The New York Times mocked residents of a small town in California’s rural Central Valley on Saturday for not using mainstream media sources, blaming their ignorance for a militia that showed up — five years ago.
The Times story, “It Was Just a Rumor on Facebook. Then a Militia Showed Up,” is a moralistic tale warning about the pitfalls of abandoning legacy media in favor of alternative media and social media as news sources:
Now, in place of longtime TV pundits and radio hosts, residents turn to a new sphere of podcasters and online influencers to get their political news. Facebook groups for local events run by residents have replaced the role of local newspapers, elevating the county’s “keyboard warriors” to roles akin to editors in chief.
…
Julie Logan, an in-home health care worker in Oakdale, can still remember the scene: It was a weekend morning in June [2020], and the downtown farmers’ market had been replaced by a scene resembling a military operation.
Gunmen patrolled the sidewalks dressed head to toe in brown camouflage; store windows were boarded up; some of the men perched from the rooftops in tactical gear, brandishing rifles.
The Times fails to provide the context: the militia had been hired to provide security against possible rioters, and Black Lives Matter rioters did, in fact, target small towns that summer, including Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Notably, the Times has not returned its Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the “Russia collusion” hoax, or for the “1619 Project,” which falsely claimed that the American Revolution was fought to defend slavery.
Such false reporting did more than trigger a local business to hire private security; it contributed to an explosive environment of political division and violent unrest, as well as to abuses of power by government officials.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
