If you want a good example of the unending arrogance of the legacy media, look no further than The New York Times.

You may recall that earlier in the year they released a series of articles, mostly written by “journalists” with no actual experience in the subject matter, called the 1619 project. While there were a few decent pieces in the mix, the vast majority were riddled with factual inaccuracies and overly political. The point was obviously not to actually give a real history of American and slavery, but to push a modern narrative that supports things such as reparations.

This led to five historians to writing letters to the Times expressing their concerns and the response they got is exactly what you’d expect.

https://twitter.com/pegobry/status/1208189884139220993

The project was intended to address the marginalization of African-American history in the telling of our national story and examine the legacy of slavery in contemporary American life. We are not ourselves historians, it is true. We are journalists, trained to look at current events and situations and ask the question: Why is this the way it is? In the case of the persistent racism and inequality that plague this country, the answer to that question led us inexorably into the past — and not just for this project….

Translation: We are a bunch of “journalists” who twisted history in order to fit our preconceived biases for current political gain, and even though we were wrong, we were still right because we say we are right.

As the five letter writers well know, there are often debates, even among subject-area experts, about how to see the past. Historical understanding is not fixed; it is constantly being adjusted by new scholarship and new voices. Within the world of academic history, differing views exist, if not over what precisely happened, then about why it happened, who made it happen, how to interpret the motivations of historical actors and what it all means.

Actually, history is not nearly as malleable as is being presented here. There are many issues being represented in the 1619 project that aren’t up for debate and were simply misconstrued. You don’t even have to go past the name of project to find examples. 1619 was not the “real” founding of the country, nor was it even the first presence of slavery in the new world.

The same newspaper that regularly dumps on US and UK voters for being anti-intellectual and not listening to the "experts" when elections don't go their way now insists they know better than the experts. pic.twitter.com/kuLpAKRsIX

— Mark Grabowski (@ProfGrabowski) December 21, 2019

Maybe it’s good that the Times is at least being honest. The writer of the rebuttal simply admits that they were engaged in propaganda and are fine with that.

The sad thing is that the Times had a chance to bring on a much more varied, knowledgeable group of people to do the 1619 project. The subject matter is certainly worthy of more discussion and exposure to the general populace. Yet, they chose to not use historians nor even allow any conservative voices to comment on the social aspects. Instead it was just a laundry list of left-wing social justice warriors, some of which had no idea what they were even talking about.

But this is the modern state of the mainstream media. Everything is in service to the political narrative they want to push. You can no longer trust anything you hear from an outlet that was once touted as the “paper of record” and they seem fine with that.