What would I.F. Stone do?
Institutional journalism is dead, and the muckraking independent journalist would know exactly what we must all do
This week I want to pursue several themes connected to America’s populist left and populist right political movements, both of which are on the march in the western world. Sort of. Critically, in one very important aspect, they share a common goal that makes them important allies—in particular, the opposition of each to the international merger of state and corporate power.
To be sure, there are crucial differences between the two, which have more long-term consequences. Perhaps the biggest divide is about who calls the shots in the globalist state-corporate partnership. For the left, it’s the international corporations; for the right; it’s unbridled state and bureaucratic power that cowers their private partners. Of course, there are overlaps and nuances, and each component of the Great Reset is powerful in its own right.
I’ll dissect that whole issue in another piece, but today I want to look at this question through the lens of journalism, for three recent events with journalism at the epicenter allow us to filter out the surrounding chaos and watch with some clarity how the right and left have come together—and must continue coming together—on the critical issues of freedom and civil liberties.
The surrogates are easily identified. There is on one side the corporate media, also known as the legacy media. On the other are independent investigative journalists of the left and rigot, not to mention some tortuous souls trying to cling to the center. Though some of these independent journalists do maintain institutional ties, many, if not most, have run for the hills from the legacy news media, much as civil libertarians and political populists have fled the Democratic Party, and have set up shop on such platforms as Substack, Locals, Rumble, and others.