When Journalism Becomes Advocacy, and Why Disclosure Is the Line

Last week’s exchange between Victor Davis Hanson and Tucker Carlson over Israel, Qatar, and America’s alliances revealed more than a disagreement over foreign policy. It exposed a deeper fracture in moral authority itself, whether order and freedom arise from truth, covenant, and accountability, as Hanson argues, or from power, wealth, and strategic convenience, as Tucker increasingly suggests.

This essay follows that fault line, not to relitigate policy, but to confront the ethical failure that occurs when journalism drifts into advocacy without disclosure, and when influence is mistaken for wisdom.

The Hanson/Carlson exchange was never really about Israel versus Qatar. It concerned something more fundamental: the kind of authority that produces freedom and the kind that ultimately destroys it.

I do not approach this question abstractly. In 1987, I served as a registered foreign agent for the Nicaraguan Resistance. I traveled with Adolfo Calero after the Sandinistas seized his home and business. I learned firsthand the difference between honest advocacy and deception, and why disclosure matters.

What troubles me most about Tucker Carlson is not disagreement per se. It is the collapse of journalistic ethics.

If you present yourself as a journalist while reporting only what your benefactors want said, as well as failing to disclose that you’re being compensated to promote or amplify a foreign regime’s narrative, then that is not journalism. It is advocacy. And it is wrong and unethical.

The rule is simple. Whether the funds come from Qatar, Israel, China, or elsewhere, disclosure is required. Transparency is the line between truth-telling and propaganda. Cross that line and the audience is misled. Trust is broken.

And that line matters, especially now.

Recent footage and commentary involving Tucker Carlson do not weaken this concern; they intensify it. They reinforce the suspicion that Qatari interests have financially supported his media efforts: (Click HERE and HERE).

This is not a momentary lapse or a clever contrarian turn. It looks like a pattern. And that pattern, rather than showing whether Carlson is right or wrong on any single issue, raises the more serious question whether journalism itself is being quietly replaced by something else.

The ethical line, therefore, must be stated plainly.

This standard is not partisan. It applies equally. Whether the sponsor is Qatar, Israel, China, or any other state or state-aligned interest, the rule does not change. Without disclosure, the public is deceived, and trust is violated.

There is nothing inherently immoral about advocacy. Nations have interests. Causes require representation. But when advocacy disguises itself as neutral reporting, borrowing the credibility of journalism without submitting to its ethical constraints, the result is not clarity. It is manipulation.

And manipulation corrodes freedom, always, without exception.

This matters because the regimes being normalized in this conversation are not morally neutral actors. Qatar is an autocracy. Political power is concentrated. Dissent is tightly managed. Most of those living under its rule possess no meaningful political rights. Wealth may soften its image; it does not change its nature.

To portray such regimes as more “serious” or more “consequential” partners for the United States than Israel is not realism. It is moral amnesia.

The issue here is not Islam as a faith, nor Muslims as a people, that can be left to another time. It is authority: who rules, by what law, and with what accountability. Any system in which people do not govern themselves but are administered by force or by financial pacification cannot honestly be called free. Calling it freedom only empties the word of meaning.

That hollowing-out always begins with language. What is true in politics is equally valid in the media.

When truth is subordinated to access, when disclosure is sacrificed for influence, and when moral distinctions are dismissed as inconvenient, authority no longer serves freedom. It serves power. And power, unmoored from truth, always demands silence.

The real question before us is not whether Tucker Carlson has shifted his views. It is whether a culture that once demanded truth from its most influential voices is now willing to accept curated narratives without accountability, so long as they flatter our preferences or attack our enemies.

Which brings us to the spiritual. What is missing from much of this discussion is the covenant. From the opening chapters of Genesis, God grounded authority not in power or utility but in promise. Yahweh pledged the land of Israel to Abraham [Genesis 12:7; 13:15; 15:18], reaffirmed that covenant to Isaac [Genesis 26:3], to Jacob [Genesis 28:13; 35:12], and again to Moses as he looked upon the Promised Land [Deuteronomy 34:4].

Scripture is unequivocal: the land belongs to Israel by Divine covenant. That matters because a covenant establishes moral authority in a way that power never can.

As to the spiritual, Eric Metaxas tweeted last week. “Tucker’s ignorance here is BEYOND BELIEF and sounds like willful gaslighting. NO ONE ever said calling the Jews God’s Chosen People means they are better than others. Is he really THAT ignorant that he would spread this lie? This has become preposterous.”

Thankfully, Gideons and Rahabs have begun to stand.

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