One of the things we’ve learned over the years is that the press can rile people up about pretty much anything. Not long ago, a pro-life high-schooler, Nicholas Sandmann, who had the temerity to smile uncomfortably at a leftist agitator who got in his face was tarred nationally as a racist, at least until he started suing (and recovering).
George Floyd, a not very savory fellow who died questionably while struggling with police became a martyr, with protests in his name blowing through Covid restrictions and, for a while at least, remaking institutions. (His longest-lasting impact may be the utter discrediting of public health authorities, whose turn-on-a-dime shift for draconian lockdowns to endorsement of mass public gatherings destroyed their credibility with the vast majority of the public.)
The “trans” fad, now winding down, also remade many institutions, which are now trying to recover. For a while, pronouns were in, “gender affirming care” was unchallengeable, and anyone who dared criticize the fad was in danger of cancellation. All of these fads were mediated, and to some degree outright created, by the press.
But while rabble-rousing is the most obvious exercise of press power, rabble-snoozing — the power to keep a news story dormant and out of the general public’s notice — is undoubtedly a bigger one. And we see that exercised again:
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