We really need to have a conversation about how the rhetoric of "free speech and the marketplace of ideas" has been used to as a cynical cover by far right propagandists in the US for years, if not decades. They are choosing to use their precious airtime to spread lies.

Anyone who has ever taught knows that there's value in presenting competing perspectives on topics. To what extent was the American Revolution a genuinely grassroots insurgency, and to what extent was it organized from the top-down by elites with their own interests?

Note that I didn't also ask "To what extent was the American Revolution organized by a shadowy cabal of Masons and globalists who formed a secret society devoted to enslaving all of humanity?" or "To what extent was the American Revolution organized by Martians?"

I mean, those are just questions right? What's wrong with just asking questions? Well, what's wrong is that there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that those questions are even worth asking. Same goes for that Plandemic crap.

I mean, even in the marketplace of stuff, we don't allow people to just do whatever the f they want. If you sell allergy medicine that contains cyanide you go to jail. If you sell an ointment that contains known carcinogens, you go to jail (or at least you should).

There is a wide range of dispute and disagreement amongst scientists when it comes to the coronavirus. To what extent are aerosols responsible for transmission? Or droplets? Or fomite transmission? People martial evidence and arguments to engage those questions.

How should we best weigh the competing public goods of having young children in school, while also protecting the health of those children, their families, and the adults who work in schools? If Sinclair wants to air a range of opinion on that, have at it.

But that Plandemic video is just made up nonsense. It has no basis in scientific fact. It's just straight up propaganda designed to gin up more opposition to the public health measures necessary to get the pandemic under control. It is DESIGNED TO CAUSE HARM.

Media influences how people perceive, think about, and then act in the world. It's not just some neutral or passive observer. Media outlets that feel no responsibility to be accurate are outlets that will just sell their viewers minds and eyeballs to the highest bidder.

First LImbaugh and then Fox established the modern model of what it would look like for an American media outlet to devote the majority of its airtime to outright propaganda, almost entirely divorced from an empirical reality that might have the power to counter one's claims.

Without right wing media, there would have been no "conservative movement." In the past there were "conservative" media outlets that felt at least some fidelity to the truth, some obligation to their readers to provide them with accurate information.

With precious few exceptions that I can think of, that is no longer the case. Conservative media is now it's own universe of "alternative facts." That approach to the world is an insult to their audience, and an affront to democratic self-governance.

You'd think that the people who work in that world would feel some shred of shame about what they're doing. But there's been little evidence that this very useful and important human emotion exists on the right anymore.