“[Fox News] had a profound distorting effect on the news media, on our society. And if you look at what Musk says about social media, we are in the same moment, just updated 30 years later…[He] sees Twitter, and the policies that he wants to put in place and the way that he wants to use the platform, as a way to balance out those other social networks.”

—-Angelo Carusone, president of the pro-progressive media bias organization Media Matters, comparing Elon Musk’s pending acquisition of Twitter to when Fox News broke the liberal monopoly on network news more than two decades ago

Give Angelo credit: he’s right, even if he can’t distinguish a good development from a bad one. But then, that’s Media Matters for you, nearly completely ethics-free. (I generally ignore MM because it is so clearly dishonest and untrustworthy, but it does have a odoriferous Ethics Alarms dossier, here.)

These periodic themes on Ethics Alarms aren’t planned, but wowie zowie, have a lot of examples of the news media’s leftist bias been flying by today!

Caruso’s quote is signature significance for the arrogance and totalitarian instincts of such people. I seldom watch Fox News because it so often is pitched to idiots incapable of critical thought, and its star pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are perpetually intellectually dishonest. Nonetheless, Fox News’ appearance on the scene was arguably the most important and essential development in American journalism before journalists decided not to practice journalism any more and almost completely stomp on the principles enshrined in the profession’s ethics codes.

How many news stories that the mainstream media tried to bury or distort would we have never been informed fully about (or informed about at all) without one network that existed, indeed with its own biases, to balance out the Borg-like perspective of the vast majority of its competitors?

Every American regardless of partisan preferences should be grateful for Fox, and the attitude expressed by Carusone is a major reason. He really regards the fact that the left-biased news sources no longer have a monopoly over the flow of information as a problem.

Sure, it’s a problem if your party and ideology are trying to take over with as little opposition as possible. Without Fox News, every TV news network would behave like MSNBC, with all progressive propaganda, all the time. And now the nation faces having a major social media network that wouldn’t ban the previous President of the United States and would allow news reports about Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling even if it did risk losing his father the election.

The Horror.

Speaking of biased media, The Hill’s report on critics of Twitter soon becoming less censorious is full of pernicious bias itself. It laughably calls Media Matters a “left-leaning watchdog group,” when it is in fact a conservative media attack dog group that has never encountered a Democrat or a progressive lie it didn’t support. The Hill writes that Fox News arose as an “alternative to balance what its founders viewed as a media landscape that catered to liberals.” What its founders “viewed“? Although post-Watergate the news media in print and broadcast news began a long, destructive trend away from even pretending to give objective news reports, all of the news anchors and almost all of the network reporters were liberal Democrats to their core. The bias seeped into every “Evening News” show and morning shows like “Today” as well.

Then there’s this tell:

“One constant throughout the five-month process has been Musk’s pledge to embrace his vision of free speech, one that appears to be in line with the lax content moderation measures Republicans have been advocating for.”

“Lax moderation” is a deliberately pejorative term for “permitting opinions and interpretations of news events that run counter to progressive cant, political correctness, and Democratic propaganda.

Angelo Carusone, like all totalitarians, believes that a nation is best served by “watchdogs” who make sure only “safe” and “acceptable” facts and opinions that serve the “greater good” get wide circulation.

Believe such people when the tell you what they are.