TJ Walker examines why four Alaska journalists quit after their newsroom removed a description of Charlie Kirk as a Christian nationalist. He argues corporate owners and platform economics are crushing press freedom, and shows Kirk's own words about Christianity and race supported the original reporting.
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Right wing wokeness claims another newsroom in Alaska. Four journalists just resigned from three local newspapers after their corporate owner caved to political pressure over coverage of Charlie Kirk's death. According to the New York Times, the original article described Kirk as a Christian nationalist icon who defended often racist and controversial views. That language was later stripped out after Republican State Representative Sarah Vance blasted the piece as hate baiting at its worst. But the original description was accurate. That's right. It was factually accurate. Kirk repeatedly declared America a Christian nation in 2024. He said, you cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population. Okay, well, I'm sure the people in Japan find that interesting. He also said, quote, this is a Christian state. I'd like to see it stay that way. On race, Kirk once said, quote, if I see a black pilot, I'm going to be like, boy, I hope he's qualified. He also called George Floyd a scumbag and dismissed systematic racism as fake. The journalists resigned, saying they couldn't work for an owner willing to erase uncomfortable facts to appease politicians. As Poynter Institute's Kelly McBride put it, they capitulated. Okay, so what's the real message here? Right wing wokeness is growing stronger every day in America, and it is literally rewriting the first draft of history when newspaper writers write facts about someone like this guy Charlie Kirk and say the truth, which is, he did speak of hate, he did promote hate. He was a Christian nationalist, and the story just disappears. That is a brave new world we don't want to continue going into. Let's dig a little deeper here. This is scary stuff, folks, because I hate to tell you, this whole democracy thing, this whole having a republic doesn't really work if there's not some free form of journalism. And if we have politicians saying, okay, remove this story not because it's factually incorrect, but because it doesn't politically help me. So you're going to delete the story and publishers do the bidding of the politicians? You can kiss democracy goodbye. I'm sorry. It really is that simple. Let's look at other facts in this case. Now, I showed you, in Kirk's own words, the original story was accurate. He did in fact, embrace Christian nationalism. A lot of people embrace Christian nationalism. It's not considered to be a part of what a real American would believe in, frankly. It's not what Ronald Reagan promoted. It's not any part of the traditional conservative, Republican, centrist, or liberal Democratic position ever stood for. But it does sell. Again, his direct quote is, if I See a black highlight, I'm going to be like, boy, I hope he's qualified. So his implication is, again, black people are inherently inferior. The only way a black guy could be a pilot is through some affirmative action program because he probably couldn't really get into school or pass test without that. That's clearly the implication. So he said, I didn't even get into things he said about Martin Luther King. Now, you don't have to love Martin Luther King, but to trash an icon like Martin Luther King as Kirk did, and then be aghast, well, how dare anyone say I'm, I'm stoking hatred or racial fear. That's a bit much. It's a bit rich. Now four journalists resign. I'm hoping they, they band together. Maybe they start a YouTube channel, maybe they start their own substack. I hope there are enough people in the land of Sarah Palin to actually promote some real journalism, who care about real journalism. But I don't know. It's very, very difficult to be a journalist in a smaller market, smaller towns, small towns, mid sized towns, even large towns and make enough money. Because frankly, Craigslist and Google Ads and Facebook ads have sucked all the money away from journalism. And these big tech companies realize, why do we want to spend money on things like fact checkers? Let's just give people tools to spew lies and spew nonsense and it cost us nothing. And we can just rake in all the money for advertising. So this is something our founding fathers could not have anticipated, they did not anticipate, and I don't know what the problem is. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have utterly spineless cowards like Mark Zuckerberg throwing in the towel to the great orange one and say, oh, you know what, fact checkers, we'll not check any facts anymore. We're not going to throw people off for spreading absolute nonsense and vile conspiracy theories that end up killing people and causing riots in Washington D.C. we're no longer going to de emphasize those people or kick them off for being hate mongers and tearing apart our fabric. In fact, we're going to continue escalating them. We're going to boost their feeds. You got a big enough lie and say, oh, Kamala Harris eats baby children, spits it out, turns it into soup, and then puts that in your children's lunch the next day. If you crave a big enough lie, the folks at Facebook and Twitter and say, well, sure, come on, come on in, the water's fine. We'll promote you. We'll actually give you millions and millions of views and impressions and clicks because it's interesting and it's engaging. The bigger the lie, the better. That, unfortunately, is what people are consuming, actually reading facts about Charlie Kirk's record. Something factual. No, we don't get that anymore. Sorry, Charlie, you are out of. Of luck. Although Charlie's. Well, he's out of luck for other reasons, obviously.
