Who Could Have Seen This Coming?

I keep reminding people: 'freedom of the press' is short for 'freedom of the printing press'. It means anyone is free to publish whatever they want and they don't need some kind of 'printing licence'. 

In other words, despite what the MSM keeps implying, it's the exact opposite of the idea that there is some kind of elite group out there called the 'press' who have special rights not granted to other citizens. There's no legal basis for that belief, but the idea that they're some kind of journalistic jedis is at the heart of why so much modern reporting is awful. Too many of these guys identify more with the people they're supposed to be reporting on than they do with the public they hope will actually buy their lousy papers. 

On the plus side, at least there's some amusement to be found in the outraged reporting every time an MSM journalist is treated like one of the peasantry. 

Here's today's example.

To quote the mighty John McLane: welcome to the party, pal!

Hey, nothing personal - she is one of the least worst journos out there and it's great that the MSM has finally started to talk about this stuff, but Joe Citizen has had to put up with this kind of censorship for years and these guys were fine with that. 

Actually, they were more than fine. No end of ink was spilled on the vitally vital importance of 'clamping down on online extremism'. Now - amazingly - it turns out that 'extremism' turns out to mean 'anything the political establishment doesn't approve of'. Who could have seen that coming? 

Not our professional journaljismers, hence why most people are only now seeing stuff like this:

The Government have been pressurising social media companies to tackle 'false and misleading narratives' about Covid, and through its Rapid Response Unit claims to have 'resolved' 70 such incidents a week.

You know, I can't help thinking that .gov setting up a real life Ministry of Truth might be something worth reporting on even before it started to affect the elect? 

Just a hunch.

And it gets worse. Check out the reporting in the sidebar on the censorship of Lionel Shriver. Not only is she in no way a rhetorical bomb thrower or extremist, the point she was making was both true and useful: obesity increases the risk from the dreaded C-virus. Not only is that true, what if it wasn't? Is YouTube worried people will lose weight unnecessarily and be left with nothing more than a drastically reduced risk of cancer, heart disease and diabetes? 

As I was saying, it's not a conspiracy if it they're doing it openly.