Journalism Is Now Propaganda
By: Brad Flutey
Tags: Covid 19, Donald Trump, Jacinda Ardern, Media Criticism, Fake News

I’m not a journalist; I’m an opinionated writer who writes pieces that are true to what I know at the time. I don’t write for money, although I do get a small amount for my writing (roughly nine US dollars a month while my subscribers pay a total of 300 US dollars to Medium a month). If I wanted to do it for more money, I would stop being true to myself, and bullshit my way through pieces that pander to the far-left. That’s something I could do too! I used to be one of those types; I fought for social justice in ways that fully displayed how naïve and impulsive I was.

Today, I understand those on the right a little more, and I can see when we (liberals) can go too far, so I write with an acknowledgement to the fact that we are going too far, I believe that this is how someone being true to themselves should write opinion pieces. If you aren’t displaying the real sense of yourself in your articles, then you’re a fake. Opinion pieces draw criticism and challenge; I welcome these, if an excellent one comes along, I might have to change my perspective, which helps me grow as a person. Or, maybe the reader has that happen to them through reading our opinion pieces? Perhaps that benefits their personal growth? If so, that’s the beauty of a good opinion piece.

Journalism is not an opinion piece, and for good reason! Journalism is the reporting of news, and as such, should be separate from opinion pieces. You could make an excellent case for legislation that prevents entities that distribute journalism from mixing opinion into it, because today, that’s what the vast majority of our “so-called” “journalists” do. Patrick Gower is not a journalist, John Campbell is not a journalist, neither is Mike Hoskings, and Marc Daalder is a piss ant. Sorry, but that guy is closer to the wee dribble of a sick nob than he is to a writer. I say this with confidence because there is no place in journalism for blatant propaganda that provokes division. If it turns out that people like Marc Daalder live in glass houses, it would make sense, people who throw stones at lions and then complain when they bite usually do. If you don’t know who this guy is and are a Harry Potter fan, think Malfoy with glasses, and you’ve pretty much nailed it.

The point is, there is more far-left propaganda mixed in with news journalism than there has ever been. Why is it defined as propaganda? Because it’s not news, it’s agenda-based opinions broadcasted on a bigger tax-funded stage. It’s almost all far-left opinion; it’s not even traditional liberal opinion anymore. I claim this because I don’t allow persistently repeated nonsense to form my worldview in an increasingly busy world, I do my research and question at length instead. To do this these days is a luxury, and this is unfortunate. Higher taxes, a list of societal issues so long it promotes suicide, material wealth promoted as the “higher goal”, and bogus crisis after bogus crisis will make the ability to disseminate information adequately a luxury. Especially if you repeat that sequence over and over to a mostly naïve liberal population. Do it to a right-wing population that has all the guns, dominates the political inclination of the most advanced military in the world, whilst having leftist politicians advocating for the “defunding of the police”, and you’ll have a right-wing military/police state in no time.

This is just one reason as to why propaganda mixed with journalism is not a good thing. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying we should legislate against opinion pieces associating with entities that proclaim to be news-based or infer that they are news based in their name and declaration. The taxpayer should never fund opinion pieces or propaganda, and yet, the government uses our taxes to do that for its political gain. This fact alone should call into question the security of our election integrity, and the validity of information delivered under the context of news.

One example is the Guardian, an independent and popular source of “journalism”, it used to be something I read all the time, now I think its propaganda trash. There are a plethora of examples that support this claim, but for the point of this article, I’ll pick this one (hyperlink). Usually, what I do when I start reading a journalist piece, is I see how many paragraphs it takes to proclaim an obvious fallacy. This article only got to the second paragraph before it shat all over itself with nonsense, Jacinda didn’t “handle” the Covid-19 “outbreak”, nor did she listen to the “science” and the “experts.” She kept on driving the hypothetical kindness bandwagon and did what all great crisis spinners do — used it as a political weapon, and spun some more bullshit. With the help of opinion piece media disguised as news agencies, she made something that seasonally disappears along with rhino-viruses and influenza, look like something you could conquer with insane governmental control measures. Even if it could be handled this way (it can’t), the elimination strategy is her mates favoured angle because of its financial gains for their investments.