2023 – Media’s Year of Moral Collapse

Journalism schools may someday point to 2023 as the year of a final moral collapse for the corporate media – a point of no return ultimately reached after years of ethical decline and loss of credibility with the public.

This year, perhaps more than any other in history, America’s once lionized major news organizations proved they were not about “the news” at all, but about the protection of those in power and partisan politicians they favored.

In doing so, they toppled the ethical pillars that once stood as the greatest traditions of American journalism—principles such as:

• Expose and relentlessly pursue political scandals and public corruption no matter which party is involved.

• Bring to light cover-ups by law enforcement and government officials seeking to hide scandals and wrongdoing by the powerful, or trying to obstruct congressional investigations into such wrongdoing.

• Dig into secret “dark money” forces or lawyers abusing the legal system to smear their political opponents or those who dissent from the establishment view.

• Expose and hold up for public scrutiny purveyors of hatred and malice like antisemitism and never excuse it or them.

• And above all, never act as an agent of the government and those in power and relentlessly expose efforts of government or powerful enterprises to censor dissenters or infringe on Americans’ right to free speech.

Here are some examples of why 2023 may well be seen as the year corporate American journalism entirely lost any claim on moral sense or ethical conduct.

Doubling down on the cover-up of the “Biden Crime Family” – the greatest public corruption scandal in American history, surpassing Teapot Dome, Credit Mobilier, and Watergate

The slew of revelations about the Biden family’s shady foreign business dealings and alleged influence peddling ranks among the most shocking scandals in American history and should’ve been the biggest domestic political story of the year by far. But instead, a coordinated campaign of Democrat obstructionism and media misdirection have insulated Biden from criticism and accountability.

In generations past, media outlets understood the vital role they played in holding government officials accountable in exposing wrongdoing by those in power. Journalists likewise prided themselves on never serving the interests of government officials or allowing themselves to be used as tools to advance a partisan agenda.

Now, however, the media has become a primary enabler of Biden’s corruption and a pawn in all the left’s schemes. While repeating Democrat talking points about how Republicans are a “threat to democracy” and legitimizing left-wing efforts to financially destroy and imprison Donald Trump, Biden’s greatest political threat, the media has simultaneously downplayed, discredited, and ignored mounting evidence implicating the First Family in a string of major crimes.

Consider for a moment just some of what House Republicans and enterprising conservative journalists have unearthed.

We now know that, as president, Joe Biden lied on multiple occasions about his knowledge of his son’s business dealings. We know that Hunter Biden traveled with Joe Biden on Air Force Two to visit at least 15 countries and conduct business. We know that, while he was vice president, Joe Biden used an alias to secretly communicate via email with Hunter’s business partners. We also know that Owasco PC, Hunter Biden’s business entity that is now under DOJ investigation for tax evasion and other crimes, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden.

Overall, as the House Oversight Committee has reported, the Biden family and their associates “raked in over $24 million dollars between 2015 and 2019 by selling Joe Biden as ‘the brand’” – including millions from entities linked directly to the Chinese Communist Party.

Furthermore, as two whistleblowers have attested, when the IRS launched an investigation into these dealings, the Biden family received “preferential treatment” amid pressure from U.S. Attorneys whom Biden appointed – leading to a sweetheart plea deal for Hunter Biden that was later rejected. In fact, were it not for these two courageous whistleblowers and a federal judge, it is entirely possible that Hunter Biden would have escaped with even less than a slap on the wrist and blanket immunity for any as-yet undiscovered crimes.

Then there is the matter of Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine, where he sat on the board of energy company Burisma while his father was vice president under Barack Obama. Despite having no prior experience in the energy sector and admittedly suffering from a range of substance abuse issues at the time, the younger Biden and a business partner were paid $6.5 million in 2014 and 2015 alone.

All of this, of course, comes in the context of Joe Biden openly admitting in 2018 that he threatened in 2016 to withhold military aid to Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. (As many conservatives have astutely pointed out, Biden was, in other words, openly admitting that he did what the media accused Trump of doing as the grounds for Democrats’ first impeachment against him in 2019.)

More recently, there is the matter of Hunter’s bizarre art career. Despite no formal art training, the First Son allegedly made at least $1.3 million selling his art, including by selling one painting to a major Democrat donor whom Joe Biden later appointed to a presidential commission.

Joe Biden and his legal team have maintained that all of these dealings were legitimate – claims parroted without question by the mainstream media. But neither the Bidens nor the media have been able to offer any specifics on any actual work products that the Biden family provided, or any value at all that Biden family members could provide to foreign businesses – aside, of course, from access to Joe Biden himself.

Democrats have clung to the assertion that in order for there to be any wrongdoing, it must be proven that Joe Biden accepted money directly from a foreign entity in exchange for favorable treatment. But as law professor Jonathan Turley has pointed out during congressional testimony, “money going to family members is, in fact, a benefit.” Turley has also penned an op-ed for The New York Post pointing out specific instances where Joe directly benefited from his family’s business dealings.

If you’ve only been tuning in to the mainstream outlets this year, you likely haven’t heard any of this. Major papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post continue to offer only cursory coverage of the scandal and bracket the GOP’s allegations against the Biden family with phrases like “without evidence.”

It’s also worth considering what this coverage would be like if Trump were in Biden’s place, and his children were the ones making millions of dollars a year without any discernible work product. Given the laughably dishonest coverage of the Trump family’s legitimate business dealings that existed long before Donald Trump’s foray into politics, it is a virtual guarantee that Trump would never have survived a scandal even a fraction of the magnitude as the one Biden is now facing.

Yet the media has dutifully covered for the Bidens and looks poised to continue to do so through next year’s election. But as the bombshells pile up, the American people are beginning to take notice and backlash against Biden’s media enablers is mounting.

Refusing to question the FBI director and other top intelligence community officials after years of falsehoods, dodges, and obstructions of justice

Despite a slew of scandals involving abuses of power by the FBI and intelligence community in 2023, the media engaged in a coordinated campaign to cover for the Deep State bureaucrats targeting the left’s political enemies.

In January, it was revealed that an FBI field office in Richmond, Virginia, produced a memo labeling “radical-traditionalist Catholics” as a violent extremist threat. Once the memo became public, FBI headquarters in Washington quickly disavowed it and claimed that it was the product of one rogue field office and did not represent the views of the FBI overall.

The media predictably ran with this narrative and asked no further questions.

However, subsequent investigations launched by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee revealed that multiple field offices had coordinated to prepare the memo.

Furthermore, when Missouri Senator Josh Hawley questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray in perhaps one of the most devastating moments in the agency’s history, Wray admitted that there had been no disciplinary measures taken against the individuals responsible for creating the memo – further proving that a shameful lack of accountability pervades the nation’s highest law enforcement agency.

Still, the media were silent, despite the fact that Wray – whose falsehoods and obfuscations under oath seem to grow with every congressional appearance – was badly shaken after being caught red-handed by Hawley. Yet the journalistic class ignored this perfect made-for-TV moment out of blind loyalty to those in power.

The pattern of conduct here dates back to the beginning of Wray’s tenure, when—in the wake of an Inspector General report detailing FBI wrongdoing, cover-ups, and crimes during its “Russian collusion” hoax and “FISA warrants” scandals—Wray responded by saying he was going to call for “more training.”

From the start, Wray has stalled on looking into, investigating, or punishing wrongdoers – a position that now has led to complete loss of faith in his leadership by many members of Congress. This includes Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI), who have still not been able to get answers on what they believe was an attempt by FBI agents to set up an intelligence briefing intended to lead to political embarrassment as described by The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.

The media also said nothing when pro-life activist Mark Houck was acquitted by a jury following a dawn raid by the FBI on his house last year. Instead of probing FBI leadership on why it felt the need to send more than a dozen heavily-armed agents to the suburban home of this father of seven, the media either ignored the story entirely or continued to demonize Houck and other pro-life activists.

Additionally, Wray’s FBI has refused to comply with multiple document requests from House Republicans, comprising one of the most glaring instances of obstruction of justice to date from a federal official. Again, the media has chosen not to cover the fact that an unelected federal bureaucrat is knowingly disobeying a duly-elected governing body.

Journalists once viewed it as their mission to protect dissenting voices against government attempts to impose censorship and prosecute the political opponents of the ruling party. But 2023 marked another year in which the media instead aided and abetted the efforts of those in power, primarily the leadership at the FBI, to target Democrats’ political enemies.

Refusing to probe the players in a dark legal cabal behind the lawfare and harassment brought against Donald Trump, elected Republicans, and everyday conservative Americans

From the four spurious indictments against Donald Trump to the media smear campaigns against Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Elon Musk, there appears to be a coordinated and well-funded effort to publicly destroy Democrats’ political enemies.

But to date, despite constant fearmongering about “dark money” in politics, the media has intentionally shielded left-wing groups involved in this effort from scrutiny. While attempting to destroy conservative organizations like the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo’s Marble Freedom Trust, the media has covered for notorious left-wing dark money groups like Arabella Advisors, which has been one of the primary money groups behind the left’s efforts to politicize the American justice system.

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a vehement Trump critic, has notably said regarding the Trump indictments in particular that he doesn’t “believe a Democratic prosecutor just happens to be attacking a Republican” and stated flatly that it’s “all politics.”

In an honest media ecosystem, there would be a far more robust effort to expose the forces behind the left’s schemes to destroy the conservative movement. It is a serious indictment of the media that no one in the legacy press is even asking who the major players are in this elaborate smear and defamation effort.

Covering for Harvard President Claudine Gay and the rest of academia amidst a proliferation of antisemitism and anti-American sentiment on college campuses

Even after refusing to say that calls for genocide against Jews violate the school’s code of conduct and being exposed as a serial plagiarist, Claudine Gay is still firmly entrenched as Harvard’s president – thanks in large part to the fact that the media has continued to cover for her.

Despite revelations that she lifted sentences and in some cases entire paragraphs from other authors, including in her 1997 PhD thesis, the media has parroted Harvard’s assurances that Gay has resolved the issues of “duplicative language” and that the issue shouldn’t require her to step down.

Moreover, mainstream outlets, instead of defending the right to free speech and media inquiry, have ignored the fact that Harvard is now threatening to sue The New York Post for defamation for reporting on the scandal.

Most major outlets have also downplayed the extent and severity of antisemitism on college campuses following Hamas’s attack on Israel. For instance, after one episode in which Jewish students were forced to barricade themselves in the Cooper Union in New York as a pro-Hamas mob attempted to break in, The New York Times described it as merely a “tense scene.”

Publishing Hamas lies and propaganda and pushing “moral equivalence” of Hamas and Israel

The New York Times’ recent publication of an op-ed from the Hamas-backed mayor of Gaza City is a perfect encapsulation of the media’s shameful moral equivalency and willingness to promote Hamas’s lies when it comes to the war in Gaza.

It’s worth remembering that a Times editor was forced out in 2020 after running an op-ed from Republican Tom Cotton, a sitting U.S. Senator. While Senator Cotton’s calls to end the violence then taking over American streets were apparently too much for the paper, parroting the propaganda of a politician backed by a terrorist group was not.

But even this outrage pales in comparison to the media’s willingness to report – based on claims from the Gaza Ministry of Health – that Israel had intentionally targeted the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza and killed hundreds of innocent civilians. The story quickly spread around the world, fueling antisemitic rhetoric and actions, before it was later confirmed that the rocket had actually struck a parking lot, not the hospital itself, and was an errant launch from Hamas fighters in Gaza, not Israel.

The saga of the al-Ahli Hospital and the publication of an op-ed by a Hamas leader again confirmed that the American media have completely abandoned any commitment to journalistic integrity and ethics in favor of pushing a partisan agenda – in this case one that makes excuses for terrorists and demonizes America’s only true democratic ally in the Middle East.

Refusing to report or investigate Fauci’s corruption

Over the course of 2023, House Republicans unearthed a number of scandalous details about former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, including allegations that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of gain-of-function research funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Republican lawmakers also uncovered evidence that Fauci worked to discredit the so-called “lab leak” theory despite other scientists telling him early on in the pandemic that the virus “looked engineered.” Email correspondence showed that Fauci, along with publicly denouncing the lab leak theory, also urged his public health colleagues to not even look into it, even “prompting” publication of a scientific paper claiming to “debunk” it.

All of this amounts to one of the greatest public health scandals in history, and one that did immeasurable damage to democratic discourse, trust in America’s public health institutions, and U.S. national security. Yet the media has continued to treat Fauci as a godlike figure and refused to report on the evidence against him.

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There have been plenty of signs this year that the establishment press has entered a terminal decline. Future generations may see as a tipping point the moment when Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy used his platform during the GOP debate hosted by NBC News to turn the tables on moderator Kristen Welker and demanded that she apologize for her network’s dishonest coverage of the “Russiagate” hoax. Though perhaps no better indicator exists of the media’s current moral collapse than its inability to retract and apologize for the spectacular lies involved in its “Russiagate” hoax or its cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop just before the 2020 election.

Another sign of the media’s collapse this year was the growing influence of independent journalists who exposed so much of the media’s ethical decline and double standards—including figures such as Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and now Tucker Carlson. Meanwhile, the rise in popularity of alternative information outlets like Substack, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, The Daily Caller, and AMAC Newsline signaled a growing crisis of confidence in the mainstream media.

Among some of the most important work done by these journalists is that exposing the militant extremists in newsrooms like those of The New York Times and The Washington Post who intimidate editors and publishers into purging colleagues who may differ from a rigid left-of-center perspective on the news.

Regardless, signs point to 2023 being the year when the media’s corruption became too much. Now, a great reckoning may lie ahead for an American media that, while always liberal in its outlook, once believed in exposing, not colluding with government abuses of power.

B.C. Brutus is the pen name of a writer with previous experience in the legislative and executive branches.