TR 198 - The Threat of Free Thinking

They’re coming.

At least that was the catchy title that caught my eye:

Watch out, conservatives -- they're coming for your podcasts

This is what passes for an article these days—a catchy headline that opens to a quote from a different publication. It requires little effort to copy, paste, and attribute. It makes their site look full of interesting, intelligent articles. It gives the site lots of clicks, which inflate their numbers, but hey, I guess that’s the way the game is played.

I point that out to draw contrast to everything it takes to create the articles and podcasts here at TheTorchReport.com. It’s a lot of work, and I’m exceedingly grateful to everyone who’s joined the Patriot Club to support this mission to share the “truth you can trust” — curious perspectives for intelligent people, witty commentary, and well documented sources that aim to help you develop your own informed perspective.

Every episode can’t be the best episode, but I do what I can to deliver each day.

The reason that article caught my eye should be obvious: “They’re coming for your podcast!” Oh really?! This isn’t a surprise, and it’s not that no one saw it coming, it’s the fact that this title has graced the headlines (on a conservative channel) that made it interesting to me. Digging in a little, we find that the primary source of this information is based on research funded and conducted by a liberal think-tank.

From the uber-liberal Brookings Institute we read their intent:

“…assessment of the podcast ecosystem as a space where “you can say whatever you want” is—for the most part—accurate, both with respect to government regulation and platform guidelines.

Even as tech companies raced to limit the spread of election-related misinformation across social media platforms in late 2020, prominent political podcasters played a central role in disseminating election fraud narratives in the lead up to January 6, as we have documented.

Podcasts also offered a prime avenue for the spread of pandemic-related misinformation, particularly regarding unproven treatments and vaccines. Despite the real-world harms caused by this type of misinformation and the medium’s growing reach and influence, to-date little research has explored the role of podcasting in shaping political conversations…” (emphasis added)

What was their solution to this problem—to the problem of people being able to say whatever they want? They created a data set and developed a dashboard.

How interesting.

I know it seems dry, and even a bit benign, but this is actually a ripe opportunity to see the step-by-step methods being used to install the global surveillance state in countries around the world. This is the Delphi Method in action.