Totschweigetaktik

This humble blog has been in existence since November, 2005—that's just over 17 years! During that time, I have often noted that the obvious bias of the main stream media toward a certain political ideology. That bias was evidenced whenever important politically sensitive stories arose. Major media print and video outlets, along with virtually all social media platforms, outright refused to report stories that might be damaging to their favorite political actors or narratives. Sure, they sometimes mentioned the story, but they uniformly showed an amazing lack of curiosity in their reporting, especially when in-depth investigation might have led to damaging revelations.

When this blog was launched in 2005, all of this was already occurring, but it was subtle. Today, the media's bias is in-your-face—so blatant that major stories are buried if they conflict with the approved narrative. The story of The Twitter Files, posted here and here, is a case study in the media's bias, demonstrating their attempt to bury a major news story that could hurt their preferred political party.

In essense, The Twitter Files document an attempt by arms of the federal government to influence the actions of social media companies in an effort to censor or otherwise mute opinions that the current government and their deep state functionaries didn't like. Ironically, it's everything that the media claimed would occur at the behest of the previous hated  administration, but did occur when driven by opponents of that administration. 

Miranda Devine comments:

If anything is an existential threat to democracy, it is Big Tech’s assault on free speech, in service to one side of politics and under the instruction of intelligence operatives determined to rig elections against recalcitrant Republicans. In fact, the lead agency tasked with election security, the FBI, is revealed as a prime culprit.

The best description for what The [New York] Times and WaPo are doing is “totschweigetaktik,” a great German word for “death by silence,” a tactic to kill ideas or news stories by ignoring them.

One example: The Hunter Biden Laptop scandal is a study in Washington corruption that is so broad and deep that it makes one wonder whether decisions on the Ukraine and China are being driven by actions that are in the best interests of the United States or something considerably more sinister. Maybe that isn't the case, but the august pillars of the media community haven't even investigated, or reported, or asked public questions. Instead they apply totschweigetaktik.

Another example: As the near-complete failure of most of the key pillars of COVID-related public health policy espoused by Anthony Fauci and his minions become impossible to ignore, we learn via The Twitter Files that the sainted Dr. Fauci and/or his people worked overtime to censor or shadow ban other medical experts who offered alternatives that we now know would have been more effective, less damaging to lives and livelihoods, less destructive to childrens' education and psyches, and certainly less costly. Instead social media censored and the main stream media applied totschweigetaktik.

But there's even more. There is compelling circumstantial evidence that Anthony Fauci was involved in approving gain-of-function research that may very well have lead to the weaponized version of COVID that escaped from the Wuhan lab in China. But Fauci was perceived as a key player in the defeat of a hated president in 2020, so the media decided he was unassailable—no serious investigation, or reporting, or public questions for key players. On the social media side, people were banned from the old Twitter for even suggesting that Fauci might have culpability. Again, social media censored and the main stream media applied totschweigetaktik.

The danger of  totschweigetaktiks that it allows one politicial party to act with impunity, and as we saw over the past few years, to enact authoritarian policies that are never questioned publicly. Totschweigetaktiks is dangerous, but it's also effective, so it will continue.

Going forward, I'll refer to the mainstream media by a different name. They've earned the name "propaganda media."  They are an embarrassment to a once-respected journalistic profession, and they should be ashamed. But of course, that would require a level of character, self-awareness, and humility that the members of the propaganda media simply do not have.

UPDATE-1 (12-13-2022):

Glen Greenwald is a left-leaning journalist who has slowly been red-pilled on media related issues as he watched the propaganda media reject journalistic ethics and professional responsibilities and become a PR function for the Democratic party. He writes:

The same worthless media liberals who never break stories, who never do any reporting, who just sit around mimicking each other every day - speaking only to and for one another in servitude to Dems - all write the same articles because they're all hive-minded empty herd animals. 

Over the years (e.g., here), I've often referred to those who reject hard evidence, cherry pick information to fit a specific narrative, and never, ever offer an opinion that dissents from their ideologically similar clones as "The Stepford Wives." I think that about covers it.

UPDATE-2 (12-13-2022):

And then there are these decade old tweets: