Truth or Censorship: The Legacy Media’s Death Spiral

There is nothing more dangerous than a censor—especially one who makes their living off the very God-given liberty they seek to deny to their fellow citizens.

Thaddeus G. McCotter for American Greatness

One of the consequences of the Communications Revolution has been the deterioration of the traditional news media into just another endangered industry clamoring for protectionism.

Once, legacy television and print news outlets believed the technological hurdles and exorbitant costs entailed in providing content to their audiences formed an insurmountable barrier to entry for any potential competitors. To wit: for decades, there had existed only three major national news broadcasts and a handful of newspapers “of record,” like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Further, the number of local stations and newspapers, while competitive, were in effect capped by their respective audiences and advertisers. Over time, this technological and financial insulation resulted in a virtual monopoly upon mass information and, inevitably, the hubris, typified by their claim to be “opinion makers.”

Yet, fate humbles the haughty.

The rise of the internet destroyed both the financial and technological barriers faced by the legacy media’s prospective competitors. The legacy media’s arrogance rendered them slow to recognize the threat and, in many instances, deride their challengers as basement dwelling ne’er-do-wells cosplaying journalists on-line in their parents’ basements.

But these competitors and the social media platforms, such as (then) Twitter and YouTube, were, by circumstances and economics, necessarily designed to be an affordable, efficient, and effective disseminator of original content, including news and opinions. Perhaps more importantly, as business entities specifically designed for social media, these platforms knew how to monetize their users and content.

The legacy media, both nationally and locally, was too slow in responding—if they even could. The shrinking power, profits, payrolls, and prestige of their industry have led to calls for bailouts, most notably for local newspapers, and government protection from competition, including demands for something past generations of legacy media luminaries would find equally inexplicable and unconscionable: censorship.

In fact, this was not the first time the legacy print media faced challenges in its business model and sought government assistance. The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, which, in its Congressional Declaration of Policy:

…it is hereby declared to be the public policy of the United States to preserve the publication of newspapers in any city, community, or metropolitan area where a joint operating arrangement has been heretofore entered into because of economic distress or is hereafter effected in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.

Per the learned one who litigated a case involving the law, “effectively let metropolitan dailies combine their business (but not editorial) operations in a Joint Operating Agreement because local markets could no longer support both papers.”

The present situation for legacy media is similar to the one faced by record companies in the 1980s, when they colluded with radio stations to control the music industry and shape public tastes. The inability to monetize their product within the bounds of cyber-space proved a disaster for their corporations, artists, record stores, et. al. Yet, it also proved a boon to individuals who now had a means to produce and disseminate their own music to the masses. In their death throes, the music industry’s corporations and artists appealed for government help to prevent their product—the music created by the artists and purchased and produced by the corporations—from being sold online by unauthorized entities. What the music industry and artists did not do was demand that the works of individual artists who created, produced, and disseminated their own music from being placed online.

But this is precisely the demand made by the legacy media to protect its privileged position as the elite opinion makers in our republic—namely, the stifling of the democratization of information through censorship.

In the legacy media’s death spiral, their opinion-shaping wordsmiths are rarely as honest as that in expressing their motives and aims. Make no mistake, however, when a free press begins advocating for the euphemistic “content moderation” to end “disinformation” and “hate speech” for the alleged sake of “safety” or some other such risible pretext, one can be sure they are not talking about curbing their First Amendment rights.

Colluding with their political cronies, both elected and otherwise, and ironically with Big Tech, the legacy media is targeting any American seeking to participate in the Communication Revolution’s “democratization of information.” In return, there is reciprocity on the part of the legacy media: recall their willingness to falsely condemn and conceal the reportage of another legacy media outlet (the New York Post) when the Hunter Biden laptop story threatened the legacy media’s aligned and preferred candidate’s presidential prospects.

Ah, yes, who better than the legacy media that spent years spreading Russia-gate lies to undermine a duly elected president to determine what the truth is? Still, nothing screams honesty more than a politician, who everyone just loves to death. Why not let the people who are known for their humility, rectitude, and subtlety—the legacy media, politicians, and beloved Big Tech multinational corporations—determine what an appropriate level of “content moderation” is? What is true? What is real? What you can talk about? What you can think about?

What could go wrong?

Everything. There is nothing more dangerous than a censor—especially one who makes their living off the very God-given liberty they seek to deny to their fellow citizens.

You can have either truth or censorship. Unlike the legacy media and their political cronies, choose wisely.

What’s Behind America’s Doctor Crisis?

 Physicians are retiring in greater numbers as burnout levels increase; at the same time Americans are placing higher demands on the health care system.

Securing an appointment to see a doctor in the United States is exacerbated by soaring health care demand and fewer doctors. Many specializations are increasingly affected by this trend, but primary care and emergency medicine are among the hardest hit.

The average wait time to see a doctor has increased since 2017 and continued to rise after the demand spike brought on by COVID-19.

A survey conducted by AMN Healthcare in 2022 of 15 large metro markets revealed the average time to see a physician was 26 days—an 8 percent increase from 2017 and a 24 percent spike since 2004.

Staff constraints are also felt in hospital emergency departments. Nearly 140 million Americans visited a hospital emergency department in 2021, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those, about 13 percent resulted in hospital admission; while thousands waited hours to see a health care provider.

Consequently, many patients leave before being seen by a doctor.

One study analyzed more than 1,000 hospitals between 2017 and the end of 2021 and found those with the worst performance had 4.4 percent of emergency room patients leave before a medical evaluation was conducted. At the end of 2021, that number had risen to upwards of 10 percent.

Compounding the issue is that nearly half of the doctor population will reach retirement age within the next 10 years and career burnout is hitting the rest harder than ever, according to data from Association of American Medical Colleges.

Almost 50 percent of doctors report that they feel burned out, according to a 2024 Medscape report.

These are key factors driving America’s growing scarcity of doctors. Physician Thrive’s 2023 study noted that the United States may have a shortage of 124,000 doctors by 2034. Within that shortfall, up to 48,000 will likely be lost from primary care, while the industry is projected to lose another 58,000 specialists, surgeons, and nurse practitioners.

“This is definitely coming down the pipeline. It’s been coming for a long time, and we’re seeing this all across health care,” emergency physician Dr. Jared Ross told The Epoch Times.

Dr. Ross is also president of Missouri-based Emergency Medical Services, Education & Consulting. He’s watched America’s health care worker crisis unfold on the front lines and says the shortage of physicians is an old problem that’s reached a tipping point.

“We’ve talked about this for years. It’s nothing new. There’s been a number of attempted stop-gap measures that haven’t been all that successful,” he said.

Some of these provisional solutions include bringing in more practitioners from foreign countries, medical school loan forgiveness programs, expanding telehealth services, and increasing the number of resident physician training supported by Medicare.

Dr. Ross has seen doctor shortages impact emergency medicine but maintains primary care has “really struggled” to retain physicians.

This is critical for two reasons. One is because health care demands in the United States are rising. The average number of times Americans visit a doctor per year by age group is four times for adults, nine for infants, and twice for children between the ages of five and 15, according to Vanguard Medical Group.

The other reason is due to what Dr. Ross called the “corporatization of medicine.”

“The problem is we have an insurance system that is a massive bureaucracy,” he said.

During a recent conference with other medical leaders, Dr. Ross said it was discussed how America has “really pushed away from the model of traditional health care.”

There was a general consensus within the group that insurance companies have become too powerful in medicine.

“The administrative burden or hassle, as many doctors describe it, is very disheartening,” Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told The Epoch Times.

Having worked in medicine for more than 40 years, Dr. Schaffner has witnessed it evolve into something “aggressively more complicated” as insurance companies expand power over doctors. He says this trend became more noticeable by the 1990s.

“Doctors didn’t go to medical school in anticipation of arguing with insurance companies. It’s depressing and discouraging,” Dr. Schaffner said.

In 2020, for the first time, fewer than 50 percent of U.S. physicians worked in private practice, according to the American Medical Association (AMA). Most have chosen to become employees of large medical groups, which has drastically changed the paradigm of health care.

“The shift away from independent practices is emblematic of the fiscal uncertainty and economic stress many physicians face due to statutory payment cuts in Medicare, rising practice costs, and intrusive administrative burdens,” AMA President Dr. Jesse M. Ehrenfeld said in a 2023 statement.

Battling With Insurance

The move from independent practice to medical group employee presents its own dilemma. Aside from increased patient loads, it has left doctors at the mercy of having to get prior approval from insurance companies to carry out a medical treatment or procedure.

This forces a quantity-over-quality approach to treatment, according to Dr. Ross.

Prior authorizations are “an absolute headache,” he said. Physicians are now stuck battling with a third party who creates “as many roadblocks as possible because they don’t want to pay out.”

Dr. Schaffner said it took “numerous telephone conversations” with an insurance provider so a family member could get a necessary medical procedure done.

He said part of why it’s challenging is because there needs to be a level of trust on the insurance company’s end. “It’s not just a formal relationship that happens, but there also has to be a trust that develops with the benefits manager. It can take time,” Dr. Schaffner said.

An AMA survey of physicians showed that 88 percent felt the burden associated with prior authorization protocols was “high” or “extremely high,” and they spent an average of 14 hours per week doing only that.

Beyond fueling the upward trend of doctor burnout, there are also concerns about clinical outcomes for patients due to lengthy prior authorizations. Eighty-nine percent of doctors reported either a “somewhat” or “significant” negative impact on their patient outcomes.

Dr. Ross believes the overarching bureaucracy in medicine is a major component of physician burnout, but there’s also what he called the “documentation burden.”

Filling out electronic health records eats up hours of a physician’s day. Much of this record-keeping is devoted to billing, which is a source of frustration for many health care practitioners. One study noted primary care physicians spend a median 36.2 minutes per patient working with electronic health records.

It also significantly reduces the amount of time a doctor can spend treating or educating patients about their conditions.

Moreover, Dr. Ross says many doctors have no choice but to bring their work home with them at the end of the day. “They’re seeing patients during the day and writing notes after hours when they’re home with their families.”

“Medical records have given us a lot of wonderful things. The idea was it would make things faster, but it’s not. We used just to scribble some notes in a folder, but now we’re expected to write a whole diatribe. Information is being constantly added from government and insurance providers … electronic records have given us access to more information, but it’s also become overcomplicated and less efficient,” Dr. Ross said.

Dr. Schaffner concurs, saying insurance companies have created a “time sink” with the added documentation. Many doctors maintain that electronic health records are too focused on billing and not on the patient’s condition.

Consequently, the medical scribe industry has sprung up alongside the growing paperwork burden for doctors, but it’s an added expense for physicians already struggling with rising industry costs. A medical scribe will take the doctor’s recorded audio notes for a patient and transcribe them, saving time for the doctor.

“There are only 24 hours a day. You can either be on your computer documenting a patient, or you can be seeing the next patient,” Dr. Schaffner said.

One study by AMA linked medical scribes to a 27 percent lower physician burnout rate among primary care providers.

However, other data suggests that administrative help doesn’t have much of an overall impact due to the amount of time doctors spend proofreading.

Patient Care Impact

In 2023, nearly 30 percent of medical groups had at least one physician leave or retire early due to burnout, according to a survey by the Medical Group Management Association.

Six out of 10 doctors and residents say they’re feeling burned out, while seven out of 10 medical students say they’ve also hit that point, according to The Physicians Foundation’s 2023 survey.

Many health care professionals are sounding the alarm over the future of patient care. “We’re already seeing this. We have huge waits for primary care doctors. This is especially true in inner city and rural settings,” Dr. Ross said.

The National Association of Community Health Centers estimated that 100 million Americans lack reliable access to primary care, in its 2023 report.

Dr. Ross said, that means many simply head to urgent care or the emergency room.

“What we’re doing at the end of the day is asking non-medical people to make a decision on where to get care,” he said.

Due to rising levels of career burnout, Dr. Schaffner has observed that the younger generation of physicians is beginning to limit their working hours. He said new physicians are more keenly aware of “professional life balance” and are much less likely to be on call. “They want to do burnout prevention,” he said.

While this may keep more doctors from leaving their respective fields, it still poses a problem from a patient accessibility standpoint.

This is becoming an urgent issue in America’s aging and chronically sick population. Six in 10 adults in America have a chronic disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Four in 10 have two or more.

At the same time, a little more than 17 percent of the population is over the age of 65, data from the Census Bureau indicate. That number is expected to surpass 20 percent by 2040.

The rules of corporate medicine aren’t making this problem any easier, says Dr. Ross. The “revenue value unit,” or RVU, is now the standard method of evaluating physician productivity.

“Physicians really feel like cogs in a wheel. They’re evaluated on their production. How much are they billing? How much [money] are they bringing in for their practice? Not so much the quality of care or patient satisfaction,” Dr. Ross said.

A 2023 satisfaction survey of overnight hospital patients revealed barely 36 percent of patients said they were able to speak with a doctor when needed—a 43 percent drop from the 2011 J.D. Power survey.

“It all comes back to what medicine has become,” Dr. Ross said.

And we Know, On the Fringe, and more- May 12

 

Ashley Biden Officially Confirms Her Diary, Where She Talks About “Showers w/my Dad” Joe Biden, is REAL in Emotional Letter to Judge

 

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/05/ashley-biden-officially-confirms-her-diary-where-she/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=the-gateway-pundit&utm_campaign=breaking&utm_content=breaking

In a letter dated April 8, 2024, addressed to Chief Judge Swain of New York, Ashley Biden, daughter of U.S. President Joe Biden, confirmed the authenticity of her previously ‘stolen’ diary.

The diary, which has sparked considerable public and media attention due to Joe Biden’s perverted acts, became a subject of controversy when excerpts were leaked online.

Ashley Biden’s letter, obtained by the New York Times, was submitted as part of a judicial proceeding against Aimee Harris, one of the individuals convicted of ‘stealing’ and selling her personal journal.

In her correspondence, Ashely Biden expressed profound distress over the theft and subsequent public dissemination of her private thoughts, which she described as “stream-of-consciousness” musings meant for personal healing.

She defended the content of her diary, saying it was “grossly misinterpreted” and “lob false accusations that defame my character and those of the people I love.”

Read her letter below:

I am deeply saddened that I even have to write this letter because my personal private journal was stolen and sold for profit. The point of the theft, I assume, was to be able to peddle grotesque lies by distorting my stream-of-consciousness thoughts. The reason I have decided to not attend tomorrow’s sentencing in person is because it would only increase my pain. Nonetheless, I write to ask Your Honor to sentence the defendant to time in prison.

The defendant’s actions constitute one of the most heinous forms of bullying, not to mention a complete violation of my privacy and personal dignity. After being the victim of a crime in my early twenties, I developed PTSD. The journal that was stolen was part of my efforts to heal. I am a private citizen, targeted only because my father happened to be running to be President. In other words, the extensive work I have done to move past my trauma was undone by Ms. Harris’s actions. The defendant’s actions have created a constant environment of anxiety, fear, and intimidation in which my innermost thoughts are constantly distorted and manipulated.

Although this criminal act happened more than three years ago, because of the publicity it drew-exactly as Ms. Harris intended—I am constantly re-traumatized by it. I will forever have to deal with the fact that my personal journal can be viewed online. Repeatedly, I hear others grossly misinterpret my once-private writings and lob false accusations that defame my character and those of the people I love. Her actions were not only re-traumatizing to me, but constituted a horrific trauma in and of themselves. This ongoing harm is a direct result of Ms. Harris’s intentional actions.

I ask Your Honor to sentence Ms. Harris to time in prison followed by lengthy probation. She should be held accountable for what she has done. Not only did she demonstrate a complete lack of morality, but she lacks any respect for the rule of law as well. Among other things, she has failed to appear in court 12 times.

My goal in asking Your Honor to impose a term of incarceration is to ensure that another woman isn’t bullied and shamed like this ever again. The despair I have often felt will never truly go away.

But I ask Your Honor to hold Ms. Harris accountable so that she thinks twice before doing it to someone else. I have spent much of my life trying to speak up for those who cannot find their voices. I am fortunate enough to have found mine, and I use it today—and every day—to make sure that bullies are held accountable.

Finally, I worry that a non-incarceratory sentence will send a message to her and to others like her-that it is okay to violate and exploit others for your own personal gain, regardless of the humiliation and pain it causes. Please send a message that these types of damaging criminal actions will not be tolerated. I thank Your Honor for your consideration.

It can be recalled that Aimee Harris, 41, was sentenced by Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to prison last month, followed by a period of home confinement for her role in the alleged theft and distribution of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden.

Aimee Harris, 39, found Ashley Biden’s diary at a halfway house in Palm Beach in 2020 and sold it to Project Veritas for $40,000. According to the Daily Mail, Ashely Biden, Joe Biden’s youngest daughter, left her diary under a mattress at the Palm Beach rehab home.

As previously reported by The Gateway Pundit, Ashley Biden, Joe Biden’s youngest daughter, left her diary under a mattress at the Palm Beach rehab home following a stay at a treatment facility. Two individuals who found Ashley Biden’s diary at a halfway house later sold the diary to James O’Keefe and Project Veritas.

In a January 2019 entry, Ashley Biden recalled how she used to shower with her father, Joe Biden, and suggested it may have contributed to a sex addiction.

The diary describes Ashley and her father, Joe Biden, taking showers together at an inappropriate age.

“I have always been boy crazy,’ Ashley wrote. ‘Hyper-sexualized @ a young age … I remember somewhat being sexualized with [a family member]; I remember having sex with friends @ a young age; showers w/ my dad (probably not appropriate),’ she wrote in a January 2019 entry, according to the Daily Mail.

James O’Keefe was later the victim of a late-night FBI raid and was arrested by the Biden regime.

US District Judge Analisa Torres, an Obama appointee, said Project Veritas’s First Amendment claims were “inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent.”

The judge also said of Project Veritas 1A claim: ‘O’Keefe, Veritas couldn’t claim it was protecting identity of confidential source from disclosure after two individuals publicly pleaded guilty.’

In 2022, Aimee Harris and co-defendant Robert Kurlanderwho, who found Ashley Biden’s diary at a halfway house, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.

Despite Harris’s personal plea and her defense attorney’s appeal for leniency based on her traumatic past and responsibilities as a mother, the prosecution highlighted Harris’s pattern of disrespect for the law.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman claimed that Harris’s actions were not only unlawful but were intended to harm the Biden family and influence the political landscape.

Chief US District Judge Laura Taylor Swain described the act of selling the diary as “despicable,” highlighting the privacy invasion and the potential political motivations behind the sale.

Harris was ordered to serve a one-month prison sentence, pay a $20,000 fine, and undergo three years of probation.

Harris is set to begin serving her prison term in July, while Kurlander’s sentencing is pending.