Fox News host Tucker Carlson says it’s incumbent upon the American people to realize the danger posed by “the big legacy media outlets” embracing censorship and then replace it soon with “something new.”
Mr. Carlson told his audience Thursday night that traditional journalism essentially has been subsumed by corporate entities that thrive on oppressing true intellectual discourse.
“We have been waiting for the big legacy media outlets — NBC News, CNN, The New York Times — to wake up and recall that they must oppose censorship. It’s their duty, it’s why they exist,” the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host said. “So, as much as we criticize them, we’ve assumed at some point they’ll recall that — but no, that’s not going to happen. Let’s be honest.”
Mr. Carlson said the threat posed by a poisoned media environment beholden to Silicon Valley has been highlighted by the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Sen. Rand Paul, for example, was recently silenced by YouTube for his continued criticism of mask mandates and the vacillating positions of high-profile public officials.
“There was nothing kooky or inaccurate about Rand Paul’s video on masks,” Mr. Carlson said of the Kentucky Republican’s commentary. “It was true. … People know what they’re talking about it, agree with it, including the people in charge of our COVID response — but it was censored anyway. And the fact that YouTube did censor it anyway is a scandal. It’s one of many such scandals playing out in our country right now. Now, you’d think the media might be on this story, you’d imagine that people who make their living on the First Amendment would defend it and lead the charge against censorship, but no, just the opposite in this bewildering time.”
He then stressed the corrupted nature of major media outlets.
“Those people encourage censorship,” he said. “They’re out there in public begging the tech companies to suppress news and information, to make certain the public never sees it. Doing that makes them feel powerful and protects their monopoly, so now they’re attacking Rand Paul. … They are not going to oppose censorship. They benefit from it. So what’s our option? The rest of us living in this country who don’t have another passport, who are going to stay here? We have to replace them. We need something new.”
Mr. Carlson pointed viewers to Rumble for freer discourse and noted efforts by journalist Glenn Greenwald to find a network of journalists with integrity.
“He spent the last couple of months gathering a group of free thinkers and planning a move to an alternative video platform called Rumble,” Mr. Carlson concluded. “Jeff Bezos’s newspaper attacked [the platform] today. That means The New York Times will soon be on it along with The Atlantic and The Daily Beast and all the rest of the Praetorian Guard. Your job, ignore it. You know they are liars, they are frantically defending a system that no one believes in anymore.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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