The big news in the X-osphere is that Tenet Media, owned by Lauren Chen, has allegedly been paid $10 million to produce four livestreams per week. Tenet employs multiple “conservative influencers” who express disparate opinions regarding current political events, but they don’t seem to have ever adhered to a single scripted talking point, even quarreling amongst themselves over issues like Israel. Chen herself has been a fierce critic of Israeli influence on our political process, and critical of Trump, and many are pointing to these two opinions of her as a damning indictment. But is it? Foreign money floods our public intellectual class year upon year, but now we’re supposed to be outraged that Russia is funding a media outlet that doesn’t appear to be beholden in any perceivable way to Russian interests, aside from criticism of the Ukraine war, and an opposition to war with Russia, which is something that almost every single commentator not affiliated with Tenet has expressed. Our corporate press is funded by the pharmaceutical industry as well as pro-Israel organizations who assuredly get their money from the Zionist state. Ukraine is using American tax billions to fund pro-Ukrainian talking points. If one is a crime, then so are the others. But what is the crime here? This is how the media has always functioned.
