On Friday morning in his Substack, our friend Erick Erickson wrote that the national media’s Trump-focused and Democratic-defensive coverage of the California wildfires has led him to believe “[i]t’s time to let the press hit rock bottom” and even had him “starting to wish ill on the American press” even though “[t]he country needs it” and the powerful deserve to be held to account.
In “The Press Circles the Wagons Around Progressives,” Erickson correctly noted he arrived at this view despite having “long defended the press corps” and that it’s his inner “sinner” talking.
“But it’s like watching an addict...who refuses to help himself and you’ve finally decided until he hits rock bottom, he won’t get help...I don’t think the press wants to help itself. I think the political press, in particular, needs to go on and overdose,” he added.
Erickson said there have been “things that are not true or are blown out of proportion” about the wildfire coverage, but plenty of facts remain and “[t]he American press corps has served as concubines for Gavin Newsom” by “deflect[ing] and dodg[ing] holding progressives accountable for much of anything.”
He explained some of the facts that do remain, such as the reality that the wildfires that have only been exacerbated by policies such as no “new reservoir since 1979, despite voters demanding new ones in 2014” and there being “a firefighter shortage because, in part, the county fired firefighters who would not get the COVID-19 vaccine and have been slow to hire because of DEI issues.”
He went onto add more examples (click “expand”):
Here, from 2023, is a video of California releasing a massive amount of water into rivers because it had no more reservoirs to hold the water. Now, here is Joe Biden from yesterday, admitting that because of the risks of sparks from power lines, the power was turned off, which is the direct cause of water not flowing to fire hydrants. The pumps stopped working.
Where are the serious questions from the press about the pumps and generators?
It turns out that Los Angeles Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Brian Williams is on leave due to an FBI investigation while Mayor Bass was out of the country. Where are the questions about who was in charge?
(....)
Now, the Washington Post and the New York Times have decided that, instead of asking tough questions of progressives, they must instead push back against the right for doubting climate change caused the fires. Philip Bump of the Washington Post compared right-wing dismissiveness towards climate change causing the fires to 2020 election denialism. Lisa Friedman at the New York Times reported that Elon Musk is wrong about the role climate change played in the fires.
Later, he gave it to us straight, down to the analogy of the liberal media being like someone’s personal prostitute housed in a sex dungeon: “Our republic needs a free press to hold power accountable. The press we have is not free. It is a ball-gagged gimp kept in the basement of the DNC trotted out to abuse anyone on the right who dares question progressive claims to power.”
