Once upon a time….a long, long time ago…the media world was a very different place.
Liberal newspapers fed liberal television networks and wire services and thus was the dominant view of the American world established. And fed. Over and over and over and over again.
Then the future arrived through technology. Alternative — that would be conservative — points of view arrived beyond the opinion journals that came in the mail.
It would reach well beyond the magazines created by William F. Buckley (National Review) and R. Emmett Tyrrell (The American Spectator). Now the future was on in earnest. Talk radio blossomed (thank you Rush Limbaugh), Fox News appeared (thank you Rupert Murdoch) and, but of course, the Internet. (Thank you all you wired geek geniuses.)
All of this changed the world for certain. But as might be suspected, for those in the liberal media who watched in dismay if not fury to see their dominance fade, this was a most lasting unhappiness. America could no longer agree on “the same facts.”
This unhappiness — make that fury — at having lost the ability to dominate today’s media is frequently popping up and out on display. Case in point?
This front and center New York Times story focusing on the recent disturbances surrounding the ICE headquarters in Portland, Oregon. The headline:
How Right-Wing Influencers Are Shaping the Guard Fight in Portland
President Trump and his administration are amplifying the voices of pro-White House podcasters and streamers eager to ratify the president’s description of Oregon’s largest city as a ‘hellscape.’
The Times story by Anna Griffin and Aaron West reports someone is ruining the narrative of “very peaceful” anti-ICE protests:
In the fight over deploying National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., Democratic leaders in the city and state have pleaded with President Trump and the courts to trust law enforcement records, both local and federal, that describe the demonstrations as small and comparatively calm.
But in the bifurcated media world of 2025, one side’s comparative calm is the other’s “hellscape” — as the White House described Portland on Wednesday — and the narrative that the Trump administration has wanted has been supplied by a coterie of right-wing influencers elevated by Mr. Trump himself.
Which is to say, as evidenced in this case, the American media world has gone to hell in a hand basket because the media is now flooded with “Right-Wing Influencers” who have the nerve – the nerve! – to be…
Amplifying the voices of pro-White House podcasters and streamers eager to ratify the president’s description of Oregon’s largest city as a ‘hellscape.’
To be “amplifying the voices of pro-White House” was OK with the liberals who ran the media before the internet. It was just hunky dory if 1) the media was dominated by liberals and 2) there was nowhere else to turn for a different point of view.
Not for nothing the famous sign-off of CBS anchor Walter Cronkite. Cronkite would end his five nights a week broadcast of the CBS Evening News by assuring Americans that whatever his liberal take of the world was at that moment really was “the way it is.”
Now, of course, if your Aunt Mildred or your teenage cousin Sam not only has a conservative take on the news, they can sit down in front of their laptop, bang away presenting their view of the day, hit the send button to X and sit back and watch just how their conservative take has driven some collection of lefties around the bend.
Conservatives of today may even take this for granted if, in fact, they weren’t around in the old media world.
But one suspects there are enough old school libs at The New York Times and elsewhere who are old enough to remember the old days. Which in turn produces stories like the one cited above from The Times in which they are bemoaning the work of “Right-Wing Influencers” who “Are Shaping the Guard Fight in Portland.”
Which is to say, conservatives with a high-tech capability are shaping that latest media story not at all in the way the Left wants it reported. And they are not happy about it.
Imagine that.
