Federal Appeals Court Judge: ‘One-Party Control Of The Press And Media Is A Threat To A Viable Democracy’

A judge on the influential federal court of appeals in Washington used his dissent in a defamation case to excoriate the majority of  US news media outlets for touting “shocking” anti-Republican views and he called for libel laws to be updated to make it easier to sue the press.

The press has a First Amendment Constitutional right to Freedom of the Press, but that doesn’t mean that they have a Constitutional right to lie when they report.  The whole purpose of Freedom of the Press was because the Founding Fathers knew what it was like to have a government-run press or a press that appeases government authority because then the people never get the truth of what’s going on in their government.  Today we have the overwhelming majority of our news media siding with Democrats, even to the point where they lie in their favor.  The mainstream media no longer report the news.  They create the news and mold it to fit whatever the current leftist Democrat narrative happens to be.   And it should burn your biscuits every time you hear one of these elitist fake news anchors talk about the integrity of the media and how they’re professionals and just want to report the news accurately.  CNN’s motto is “The most trusted name in news” and it’s a total joke.  Since Donald Trump left office, CNN’s audience dropped 50 percent. And the network will completely ignore that revelation. They will act like they are the top broadcast network out there, even though they’re nearly dead last.

U.S. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman said that the New York Times and the Washington Post are “virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” and that the news section of the Wall Street Journal “leans in the same direction.” He then added the major television outlets and the Silicon Valley tech giants were similarly biased.

“One-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy,” Silberman wrote. He exempted from his criticism of “Democratic ideological control” Fox News, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.  The judge argued that even those outlets are “controlled by a single man and his son.” Of course, he was referencing Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, and he wondered how long they could hold out before they too succumbed to the leftist ideology.  I think except for a couple of news anchors and a handful of opinion hosts at Fox News they have already gone Left.

“After all, there are serious efforts to muzzle Fox News,” the Reagan appointee wrote.

The case Judge Silberman went on about didn’t involve any of those companies, however.  He dissented in a 2-1 decision, throwing out a lawsuit file by two Liberian officials against an environmentalist group called Global Witness that published a report saying that they have possibly accepted bribes.  The judge pointed out that the group’s support to back up its claims was so feeble that it should never have been protected under the Supreme Court’s ruling of New York Times v. Sullivan. It was because of that landmark ruling that newspapers today get away with publishing anything.  They don’t even have to corroborate sources. In fact, they get caught lying all the time and they do it with impunity.  New York Times v. Sullivan because a precedent in 1964 and it established that in order for news media outlets to be sued for libel, the complainant must be able to prove that false reports were published with “actual malice” in order to be overturned.

Silberman called for the precedent case to be overturned, claiming its protections were allowing what is no longer a free press but one that is overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic Party “to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.”  Just think of the last four years in how the mainstream media treated President Donald Trump.   They lied about him every day of the four years that he served as president.  In fact, they lied multiple times most days.

And Silberman isn’t alone in his thinking.  Back in 2019 the great Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called for the landmark decision to at least be reconsidered since there is no basis found in the Constitution.

Judge Silberman went a little further than Justice Thomas, saying the media often “manufactures scandals involving political conservatives.”

Former President Trump, no stranger to this topic, always made similar accusations and numerous times suggested that the libel laws should be made easier to sue media outlets that blatantly lie.

Silberman made his point known that he believes that democracy could be foiled by leftist control of the media.

“The first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news,” he wrote.