing, it can “give rise to countervailing extremism” because “a biased press can distort the marketplace.” But it also puts our very republic in jeopardy.

“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news,” Silberman concluded. “It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy.” Indeed it is.