Kara Swisher, Times tech journalist, begins her column:

…So when the Sri Lankan government temporarily shut down access to American social media services like Facebook and Google’s YouTube after the bombings there on Easter morning, my first thought was “good.”

Good, because it could save lives. Good, because the companies that run these platforms seem incapable of controlling the powerful global tools they have built. Good, because the toxic digital waste of misinformation that floods these platforms has overwhelmed what was once so very good about them.

Kara left out the real reason she and, I suspect, her fellow propagandists wish that social media didn’t exist: “Good, because then people will have no alternative but to believe what we tell them.”

Here’s some full disclosure: I have a history with Kara Swisher. Small Washington, D.C. theater companies like mine, the late lamented American Century Theater, had to fight to get any notice from the Washington Post, and in the early years, the internet didn’t help much. Swisher was then the Post’s writer for a weekly column about under-the -radar developments among the smaller theaters, but unlike her predecessor in that role, Kara played favorites. She kept giving ink to the same narrow group of companies that matched her tastes, and the large companies too, which was neither fair nor the column’s purpose. I complained to her, and to her editor, and I wasn’t the only artistic director who raised the issue. We all celebrated when Swisher, who was incredibly arrogant at a tender age, left town. She was and is a classic example of current journalism: convinced that her viewpoint should control what the public has a right to know.

Social media has many flaws, and they are exacerbated horribly by a U.S. education system that appears incapable of teaching critical thought. It is true that morons are especially vulnerable to inflammatory, false, and silly posts on Facebook, Twitter, Insatgram et al., (Imagine: companies pay Kendall Jenner to like things on Instagram, and it works..) but that’s not the fault of the platforms. The news media and journalists like Swisher just want all the morons to themselves so they can manipulate, confuse and control them, and through them, the nation’s culture and political tilt.

For all the garbage that appears on social media,  and for all the sinister abuse of power by the companies that run the platforms,if it were not for the opportunity it provides to challenge the news media’s often biased and distorted reporting on our nation and the world, the left-wing information Borg’s domination of what is perceived as “truth” would be nearly total. Most people can’t take the time to write blogs, and the comment sections of newspaper and network websites are basically exercises in metaphorical masturbation. It is unmoderated cacophony interrupted by ads [“I made over 16,000 last month part time on my home computer…”], with intelligent and supported rebuttals buried and unread. Social media, however, can break through the news media monopoly and thriving thought-control projects. President Trump’s crude and impulsive use of Twitter is a net negative for him and the Presidency, but I’ll concede this: without the tweets, the Get Trump news media wing of the resistance would have damaged his Presidency far more than it has. That is, of course, one more reason journalist want him out of office as soon as possible, elections be damned.

British essayist and wit Mark Steyn has added one more smoking gun to the growing collection of sinister mainstream news media gaslighting exercises. I will discuss the emerging journalistic ethics train wreck of the reporting on the Sri Lanka terror attacks on Christians in more detail later (I hope), but Steyn’s analysis of the Economist’s initial coverage shows how the objective in not to inform the public, but to bury the lede. He writes, ruefully, in part,

Okay. Opening paragraphs [of the Economist news story]:

“The deadly attacks in Sri Lanka on Sunday highlighted how easily religious coexistence can be ripped apart in a region where secularism is weakening amid the growing appeal of a politics based on ethnic and sectarian identity.

In India, the country’s governing right-wing Hindu party is exploiting faith for votes, pushing an us-versus-them philosophy that has left Muslims fearing they will be lynched if they walk alone.

In Myanmar, the country’s Buddhist generals have orchestrated a terrifying campaign of ethnic cleansing against the country’s Rohingya Muslims.

And in Indonesia and Bangladesh, traditionally moderate Muslim politicians are adopting harder-line stances to appeal to more conservative electorates.”

So Hindus are attacking Muslims, and Buddhists are attacking Muslims, and “hard-line” Muslims are attacking moderate Muslims. Thank God for some clarity on the situation. But what were all these Muslims doing in church on Easter morning?

…The lights are going out on the most basic of journalistic instincts: Who, what, when, where, why. All are subordinate to the Narrative – or Official Lie…Meanwhile, back in that fast shrinking space known as the real world, from the very first hours the headline of this story was completely straightforward:

“Islamic Suicide Bombers Slaughter Three Hundred on Easter Morning”

But apparently that can no longer be said.

It can be, and is being said on social media, however. You can share Steyn’s truth-telling on Facebook (not mine, more’s the pity, but his). You can foil Kara Swisher and her employer, as well as the Washington Post, CNN and the rest, in small but substantial increments, by calling out the “official” media for not playing straight with the facts, and for becoming, though it is impolitic to say so, “the enemy of the people.” You may get defreinded or unfollowed or blocked, but every bit of truth helps.

It is horribly imperfect, but social media is the voice of the people, and the best chance the people have, those who aren’t morons and ready to swallow  whole the tales of the Pope endorsing Presidential candidates and of Hillary Clinton using pizza joints to dabble in sex trafficking,  to knock down and overcome propaganda and lies.

This is why, as frustrating as it is, we all have an obligation to keep annoying our gullible Facebook friends with pointed corrections of their latest biased meme or legally absurd impeachment theory. A nice, quite, non-political social media is what the Kara Swishers crave.

For them it means unrestrained power.