By: Mark Glennon*
Strong evidence has led the majority of Americans to see four recent, national scandals. Even the most biased of leading mainstream media have reported at least something on the stories – The New York Times, NPR, Washington Post and CNN, among others – albeit belatedly and distortedly.
But if you relied on the Chicago Tribune or Chicago Sun-Times for news, you’d know nothing about these:
- Nine members of Joe Biden’s family, including some grandchildren, got paid a total of over $9 million by foreign entities, almost certainly as part of a massive influence peddling operation centered on Joe, which he repeatedly and dishonestly claims he knew nothing about;
- Fifty-One top, former U.S. national security officials helped perpetrate what was the true Russia hoax — that the infamous Hunter Biden laptop was a fake planted by Russians — to help Hillary Clinton get elected.
- The FBI lacked even enough evidence to start its investigation that consumed the nation for years of alleged collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign, according to the report by independent counsel John Durham released earlier this month.
- An entire Censorship Industrial Complex, as journalist Matt Taibbi calls it, is now at work to restrict what news you see, and the federal government is behind most of it. Here’s a must-read column from earlier this month listing 50 organizations that are part of that complex.
The Tribune and Sun-Times have suppressed essentially all coverage on any of that, the sole exception I find being one Associated Press column run by the Tribune about the Durham report, which is itself heavily biased, claiming “ Durham’s investigation delivered underwhelming results.”
Most Americans now see the truth in those four stories. According to a Harvard-Harris poll released this month, Americans say Joe Biden participated in influence peddling (53%), Hunter Biden’s laptop is real (59%) and the Russian collusion with Trump was a fake story (56%). And they are concerned enough about interference by the FBI and intelligence agencies in presidential elections that they want wide ranging reforms to prevent future interference (71%).
It’s not just the “right wing,” “conservatives” or Trump supporters who are in that majority, as much of the press likes to pretend. Over 50% of independents agree with each of those items, according to the survey.
The Tribune and Sun-Times focus mostly on state and local news, but they do include a number of syndicated stories supposedly on the major national news of the day, and they editorialize on national issues. In years past any news media of any political strip would be all over each of those four scandals, particularly the federal government’s role in censorship. No longer, especially at the Tribune and Sun-Times. They’ve entirely blacked out coverage of those stories.
Are the Tribune and Sun-Times blind to the public’s distrust? Do they really think the four stories aren’t newsworthy?
Hard to say, but it’s probably true that the substantial minority that does not believe the four stories rely heavily on sources like them.
UPDATE: Watch here Biden’s NSC Spokesman John Kirby’s non-answer when asked Wednesday about 53% of the public believing that Biden participated in an illegal influence peddling operation. The questioner was apparently referring to the same Harvard-Harris poll cited above. Many headlines on that around the country, but no mention of it in Wednesday or Thursday Tribune or Sun-Times.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
The mainstream media is dead and no longer even pretends to be unbiased. The mainstream media has become shills for the liberal establishment. Even supposedly conservative mainstream news outlets like Fox are shills for the establishment. For statewide Illinois news, I go to alternative / independent news publications like WirePoints, Illinois Policy, The Center Square, and Edgar County Watchdogs. Alternative / independent local news publications in Illinois would include the Madison-St. Clair Record, the Cook County Record, and the Riverbender in the St. Louis Metro East. Alternative / independent national news publications would include The Conservative Treehouse, Epoch Times, Gateway… Read more »
Nice work wirepoints.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/both-major-chicago-newspapers-suppress-coverage-democrat-scandals/
It would be worth a little research to see who exactly owns the SunTimes these days. About a year ago there was a transaction that appeared to give WBEZ (public radio) control of the paper. If indeed it is an NPR affiliate, then why are taxpayer dollars funding this rag. Until that transaction, there were union owners, Rocky Wirtz from the Blackhawks, and a few other Chicago businessmen who invested. They claim now to be a not for profit, but if that is the case, it is not hard to see how they are violating all kinds of NFP lobbying… Read more »
You can add the Daily Herald as a co-conspirator. I still subscribe to it but only because my spouse likes some of the local coverage.
Neither paper is interested in covering “real news”. Maybe their remaining journalists don’t have academic backgrounds commensurate with Wall Street Journal or Financial Times journalists. Maybe their remaining readership bases don’t have reading skills required to digest “real news”, and only seek fish-wrap for their bird-cages, or compost for their gardens. Maybe both newspapers content is generated by AI, and geared towards the People Magazine readers interested only in sports scores, “man bites dog” human-interest, and celebrity gossip stories. Note that Trib recycles many articles from already-published NYT stories. Many people no longer want “news”, because, to quote: “it’s too… Read more »
People want news, most don’t want it from legacy media. I personally get plenty of real quality news in the conservative world. And Twitter has become an amazing resource now that the frequent banning has mostly ended. Outside of twitter’s chaos, the best curated source is by far, Citizen Free Press, with hundreds of links a day to real news stories, much of it often real journalism on blogs or substacks. Heck, there’s another obscure niche forum I’ve visited for nearly two decades now where readers post links to all corners of the conservative internet. Its unfortunately the liberals that… Read more »
Why would anyone depend on the Tribune or Sun-Times for national news? It would be nice if there was one reliable source of local and national news, as the Tribune once upon a time pretended to be. But failing that, we have Wirepoints for the local stuff, and Real Clear* for national.
If you think this is bad, the false reporting and propaganda about the Ukraine proxy war is ten times worse. Truth seekers must seek, don’t depend on the MSM for a damn thing!
Our two major political parties are the Republicans and Democrat/Media party. Media lies for Dems and ignores Republican news unless they can manipulate it and use it to Democrat benefit. The Dem/Media party is unapologeticly biased. When you subscribe or purchase a single paper you are contributing to the Dem/Media party. People believing what they read in these newspapers have been brainwashed by the Dem/Media. When these papers are forced to be online only, the publishers will suffer greatly. Finally.
Why they couldn’t PAY me to continue my subscription to the Tribune, new offer of $3 a year for misinformation, no thanks keep it.
When I first moved to my town years ago, we subscribed for one year to the local weekly newspaper, it discusses city hall meetings, stuff going on around town, etc. After one year we did not renew but we kept getting the weekly, but I never read it… Then not too long after Trump was elected, the newspaper went crazy left-wing, seemingly overnight. Local coverage about town events focused exclusively on our local progressive group, and nearly every article had a comment from a known and active member of this progressive group, i’m exaggerating, but they’d reach out to the… Read more »
A LOT OF PEOPLE DEPEND ONLY ON THE LOCAL LIES AND HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THIS…..TRY AND TALK ABOUT IT AND THEY LOOK AT YOU AS IF YOU ARE AN ALIEN……LOOK FORWARD TO NEW LEADERSHIP IN ILL!!!!!
That’s my personal experience — I am surprised at how many people I bring this up don’t know about it, even well-informed people. I say something about the huge government censorship involvement and they ask what I am talking about.
That is truly sad Mark. So many are too busy or willfully blind. The local papers and TV news are awful and I stopped watching years ago.
Today’s Chicago Tribune features Steve Chapman dissing on the Republican party. And here I thought he retired from the CT 😅
He was once particularly interesting, usually with a different angle on things. Like so many he then joined the lemming left, as you can see in that silly Trib article you mentioned.
GREAT ARTICLE
COULD NOT AGREE MORE
Good to see Frank commenting. He has a lot of insight into the media that can be very enlightening.
The liberal media slant is apparent in virtually every local newscast. The stories they choose to emphasize, where those stories are placed in the newscast, the demeanor of the news anchor presenting the story. It’s all done with a purpose. Dare to point it out and you’re labeled a fascist and racist.
Yep, your demographics mean nothing anymore, it’s your narrative that trumps all.
You touched upon a point that has aggravated me for years. I find emoting Talking Heads to be insulting. Give me the news and let me decide my reaction. Don’t leave me by the nose.
Also, along that vein, the banter in the newsroom is extremely annoying. I don’t know if they’re trying to eat up time, or if they feel that this is something the public wants. This public doesn’t want it. Deliver the news. Save the banter for your coffee breaks.
Stupid chickens.
Are the major newspapers in other major cities also suppressing these stories?
Yes! Absolutely!!! Even worse, alternative media is now culpable in beating up and misleading their patrons, too. It’s not uncommon to get baited into reading a story that is designed to pacify you, demoralize you, or persuade you that you’re compromising your safety for speaking up or acting out against corruption. Lots of people don’t even bother reading articles anymore and scroll straight to the comment section, which is often a lot worse! People wonder why Democrats keep gaining ground and nobody is taking a stand. At the same time, I have a hard time finding media that isn’t gamed… Read more »
“It’s not uncommon to get baited into reading a story that is designed to pacify you, demoralize you, or persuade you that you’re compromising your safety for speaking up or acting out against corruption.” What you’re describing are what I would call the 21st-century culture war versions of Axis Sally, Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw, the infamous radio propagandists of WWII. It’s important to note that there was actually a significant amount of accurate information mixed in with their propaganda — for example, Axis Sally would report on Allied troop movements and battle losses that the U.S. government didn’t… Read more »
All you have to do is click on the articles above to see what they’re doing with today’s social media. Not much has changed in the techniques, but the campaigns are far more successful because of the interactive nature of social media and the intelligence gathering capabilities that modern technology can accommodate.
The vaccine campaigns are a great example. I still wear a mask occasionally because they’re absolutely amazing for alleviating allergy symptoms. People yell at me all the time for being a COVID fanatic.
I hate wearing a mask, but I don’t care if someone else actually wants to wear a mask. My only problem is when the mask wearers want to force everyone else into wearing a mask like what happened during covid.
As long as you keep your mask to yourself, I’m fine with your choice to occasionally mask up as it isn’t any of my business.
Yes, newspapers in other major cities are also suppressing these stories and have a woke, far-left bent.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a terrible, far-left newspaper similar to the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times.
Those poll results are some very welcome news! BTW, Michael Shellenberger coined the CIC, but Taibbi does reference it often.
The media is just an arm of the Democratic party. They only publish what they are told to, and it’s all the same. The only true voices for the people now are individuals who document with video and post online. They are called citizen journalists. Look at the one who covered the total lack of transparency at the Standard Club and Inn of Chicago about who’s staying there. “Just some guy” with a video camera is the only hope left for honest news. I sent Mark a clip a guy had filmed of dozens and dozens of buses in Panama,… Read more »
And you don’t believe it, watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI
Yeah, it’s a huge industry. NGOs have been advertising America’s compassion all throughout South America since at least the early 2000s. They’re doing it via social media and movies like Sin Nombre. Sin Nombre is a movie about a gang banger that runs from his gang to America with a nice girl he meets on a train as a stow away. It’s a giant fairy tale that glamorizes the journey to America. The movie ends when the girl gets to Texas and makes a phone call that magically solves all her problems. NPR sums it up really well below. There’s… Read more »
They’ll pay attention once impeachment proceedings begin, likely during the primaries. It will be hard for them to ignore. I’m sure the Democrat Party leaders have contingency plans for this. The Republicans seem to be waiting for the right political opportunity to show all their cards, especially this one where the FBI was apparently aware Biden took $5,000,000 from a foreign entity to change official policy towards that country. The Biden regime knows that if Biden goes down, they’re all going down with it, because the new guy – R or D – is going to install all of their… Read more »
The St Louis Post Dispatch is a fine purveyor of the leftist line downstate left its offices a while back and its readership has fallen so low the grocery stores no longer put their weekly ads in the fishwrap. I think they are finding out that the leftists think everything should be free meaning if the paper isn’t free they wont read it. Fitting justice and good riddance!
True, they may be the very worst from what I see, though I do not read it regularly.
I agree that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a terrible, far-left, woke newspaper. The Post-Dispatch has declined so much that they thankfully don’t have enough resources to cover the Illinois side as much as they used to and have ceded the Illinois news market to the local St. Louis Metro East publications. The Edwardsville Intelligencer and its sister publication, the Alton Telegraph, are both liberal corporate owned newspapers. The Belleville News-Democrat, also a corporate owned newspaper, used to have a right leaning slant and employed the conservative political cartoonist, Glenn McCoy, but is now very liberal. The Madison-St. Clair Record… Read more »
The real scandal is how these rags manage to stay in business. Soros must be their sugar daddy.
It doesn’t matter much, nobody reads them, theylll be out of business soon, I’ll weep!
Sun Times and Tribune are both integral part of the Democrat Party Pravda Propoganda Department. Their so called “journalists” are nothing more than dutiful mouthpieces parroting the press releases of their Democrat Party superiors. Much like Rich Miller and his Capital Fax.
I used to love Capitol Fax (not enough to cough up the $300+ a year subscription fee, but enough to read the public blog posts on a daily basis). It did, and to some extent still does, provide information that I need to know as a State employee (FYI, not union). However, after Trump’s election, and especially after Pritzker’s election, it got to the point where I could not read it anymore without spiking my blood pressure because of the constant “Trump and conservatives bad, Dems good” tone. Now all the crowing about the legislative “victories” of Planned Parenthood and… Read more »
It was essential reading decades ago if you followed IL politics. Today, it should be named The Walled Garden. It aggregates news only from the left and blocks comments from the center and right.
@ Elaine S – I could have written this comment. Here, here.
I would submit that after Rauner’s election in 2014 the ‘news’ in Capitol Fax veered rigidly to the left. Rauner was treated by Springfield as an invasive species and the mini swamp reacted. Much like how DC treated Trump in 2016. No longer a source for news and information it became – and still is – a rallying point for “government knows best and must crush all opposition” activism. It is instructive in seeing, first hand, the grass roots of how totalitarian governments come to power. It is also a case study in how left leaning individual Journalists have abandoned… Read more »
$500
Where do I claim this fabulous prize? 🙂
Oh wait, you mean the Cap Fax subscription is $500…
Capitolfax basically scared away nearly all the moderate or right-leaning commenters through selective censorship, leaving a tired comments section full of one-sided observations and cringey attaboys. With little intelligent back-and-forth or differing opinions, it is quite a bore.
Years ago there was some commenter that was considered the end-all of pension experts. Problem was, his knowledge of actual pension accounting was quite limited, but you couldn’t counter his false claims.
“….leaving a tired comments section full of one-sided observations and cringey attaboys.” It would seem you think Wirepoints is greatly different. Well, judging by the preponderance of those who respond I don’t. They are both tribal camps but invariably with opposing, strongly held points of view. Each thinks the other side is totally bonkers. Room for friendly compromise? Never; where’s my gun?
Wirepoints and Capfax are opposite sides of the same coin as far as commenters. The difference is Mark allows opinions that he doesn’t agree with while Rich considers anything that doesn’t correlate 100% with his beliefs as “Facebook” lies. Some people just love an echo chamber.
Spot on. Something that we can agree on PPF. There is hope for the Republic……but, sadly, not for IL Pensions. Plus Wirepoints has articles from the other side as well – the Jacobin articles come to mind as especially eye opening and annoying – where Capitol Fax is simply an I-Love-Government/Democrat Blather re-posting site.
I responded maybe 20 minutes ago, but apparently it got lost in the ether. In any event my response was/is to agree with the two points you made, and to say, yes, I do consider the Wirepoints staff to be far more open to differing opinions, and that deserves kudos in itself.
The difference is the media portrays Wirepoints as right-leaning and Capfax as bipartisan or neutral.
Legacy media paints Wirepoints as extension of the Proud Boys or alt-right bogeyman; and CrapFax as towing the acceptable institutional line, so to speak.
LOL the difference between Wirepoints and CapFax is that conservatives are mostly correctly and liberals are mostly wrong. The CapFax posters may think they are correct, but they are often wrong, objectively wrong about many things.
Great comment nixit! What you observed is part of a new political tool set rooted in advanced social science research, neuroscience and more. Contention drives up engagement and dwell time. Intermittent reinforcement, an operant conditioning technique where great stories occasionally show up amongst a majority of duds and losers, often fuels addictive behavior. Echo chambers in the comment section can be a powerful tool. This is an old and famous experiment from the 1950s related to conformity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyDDyT1lDhA Combatting these techniques and maintaining a free speech environment is nowhere as challenging or as complicated as the government claims. The best… Read more »
Was that RNUG, the Retired Non Union Guy?
And that substantial minority insists, insists, they are certain of it- that they are in sole possession of the truth.
In financially distressed newspapers and some media (like NPR), much of the distortion is to retain consumer interest in buying what they have to sell. Hearst was able to use a similar technique to enrich himself, but it’s now become more of a survival strategy. Add to this the short attention spans and general lack of interest in what we laughingly call the “reading public,” it is understandable how jouralistic principles have been set aside in desperation. The First Amendment and the Sullivan case generally protect purveyors from downside risk although the occasional defamation suit makes the lawyers nervous. Many… Read more »
Locally, Jenny Thornley deserves her own meme.
“Jenny Thornley Justice” (#jennythornleyjustice) should become nationally known as the non-uniform application of discretionary (non-)prosecution which is only available to the protected class of political elites.
Another thing, there are plenty of lawsuits and people fighting back against this. You should get involved too. No matter how intimidating it looks, they’re still outnumbered and are having trouble finding people willing to work towards the implementation of these programs.
Hi, it’s Censorship Industrial Complex, not Censorship Industrial Policy. Policy implies some legitimacy. In reality, these programs are far more sinister and illegal. This is, in essence, the illegal weaponization of the federal government for partisan gain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDVKR5uVPmM
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/shellenberger-testimony.pdf