Axios Has a Total Meltdown Because the Press Can’t Control the Narrative Anymore

Save some thoughts for national journalists because they are going through a tough time right now. Having failed in their quest to defeat Republicans in the 2024 election, press outlets are now facing a reality they don’t like: An inability to control the narrative.

How are they responding? By melting down, of course. 

Axios published a hand-wringing piece on Friday morning, decrying the death of so-called “fact-checking” while demanding that the press morph into “reality-checkers.” 

Fact-checking suddenly looks inadequate and practically irrelevant. Whole realities — the supposed culprits for the LA fires, a new MAGA world map, a child sex-abuse scandal in Britain — now sweep the internet overnight.

We no longer need fact-checkers. We need reality-checkers.

— Axios (@axios) January 10, 2025

Fact-checking suddenly looks quaint, inadequate and practically irrelevant. 

• Whole realities — the supposed culprits for the LA inferno, a new MAGA map of the world, a child sex-abuse scandal (“grooming gangs“) in Britain — now sweep the internet overnight. 
• We no longer need fact-checkers. We need reality-checkers.

There’s a lot more to get to from this article, but let me translate that introduction for you: “We want to be able to control the flow of information, curating it to fit our preferred narratives so we can dictate our preferred political outcomes.”

It’s not any more complicated than that. The press will try to wrap all this up into seemingly complicated arguments about “misinformation” and the twisting of reality, but at the end of the day, they want control. The internet, driven by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, has taken that control away from them. Further, Donald Trump’s re-election has made it clear they no longer have any viable power. The press did everything it could to stop him, going further than anyone has in American history, and they still failed. Their credibility with the American people is in tatters, and they are lashing out. 

1. As flames tore through Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, X became a cesspool of misinformation and anti-DEI attacks targeting LA Mayor Karen Bass and LAFD chief Kristin Crowley, who is the first woman and LGBT person in the job.

• The truth became impossible to distill: Musk’s vaunted Community Notes system was like a Band-Aid on a bullet hole, as reports of water shortages — some real, some fake — exploded into partisan blame games.
• Trump quickly exploited the crisis and accused Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of refusing to sign “the water restoration declaration,” which the governor’s office dismissed as “pure fiction.” With the fires raging and growing, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!” Musk quickly tweeted agreement.

It’s rather cute to see a press outlet complain about the “partisan blame game” when they are the primary drivers of it (and always in one direction). There were and continue to be water shortages for those fighting the wildfires in Los Angeles County. That is not in dispute, with firefighters on the ground repeatedly telling reporters that the hydrants were not working. Here’s just one example. 

This is amazing.

A left-wing anchor tries to “fact-check” Rick Caruso by saying firefighters have not said they are running out of water.

They then cut to their reporter on the ground who repeatedly states they are out of water completely.

Devastating. pic.twitter.com/rm7aXK6sFv

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 9, 2025

As to Trump supposedly “exploiting” the crisis, have its journalists ever made that charge about a Democrat rushing to blame “gun control” in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting? Of course, they haven’t. Again, it is simply a fact that Donald Trump signed a water restoration declaration that would have diverted more water from the Bay Delta to drier parts of the state. He was sued by the State of California, which last I checked is run by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

SEE: The Press and Democrats Mocked Donald Trump Over Wildfires, Now the Receipts Loom Large

Notice, though, that the supposed arbiters of truth didn’t bother to mention that context. Instead, they just reported Newsom’s denial and left it at that. What kind of “reality check” is that? If you’re going to cry about misinformation, then don’t produce it by purposeful commission. 

Reality check: The unprecedented fires are a natural disaster caused by fierce winds and some of the driest conditions on record for early January, likely exacerbated by climate change.

• Bass is facing real criticism for being on a diplomatic mission in Ghana at the start of the crisis. And water policies have been hotly debated in California. But there’s no evidence of diversity programs hindering the response. 
• The lack of sufficient water to put out the fires wasn’t as simple as a few bone-headed decisions by incompetent people. It’s exceptionally complex: Municipal water systems aren’t built for this many fires requiring this much water from this many hydrants. Fixing this, if super-fires are indeed a new normal, would be a domestic Manhattan Project.
• Surely mistakes were made. But it’s implausible to know the precise ones to fault in real time.

The above excerpt is just incredible. It begins by stating that the fires were “likely exacerbated by climate change,” yet just a few sentences later, they claim it’s “implausible to know” what mistakes were made that could have exacerbated the fires. So let me get this straight. Axois knows that nebulous “climate change” was a factor, but the rest of us can’t say, for example, that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass shares some responsibility for her city’s crumbling, ineffective infrastructure leading to water shortages? That’s an insanely obtuse contention.

Likewise, Axios claims there is “no evidence” that DEI programs have played a role in reducing the readiness of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Is that true, though? Because I would say a department that has suffered budget cuts to the point where it had to stop testing fire hydrants in late 2024 has probably been negatively affected by its Fire Chief wasting millions on a DEI bureau. That criticism also applies to recruiting. The LAFD has a staffing shortage, and DEI has been at the heart of its recruiting efforts. 

Yet, the rest of us aren’t allowed to point out that those efforts have failed to fix the issue while possibly damaging recruiting further. This is why no one trusts or likes the press. They make broad, often unsupported proclamations to push a narrative only to turn around and be hopelessly pedantic when others apply some common sense to the situation. 

Axios continued by taking a shot at Musk, suggesting he had manufactured the outrage over grooming gangs in the United Kingdom.

2. Musk plunged the U.K. into crisis last week— and is now plotting to oust center-left Prime Minister Keir Starmer — after reviving and weaponizing a decade-old child abuse scandal involving British-Pakistani grooming gangs.

Was it Musk that “plunged the U.K. into crisis, or was it the fact that U.K. politicians downplayed the mass rape of innocent children in order to protect their immigration policies? And since does something being a “decade-old” disqualify it from the conversation? That’s a rather odd way to try to deflect from such a gross series of crimes. Notably, Axios doesn’t even attempt to pretend they didn’t happen. Instead, they just seem upset people are talking about it. 

Here’s my favorite part, though. 

There’s no evidence that the Labour government — which was elected in a landslide last July after 15 years of Conservative rule — has intentionally blocked investigations for political reasons.

No evidence, eh? Keep in mind the article cited above was published on January 10th. On January 8th, Labour Party members overwhelmingly voted to stop a national inquiry into the grooming gangs. But according to Axios, there’s “no evidence” they’ve intentionally blocked investigations. You can’t make this stuff up. 

BREAKING: Keir Starmer’s far-left Labour Party votes against opening up an investigation into child rape gangs

The vote was 364-111. pic.twitter.com/S89e67bqLA

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 8, 2025

Is it any wonder no one trusts the national press? They have burned themselves to the ground and lost any ability to control the narrative. No amount of finger-wagging about “reality-checking” is going to change that.

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