James G. Zumwalt / April 12, 2023 

World Net Daily ... Turkish journalist Can Dundar and a German-based broadcasting company have created a documentary series entitled "Guardians of Truth." It shares stories about people around the world who courageously stood up for freedom of speech.

Dundar himself has paid a high price for doing so. As editor-in-chief of a daily Turkish newspaper, he published a true story about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shipping weapons to Syria.

For two decades, an autocratic Erdogan has been tightening his grasp on power, initially as prime minister and currently as president. His near carte blanche control of the country's institutions, including the judiciary, resulted in Dundar being tried in absentia for publishing the story and receiving a prison sentence of 27 years.

For many of the subjects in the documentary series, America has long served as a source of inspiration for free speech and their ultimate decision to take on the fight within their own countries. It is sadly ironic, however, the American institutions traditionally serving as their model guardians of truth have now fallen from grace.

While the subjects of the series endeavor, at great personal risk, to continue to strive for truth, they see American guardians today no longer treasuring it, embracing fake news, misinformation and disinformation to promote a liberal mindset.

America's historic guardians of truth – the government, the media and our educational institutions – have undergone such change, one wonders whether the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is still applicable.

The continuing release of Twitter Files underscores how Joe Biden, both before and after winning the 2020 presidential election, worked closely with the social media to divert negative publicity about him and his family to negate its impact on voters.

The mainstream media (MSM) over the years has made it abundantly clear it leans left with over five times as many members identifying as liberal rather than conservative. Fake news has run rampant within the MSM, lowering trust across party lines. Despite being newer to the game than establishment media, the social media have displayed a similar leftist bent.

Both these media sources have fed a leftist ideology, either by manipulating truth to publish fake news or by undermining any effort to publish conservative viewpoints or to promote candidates of that ilk.

One would think a place where conservative views could be openly aired would be our educational institutions, but many such institutions have actively participated in banning conservative voices as well.

Ironically, one of the major universities that took on an active role in the 1960s to ensure anti-Vietnam War voices were heard was the University of California at Berkeley. Yet 21st century Berkeley has been banning conservative views, triggering lawsuits.

A recent revelation suggests leftist groups have taken things to a new low, backed by dark money from the Democratic Party, to quietly promote misinformation.

The term "misinformation" is defined as "false information that is spread, regardless of intent to mislead." A consulting firm – Arabella Advisors – tied to the Democratic Party manages funds that support academic and independent research into online misinformation, predominantly targeting conservatives' online presence.

Unsurprisingly, many Arabella-funded research projects cite conservatives as the predominant purveyors of misinformation with several recommending solutions to mitigate its spread, including censorship. By doing so, these groups weaponize charitable laws and tax exemption regulations in their push for Democratic electoral victories.

American politics of the 21st century have become a dirty game.

Substantive discussions on issues have given way to unfairly silencing one entire side of the debate. It smacks of the same approach Democrats took in establishing their January 6 House investigative select committee. That committee's mission clearly was to promote only one side of the issue – that President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing, while totally disregarding any evidence to the contrary.

With our own Guardians of Truth becoming an endangered species, America is shamelessly showing signs of transitioning to a one-party system in the 21st century.