I’ve written about Bryan Griffin before, and no doubt I will again. Griffin is the quarterback of DeSantis’ media team as his press secretary, having taken over from one of my heroes, Christina Pushaw.

Pushaw works the outside game now doing rapid response, and Griffin the inside, having to deal with the media on a day-to-day basis. As the media point person within the Governor’s team he gets all sorts of ridiculous media requests, and what’s great about his approach is that he provides the rest of the world with a front-seat view of how the media treats politicians it wants to destroy.

He doesn’t just describe his interactions. He brings the receipts.

A great example of this wound up on Twitter yesterday. Governor DeSantis took a stand against digital currencies controlled by the federal government–currencies that would give the fed and the federal government a total stranglehold on your spending whenever they like, and the ability to track everything you spend money on–and the New York Times went into full overdrive to attack him as an overreaching conspiracy theorist.

DeSantis and his office vow Florida will "NEVER recognize a centralized digital currency," issue fiery remarks to the Federal Reserve@BryanDGriffin: "The media are already running cover on this issue, downplaying CBDC implications."https://t.co/TthPgOO8O0

— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) April 11, 2023

Because of course they needed to deride what DeSantis is accomplishing. It is their job to attack DeSantis, not to report on what he did and why he did it. Governments are looking longingly to China’s social credit system and a digital currency would be an excellent tool of social control.

🧵It cannot be overstated how important this is.

With this legislation, FL is vowing that it will NEVER recognize a centralized digital currency.

Centralized digital $ is critical to big gov't & globalist agendas. @GovRonDeSantis is crippling their greatest measure of control. pic.twitter.com/0sT78JpbAC

— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) April 11, 2023

A digital dollar would be an incredibly powerful tool the federal government could use to control your life and monitor your activities. It would the equivalent of putting a GPS and video camera on you while simultaneously controlling your money. You can be tracked and your expenses controlled if they want.

Think Canadian truckers, only much much worse.

But that is not my concern in this post. Rather, what is interesting to me is the NYT’s approach to covering DeSantis’ digital currency policy.

Here's the response, calling out the bad faith tactics and bias. Look out for a hundred more stories like this. They're all completely predictable: "This isn't happening, but if it does, it's a good thing!" pic.twitter.com/iKO7mctvVy

— Bryan Griffin (@BryanDGriffin) April 11, 2023

The New York Times, in order to maintain its veneer of being a news organization, does contact the governor’s office in order to get a comment.

But only after the story is written and includes the spin they want. The reporter literally wrote the story using the talking points of DeSantis’ critics and then invites the governor to give a comment about why, precisely, he isn’t the evil person that the story claims.

They call this journalism.

The claims being put forth by the critics are, in the main, ludicrous. But again that isn’t the point. Every story should include arguments for and against a position, although they should at least try to be honest about them.

What is the point is that the Times was utterly uninterested in DeSantis’ arguments before writing the story. Could it possibly be, for instance, that if the Times had bothered to ask questions before the story was written that many of the critiques would already have been answered? Just perhaps, in fact, those arguments might have gotten the reporter to challenge not just DeSantis, but his critic’s claims.

Perhaps, even, DeSantis may have a point.

But here’s the rub–they don’t want both sides or even the truth. They want a narrative, and they decided that long before the story was written.

Back when I was a spokesman for a nonprofit I learned this game. I even got phone calls from reporters asking “Can you say this on camera? I need somebody to say this. Can you?” Sometimes yes, it was what I actually believed. Sometimes no, I wouldn’t say it. But in every case, I was dealing with a person who had an agenda.

The story was in the can. They just needed to put the words into others’ mouths. Always.

That is how the game is played. It is propaganda, not reporting. It has been that way for a long while, but it is more transparent and at least some people are willing to show how the sausage is made. As of now, it is mainly DeSantis’ people because they have realized that the media will never give them a fair shake, so screw ’em.

The 24-hour news cycle has made the imperative to churn out the content more urgent and email has made it easier to reveal the inner workings. It used to be hard to bring receipts. No longer.

But it took the guts of people like DeSantis, Pushaw, and Griffin to actually fight back with something other than ineffectual cries of “fake news.”

For that I am grateful.