Recently ousted &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; anchor Scott Pelley registered record-low self awareness level — and gave the impression that he&#8217;d never before encountered a normal human being — during a New York Times interview over the weekend.
Pelley, who was fired &#8220;for cause&#8221; by &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; executive producer Nick Bilton after raging at the network&#8217;s new leadership, expressed his complete bewilderment that new top exec Bari Weiss would ask his former colleagues at CBS News about bias in their coverage.
WATCH:
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&#8220;She, I am told, said something to the effect of, &#8216;Why do you think the country thinks you&#8217;re biased?'&#8221; Pelley explained, adding, &#8220;But she didn&#8217;t offer any kind of a metric.&#8221;
Pelley went on to suggest that there was no reason for Weiss to even ask such a question, saying, &#8220;Why do you think so? Do you have a poll? Is there market research? What are you talking about?&#8221;
AllSides.com, a media watchdog organization, rates CBS News reporting tends to &#8220;<a href="https://www.allsides.com/news-source/cbs-news-online-media-bias">lean left</a>,&#8221; and Pew Research data shows that, accordingly, more Democrats than Republicans view CBS News as a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2025/06/10/the-political-gap-in-americans-news-sources/">trustworthy source</a> of information.
While it&#8217;s certainly possible that Pelley never saw the AllSides assessment or the Pew Research data, it&#8217;s unlikely that he was unaware of the lawsuit, filed by President Donald Trump against &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; over edits made to a pre-election interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
CBS News parent company Paramount paid out $16 million over the Harris interview, which Trump and numerous others alleged had been deceptively edited to clean up several of her &#8220;word-salad&#8221; answers. The interview aired in early October 2024, just weeks prior to the election — and Paramount, without issuing an apology, agreed to the $16 million settlement in July 2025.
Pelley&#8217;s first post-ouster interview raised a number of questions, particularly after he also claimed that he&#8217;d &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/scott-pelley-takes-military-cosplay-to-new-level-in-deluded-nyt-interview">been in combat</a>&#8221; for the United States and claimed that watching people he&#8217;d worked closely with lose their jobs at CBS News was like personally witnessing the &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/scott-pelley-compares-cbs-ouster-to-family-being-murdered-in-over-the-top-interview">murders</a>&#8221; of close friends and family members.

60 Minutes

Scott Pelley Reveals He’s Never Met A Normal Person In His Life

Scott Pelley Reveals He's Never Met A Normal Person In His Life

Bari Weiss

CBS News

Media

Media Bias

Politics

Scott Pelley

Over the past decade, the biggest news outlets in our country have resorted to reporting that is tainted by their journalists’ personal beliefs, regardless of political affiliation. Apparently, the virtue of objective reporting has become a thing of the past. Being a student at the Missouri School of Journalism has shown me that the main contributor that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves is the dwindling standards of journalistic ethics.
In one of my core journalism classes this past semester, my professor argued that “objectivity harms,” claiming that the ideal itself is essentially dead in the media today. This claim allowed her to justify the uncritical imposition of her own beliefs on a class of nearly 200 students. The irony was hard to miss. The course, Cross Cultural Journalism, was designed to teach students how to represent different groups fairly and accurately in the media. However, it became clear during the week on International Politics and Conflict that this was not the lesson being taught.
Instead of discussing the various approaches that journalists have taken to represent international powers and explain their conflicts, class was spent watching a biased documentary about a Palestinian mayor. After what can only be described as a <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-firsthand-look-at-the-anti-israel-bias-in-college-classrooms/">problematic class discussion</a>, in which my professor pushed the genocide libel and allowed classmates to yell at one another to voice opposition, she decided to invite the filmmaker for a Q&amp;A.
At one point in his discussion, the filmmaker said he wouldn’t have been able to make this film after October 7 because it was “made for an audience that no longer exists.”
He explained that the documentary was made for those who were either neutral or uneducated about the complexities of the conflict, and even though many of his scenes presented opinions that demonized Israel, his attempt at objectivity during our discussion was refreshing. I could agree with him that the discourse on the conflict has lost a certain capacity for neutrality, and therefore the audience his film was intended to serve.
Having a person who seemingly has strong opinions critical of Israel restrain himself from pushing his own beliefs onto a group of students gave me a chance to find common ground. My professor, however, took a different approach.
Throughout the dialogue, she repeatedly inserted her own political opinions. When discussing the current status of former Palestinian mayor, Musa Hadid, she asked rhetorically, “There’s still a Ramallah?” She also repeatedly minimized Hamas’s <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R47754">part</a> in the beginning of the war, often trying to shift the blame to Israel or oversimplifying the whole issue.
In doing so, she transformed the class into another exercise in reinforcing preconceived anti-Israel beliefs. More importantly, it showcased the extreme bias my professor holds, her disregard for journalistic integrity, and the influence professors wield in their classrooms.
My earlier negative experience of voicing an unpopular opinion convinced me to stay quiet this time around. Expressing my beliefs didn’t seem worth the trouble.
If this class were taught by a responsible professor, it would have allowed for a multitude of ideas and interpretations, capitalizing on the fact that students come from different backgrounds, political ideologies, and socioeconomic statuses to simulate the kind of audience we will be writing for as prospective journalists.
The lesson implicitly being taught here is that if a journalist believes strongly enough in a narrative or a specific side of an issue, the journalistic ethics we’ve been taught can be bent or altogether forgotten to fit that narrative. At best, this kind of subpar journalism produces an uninformed society. At worst, it empowers activist movements that cause more harm than good.
I hope my peers eventually come to understand the power journalists hold and strive to act responsibly. All stories have more than one side, and it’s our duty as journalists to explore each perspective when forming personal beliefs.
***
Leore Tal is a contributing writer for The College Fix, a Journalism and Political Science student at the University of Missouri, and an undergraduate Fellow with the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA). Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CAMERA.

Quill Feather Pen in hand

How Journalism Schools Are Baking Bias Right Into The Cake

DW Opinion

Journalism

The Left&#8217;s institutional control is falling apart. They thought they had the government.
Then President Trump won, and the Republicans won, but the Left thought they had the media. More than anything, they thought they had the media.
But last night, that magical world dissolved before their very eyes.
CBS News fired longtime “60 Minutes” anchor Scott Pelley, making clear that the show would no longer be an agitprop outlet for the Left.
But without institutional control, what happens to the Left? What do they do next?
The answer? They move even farther to the Left.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2437?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
The left-wing and mainstream media narrative today is that “60 Minutes” was a magical place filled with objective journalism. Then right-wing fire-breather Bari Weiss and her evil Zionist paymasters arrived, and now they&#8217;re firing stalwarts like old-style journalist Scott Pelley from “60 Minutes.” How dare they touch this bastion of journalistic integrity?
False. “60 Minutes” was never objective. It was always a Left-wing outlet. That&#8217;s the reason why the Left is angry that changes are being made.
They saw this as their institutional preserve and now that preserve has been violated. Like a naturally beautiful piece of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge being touched by human hands, it must not be.
They&#8217;ve been promoting the notion that Bari Weiss is some sort of flaming Right-winger. That&#8217;s crazy. I&#8217;m friends with Bari; she is not Right-wing on a huge number of issues. She is pro-LGBT, obviously. She is pro-choice, obviously. She used to describe herself as a center-left person. If you went back about 25 years, she&#8217;d be a moderate Democrat.
So what is the actual story here?
The key story here is the Democrats are losing control of a lot of their key institutions. If there&#8217;s any overarching sort of theme to the Trump era, it is that Democrats thought they had undeniable control of virtually every key institution in American life and now, one by one, that&#8217;s coming apart for them.
“60 Minutes” was considered the tip of the spear in the objective journalism universe.
Those of us who&#8217;ve been watching mainstream legacy media for a long time recognize that the so-called objective media is usually anything but objective; usually it is just a Left-leaning group of people who pretend to be objective.
Scott Pelley was fired. The reason he was fired is that there were changes made over at “60 Minutes.” Nick Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker, was appointed to shake up “60 Minutes” because the ratings were poor and there were problems with journalistic integrity.
Bilton was publicly accosted by Scott Pelley at a meeting where he introduced himself to the staff. This was after CBS had fired the previous executive producer, her deputy, and a couple of the show&#8217;s correspondents.
With absolute self-centered arrogance, Pelley called it Black Thursday.
That&#8217;s true for an enormous number of journalists and pseudo-journalists in the online space. They are simply narcissists; the only thing they regret about the camera is that it is not a mirror.
Bilton said Bari loves the institution, loves “60 Minutes.”
Pelley got up in full self-righteous mode, knowing, of course, that he was trying to get himself fired. Let&#8217;s be clear: that&#8217;s what he wanted. He wanted to be a martyr. If you&#8217;re going to have your airtime reduced, it’s better to be a martyr.
If you&#8217;re Colin Kaepernick and you&#8217;re about to get benched, much better that you go out protesting the national anthem.
So Pelley decided this was his moment of bravery and resistance. (Maybe they&#8217;ll make a movie about him.)
He said Bari was murdering “60 Minutes,” that she did not love this place, that she was trying to kill it; that she had no qualifications for her job.
It is incredible to me when people talk about qualifications in the journalistic world. The idea that journalism is a job for which you require a license or a qualification is ridiculous. It ain’t like being a heart surgeon.
Bari Weiss was an editor at the New York Times before she started The Free Press, one of the most successful independent journalistic endeavors in America. But she has no qualifications?
Yet Scott Pelley, who reads stuff from a teleprompter on camera, says she has no qualifications for her job.
Bilton wrote a letter that stated:
<blockquote>I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I&#8217;m new to 60 Minutes, I&#8217;ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner.
It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday&#8217;s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama.
I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal. Despite yesterday&#8217;s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.
Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (&#8220;CBS&#8221;) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.</blockquote>
A great letter.
Applause for Nick Bilton. This alone means that his tenure has been worth it. This is how you should treat insubordination.
“60 Minutes” pretends that it is an openly objective institution. The notion that “60 Minutes” was a bastion of objective journalism is not true.
It’s another institution that is finally being remade to veer toward objectivity.
And the Left is panicking.

truth_bomb

The Left’s Media Fortress Has A Breach

Ben Shapiro

Opinion

The media are fully convinced that the best way for the United States to confront China and Iran is simply to do whatever they want.
President Donald Trump has been confronting both countries for two terms. And yet, according to The New York Times and The Washington Post, somehow China and Iran have the upper hand.
That&#8217;s a weird thing to say. Iran does not have a leadership class. They are all dead. Iran does not have forward military capacity. It&#8217;s been destroyed. Iran does not have a navy. They&#8217;re at the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz. They don&#8217;t have an air force. They can&#8217;t fly anything but low-level drones.
Iran doesn&#8217;t have a functioning economy, but somehow, Iran is winning?
Meanwhile, China, which has a massive debt problem, a massive demographic problem, and serious military issues — its military is wildly inferior to that of the United States — is also winning?
According to these media outlets, the best strategy is to make nice with the Chinese, to hug them, to give them everything they could possibly want; to go to the Iranians and cut a deal where we free up billions of dollars so they can rebuild their entire military machine.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-dubunking-nytimes-iran?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
I&#8217;m not sure what else you&#8217;re supposed to gain from news analysis from The New York Times that says Iran gained leverage in the war, or this from The Washington Post: “China gains major edge on U.S. amid Iran war, intelligence report finds.”
China has no oil. It receives a majority of its oil from the Strait of Hormuz, which is closed. How is China trying to become magically stronger in some way? Iran has nothing functional in it. Yet somehow they are magically winning.
The media’s perspective is that China and Iran have gained leverage.
The Times reports, “Nearly three months into the conflict, the Iranian regime has succeeded in confounding U.S. and Israeli expectations for a speedy victory.”
Of course, all of this depends on your definition of victory. We have not had a victory on planet Earth in which one side gets on the deck of an aircraft carrier and signs a surrender document for roughly 80 years.
If by victory over the U.S. you mean Iran has no top-level military, their government is barely holding on to power, their economy is nonfunctional, and that they are, in desultory fashion, firing drones at shipping — that’s a pretty narrow definition of victory.
The Times writes: “The regime survived a wave of targeted killings early in the war. It then managed to turn the tables on its more powerful adversaries, introducing something of a stalemate. Since mid-March, Iran has maintained control over the Strait of Hormuz, an international waterway crucial to the world&#8217;s oil and gas trade. It has been able to limit U.S. and Israeli strikes on its energy industry. It even got President Donald Trump to rein in Israel&#8217;s war in Lebanon against Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militia.”
Most of these points are false. If Iran maintained control over the Strait of Hormuz, they would be able to ship their own oil out; they would be able to toll ships that were traveling.
They can’t.
Sure, President Trump is concerned about the spike in oil prices that would accompany an Iranian counter-fire against the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. But as far as limiting U.S. and Israeli attacks on its energy industry, President Trump is not sure that he wants to do that, because he is not sure that he wants to destroy the lifeline of a future Iranian regime if they were too moderate. He&#8217;s concerned that hurting the energy supplies in Iran would hurt the Iranian people.
As far as the war in Lebanon, the Israelis are still pursuing military action in Lebanon, and they&#8217;re likely to pursue it further as time goes on because Hezbollah is not giving up the ghost.
Nonetheless, The New York Times did find “experts” to explain that Iran is winning. Nicole Grajewski, who teaches at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in France, said, “Iran definitely has the advantage here. The U.S. is just kind of flailing at the moment.”
In what sense do they have an advantage?
The idea here is that Iran is pressuring the UAE and Qatar, except the UAE wants the United States to go even further. Saudi Arabia may be lobbying the United States not to go further, but that&#8217;s only because the United States has not evidenced a willingness to go all the way. If the United States were to say to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, “We&#8217;re toppling the regime,” both of those states would be onside, but they don&#8217;t want half-measures.
Thus, the pressure is not on the United States in the sense that America is about to be damaged; the pressure is on Iran regarding whether the regime lasts.
Iran&#8217;s strategy, according to The New York Times, of targeting oil fields and surrounding countries, “has shifted much of the focus of the war to the crucial question of how to get the strait reopened —  and how to limit Iranian leverage over it in the future. Efforts to pressure Iran to reopen the crucial waterway have proved unsuccessful.”
There are options that President Trump does not want to use, but he certainly could. Nonetheless, according to the New York Times, “Iran, though deeply damaged by the war, is likely to emerge from it with a valuable new asset” — I assume this means shutting down the shipping in the Strait — “having at least partial control over the strait would not only be a source of revenue for the regime, but also a form of geopolitical strength.”
They could have done that before. That&#8217;s the whole point. Do you want a regime that could have shut the Strait at any point to have a ballistic missile umbrella and nuclear weapons?
The answer is no.
It is yet to be seen how the war ends, but to suggest that Iran is somehow stronger now than they were before the war is crazy.
They just did something that they had to do because they were basically on their last legs if they had not shut the Strait of Hormuz. That was their last point of leverage, which, by the way, puts them at odds with China, which needs that oil. If they had not closed the Strait of Hormuz, and if it were to reopen without their economy reopening, they would be in very, very serious trouble.
How about China? The Washington Post is trying to claim that China is benefiting from all this, which is hard to see since their economic growth has slowed and they&#8217;ve been relegated to stealing our tech.
Nonetheless, according to The Washington Post, “A confidential U.S. intelligence analysis details how China is exploiting the war in Iran to maximize its advantage over the United States across military, economic, diplomatic, and other fields &#8230; The assessment, the officials said, was produced this week for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, and has raised alarm within the Pentagon about the geopolitical cost of Washington&#8217;s standoff with Tehran.”
We should be very clear. There are many intelligence reports presented to the military, so we don&#8217;t know how important this one was. Was it sort of a consensus? Unclear.
“Officials talked about the finding,” the Post continued. “China has sold weapons to Persian Gulf allies of the United States&#8230; Beijing has also assisted countries around the world struggling to meet their energy needs.”
That would be weird given that Beijing does not have access to oil and natural gas.
The reality is that the United States has become the chief exporter of oil and natural gas on Earth, thanks to developments in the Strait of Hormuz. You can see graphics showing the large number of ships leaving American shores with American LNG.
According to the Washington Post, “The war has also drained the U.S. with massive stocks of munitions that would be critical in a potential standoff with China over the fate of Taiwan. The Iran conflict &#8230; has allowed Beijing to observe how the U.S. fights war and learn how to plan its own future operations.”
Beijing would have learned that in any conflict anyway. As far as munitions stocks being short, the reality is that&#8217;s why we need to ramp it up. We should have been ramping it up beforehand. The fact that Joe Biden didn&#8217;t ramp it up, the fact that Barack Obama slashed our military by leaps and bounds, did not help.
“The report notes that Beijing has incorporated popular criticisms of the war into public messaging,” the Post writes.
Of course that&#8217;s true, but none of this is a surprise. China trying to take advantage of an international conflict is not a gigantic shock. But the notion that China is somehow better off when it can&#8217;t import oil from Iran or Qatar or UAE or Saudi Arabia, how?
This doesn&#8217;t mean China doesn&#8217;t have counter moves. Any country worth its salt has counter moves. The question is, are they better off now or were they better off five months ago? And the answer is China was a lot better off five months ago.
But don&#8217;t worry, you can always find an expert. Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security — a left-wing think tank — says, “On balance, the war in Iran is massively improving China&#8217;s geopolitical position.”
I have doubts that that is the case.
Nonetheless, there are people who are trying to pretend that Beijing is doing well, that Beijing is actually somehow making common cause with Japan and South Korea and Australia.
I don’t think so.
People who don&#8217;t like Trump are claiming that China is going to step in and win the moral party arguments.
I have a hard time believing that unless you&#8217;re an idiot.
Stokes says, “China has an opening to portray the United States as an aggressive, unilateralist power in decline because Washington cannot stop itself from getting embroiled in a bloody and costly Middle East wars.”
First, this is not a particularly bloody nor particularly costly Middle East war. Second, if you want to believe a Chinese attempt to portray us as an aggressive unilateralist power while they threaten Taiwan, eat Hong Kong, threaten Japan, and build bases in the middle of the ocean to attack the Philippines, you are simply stupid.
If you&#8217;re the kind of person who wants to believe that China can make a moral case on the world stage, I would suggest you need to get your brain checked because you have a serious disability of some kind.
But count on the media, in all circumstances, to take the side that says that America ought to be weaker in the world. That&#8217;s become a popular point of view on both the Left and the Woke Right.
The truth has always been that the world is a much better place when America is stronger.
President Trump understands that.

haters_gonna_hate

Haters Gonna Hate. What The Anti-America Crowd Is Lying About

Communist China

Iran

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has spent years being treated by mainstream media as the go-to expert on hate groups and extremism. Now it is facing an 11-count federal indictment for wire fraud, lying to a bank, and money laundering.
As Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto recently put it, the SPLC does not act like a neutral watchdog. It behaves more like a competitor to real journalism, with every incentive to hype threats because “hate pays.”
The real test is whether the institutions that have propped it up will finally take these charges seriously. So far, the response has been disappointing. The indictment claims the SPLC secretly funneled millions of dollars to leaders of the very white-supremacist groups it claims to track, including more than $270,000 to an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. That rally gained instant notoriety, and it became prime fodder for left-leaning media that endlessly replayed former President Joe Biden’s misleading claim about Trump saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Three of the Big Four news apps — Google, Yahoo, and MSN — completely ignored the April 21 indictment. Apple News featured just two stories on the scandal, both from left-leaning outlets. As for the other three apps, the story did not crack their top 20 headlines in the days after it broke. Wikipedia went even further than ignoring it. Editors buried the indictment deep in the SPLC’s page, 65 paragraphs down under a mild “criticism” heading. Efforts to move it higher, including into the lead section, were quickly shot down. One editor said it had “no place so far up.” Key details, like the payments to the Unite the Right organizer, were stripped out as “UNDUE.”
They also removed references to the indictment from the Unite the Right rally page itself, despite the obvious connection, and blocked it from the list of groups the SPLC labels as hate groups. This protective editing stands in sharp contrast to how quickly Wikipedia highlights indictments against Republicans and conservatives.
It is not just dishonest coverage. Wikipedia still treats the SPLC as a “generally reliable” source, letting editors cite it over 7,000 times. Meanwhile, right-leaning outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, the New York Post, and The Daily Wire are heavily restricted or blacklisted. After the indictment, editors shut down debates about the SPLC’s special status and even topic-banned a dissenting editor.
The bias runs deep. The SPLC’s “extremist” files and hate lists still get prominent placement on pages about conservatives like Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, Jack Posobiec, Moms for Liberty, and the Alliance Defending Freedom. At the same time, the SPLC is accused of quietly paying an Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America and a leader of the National Socialist Party of America while publicly condemning them.
Wikipedia matters because it dominates Google search results and AI summaries. Google has given millions to the Wikimedia Foundation, and tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft partner with it. When these platforms downplay damaging news about a favored group while keeping its power to label enemies intact, tens of millions of people get a distorted picture every day.
This fits a broader pattern tracked by the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America project. Our monitoring of the Big Four news apps shows consistent favoritism toward liberal sources. Paired with Wikipedia’s practices, it shows how big tech amplifies left-leaning gatekeepers and sidelines stories that do not fit the narrative. In short, major news aggregators and Wikipedia have buried the SPLC indictment. They have protected one of the Left’s most powerful smear machines from real accountability while it keeps attacking conservatives online.
When the information gatekeepers suppress a major federal corruption case against an organization that shapes so much of our public debate, they erode trust across the board. Millions of Americans end up seeing a cleaned-up version of reality that serves the SPLC’s defenders, not the truth.
***
David Bozell is president of the Media Research Center.

Wikipedia

How The SPLC Gets Big Time Protection From Big Tech — And Why It Matters

Big Tech

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

Brian Karem, the longtime White House correspondent and author of “Free the Press: The Death of American Journalism and How to Revive It,” just <a href="https://www.salon.com/2026/04/24/why-im-boycotting-the-white-house-correspondents-dinner/">published</a> a fiery Salon piece declaring he’s boycotting this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD). His reason? President Donald Trump is attending. “I will not be attending,” Karem writes. “I have no desire to participate in this hypocrisy.” He accuses Trump of “discredit[ing], insult[ing] and abus[ing] reporters,” closing off access, suing news organizations, and stacking the briefing room with “right-wing propagandists posing as independent reporters.” He laments a “spineless and worthless” corporate media that won’t fight back hard enough.
If the press is truly under siege, if American journalism is dying, as Karem’s book title insists, then why does one President showing up to a black-tie dinner feel like an existential threat? The truth is simpler, and far more American: The press has never been more free. It’s just no longer the exclusive property of the old gatekeepers.
For decades, the press wasn’t a marketplace of ideas — it was a cozy cartel. Three television networks, a handful of powerful newspapers, and the annual WHCD (affectionately, or not, known as “nerd prom”), where reporters mingled with the very officials they were supposed to hold accountable. Access was everything. Favors were traded over cocktails. Stories that challenged the narrative often died quietly in the editing room.
Karem himself is a product of that system. He successfully sued to regain his press pass during Trump’s first term. He’s covered administrations for years from inside the bubble. Yet now he’s shocked that the man millions of Americans elected twice refuses to play by the old rules. Trump didn’t invent presidential control over White House access — it’s not a public utility, and never has been. Every president has shaped the briefing room to suit his style. What’s different is that Trump says the quiet part out loud, and millions of Americans cheer him for it.
Meanwhile, legacy outlets spent years pushing stories that later crumbled: the Russian collusion narrative (later walked back by intelligence officials), the Hunter Biden laptop promoted as “Russian disinformation,” and COVID-era claims that shifted with the political winds. Trust didn’t evaporate because of Trump’s tweets. It collapsed because Americans could see the spin in real time. Gallup’s latest poll shows just <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/695762/trust-media-new-low.aspx">28%</a> of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media — the lowest on record.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/wired-in-live-white-house-correspondents-dinner-special-edition?elementPosition=0&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">Watch the White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner LIVE on The Daily Wire</a>
The internet shattered the cartel. X, Substack, podcasts, YouTube, and independent sites let anyone with a smartphone and the courage to speak publish instantly. Citizen journalists reach millions without begging corporate approval.
Substack alone has exploded past 35 million monthly active subscribers by 2026, with paid subscriptions growing rapidly as readers vote with their wallets for independent voices. Podcasts and newsletters from moms, veterans, and everyday Americans now influence the national conversation more than evening newscasts ever did. Legacy newsrooms are hemorrhaging staff and subscribers, not because of “right-wing propagandists,” but because competition works. When the old guard calls this the “death of journalism,” what they really mean is the death of their monopoly.
Viewpoint diversity has never been higher. Before 2016, newsrooms in Washington, D.C. and New York City leaned overwhelmingly one way — studies routinely showed that over 90% of political donations from journalists went to Democrats. Conservative perspectives were dismissed as fringe. Today, parallel ecosystems flourish. Trump didn’t kill journalism; he accelerated its breakup into a true marketplace of ideas. Americans can now choose sources that reflect their values instead of being force-fed a single narrative.
Real-time corrections happen daily. The Hunter Biden story suppression, the lab-leak theory dismissal, and “transitory” inflation spin were all exposed not by internal ombudsmen but by independent outlets and the American public.
Legally, the press has never been safer. The First Amendment remains untouched. Presidents have always limited access, issued criticism, and occasionally sued when reporting crossed into falsehood. Trump’s “enemy of the people” line is protected speech, just as the media’s daily insults toward him are. No journalists are jailed. No newspapers are shuttered. Contrast that with actual authoritarian regimes where reporters face prison or worse. Reporters Without Borders may wring its hands, but America still ranks among the freest nations on earth for press freedom.
The WHCA dinner itself proves the point. It’s a celebrity schmooze-fest that raises scholarship money while reporters pose for selfies with power brokers. Karem and more than 250 colleagues (including Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson) signed a <a href="https://x.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/2046181834506096954/photo/1">letter</a> decrying “unprecedented attacks.” Yet the event was never about “vigorous press” — it was about access and glamour. Boycotting Trump because he shows up exposes the hypocrisy: The dinner was fine when it roasted him in 2011 or when comedians mocked him in absentia. Now that he’s back in the room as the elected president, suddenly it’s unbearable.
Karem’s Salon piece is revealing. He praises past colleagues for “standing up” to Trump and laments today’s “compliant reporters” softened by buyouts and diluted by new voices. He wants the old rules back — where a small guild decided the narrative and everyone else followed. Americans rejected that model in 2016, 2024, and again now.
The press isn’t dying — it’s democratizing. It’s becoming more representative, more accountable, and more responsive to the people it serves.
The question isn’t whether the press will survive Trump. The real question is whether the old guard will adapt to a truly open marketplace or keep boycotting reality while the rest of us move forward.
The press has never been more free. And that’s the American way.
***
Bethany Miller is the Director of Communications at NRB, managing editor of The Conservateur, and a senior fellow at Concerned Women for America.

Fake news graffiti

President Trump’s Appearance At The WHCD Isn’t A Threat To Journalism — Journalists Are

Free Press

Mainstream Media

White House Correspondents’ Dinner

There is a long-honored pattern among progressive media figures when it comes to any form of new media. Prolific X (formerly Twitter) user David Burge (@Iowahawkblog) made <a href="https://x.com/iowahawkblog/status/664089892599631872">this observation</a> in 2015, and it has not been stated better since:
<blockquote>
1. Identify a respected institution. 
2. kill it. 
3. gut it. 
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect. <a href="https://x.com/hashtag/lefties?src=hashtag_click">#lefties</a>
</blockquote>
This weekend, during White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD) and festivities, Substack will be hosting its own third annual invite-only party at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. Substack has sold this as a form of counter programming to traditional media, like network news and newspapers, and has always billed itself as a “New and Independent” media enterprise.
Except there is no longer anything new or independent about Substack, which over the last year has largely become a sanctuary catering to former corporate and legacy partisan journalists. For the first time, President Donald Trump will be in attendance, and several of the journalists he regularly spars with will be attending the Substack party instead.
Substack’s exclusive, invite-only party will feature a cadre of so-called independent media voices. Kara Swisher, Mehdi Hassan, Chuck Todd, Chris Cillizza, Jennifer Rubin, Jim Acosta, and more mainstream media cast-offs who now all lay a claim to Substack and who Substack is turning to for their audiences, and it goes without saying that they are the farthest thing from “independent” media.
There is also one more addition slated to appear — the looksmaxxing <a href="https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/politics/white-house-correspondents-dinner-weekend/65-ab37e62c-8089-4749-a4db-e8f9d8647df8">online influencer Clavicular</a>, who has made waves of late in Florida and seen cavorting around with far-Right nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes. As someone who makes a great deal of his living from Substack and has for the past three years, the glaring shift in ideology and mission has been hard to ignore, as have the algorithmic changes that now favor those very same journalists — the ones who will be partying this weekend. What independent voices on Substack see is The David Burge Effect happening in real time.
It wasn’t even five years ago that mainstream media figures and outlets were publishing hit pieces against Substack, calling it a platform <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/pressure-builds-newsletter-company-substack-stop-paying-nazi-writers-rcna132593">that hosts white supremacists</a>, dangerous vaccine disinformation, <a href="https://judedoyle.medium.com/substack-is-still-a-problem-dec84cb84188">transphobic, and lacking proper moderation</a>, that these same journalists and media figures were successful at hollowing out platforms like Facebook and Twitter of voices they found problematic, until Elon Musk purchased Twitter. Several prominent media figures, like Kara Swisher, abandoned Twitter because they stated they could not participate on a platform owned by Elon Musk.
In actuality, what happened is they lost the power, through Twitter, to silence voices they disagreed with. Gone were media allies Vijaya Gadde and Yoel Roth, the heads of (former) Twitter’s so-called “Safety Team,” which was disbanded under Musk, and with the release of the Twitter Files, revealed how they worked closely with journalists to censor voices on the platform, oftentimes conservative or Right-leaning in nature.
After Donald Trump&#8217;s second election in 2024, several media institutions began recalculating their business models. Resistance porn was no longer effective, and their audiences were dwindling. Several prominent journalists and media personalities found themselves out of a job. CNN’s grandstanding partisan personality, Jim Acosta, refused to be moved to late-night. Chuck Todd was out at NBC’s Meet the Press, and social media punchline and Wrongest Human Being on Earth Chris Cillizza had also departed CNN.
That’s where Substack stepped up, not only offering its platform to voices and institutions that had disparaged it in the past, but also pursuing promotional partnerships. Earlier this year, Head of News and Politics Catherine Valentine <a href="https://x.com/redsteeze/status/2019375521105383662">partnered with Cillizza to offer a Substack “Masterclass”</a> for journalists laid off at the Washington Post. Valentine also reached out on her public timeline for an anonymous CBS anchor unhappy with CBS News’s direction under new Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss.
Cillizza, who once famously stated that “for the billionth time, journalists don’t root for a side,” had only recently joined Substack but was clearly being promoted by the platform as a new and important voice for content over less prominent long-time users of the platform.
Last year, Substack made a push into video and live video, and there are rumors of Substack wanting to become essentially a new online television network, with the development of <a href="https://likeandsubscribenews.substack.com/p/scoop-substack-is-launching-a-tv">a live TV app</a>. Substack sent out a promotional email to users and subscribers (like my Substack, Versus Media). Who were they promoting with this new direction? Jim Acosta and Katie Couric — two well-established detractors in the media of the political and cultural Right.
Valentine’s X bio states that she is helping “to lead a new media revolution.” She’s a former CNN, Politico, and Washington Post journalist herself, which explains the urge to turn Substack into a newer version of those biased outlets; the same outlets that targeted Right-leaning and independent voices on social media over some of the biggest news stories of the last five years, including the origins of Covid and the resulting vaccines, Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, and the Hunter Biden laptop story, which journalists actively assisted Twitter at the time in stopping the sharing of the story on social media platforms.
To her credit, Valentine and other heads of Substack have been open to concerns about catering to legacy media partisans, but that doesn’t appear to be slowing this trend. It’s being lavishly celebrated and catered to, even with more of these promotional partnerships. Of <a href="https://substack.com/leaderboard/us-politics/paid">the Top Ten Bestsellers on Substack</a>, eight of the top 10 are progressive personalities or former corporate media journalists, and they will all likely be in attendance at Substack’s counter party to the WHCD.
Substack can no longer lay claim to being “New Media” when they have turned their platform over to the most prominent partisan voices of old media personalities from the Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC. If Substack wants to become the platform of the media it helped destroy in the first place, that’s certainly their choice.
After journalist/activist Don Lemon was arrested in Minneapolis earlier this year for his role in a church protest, during which congregants said Lemon blocked a doorway and would not let them exit, Substack released a <a href="https://substack.com/@substack/note/c-207583763">statement</a> defending Lemon, another former CNN personality, as an act of free speech and journalism.
It wasn’t.
While there was spirited debate among members of Substack&#8217;s leadership about religious freedom and the right to worship in peace, there was no mention of the First Amendment rights of the congregation that were being violated by Lemon and the protestors, with whom he was working.
What made Substack special in the beginning, and what made it thrive, was that it was a model that stood up to those very same institutions, which have largely been discredited by dwindling audiences and a lack of credibility. It didn’t cave to pressure and accusations of being a transphobic platform that also gladly hosted Neo Nazis. Now, Substack is throwing lavish invite-only parties for those very same people.
Substack is becoming South By Southwest and Coachella. What was once a fledgling, daring independent music festival featuring some of the boldest independent and undiscovered bands and musicians became a sell-out corporate media playground that hosted progressive politicians for TED Talks.
Coachella, once a bold four-day music festival featuring independent acts, is now simply a fashion orgy for the rich and the celebrity elite. The question we are all asking ourselves now is where we go from here, after Substack’s party for the media elites.
***
Stephen L. Miller is the host and producer of Versus Media Podcast on Substack. He has written for The Spectator magazine, National Review, the New York Post, and Fox News. He can be found on Twitter @redsteeze

WHCD afterparties in Washington DC

Substack Is Captured By The Media Elites

Legacy Media

Substack

FBI Director Kash Patel is preparing for a full-scale legal battle against The Atlantic after the outlet published a bombshell report he says is riddled with falsehoods, and he’s making clear he intends to take it to the mat.
“Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court — bring your checkbook,” Patel <a href="https://x.com/S_Fitzpatrick/status/2045273851764859074">told the magazine</a> ahead of publication, a warning that has now escalated into an imminent lawsuit.
The Friday article by Sarah Fitzpatrick, titled “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/kash-patel-fbi-director-drinking-absences/686839/">The FBI Director is MIA,</a>” levels a barrage of allegations against Patel, painting a picture of a senior law enforcement official allegedly plagued by instability, heavy drinking, and internal dysfunction. The report claims Patel engaged in “erratic” behavior, suffered bouts of paranoia about his job security, and was frequently absent or unreachable during key moments.
Among the most explosive claims: that Patel is “known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication” in front of colleagues, that members of his security detail have struggled to wake him due to alleged inebriation, and that officials once considered using breaching equipment to access a locked space when he could not be reached. The piece also alleges that meetings had to be delayed due to his condition and suggests his behavior could pose a “national security vulnerability.”
Patel’s legal team has forcefully rejected every one of those claims.
In a <a href="https://x.com/jbinnall/status/2045287437325254768">pre-publication letter</a>, his attorney Jesse Binnall called the allegations “categorically false and defamatory,” emphasizing that most rely on anonymous sources using vague phrasing like “people familiar with the matter.” Binnall argued that such sourcing “could not possibly possess firsthand knowledge” and accused the magazine of reckless disregard for the truth, a key component in proving defamation involving a public figure.
He also pointed to what he described as glaring factual holes, including the alleged “breaching equipment” incident, which he said has “no corroborating public record whatsoever” and appears to be either fabricated or based on a single unreliable source.
Reaction on X was immediate and sharply divided, with Patel allies and critics clashing over the credibility of The Atlantic’s reporting.
FBI media adviser Erica Knight <a href="https://x.com/_EricaKnight/status/2045279436354867267">blasted</a> the article as a recycled collection of rumors that “every real DC reporter chased, couldn&#8217;t verify, and passed on,” while laying out a lengthy defense of Patel’s record. She pointed to internal metrics under his leadership — including tens of thousands of arrests, major increases in violent crime enforcement, and large-scale fentanyl seizures — while dismissing the report’s central claims outright. “The so-called ‘intoxication incidents’ The Atlantic breathlessly reports have happened exactly ZERO times,” Knight wrote, adding bluntly: “Lawsuit is being filed.”
Others with direct ties to Patel echoed that pushback. Clint Brown, who described himself as a “sherpa” during Patel’s transition into the role, <a href="https://x.com/DissidentClint/status/2045310456340840611">said</a> he spent months working closely with him, and never witnessed any of the behavior described in the report. “Your anon sourced story is BS,” Brown wrote, adding that Patel was consistently responsive, detail-oriented, and deeply engaged in his work, often reviewing briefings at all hours.
Patel himself <a href="https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2045549772044439803">leaned into the fight</a>, framing the controversy as proof he’s doing his job. “Memo to the fake news — the only time I’ll ever actually be concerned about the hit piece lies you write about me will be when you stop,” he posted, adding that criticism would not deter the FBI from “making America safe again.”
On Capitol Hill, the reaction broke along predictable lines. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) seized on the report, <a href="https://x.com/SenSchumer/status/2045524585567723876">saying</a> it confirmed Patel is “completely unfit to serve” and calling for his resignation. But Tom Cotton (R-AR), who works directly with Patel as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, <a href="https://x.com/TomCottonAR/status/2045517520849773053">dismissed</a> the story as a “dishonest smear” and pointed instead to what he described as tangible results from the bureau. Cotton followed up, <a href="https://x.com/TomCottonAR/status/2045517524926705838">adding</a>, &#8220;Here&#8217;s what&#8217;s really happening: Liberal reporters and disgruntled deep state leakers — who have zero knowledge of what the story alleges — are bitter that the FBI is no longer targeting Catholic parents and pro-lifers.&#8221;
The clash underscores what is quickly becoming more than just a media dispute: a political and legal showdown that is now playing out in real time across both the press and the courts.
Inside the administration, Patel has drawn swift and public backing. “Patel has accomplished more in 14 months than the previous administration did in four years. Anonymously sourced hit pieces do not constitute journalism,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said when reached out to by The Atlantic for comment.
FBI Assistant Director of Public Affairs Ben Williamson, who pushed back on the allegations when first contacted by the outlet, didn’t mince words in his response. He dismissed the report as a reheated collection of long-circulating rumors that had never held up under scrutiny, <a href="https://x.com/_WilliamsonBen/status/2045274603455476140">saying</a>: “This article is a compilation of pretty much every obviously fake rumor I’ve heard the last 14 months except the Atlantic is the only one dumb enough to actually print it.”
Patel himself has gone further, <a href="https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2045327321192599867">publicly accusing</a> the magazine of acting with “actual malice,” the high legal bar required in defamation cases involving public officials. He went further, saying, “See you and your entire entourage of false reporting in court.”
His team is also demanding that The Atlantic preserve all internal communications, drafts, and source materials related to the story, a clear signal that litigation is not just a threat, but imminent.
For her part, Fitzpatrick is standing by her reporting, citing interviews with more than two dozen sources and insisting the story is accurate. 
Neither side is backing down and so the high-stakes collision between a top federal law enforcement official and a major national publication seems imminent. If Patel follows through, the case could become a major test of modern media practices, particularly the reliance on anonymous sourcing in stories involving national security figures, and whether courts are willing to scrutinize those standards more aggressively.
The next round seems likely to play out in court, where both sides will be forced to back up their claims under oath, and where the consequences could be far more serious than a war of words.

Kash Patel

Patel Unleashes On The Atlantic Over ‘Categorically False’ Report Including ‘Locked Room’ Claim

Courts

kash patel

Lawsuit

The Atlantic

Trump Administration

On Tuesday’s episode of The View, it was Joy Behar’s turn to play biblical scholar. The longtime co-host confidently asserted: “Jesus himself did not run around saying, ‘I’m the Messiah, I’m the Messiah.’”
Co-host Sara Haines, to her credit, immediately responded with the obvious: “That’s exactly what Jesus said, ‘I am the Messiah.’”
Let that sink in. One of television&#8217;s most prominent voices just rewrote the Gospels on live television because it was politically convenient. This is what passes for insight on daytime television. And don’t forget that ABC considers The View a news show.
Let’s do what Behar clearly hasn’t: open a Bible.
In John 4, Jesus sits down with the Samaritan woman at the well. She says the Messiah is coming. Jesus replies plainly: “I who speak to you am He.” In John 8:58, He declares, “Before Abraham was, I am” — a direct claim to the divine name of God from Exodus 3:14. The religious leaders tried to stone Him on the spot for blasphemy. During His trial before the high priest Caiaphas in Matthew 26, when asked if He was the Christ, the Son of the Blessed, Jesus answered, “I am.” That confession is what led directly to His crucifixion. The entire trial and execution hinge on Jesus affirming His identity as the promised Messiah.
Is Joy Behar having a Joe Biden moment?
Jesus didn’t “run around” shouting it like a campaign slogan, but He most certainly claimed it — repeatedly and clearly and with divine authority. He spoke as one with authority over the Law itself. The very reason He was crucified was because He claimed to be the Messiah.
This isn’t just garden-variety ignorance. It’s the sneering arrogance of the secular Left, which loves a neutered, hippie version of Jesus who never makes any uncomfortable truth claims. In reality, the real Jesus is far too politically incorrect for The View set. He’s the one who called religious hypocrites a “brood of vipers” and insisted He was the exclusive path to salvation. Joy Behar and company like to memory-hole the parts of the story that don’t fit their narrative.
The View has long been a safe space for this kind of casual anti-Christian contempt. From Whoopi Goldberg’s historical illiteracy to the panel&#8217;s routine sneers at Christian nationalists, these multimillionaire celebrities treat faith as either a joke or a weapon, depending on the target. Behar isn’t just wrong here, she’s confidently, arrogantly wrong. The kind of wrong that only comes from someone who hasn’t cracked open a Bible since she <a href="https://ffrf.org/publications/day/joy-behar/#:~:text=Raised%20Catholic%2C%20she%20now%20identifies,felt%20that%20I%20was%20brainwashed.%E2%80%9D">“lost her faith”</a> to “find herself.”
The irony is thicker than her makeup. These are the same hosts who invoke Jesus when they want to shame conservatives about immigration or taxes, but the second a Republican does anything remotely culturally Christian, suddenly He’s just some vague figure who never made any bold claims about Himself. Meanwhile, actual Christianity — the kind grounded in Scripture — remains the most persecuted faith on earth, absorbing violence while progressives like Behar lecture us from their cushy ABC perch about who the real threat is.
While Behar was busy screaming to America about narcissism during Holy Week, millions of Christians were celebrating the holiest days of the year — the week the Messiah did exactly what the Gospels record: He claimed His title, carried His cross, and rose from the dead three days later to prove every word true.
Next time Joy wants to play Bible scholar, maybe she should try reading one first.

ABC’s “The View” – Season 21

ABC News Host Joy Behar Claims Jesus Christ Never Called Himself Messiah

Christianity

The View

&#8220;The lady doth protest too much, methinks.&#8221; Shakespeare wrote it for a queen. It fits a congressman just as well.
For years, U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell — California Democrat, impeachment manager, aspiring governor, and self-appointed guardian of women&#8217;s dignity — lectured America about sexual misconduct. He demanded Brett Kavanaugh open his doors to every accuser. On social media he posted &#8220;Support survivors. Believe survivors. We are with you&#8221; in 2018. He championed the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files &#8220;for sexual assault victims.&#8221; He sat across from Senator Adam Schiff not long ago and declared, with his characteristic smugness, &#8220;We are better than this.&#8221;
It turns out he is not.
On April 10, the San Francisco Chronicle published a damning exclusive: a former staffer, hired at age 21 in his Castro Valley district office, alleged that Swalwell sexually assaulted her on two separate occasions while she was too intoxicated to consent, leaving her battered, bruised, and bleeding. Hours later, CNN published a follow-up with three additional women. Two allege Swalwell sent them unsolicited explicit messages and photographs. A fourth says she woke up in his New York City hotel room after a night of unwanted kissing and touching, with no memory of how she got there.
The dominoes fell fast. The Manhattan District Attorney&#8217;s office opened a criminal investigation into the 2024 NYC hotel allegation. More than 50 former staffers signed an open letter calling the accusations &#8220;serious, credible, and [demanding] accountability&#8221; — urging him to resign from Congress and exit the gubernatorial race. He suspended his campaign the following day. His statement managed, somehow, to apologize for things he simultaneously insisted he never did.
Ugly — but the revelation that this congressman is a grotesque weirdo isn&#8217;t the main takeaway. Most of us already knew that. The intrigue is in the mob response from the Left. The liberal media knew all along and turned a blind eye for years. Now the whole cabal is scrambling to pretend they were always on the case while simultaneously throwing Swalwell directly under the bus.
Reporter Steven Tavares admitted what was, apparently, an open secret: that Swalwell&#8217;s behavior &#8220;was known by all levels of our local government and the Alameda County Democratic Party&#8221; as far back as 2013 when he first arrived in Washington, D.C. That&#8217;s 13 years. It adds up to over a decade of endorsements, fundraisers, national television bookings, and impeachment hearings — while a press corps that lectures the country about speaking truth to power looked the other way.
This isn&#8217;t investigative journalism; it&#8217;s a deliberate demolition timed for effect.
Ask the obvious question: if Swalwell&#8217;s behavior was an open secret in Democratic circles, why did the party of supposed feminists and #MeToo metrosexuals allow him to ascend from local pol to gubernatorial frontrunner? The answer is that Californians know he&#8217;s not just a perv, but an idiot — and he would&#8217;ve burned California faster than Gavin Newsom did last January. Swalwell would&#8217;ve been an abysmal candidate against Steve Hilton. Now that it&#8217;s politically convenient to rid themselves of this smarmy beta, they&#8217;ve unleashed the dogs on him.
The press, which had been sitting on this story for years, suddenly found its courage. <a href="https://x.com/brianstelter/status/2043634957776548277">Brian Stelter and company</a> would very much like credit for a moment of journalistic reckoning. They don&#8217;t deserve it. They failed for over a decade. The timing of this story is political, not principled.
The lesson isn’t that a sanctimonious hypocrite has been exposed, though one has. The lesson is about who holds the controls. The liberal media does not report on Democratic misconduct. It ratifies decisions the party has already made. When Swalwell was useful, the rumors stayed rumors. When he became inconvenient, the Chronicle got its scoop.
On the bright side, though, the citizens of California can still elect the Democrat who assaulted her ex-husband by pouring scalding mashed potatoes on his head.

Rep. Eric Swalwell Begins Presidential Campaign With Town Hall On Gun Violence

The Media Knew About Eric Swalwell. They Just Didn’t Care — Until Now.

California

Congress

Eric Swalwell

There&#8217;s a thought experiment I want you to sit with for a moment.
God forbid Barack Obama passed away — shot in front of thousands of people, the moment captured on every phone in the crowd and splashed across every screen in the country within minutes — and Michelle Obama was left to pick up the pieces, preserve his legacy, and carry the torch in the only way she knew how. Do you think you would see ultra-famous white comedians painting themselves in blackface and mocking the way she grieves? Without consequence? Without wall-to-wall outrage? No. Of course not. Because that would be racist, and it would be cruel, and everyone would say so loudly and immediately.
When the shoe is on the other foot, no one seems to care.
Druski — born Drew Desbordes — has become one of the most commercially ubiquitous comedic presences in America. The COVID-era social media comedian turned pop culture fixture hosts a satirical dating show, joined the 2026 season of The Voice, and has assembled a brand portfolio that reads like a Fortune 500 roll call: T-Mobile, Amazon, the NFL, Nike, Happy Dad Hard Seltzer, PrizePicks, Meta, NBC/Peacock, Dunkin&#8217;, and Google Pixel. He has over 20 million followers. He is everywhere.
And this week, he decided to use that platform to mock a grieving widow.
In a now-viral video, Druski appears in full whiteface — skin painted white, blonde wig, blue contacts, all-white pantsuit — complete with fireworks and dramatic stage lighting. He mocks Erika Kirk, the recently widowed CEO of Turning Point USA, for continuing to make public appearances in the wake of her husband&#8217;s assassination. He ridicules the Trump administration&#8217;s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for offering prayers and honoring American symbols during press conferences. He depicts a blonde conservative in pink, riding with a white lap dog, singing Katy Perry&#8217;s &#8220;California Girls&#8221; on the way to a drive-through. And he lampoons Erika&#8217;s composure during a recent interview with Bari Weiss, turning grief into punchline fodder.
I&#8217;ll be honest: I barely knew who Druski was before this week. Unfortunately, I know who he is now.
Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;ll give him: conservative women are not humorless. We can laugh at ourselves and take a punch. The Leavitt bit? Cheap, but fine. The drive-through? Inaccurate — the last time I heard Katy Perry sing, she was in space. But there is a line between political satire and using a widowed mother as a punchline for 80 million viewers, and Druski crossed it without flinching.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year in front of thousands of people, while doing the thing he loved most — talking to young people and making the case for his country. We watched it on our phones. We were horrified. Then heartbroken. Then — naively, perhaps — hopeful that the brutality of it might draw some line we could all agree not to cross. Political violence is bad. Killing people for their beliefs is wrong. Surely that much was universal.
We thought wrong. Too many on the left laughed, celebrated, and mocked the tragedy. They worked to tarnish his name before he was even buried. Jimmy Kimmel told blatant lies masquerading as jokes and was suspended for it. And now, six months later, a comedian with a nine-figure brand portfolio is degrading Charlie&#8217;s widow for daring to honor his memory — for refusing to disappear.
That&#8217;s not a comedy bit. That&#8217;s cruelty in makeup.
Druski is not some fringe provocateur. He is corporate America&#8217;s darling — the face you see when you open an app, watch a game, or scroll through your feed. So, at what point does the ubiquitous ad avatar become a liability?
This isn&#8217;t his first controversy. In September 2025, he enraged fans with a whiteface skit at a NASCAR race, portraying a caricatured &#8220;proud American&#8221; redneck. Then came the NFL Honors, where he mispronounced wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba&#8217;s name in a way that left Buckeye fans — myself included — vexed. Each time, the brands shrugged.
The Daily Wire reached out to Druski’s active brand partnerships, T-Mobile, Happy Dad, and NBC/Peacock, asking whether they intend to retain Desbordes as a brand partner in light of this content. All but T-Mobile failed to respond, offering this: &#8220;The content in question is not in any way affiliated with T-Mobile, nor is it a reflection of our brand and values.&#8221; A statement of distance — but not of severance. Druski remains their Chief Swagger Officer. NBC said nothing. He remains on The Voice.
So the answer to the question in the headline appears to be: yes, you can.
At least for now.
Grief is not a costume. A widow is not a prop. And a woman who lost her husband to a political assassination — who chooses to stay in the fight and keep his work alive — deserves more than a whiteface parody from a man who hawks hard seltzer and phone plans for a living.
Conservatives don&#8217;t expect special treatment. We just expect consistency. If mockery of grief is off-limits for certain races and certain parties, it must be off-limits for all. Until corporations decide that values actually mean something more than virality and quarterly earnings, they will keep propping up figures like Druski — who demeans the bereaved and cashes seven-figure checks for the privilege.
The brands have spoken. Or rather, they haven&#8217;t. And that silence says it all.

The Voice – Season 29

T-Mobile Distances Itself From ‘Chief Switching Officer’ Druski After Sketch Mocking Erika Kirk

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Perhaps the most common feature of the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/14/politics/maha-birth-control-politics-of-the-pill">flurry</a> <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/population-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-birth-control">of</a> <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/10/27/nx-s1-5535839/population-shift-birth-rate-misinformation">articles</a> <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-information-trust/misleading-narratives-and-social-media-shape-contraception-perceptions/">about</a> <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953623004380">young</a> <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2025/12/17/young-women-teen-girls-gen-z-birth-control-beliefs-democrat-republican-tiktok-misinformation-contraception/">women</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/17/birth-control-why-are-influencers-turning-away-from-the-pill-and-towards-natural-contraceptive-methods">rejecting</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/10/09/health/ob-gyn-reveals-troubling-trend-shes-seeing-with-gen-z-women/">hormonal</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/style/birth-control-skepticism-wellness-tiktok.html">birth</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/03/21/stopping-birth-control-misinformation/">control</a> is the claim that their concerns are fueled by “misinformation” or based on “unfounded theories.” I’m a younger millennial. I’ve never used hormonal birth control, and I don’t plan to. But what these writers and doctors fail to grasp is how fed up women are of being told their pain is normal and prescribed a pill at 13, only to be told they have “unexplained infertility” and need IVF at 30.
It doesn’t take a medical degree to hypothesize that women’s healthcare has gone terribly wrong. It is almost entirely structured around either suppressing or bypassing the female reproductive system altogether. When journalists and doctors claim women like me are misinformed, they reject an opportunity to help make women healthier. 
For 60 years now, the standard of care for women in the United States has been a protocol that seeks not to understand and work with the female body, but to inhibit and short-circuit it. It’s no surprise that the women who watched their mothers and grandmothers unquestioningly swallow the pill and continue to suffer are now demanding a better way.
The increased rejection of hormonal birth control also comes amid a tectonic shift in medical treatment for minors.  Several major medical associations recently issued <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pediatricians-group-says-research-doesnt-support-gender-affirming-treatments">statements</a> against pediatric gender transition in the wake of the Fox Varin lawsuit, which held medical providers responsible for performing a double mastectomy on a minor. Sex-rejection treatments and surgeries involve medicating children with puberty blockers and hormone therapies, among other things. And yet many adolescent girls, some as young as 11, are prescribed hormone therapy in the form of the hormonal birth control pill or an IUD, despite their long-term effects being largely unknown.
Of sexually active 15 to 19-year-olds, almost half are prescribed some form of hormonal birth control. This, despite the fact that there are no large randomized controlled trials on the effects of synthetic hormones during girls’ pubescent years. Some research on this cohort has shown <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/120/5/1135/71113/Contraception-and-Adolescents?utm">reductions</a> in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010782408002801?utm_source">bone mass</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40097087/">density</a>, which is itself concerning. But little exists on long-term effects to adolescent brain or cardiovascular health, both of which actively require sex hormones for development. Animal studies <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40188588/">show</a> that exposure to hormonal contraceptives during adolescence has persistent effects on the female brain and behavior, though it’s unclear how this translates to humans.
Your response to women rejecting hormonal birth control will almost certainly depend upon your answer to one question: What is medicine? The same ideology that undergirds the transgender movement forms the foundation of women’s health, too: “My body, my choice.” But making your body in your own self-image is not medicine. It’s choice theory applied to the human body. And the philosophy of choice will always be insufficient because it inherently rejects the bounds of reality.
What if women’s health was actually about making women healthy instead of maximizing choice? The solution to America’s health problem is the same as the solution to transgender ideology: Respect reality, recognize that our bodies bound us and we can’t make ourselves into whatever we choose to be, and accept that women’s bodies are different from men’s. That’s not only okay but also good. Women’s bodies were made to bear children; blaming the patriarchy or <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-pursuit-of-equality-is-ruining-your-marriage">raging about the system</a> will not change that fact. Let medicine be about restoring the body’s natural function, not trying to change it. When we become unfocused on what the practice of medicine is in principle, people get hurt, even when medical professionals have the best intentions.
As a woman who has been on the receiving end of so-called “women’s healthcare,” it seems as though there is little will to understand the potentially negative effects of hormonal birth control, or the positive effects of working with rather than against the female body’s natural function. After all, birth control is convenient and perhaps even something of a sacrament to the feminized, sexually evolved West.
“Women have been taking the pill for decades,” I was told by a pushy doctor at an Ivy League research hospital, who wouldn’t let me leave his exam room without a prescription for the minipill for the extreme cramps I was having in my early 20s. When I asked for a hormone panel to help diagnose a potentially underlying health condition, fearful I’d be unable to conceive later in life, he said, perhaps revealing more about himself than intended, that a hormone panel wouldn’t tell him anything.
But not all women’s health practitioners are so unimaginative. Dr. Naomi Whittaker is a board-certified OBGYN and surgeon focused on women&#8217;s restorative reproductive medicine. She’s also the founder of <a href="https://www.rrmacademy.org/">RRM Academy</a>, which employs both conventional medicine and the latest in restorative reproductive techniques. “Working with the female body rather than against it is the cornerstone of what I do,” she said. “I see hormones not as a nuisance to suppress, but as a language the body uses to communicate.” She calls restoring the body’s natural function “the spirit of restorative reproductive medicine.”
Even still, the establishment offers these doctors no help. Medical associations and education do not teach the kind of medicine Dr. Whittaker practices, and they are deeply skeptical of it. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine have <a href="https://www.asrm.org/globalassets/_asrm/advocacy-and-policy/advocacy-activities/2025/2025-08-13-joint_letter_opposing_rrm_081425.pdf">issued statements</a> and <a href="https://www.asrm.org/news-and-events/asrm-news/press-releasesbulletins/asrm-hosts-capitol-hill-briefing-for-policymakers--congressional-staff-to-hear-from-providers--patients-about-importance-of-ivf-access-realities-and-limitations-of-restorative-reproductive-medicine/">held congressional briefings</a> against restorative reproductive medicine. After all, it is a competitor to the medical status quo at a time when the government has expressed more interest in women’s health and fertility. It seems as though the medical establishment is vying for a cut of a much-hoped-for government check.
Regardless, women continue rejecting the status quo. And this rejection comes amid an explosion of so-called “fem-tech” companies marketing devices (usually wearables, such as rings or watches) to assist women in either avoiding or achieving pregnancy naturally.
These devices use sensors to track temperature, sleep, and heart rate, among other things, to pinpoint ovulation or even underlying health conditions. Natural Cycles, which uses an AI algorithm adjusted to each individual user, became the first app to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration as birth control in 2018. And Oura, whose sensor-laden rings have become something of a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/09/oura-ring-lobbying-rfk-maha-washington-00770320?nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&amp;nname=playbook&amp;nrid=b076877d-0054-4fa6-8bd9-93aa06bde864">status symbol</a> in Washington, is aiming higher than transforming women’s healthcare: It is purporting to change the face of American healthcare altogether.
Wearables such as the Oura ring are not only designed for tracking menstrual cycles, though they can do that. They are also designed to help wearers know more about their bodies (sleep quality and blood oxygen, activity, or stress levels, for example) and to help alert them to potential illness. Only a few months ago, an older-style wearable — the Fitbit — alerted me that my heart was in arrhythmia and told me to go to the emergency room. At 31, I am not the usual candidate for atrial fibrillation, and the ER doctor assumed the device had been faulty. After performing an EKG, he was amazed to find the watch had been right. Untreated heart arrhythmias are the most common cause of sudden cardiac death in the world.
American medicine has long suffered from being reactive rather than proactive. We treat symptoms and diseases rather than teaching people how to avoid them. After all, symptom and disease management is where all the money is, and healthcare, like all businesses, needs money to survive. But wearables may be a sign that’s changing. After all, Oura’s market valuation of $11 billion dollars is more than four times greater than it was just three years ago. 
As women continue rejecting the pill, those beholden to the medical status quo will probably continue blaming women for falling prey to misinformation. That’s a lazy response. They’d do well to look a little closer: Women may be the early adopters of a new age of American medicine, rejecting pills and their unintended side effects in favor of preventative and restorative approaches, with wearables at the helm. American women seem to be ahead of the curve in heralding a return to true medicine. The only question is: Will the medical establishment get on board?
***
Katelyn Walls Shelton (<a href="https://x.com/AnnaKateShelt">@AnnaKateShelt</a>) is a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Bioethics, Technology, and Human Flourishing Program and a 2025 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow. Her Substack is <a href="https://katelynshelton.substack.com/">Technically Human</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Birth Control Pills, Female Contraception Estrogen Hormones, Prescription Medicine for PMS

The Pill Revolt — Why Millennial Women Like Me Are Rethinking Hormonal Birth Control

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