AG William Barr Warns Against Dangers of “Monolithic” Corporate Media

At a speech in front of the 2020 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville this week, Attorney General William Barr said that religion and the free press were both important weapons in the war against a powerful, centralized corporate media that was trying to impose its view of the world onto the American population.

Barr said that as long as those weapons are primed and ready, the United States will never fall into a “tyranny of the majority.”

“Today in the United States, the corporate – or ‘mainstream’ – press is massively consolidated,” Barr said. “And it has become remarkably monolithic in viewpoint, at the same time that an increasing number of journalists see themselves less as objective reporters of the facts, and more as agents of change. These developments have given the press an unprecedented ability to mobilize a broad segment of the public on a national scale and direct that opinion in a particular direction.

“When the entire press ‘advances along the same track,’ as Tocqueville put it, the relationship between the press and the energized majority becomes mutually reinforcing,” he continued. “Not only does it become easier for the press to mobilize a majority, but the mobilized majority becomes more powerful and overweening with the press as its ally. This is not a positive cycle, and I think it is fair to say that it puts the press’s role as a breakwater for the tyranny of the majority in jeopardy. The key to restoring the press in that vital role is to cultivate a greater diversity of voices in the media.”

Oh, diverse voices? The media LOVES diversity, Bill! They’ll be all too happy to accommodate you. How long before we get a transgender reporter on ABC Nightly News? Surely it’s only a matter of time before MSNBC gives an afternoon slot to a passionate illegal alien. And we’re not even sure why white men are still anchoring CNN’s late afternoon and primetime programs, but at least Anderson Cooper is gay. Not sure what the deal is with Wolf Blitzer, though.

But of course, that’s not the “diversity” that Barr is talking about; he’s talking about ideological diversity, which is a concept the corporate media has absolutely no use for. Well, that’s not exactly true: You can be a fervent liberal or a mild liberal or a NeverTrump conservative liberal. That’s pretty much your entire window right there, and it is a pretty narrow one.

“Although totalitarian democracy is democratic in form, it requires an all-knowing elite to guide the masses toward their determined end, and that elite relies on whipping up mass enthusiasm to preserve its power and achieve its goals,” Barr warned. “Totalitarian democracy is almost always secular and materialistic, and its adherents tend to treat politics as a substitute for religion. Their sacred mission is to use the coercive power of the state to remake man and society according to an abstract ideal of perfection.”

Every time we hear this attorney general speak, we’re more impressed than we were the last time. Bill Barr is a guy who GETS IT. He gets it like Steve Bannon gets it. Trump outdid himself when he put this guy at the head of the Justice Department.