[Madison, WI] – In case you missed it, members of the far-left media have “abandoned honesty and fairness” as they launched a “political assassination” against Sen. Ron Johnson, the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an opinion piece on Thursday. Unfortunately, many members of the mainstream national press are more interested in sensationalism and publishing Democrat talking points than reporting the truth.
As the Wall Street Journal notes, “Johnson has refused to brand everyone present in Washington on Jan. 6 as ‘insurrectionists’; he’s continued to note that last year’s Black Lives Matter protests led to rioting, looting, arson and death; he held hearings on treatments for Covid and 2020 election integrity; and he’s declined, for now, a Covid vaccine, given he had the disease last year and decided to let others go before him…None of this is remotely conspiratorial or even controversial.“
Read more from the Wall Street Journal here or find excerpts below.
Yellow Journalism Turns Blue
Wall Street Journal
Kimberly A. Strassel
March 25, 2021
“Yellow journalism” means a sensationalized press. Perhaps it is time to introduce “blue journalism”—the new media practice of abandoning standards to work seamlessly with the progressive left against any opposition.
A case study is the attempted political assassination of Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. The press has never liked most Republicans. Yet for most of Mr. Johnson’s decade in the Senate, it’s generally described him as what he is: an outsider businessman and fiscal conservative with a focus on deficits and spending. “Wisconsin’s senior senator is a numbers guy, a believer in the power of facts and figures,” wrote Milwaukee Magazine in his first term. In recent years, serving on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he’s developed a reputation for oversight.
[…]
What’s this all about? From the Times story, it amounts to this: Mr. Johnson has refused to brand everyone present in Washington on Jan. 6 as “insurrectionists”; he’s continued to note that last year’s Black Lives Matter protests led to rioting, looting, arson and death; he held hearings on treatments for Covid and 2020 election integrity; and he’s declined, for now, a Covid vaccine, given he had the disease last year and decided to let others go before him.
None of this is remotely conspiratorial or even controversial. Mr. Johnson’s real offense is refusing to roll over to the progressive and public-health police and continuing to ask tough questions.
The Democrat-media complex hates those questions. The Beltway press has a special grudge against Mr. Johnson, since his fact-finding efforts exposed its bias and ineptitude last fall. Mr. Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley in September issued a report on Hunter Biden’s sleazy foreign business dealings. Democrats and the media tried mightily to brand it “Russian disinformation,” only to be roundly refuted when the younger Mr. Biden’s business partner and documents later backed up the report, and when news leaked that Hunter Biden was under federal investigation for the sort of transactions Mr. Johnson had brought to light.
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No, he hasn’t diminished “confidence” in mass vaccinations, as the Times claims; he’s repeatedly praised Operation Warp Speed. Some public-health experts have argued that those who have been infected should have lower vaccination priority while supplies are limited. No, he has not “promoted discredited Covid-19 treatments”; he held a hearing with respected physicians who worried that authorities hadn’t been proactive enough in investigating common drugs that might save lives. No, he hasn’t denied “the violence of the mob” on Jan. 6; he’s condemned the lawbreakers repeatedly while asking tough questions about what really happened that day.
[…]
The only McCarthyism going on, Mr. Sensenbrenner says, is being practiced by the left against people like Mr. Johnson “for asking inconvenient questions.” Former Wisconsin GOP Rep. Reid Ribble tells me the Times also called him but didn’t quote him, presumably because he didn’t give the paper what it was looking for: “They clearly went into this with an agenda, they were seeking specific quotes to get to a conclusion.”