There’s an old psychological experiment where a teacher walks out in front of a crammed high school auditorium carrying a basketball and tells the assembled students, “Whatever you do, don’t think of this basketball.” Then the teacher leaves the stage. Guess what was on the mind of every student?

Such is what Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg unadvertantly pulled off with the Biden Burisma meeting. By trying to squelch the story they just made everyone wonder what the story was all about. The responsible and smart move would have been to do more reporting and try to kill the story with facts that undermine its credibility.

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But the Left doesn’t think like that. They are petty little authoritarians. Truth matters little to them, but controlling information matters a lot. Plus they likely knew the further they dug the worse off it would be for Biden. So they went for the kill and instead shot themselves in the foot. Senator Cruz is amusingly taking advantage of their bad aim.

.@Twitter and @Facebook’s censorship of the @nypost story on a meeting between Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and Burisma is an obvious and transparent attempt to influence the upcoming election. That’s why today I sent a letter seeking answers behind this censorship. pic.twitter.com/fq1aCUbH5X

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 14, 2020

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What was just as interesting to watch was various leftist “journalists” criticizing anyone on their side who dared to mention the story, even to mock it. Joe Scarborough mentions it to make fun of it, the Left is on him like flies on manure. Jake Sherman of Politico and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times report it and they are taken to the woodshed. But, aren’t journalists supposed to report stories?

We here, who are admittedly a journal of conservative opinion, harbor under no such constraints. Neither does, say, National Review or The Nation. This column exists to provide a point of view within the context of accurate analysis. But Politico and the NYT are supposedly news reporting organizations.

So what the Left is saying to them is, “Don’t report it, no matter if you think it’s the truth or a legitimate story. Ideological lockstep matters more than the truth.” Which is about all you need to know about the Left’s commitment to press credibility or to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. As the story unwinds there will be more attempts to kill it. But sorry Jack and Jeff. By using such hamfisted tactics, you threw the cat out of the bag for good.