News Filtering: The Shocking Truth
The Legacy Media, to include CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio (NPR) are reluctant to report about the success of Operation Epic Fury in Iran. Regrettably, such news filtering has become their hallmark, which causes this writer to recall the time when I could have filtered some news but did not.
As a teenager, in the 1950s, I served one session as a Page in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Early each morning several House Members from districts along the border with Arkansas would sit together at the back of the chamber. We pages were alerted to the fact that most of those members could not read nor write. And that the illiterate members were likely to tell us that they forgot to bring their reading glasses and would ask us to read the morning papers to them. If there was ever a chance to filter the news to elected officials, that was it.
But, as high school teenagers will no political agenda, we simply read out loud whatever articles or editorial they wanted us to read to them.
Their reading handicap came as a big shock to this teenager of long ago. But a bigger shock came when, as a grown-up, I learned that so-called objective journalists and their editors would selectively filter the news to favor their political or even personal agenda.
That reality brings to mind the “Ministry of Truth,” as conceived by George Orwell in his classic novel “1984.” For those who never read “1984,” or lost their copy of Cliff’s Notes or Spark Notes, the novel’s hero, Winston, labors in the Ministry of Truth re-writing history to make history politically correct. Although published in 1949, “1984” predicted the rise of the Politically Correct (PC) Movement in this country in the 1960s.
In “1984,” The Ministry of Truth is busily engaged in creating a language known as “Newspeak.” Certain words deemed politically incorrect are deleted from the “Newspeak” dictionary. The definitions of other words are changed to be more politically correct. For example: “Freedom,” in the sense of freedom-of-thought is banned. But “free,” as in a “free coupon” for groceries, is okay.
But Orwell’s greatest contribution to today’s political situation is “Doublethink,” which means the ability of keeping two totally contradictory thoughts in mind at the same time and being wholly accepting of both of them. For example: Virtually all college faculty and staff say they support “free speech.” But if students invite a conservative speaker on campus, the conservative speaker is either banned from speaking at all or shouted down by liberal faculty, staff, and students. In urban areas, we are seeing riots in opposition to the current administration’s supposed “totalitarianism.” But the rioters are using violence reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Another classic example of “Doublethink.”
The deplorable state of public education in certain urban areas brings to mind Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” published in 1932. The novel begins at the state-run hatchery where human embryos are injected with chemicals designed to produce humans in five classes in descending order of mental and physical abilities: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. The Alphas are programmed to be leaders. Epsilons are programmed to be morons. None of the classes are capable of forming rebellious thoughts.
Maybe you might want to revisit “1984,” “Brave New World,” and, while you are at it, Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (1945). Although British, both Huxley and Orwell were amazingly prescient about what is happening in America today.
©2026. William Hamilton