# Breaking the News ![rw-book-cover](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71WIsxZ4JhL._SY160.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Alex Marlow]] - Full Title: Breaking the News - Category: #books ## Highlights - Leftism, globalism, and corporatism have emerged as the dominant ideologies that drive major content decisions by leading news outlets. More and more, newsrooms in recent years have gravitated toward stories that advance the notion that an interventionist government combined with powerful, well-funded global bureaucracies provides the path forward for America. Rarely do newsrooms, increasingly owned, financed, and operated by the world’s biggest companies, provide a check on the corporations that control so much of our lives and culture. ([Location 24](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=24)) - The American media is the principal player in our modern day “cancel culture,” ([Location 29](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=29)) - Their ultimate goal is to cancel America, at least in the traditional sense. Next they’ll replace it with a woke-topia where political correctness, corporatism, and globalism replace liberty, In God We Trust, and E pluribus unum. ([Location 31](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=31)) - “Democrat Media Complex,” which was Andrew Breitbart’s expression for the incestuous nature of the establishment media elite and America’s ideological Left. ([Location 34](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=34)) - The corporate media establishment is constantly trying to manipulate their audiences and the world to serve their political, personal, and financial ends. ([Location 59](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=59)) - He gave a speech that night in late 2007 that was quite radical at the time: he proclaimed that culture is upstream from politics. Or, in other words, America’s entertainment industry, media, and academy are guiding policy and precipitating big societal changes. Hollywood leads, Washington follows. ([Location 98](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=98)) - There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part! You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels… upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! ([Location 126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=126)) - This isn’t bias. This is weaponized political media designed to destroy us. ([Location 154](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=154)) - (“Cancellation” is the expression for widespread ostracism or even banning of figures, past and present, from polite society and social media.) ([Location 245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=245)) - (Little in life can be disproven, which is why our legal system relies on “innocent until proven guilty” as opposed to the inverse. I could accuse Rachel Maddow and Nicolle Wallace of murder, animal cruelty, or intentionally lying to moderately large cable news audiences every weekday for years in order to undo the 2016 election of Donald Trump, and it would be impossible to disprove any of it.) ([Location 391](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=391)) - During this fake news cycle, literally dozens of celebrities accused the U.S. president of treason, a crime punishable in the United States by death.65 Meanwhile, the Times and much of their establishment media cohorts missed what was a much, much larger and contemporaneous story about U.S. government corruption: the surveillance of the Donald Trump campaign by the Obama administration.66 ([Location 399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=399)) - Perhaps the Pulitzer has become akin to a “participation trophy,” a booby prize for the privileged journalism establishment class to reward to each other, regardless of whether their reporting actually informed the public or misinformed it. ([Location 403](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=403)) - The only problem is that Breitbart had the narrative correct all along. It was an incorrect assumption shared unquestioningly by all of the establishment that Russia would have preferred a Trump presidency to a Hillary Clinton one. It was absurd to believe a germophobe like Trump had a urine fetish, and that he traveled to Moscow to indulge it. And it was, above all, idiotic to believe that Trump was simultaneously the biggest buffoon in the history of American politics but also savvy enough (despite having zero political experience) to rig an American presidential election with the help of a geopolitical adversary and not leave a trace of incontrovertible evidence. ([Location 411](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=411)) - In other words, the media’s hero, Nathan Phillips, appears to be a bit of a fabulist. ([Location 488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=488)) - In an incredibly telling moment on ABC’s daytime talk show The View, Whoopi Goldberg lamented how yet again the media had rushed to draw conclusions about a viral Internet video before the facts were in. “Why do we keep making the same mistake?” she asked the panel.100 Joy Behar responded instantly and with certainty: “Because we’re desperate to get Trump out of office. That’s why.” ([Location 508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=508)) - Over the past half century or so, American law enforcement and popular culture have conferred an extra level of seriousness and gravity to “hate crimes” as opposed to regular crimes. The definition of a hate crime, according to the FBI, is a regular crime with an added element of bias. “A ‘criminal’ offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity,” the FBI.gov website states.104 ([Location 520](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=520)) - Hate crimes are sure to grab headlines across international news because the victimhood is doubled. The victim was a casualty of whatever crime had been committed, and they’re a victim of racism/sexism/homophobia/bigotry, etc. ([Location 524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=524)) - Smollett’s story was immediately embraced by the media and Hollywood establishments. A gay black man had been a victim of a racist and homophobic attack by Trump supporters! This was way too good to check! ([Location 537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=537)) - The New York Times took Smollett’s story as gospel, reporting Smollett “was attacked in Chicago by 2 assailants who yelled racial and homophobic slurs.” Joe Biden quoted the tweet—uncritically—and predictably added some generic sanctimonious lecturing to Americans about bias: “We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.”111 ([Location 548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=548)) - The Chicago Tribune blared a headline that in retrospect looks downright comedic: “Week before reported attack, Jussie Smollett got threatening letter with ‘MAGA’ written for return address.” The article details that Smollett was sent a letter filled with white powder that spelled in “cut-out letters”—so corny! “You will die black f*g,” it allegedly said. The Tribune pointed out that the letter was also stamped with American flags.117 ([Location 567](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=567)) - Hours later a report emerged that there were two “persons of interest” in the alleged attack. Charlie De Mar of local Chicago CBS sent a tweet that must have given the Jussie fanboys and girls a cold sweat: “Police raided the home of two persons of interest in Jussie Smollett case last night. Both men are of Nigerian decent and have appeared as extras on the show. Police took bleach, shoes, electronics and more.”119 ([Location 575](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=575)) - Around this time, social media ramped up its censorship game. Instagram deleted a post by Donald Trump Jr. that was skeptical of Smollett. The Facebook-owned platform later said it was removed “in error.”122 ([Location 582](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=582)) - That sentiment didn’t last long, though. Smollett was arrested on February 21. Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson said Jussie falsified the hate crime (and the MAGA letter) because “he was dissatisfied with his salary” he was earning from Empire.124 ([Location 587](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=587)) - The “very fake noose” stories continue: In June 2020, ropes tied by a black man in an Oakland park were treated as a noose by law enforcement, even though the man said he used them for exercise.135 In an incredibly important moment representative of the national Woke Panic of 2020, Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf whitesplained the non-nooses to black Oaklanders: “Intentions do not matter. We will not tolerate symbols of hate in our city. The nooses found at Lake Merritt will be investigated as hate crimes.”136 ([Location 610](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=610)) - It was “unfortunate” for Wallace because he seemed to want to be a victim of a hate crime, as evidenced by an appearance on CNN with Don Lemon. When Lemon asked his thoughts on the FBI’s findings that he was not targeted for his race, Wallace reacted by saying he, like Jussie, was “pissed” and went on to defend his character from attacks.140 Perhaps a more appropriate reaction to the news that you weren’t targeted for a hate crime would be relief, but in 2020 America it means you miss out on savoring the sweetness of public victimhood. “It was a noose,” Bubba told Lemon. “Whether tied in 2019 or whatever, it was a noose. So, it wasn’t directed at me but somebody tied a noose. That’s what I’m saying.” ([Location 622](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08LDW29XN&location=622))