This would not have been possible in the early days of the republic, and in fact, similar information was available to the American people. During Thomas Jefferson’s first term as president, newspapers opposed to Jefferson printed stories that he had several children by his slave Sally Hemings. DNA evidence has indicated that this was indeed the case.
DNA played a prominent role in a scandal involving a later president, but the MSM tried to cover for the president and keep the information from the American people. The story was broken not by a print newspaper, newsmagazine, or TV network, but rather by what CNN still refers to as “an Internet gossip column” — the Drudge Report. Without the DNA samples on the blue dress, the MSM would even today be denying that Clinton had “sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
There are other potentially earth-shaking stories out there that could be confirmed or refuted by DNA tests. For example, Adolf Hitler’s first lawyer claimed that Hitler was actually a Jew. The psychiatrist whom President Franklin D. Roosevelt hired during World War II to analyze Hitler believed Hitler was a Rothschild. Hitler’s father was illegitimate, so indeed the ethnicity of Hitler’s paternal grandfather is open to doubt. The ethnicity question could be settled easily enough: It is well-known that Hitler has three half-grand nephews living today on Long Island. They long ago changed their name, but it is known that their paternal great-grandfather was Adolf Hitler’s father. These three Americans, in other words, have the same Y-chromosome as Adolf Hitler. Thus, by obtaining a sample of their DNA, the Hitler-Jew story could be checked.
Refuted, in my opinion. But if this story is ever investigated, it will be by a web-based media organization — the MSM would never be interested. Certainly a government-supported news organization would not be. Academic historians — historians like those at Columbia University — dismissed out of hand the possibility that Jefferson ever fathered children with one of his female slaves. The possibility that he did went against the narrative.
The new media has, collectively, no narrative. And this is precisely because web-based news organizations are not government-funded.
They are funded by customers when they provide their readers with exciting news stories, with thought-provoking op-ed pieces. When they fearlessly state the truth as they see it. By behaving, in other words, like the print newspapers America had in the Founders’ day.
We need no government bailout of newspapers. We need no American Pravda.