"FREEDOM" OF THE PRESS?

Food for thought time.

Consider the mainstream media and how they behave over certain issues in the past few years.

- They swarmed over Nick Sandmann who was at a peaceful pro-life march claiming he was yelling racial slurs and was in the face of a peaceful Native American Vietnam vet causing problems…only to then discover he it was another group yelling the racial slurs and that the Vietnam vet never served in Vietnam, was discharged from the military for disciplinary reasons and was an activists who actually walked over and got in Sandmann’s face rather than the story the press painted. 

- In 2016 they laughed on air at the very thought of Donald Trump becoming the next President of the United States. They showed polls where Hillary Clinton would win by a landslide, close to 90% of the vote going to her. When she lost to Trump they openly cried on air about it, I saw this on ABC.

- For over 2 years they kept noting bombshell after bombshell revealing that Trump had worked with the Russians, colluded with them, to win the election. It seemed that every week brought yet another “bombshell” that would do him in and help the Mueller investigation. We were told by them nightly that the Mueller investigation would be the downfall of President Trump. But when the Mueller Report came out? Nothing. It said there was no collusion.

- During the two years the Mueller report was being compiled the press talked about what an upstanding person Mueller was. They sand his praises and talked about how he was the perfect man for the job. They said that if anyone could find the evidence needed in this investigation it was him. When he released the report it became apparent that he didn’t even know much of what was in the report. Suddenly the same people that praised him in the media turned on him and talked trash about him.

- Jussie Smollett claims that he was attacked in sub-zero weather by two MAGA hat wearing Trump supporters who place a noose around his neck and hurled racial slurs at him. The press reported the story with glee referencing the MAGA hats often. None of them bothered to wonder how this man could be attacked in sub-zero weather and yet still have the rational to hang onto the sandwich he said he went to Subway to buy. The headlines talked about the story, it led the nightly news. Then the story fell apart. Two black men who worked for Smollett were discovered to be the two “white” men who staged the attack. The reporting on this was there but not near with the same fervor.

- Violent confrontations took place in various parts of the country at different rallies. At many of them antifa showed up and took to harming people. They used bike chains and locks, threw rocks at people, came with bats and more. When people putting on these peaceful marches took to defending themselves the press stood up for antifa and blamed those trying to protect themselves.

- When ISIS leaders and terrorist leaders were killed, something that should have been a great thing for world peace, the press bemoaned their loss. They described one as an educator and an “austere religious leader”. Another they discussed how he was a poet and well-loved by his people. They showed footage of the people in the street at the last one’s funeral. They ignored the fact that these people would have been arrested and killed had they not shown. And they neglected to show footage of people happy that he was dead as well as protests that followed by people who put their lives on the line to protest.

- Another item with the Mueller report came out later in the year. The IG report showed that there were abuses of the FISA system in obtaining warrants. The IG report showed that the Steele dossier that was used was junk information and that those seeking the warrants knew this. And yet they based their requests for those warrants time and time again. This information received scant notice from the press who spent hours talking about the FISA requests and Muller report before this.

- A New York Times article claims that a hypothetical family would see its taxes rise by $4,000 due to the Trump tax cuts. It turns out there was a mathematical error in their figuring and the family would actually save $43.

- The New York Times’ Adam Goldman, NBC’s Noreen O’Donnell and AP’s Deb Riechmann reported that Trump’s pick for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, had waterboarded a particular Islamic extremist terrorist dozens of time at a secret prison. It turned out that Haspel wasn’t even at this prison until after that detainee had left.

- AP’s Michael Biesecker, Jake Pearson and Jeff Horwitz reported that a Trump advisory board official had been a Miss America contestant and had killed a black rhino. The reality was that she was a contestant in Miss America and that she had fired a tranquilizer dart into the rhino.

- CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger reported that Trump’s personal lawyer, Cohen, paid $1 million in fines related to unauthorized cars in his taxi business, had been barred from managing taxi medallions, had transferred $60 million offshore to avoid paying debts, and is awaiting trial on charges of failing to pay millions in taxes. It turned out none of this was true.

- The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis, AP, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and others used part of a Trump comment saying he referred to illegal immigrants as animals. It turned out that he was talking about members of MS-13 only.

- The New York Times’ Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and CNN’s Hadas Gold showed pictures of illegal immigrant children imprisoned in cages under President Trump. It turned out the pictures were taken during the Obama administration’s time in office.

- Time magazine and others used a photo of a crying Honduran child to illustrate a supposed Trump administration policy separating illegal immigrant parents and children. It made the cover of Time. It turned out the girl was never separated from her mother and that the mother had abandoned her husband and other children and taken this child to the US without her husband’s knowledge.

-In June of 2018 after a shooting in a newsroom a reporter claimed that the shooter dropped his MAGA hat before opening fire. Turned out it never happened.

- The New York Times reported that a man, Mark Judge, testified he remembered an incident more than 30 year ago in which Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is accused of assault. Turns out their story was false, that he said the exact opposite.

- NBC News falsely reports that President Trump praised Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Turns out he was praising Ulysses S. Grant.

- CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported that Trump decided to fire a national security adviser because the First Lady demanded he do so and the story was followed up by the Wall Street Journal reporting that she had been escorted out of the White House. It turned out she was still working at the White House and just been assigned another job.

- In December of 2018 it’s discovered that nearly everything written by a Der Spiegel reporter, who had been honored by CNN, about a supposedly racist Trump stronghold town was fabricated.

- Again in December of 2018 NBC reports that Trump was the first President since 2002 not to visit the troops at Christmastime. But he (and First Lady Melania) did.

- While working at Politico, one of the New York Times reporters, Ken Vogel got caught sending drafts of stories to democratic officials.

- Another Politico reporter, Maggie Haberman, was considered friendly to the Clinton campaign. An email from a member of the campaign said “We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. We can do the most shaping by going to Maggie”.

- A Georgia State legislator claims that a “white” man at a grocery store told her to “go back where you came from.” The press tries to connect this to Trump because he recently said at the time that several Democrats in Congress should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” It turns out the incident didn’t happen as portrayed, the Georgia legislator admitted it and that the truth was SHE said this to the man at the store who was Cuban.

- An MSNBC contributor and law professor falsely tweets that Fox is not going to show upcoming Congressional testimony by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the Trump-Russia investigation. When this is proven false she says she was “joking” in spite of her tweet being shared thousands of times.

- MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell tweeted “A source close to Deutsche Bank says Trump’s tax returns show he pays very little income tax and, more importantly, that his loans have Russian co-signers. If true, that explains every kind word Trump has ever said about Russia and Putin.” It turned out the information was untrue and O’Donnell apologized on air the following night. Perhaps he should have verified before tweeting it out.

- Ken Dilinian of NBC News reports that starting October 29, “children born to U.S. service members outside of the U.S. will no longer be automatically considered citizens. Parents will have to apply for citizenship for their the [sic] children in those situations.” He ends up having to correct this false story.

- CNN and nearly every major media outlet criticized President Trump for tweeting that Alabama would likely be impacted by Hurricane Dorian. It turned out that multiple official hurricane advisories had put Alabama in a projected impacted area.

- Citing anonymous sources, CNN and the New York Times and other news sources reported that the CIA had to remove a top U.S. spy from Russia in 2017 because of concern over President Trump’s handling of classified information. It turned out the decision to remove the spy happened before CNN said it did and for different reasons and was reported as such by both the New York Times and The Washington Post.

- Vox.com’s Aaron Rupar tweeted that Trump suggested he was a “9/11 First Responder.” In fact, Trump stated the opposite: “I’m not considering myself a first responder.”

- A black girl claims white boys at school held her down, cut off her hair and called her “nappy” and “ugly”. The press tries to link the attack to Vice President Pence saying that the “attack” happened at “a Christian school in Virginia where Vice President Mike Pence’s wife works.” It turned out the attack never happened, that the girl made up the entire thing.

- ABC airs video purportedly showing a “slaughter” and “horrific report of atrocities” against Kurds by Turkey after President Trump withdrew U.S. troops. It turned out that the video footage wasn’t combat footage at all and didn’t take place at the time.

- Many major news outlets including Yahoo, USA Today, Roll Call, NBC, ABC and Fox quotes President Trump as saying Turkey’s invasion of Syria “is not our problem.” It turned out this was a misquote. What he actually said was “They have a problem as a border – it’s not our border” and “it’s not between Turkey and the US”. But the original quote remains on numerous news sites.

- The media claims that President Trump was golfing during the U.S. raid in Syria that captured the head of the Islamic terrorist group ISIS, al-Baghdadi and that photos of him in the White House situation room were staged. It turns out that he had been golfing but finished before this took place and actually was in the situation room.

- Agence France Press publishes a sensational story saying that more than 100,000 children are being held in migration-related detention in the U.S. under President Trump. It turns out that was the number in 2015 under President Obama.

- Newsweek falsely reports that President Trump is spending Thanksgiving golfing in Florida at his Mar-a-Lago Resort. He was actually in Afghanistan serving dinner to U.S. troops. It’s the second year in a row that national media makes the same mistake.

- CNN had done a story that claimed that Devin Nunes had flown to Vienna, Austria in December 2018 to meet with a former Ukrainian prosecutor in to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Nunes sues CNN saying that he was actually in Benghazi, Libya and Malta for meetings at the time they claim and provides pictures proving this.

- The press reports that Dept. of Justice Inspector General Horowitz found “no political bias” in the Russia probe which is completely incorrect and wishful thinking on their part. Horowitz explicitly acknowledged that various FBI officials involved in the probe, including Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had political bias against Trump. He also stated, in Congressional testimony, that Christopher Steele, the political opposition researcher hired by the Clinton campaign to provide the anti-Trump “dossier” to the FBI, had political bias. And he stated that it’s possible political bias was behind other inexplicable and egregious errors the FBI made during the probe, which he did not say was free of bias. Those matters, Horowitz testified, have been referred to the criminal probe and to the FBI to handle.

- MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace falsely claims that President Trump had talked about “exterminating Latinos.” She apologized the next day.

- The New York Times corrects a report it published to demonstrate how people who voted for Donald Trump no longer support him. Their featured example was a man who– it turns out– never voted for Trump in the first place.

- MSNBC reports that there were 30 deaths in the bombing attack by Iran in 2020. Turns out there were zero fatalities.

-Prior to a pro-gun rally in Virginia the press talks non-stop about how violent outbursts are to be expected and how this will be a white supremacist gathering that will be larger than Charlottesville. The Governor (who was seen in blackface in his yearbook) calls a state of emergency in Virginia. The rally takes place and…there are zero arrests. There is no violence. There are blacks and whites standing together in defense of the 2^nd amendment. And when they are done, they even pick up after themselves leaving no trash behind.

Now if the press had made a few mistakes in the past few years I could understand that. And their owning up to some of these mistakes is a good thing. But the fact it by reporting items without evidence, without fact checking, without doing due diligence to insure that their story is correct, the original story gets much more noticed, especially when the follow up apology turns up on page three or as a last minute add on at the end of a news program.

President Trump has said that the press is the enemy of the people. They’re doing little to prove him wrong. Their constant negative coverage of his presidency (at times over 90% of their coverage of him was negative in a short time period) shows a bias that shouldn’t be there. Gone are the days when the press reported the news rather than trying to shape it.

Perhaps that is the price we pay for a 24/7 news cycle. They highlight a news story, calling it a bombshell and when it turns out to be nothing they’ve already gone on to the next bombshell until it fades away as well. Maybe rather than seeking that bombshell story they should instead report what actually transpires. Maybe they should be unbiased and look at both sides of a story rather than one that suits an agenda. And maybe they shouldn’t have agendas in the first place.

(credit to the reporters who have noted many of these incidents, in particular Sharyl Attkisson from whom many of these items were taken)