Historically, the press has been viewed as a crucial instrument for a well-informed public, and thus supportive of a free and democratically-run society. Indeed, this is why journalists and news outlets were known as “the Fourth Estate.” It was an acknowledgement of their societal influence. To be effective, the press had to develop a certain amount of public trust. Today, trust in mainstream media has dramatically eroded, and for good reason.

Time and again, reporters and entire news outlets have been caught peddling fake news, and when the press misleads rather than informs the public of the facts, they become tools for tyranny. Their viewers become more ignorant by the day rather than more informed, and thus more easily controlled and manipulated.

In a recent substack article, independent journalist Matt Taibbi addresses the attempt by UCLA professor and co-leader of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, Sarah Roberts, to shame readers away from substack. “Substack is a dangerous direct threat to traditional news media,” Roberts tweeted.

According to her half-baked reasoning, journalists who leave mainstream newsrooms for substack and other independent portals are taking unfair advantage of the trust they earned while gainfully employed within the Fourth Estate. Then, once on their own, they can print whatever they want without having to go through the onerous chore of fact checking and other standard checks and balances.

“To imply that trust is a thing that can only be conferred by a mainstream newsroom is beyond insulting, especially since mainstream news organizations already long ago started to become infamous for betraying exactly those hallowed ‘norms’ 

“Why did a source like former NSA contractor Edward Snowden choose to come forward to Glenn Greenwald in particular? He surely wasn’t bothered by the fact that Glenn didn’t come up through the ranks of a paper like the New York Times or Washington Post.

“The answer connects to one of the primary reasons audiences are moving to places like Substack: the perception that traditional news outlets have become tools of the very corporate and political interests they’re supposed to be overseeing.

“Roberts complains about lines between opinion and reporting being blurred at Substack (an absurd comment on its own, but that’s a separate issue), but the ‘blurring’ problem at those other organizations is far more severe. Are newspapers like the New York Times checks on power, or agents of it?”

in 1948, the CIA launched Operation Mockingbird, a clandestine media infiltration campaign that allowed the agency to control and inject its own propaganda into the mainstream press. Today, several decades later, it’s clear that Operation Mockingbird never ceased. 

“The major ‘traditional’ cable networks, as well as many of the bigger daily newspapers, have for years now been engaged in mad hiring sprees of ex-spooks, putting whole nests of known perjurers and Langley goons on their payrolls as contributors, where they regularly provide ‘commentary’ on news stories in which they themselves have involvement.”

The modern propaganda machine also includes Big Tech, which allows for previously unthinkable information control through automated censorship across a much broader spectrum of sources.

Literally overnight, an individual or company involved in the dissemination of truthful information that goes against the status quo can have their website shadow banned by search engines, their social media accounts eliminated, their web hosting and email services canceled and their online payment systems shut down. From one day to the next, you, your thoughts, opinions and all your hard work can be effectively erased.