John Kerry is a prominent member of America’s “we know what’s best for you” liberal elite. They will rob us of our freedom if we let them. Joe Biden appointed Kerry US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in 2021. He has been working hard ever since to saddle the American people with the agenda of the climate change zealots across the world. He resigned his position early in 2024 to work on the reelect Biden campaign but made it clear he plans to stay active in matters related to climate.
Last month the United Nations General Assembly held its annual meeting in New York. The most significant news that week received almost no media coverage. The Sustainable Development Impact Meeting hosted by the World Economic Forum was held as part of the United Nations meeting and in a rare and stunning moment of political candor, John Kerry brazenly declared the First Amendment is a threat to government power.
During discussion focused on “maintaining momentum for climate and nature action, digital literacy, and economic inclusion”, Kerry identified social media as a barrier to government control when he said, “…I think the dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing and growing, and that’s part of our problem particularly in democracies – in terms of building consensus around any issue, it’s really hard to govern today.”
He went on to say “The referees we used to have to determine what’s a fact and what isn’t a fact…it’s been eviscerated to a certain degree…” “…and people…self-select where they go for their news and for their information and then you just get into a vicious cycle. So it’s really, really…much harder to build a consensus today than any time in the 45-50 years I’ve been involved in this.” “If people go to one source and the one source they go to is sick, and…has an agenda and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to just hammer it out of existence.”
Let that sink in.
Early in 2022 Joe Biden tried to create a Disinformation Grievance Board (DGB) that would serve as an advisory board to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Its purpose was to “protect national security by disseminating guidance to the DHS agencies on combating the misinformation, malinformation, and disinformation that threaten the security of the homeland.” Soon after it was announced, the plan was paused in response to concerns about constitutionality and the outrage of the American people and within months the Board was disbanded.
Authoritarian regimes use the control of information and mass propaganda as tactics to control the public. We can look to China for an example of an authoritarian one-party state where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) strictly controls the internet and controls all domestic news reporting through direct ownership of news outlets. The Chinese government restricts the access of the Chinese people to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), YouTube, Google, Whats App, Telegram, Snapchat, and Pinterest. The people are only permitted to know what the government wants them to know.
Interest in managing how we access information is not limited to government players. Mark Penn is a highly regarded Democratic pollster and CEO of Stagwell, one of the world’s leading digital-first marketing companies. He has launched a massive “Future of News Initiative” to “reinvigorate the relationship between news and marketing.” Businesses of all types have stripped news organizations out of their advertising budgets in favor of sports and entertainment mediums. Penn argues this is happening because companies are afraid their brand may be damaged if their product ad is placed alongside a negative news story. The example he uses is Boeing doesn’t want its ad next to a news story about a plane crash. He contends “if the news isn’t ‘monetized’ journalism can’t exist.” They’re dying on the vine without ad revenue.
He makes his case: “Instead of feeding the vicious cycle of news demonization that hurts quality journalism the most, advertisers should kick start a virtuous cycle of investing in news that allows brands to reach valuable audiences and gives quality news content the financial stability it needs to thrive.”
Mark Penn has this all wrong. The businesses that have pulled their advertising budgets away from the news media have made a calculated business decision aimed at maximizing the return on their investment and based on news circulation dropping like a stone.
Pew research reported that in 2022 print and digital combined daily newspaper circulation was 20.9 million. In 1990, this number exceeded 62 million. In 2006, advertising in print and digital newspapers exceeded $49 billion. In 2022, this number had dropped to less than $10 billion.
There is little doubt that the explosion of alternate sources of information such as social media have eroded the traditional news industry. However, an even greater factor is the loss of public confidence in what the news media have to say.
In 2023 Gallup reported that 32% of the public have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the mass media news reporting. This includes television and newspaper. 29% have “not very much” and 39% have no trust at all, a record high. By contrast, in 1976 72% of the public had a fair amount or great deal of trust in the mass media.
There are bad actors in government who view the First Amendment as an obstacle to imposing their agenda on the American people. The Biden/Harris administration did not hesitate to pressure social media to censor US citizens to block debate about emerging treatments and government mandates during the COVID pandemic. John Kerry’s characterization of the government “building consensus” was a misuse of the term. He was talking about manipulating people to accept the will of the government by controlling access to information. They will take us down the path to authoritarianism if we allow it.
Our First Amendment protections are vital to our freedom. Restricted speech or filtered speech is not free speech and it is not the role of the government to be the arbiter of truth. Freedom requires us to engage in the spirited debate of ideas fearlessly and unrestrained.
The news media have squandered the trust of the American people through dishonesty and political bias. We are turning our backs on them as a source of information and their viability will be the heavy price they pay. We have the power to punish them for wantonly shirking their duty to watchdog the truth by making them irrelevant.
Now is the time to defend the Constitution and protect our freedom. When Donald Trump says, “They’re coming after you. I’m just in the way,” it’s the truth. Vote for Donald Trump for President of the United States and Eric Hovde for Wisconsin Senator on November 5.
