Real 2020 Story of the Year...

 https://www.newsmax.com/stevelevy/mainstream-media/2020/12/23/id/1002841/

Real 2020 Story of the Year — Death of American Press

Ask anyone on the street what was the most significant story of 2020 and you'll probably get one of three answers. The most likely would be the once-in-a-century pandemic that killed over 1.6 million souls worldwide and crushed one of the strongest economies in our nation's history. Then there was the George Floyd killing and the social unrest that ensued. And, of course, voters made Donald Trump a one-term president.

All of these issues were of enormous impact, but, in fact, there is another issue that in the long-term will have even greater significance on the stability of our republic. I'm referring to the Death of the American Press and the suppression of speech by the social media conglomerates.

The most important line in our sacred Constitution is the very first Amendment, which guarantees a freedom of speech and of the press. It is what set America apart from all the forms of government that preceded it. It is what made this great nation exceptional. It's why millions sought to get to our shores. It's what allowed us to peaceably transfer power from one leader to the next.

As devastating as the virus was on our health and the economy, it's demise started in the same year of its initial spread. The economy is on the verge of rebounding and the dislocation will soon be a thing of the past.

But the phenomenon of having one's political views vanished by media outlets disagreeing with the content is now embedded within our American culture. It is something that would never have been tolerated or even contemplated in the past. But, today, it is omnipresent in our culture, and more frighteningly, it's likely to grow.

Interestingly, the suppression of ideas is not the type of government-sponsored tyranny that Orwell foresaw. Rather, it is self-imposed by a growing new power class, born of the radical indoctrination emanating from our higher education institutions.

The young hipsters running these Silicon Valley tech giants were raised on the fallacy that America is a sinful nation built on racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., etc. If you're not a leftist wokester, you are by default a racist. And the views of the racist must be squelched for the good of society.

In the 1970s, liberals, such as those embodied by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), stood up for free speech — even heinous speech from neo-Nazis. College students today would be shocked to learn that it was the ACLU that defended the rights of white supremisists to march down the streets of Skokie, Illinois. The idea was that unless we protected everyone's speech, there would come a day when our speech might be threatened.

That was then. Today, over 40% of students astonishingly believe it is acceptable to abridge someone else's speech if another finds it offensive. And since the tech companies are controlled by leftists, the suppression is almost always imposed against conservatives, or right-of-center thought.

There was always a liberal bias in the media, but today the mainstream media has moved on to being in cahoots with Big Tech in acting as operatives for the Democratic Party. A few cases in point:

The first was the concerted effort by the media to bury the accusation that Hunter Biden, son of the president-elect, was compromised via his dealings with companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Professionally researched reporting from the New York Post unveiled compelling evidence of the story's veracity, yet Twitter and Facebook "disappeared" any reference to it. I use the term "disappeared" deliberately, since that is the term commonly used when the CCP removes its critics from the face of the earth.

This is the year that another term, "gaslighting," emerged as the apt description of the liberal media's attempt to convince viewers to believe the media's lies over their own eyes.

That's right, you might be viewing a video showing Democratic poll watchers pulling ballots out from under a table after they sent Republicans and the media home, thereafter commencing the counting of these hidden ballots. Yet the media definitively states with a straight face that there was no evidence of voter fraud.

You might be viewing footage of buildings burning in the background while MSNBC analyst Ali Velshi looks into the eyes of the camera and tells you he's at a peaceful protest. But don't believe your lying eyes; believe Ali. He's in the media, after all. And they have standards.

And that's the point. The media once had standards. No more. The goal of the mainstream media and Big Tech is no longer a search for truth. It is to support liberals and defeat conservatives.

2020 brought us to a unique point in our nation's history where conservative American citizens can be assaulted in restaurants with no repercussions.

They can be barred from speaking at college campuses and lose their jobs for posting support for their favorite candidate on Facebook.

It's the year so-called independent "fact checkers" had to be fact-checked by conservatives to counter the injection of the liberal fact checker's bias.

It's the year that a St. Louis couple seeking to defend their home from a storming mob are portrayed as the villains and are eventually prosecuted, while the trespassing protesters get a pass.

It's 2020, the year we morphed into Jerry Seinfeld's Bizarro World. As Orwell predicted for his dystopian future world: "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." This is the year riots were renamed "peaceful protests" and evidence based reports of the wrong political persuasion were summarily deemed "debunked."

And now, a media which once took pride in brandishing established standards, have such standards no more. And our nation may never be the same.

Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of "The Steve Levy Radio Show." He is the author of "Solutions to America's Problems" and "Bias in the Media." www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com. Read Steve Levy's Reports — More Here.