China has revoked the licenses of three US news organizations. Egos have been prickled, faces bruised. This is an escalation of press oppression, reports the NYT. Yes, it certainly is. But let’s also call a spade a spade. This is (petty) retaliation, plain and simple. This country has been encroaching on press freedom long before the popular press found it headline-worthy. Local reporters will suffer long after the headlines stop trending.
I am riled. Not in defence of censorship, but by predatory, sensational media seeking to make pageview bank. Let those that be without sin, cast the first stone. Let those that be agnostic to social media, post the first hashtag. Otherwise, get off your fucking pedestal.
Mainstream media is mainstream media. One is beholden to censors, another to instamedia zeitgeist. Neither has the moral standing upon which to strike the other. To do so is a disservice, not only to the investigators and truth seekers who put their lives and livelihoods on the line giving voices to the “uninstagrammable” and the “follower-less”, but also to the “un-Verified” plebeians codifying an ugly era to memory in many a whimsical, clever, courageous way. Those that do so risk worse than extradition. They face annihilation through irrelevance.
Yet they persist. Yet they rebel.
These are the people the WSJ journalists labelled with a reprehensive slur – the ugly business that spurred all the even uglier proceedings. Sensationalism has a dollar value.
Chain made of purse-strings and chains of the leash; you are shackled all the same.
Now it’s just two incompetent buffoons tossing shit back and forth, smearing the other to mask their own incompetence, while circlet of dung Beatles feeding on drippings.
Only truth will suffer.
#00117F 