What happens when your media messaging tactic are copied by the opposition? It threatens your control! We can't have that. Oh, yeah, free speech is bad. When I read these two articles in The Washington Post, it struck me as another example of how the media, and anyone on the left, cannot stand for their opposition to have a voice. Any attempt to stand up is labeled mean and aggressive, if not violent. Any effort to correct false information on an issue is labeled misinformation. Not to mention the personal attacks & cancel culture designed to embarrass, threaten and silence other comments on an issue. These articles bemoan the current attacks on the media as an examples of attacks on freedom of the press and even attempts to criminalize news reporting. It is always curious to me that the media believes freedom of the press comes without responsibility, accountability, and the rule of law.

• Lying, frivolous personal demonization, theft and among things the media are not supposed to do. If they do, and people complain, then those consequences come with the territory. Instead, they further attack the complainer.
• Distrust of the media they somehow delude themselves into believing is Donald Trump's fault. Look at media approval polls for decades before Donald Trump and you will see he did not start it. But, he did call out what others only said to pollsters.
• The media are so arrogant that they always blame others and never take any responsibility for their results or poor popularity.
• The media somehow believes they are not politically motivated or biased. This is laughable.
• When Barack Obama won the Presidency and then was re-elected, the media could not stop congratulating him, his campaign and the social media and tech companies for helping him with their internet tools. When Donald Trump did the same thing in 2016, it was no longer smart and effective but had to be illegal. Google held a meeting to apologize to its employees. The media said it had to be collusion with Russian ads and hacking.
• Why is it that the media can label a Republican protest as a riot or insurrection, but no one can refer to a Democrat protest as a riot?
• 'Libs of TikTok' is now a target of the media, because they are using tactics and techniques in use everyday by the mainstream media. Using Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et. al, the media amplify to millions using high-profile media figures, politicians, left-wing personalities and influencers. But, when the right uses the same tactics, that is of limits somehow. Or, presented as lies and misinformation. Personal attacks follow.

So, what really happens when the media has competition for the messages sent to the public? The react as tyrants. As was stated on MSNBC's Morning Joe' the other day, regarding who is responsible for deciding what the public thinks, they said: 'that's not their job that's our job'. Now I have the answer to my questions. They do actually think only they can present information to the public. Any other message must be put down. What happened to freedom of the press? You don't have it, if you let tyrants control the press. As Benjamin Franklin said: "Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an over match for the latter." More From The Washington Post: More From The Gray Area: