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Media Test Positive For Corrupt COVID Coverage.  Policymakers and public health officials need to be held accountable for their miserable pandemic failures.  So should the media, which have no interest in objective news, and are following an agenda that is both repulsive and poisonous.  Among the media's favorite stories of the past 18 months are the deaths of the unvaccinated and those who expressed skepticism about the lethality of the Wuhan coronavirus.  A recent example is the death of a 40-year-old California woman, who, according to the British Daily Mail, "regularly posted anti-vax, anti-mask content, proclaiming herself a 'free thinker' who 'questions everything.'"  The mother of four — who also considered herself "unmuzzled" — "had been battling COVID-19 and resulting pneumonia ahead of her passing."  Tragic as her death was, it would not have been covered by the media had she been vaccinated and cheerfully compliant with lockdown and mask rules.  But in the twisted minds of most of today's journalists, it's a story that has to be told to boost their vanity.  They are our moral superiors.

ABC Takes Victory Lap After Smeared BP Agents Are Put on Desk Duty.  Border Patrol was already stretched dangerously thin but on Wednesday [9/22/2021], ABC's World News Tonight celebrated their job getting harder as multiple mounted agents were ordered to "administrative duties" after the rabid left and liberal media smeared them with lies about using "whips" on Haitian migrants.  As NewsBusters had documented all week, ABC anchor David Muir and correspondent Kenneth Moton were committed to parroting the ignorant White House talking point about how the images were "horrific."  "This scene along the southern border tonight.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott using state-owned vehicles to create what he's calling a 'steel barrier,' with the migrant crisis on the border.  And there is news tonight involving some of those Border Patrol agents seen on horseback, confronting migrants," Muir announced in his opening tease.

There Are No Bathrooms at the Border, and Other Shocking Revelations.  Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles  State Media  Times was literally shook to discover just how "dismal" things have become in migrant camps along the border.  I don't mean to make light of the harrowing conditions at the border.  Regardless of the cause, it's not nice to witness humans in peril, even of their own making.  What I am making light of is the L.A. Times and their ilk finding a "story" in the obvious and calling it news.  The very obvious truth is and has always been the same:  there aren't restrooms at the border.  It's not because the United States hates desperate immigrants or even desperate Haitian immigrants or the despotic coyotes who exploit them.  There are no bathrooms at the border because bathrooms don't belong in the middle of nowhere. [...] It obviously comes as a shock to people like Molly Hennessy-Fiske, who clearly have not spent much time in the middle of nowhere and thus do not understand that bathrooms don't grow in the wild.

Nicolle Wallace Tells Brian Williams Current Deadly Covid Surge is Like a 9/11 'Every Two Days'.  Anchoring coverage of 9/11 memorials on Saturday, MSNBC's Brian Williams and Nicolle Wallace discussed the historic significance of masks at the events and covid overall in comparison to the terror attacks of that terrible day.  Williams brought up the subject by way of mentioning the ever-present covid masks.  "Are you ever struck by the thought that on the 40th, 50th anniversary we will look back, perhaps, at some of these pictures and be reminded, oh, yeah, that's when we were all wearing masks?" he said to Wallace.  "That's when even our presidents and former presidents had to wear masks in public because of our uncontrolled pandemic in 2021?"  "Well, I think there are so many parallels to how much more difficult it is to do any of the things that anyone who has spoken today has done, to call the country to a higher purpose," Wallace replied.  "You've got politicians and prominent folks in the media outraged by steps that a president, not too many presidents after the one we heard from today, would try to save his country from an unthinkable death toll."

The Editor says...
[#1] There is no "uncontrolled pandemic."  If you turn off your television, you won't see sick people anywhere, and your life will return to pre-2020 normal in no time.  [#2] I'll take my chances with the relatively small "death toll."  Tyranny is worse than disease.  Diseases eventually go away.  Tyranny does not.

CNN Host, PBS Star Agree 1/6 Is As Big as the Civil War, World War 2.  As we have all learned from Joe Biden's presidency, the phoniest/baloney-est claim from liberals is that they have a deep desire for national unity.  There is no unity in compromise, only in surrender to the Left.  At the end of Sunday's [9/5/2021] Reliable Sources, fill-in host John Avlon interviewed the PBS gasbag Ken Burns, asking him about national unity, and he's as phony as Biden.  This is CNN, so Avlon demands unity in exaggerating the January 6 riot:  [Video clip] [...] How does anyone compare the January 6 riot to World War II or the Civil War?  It's like comparing Hiroshima to the Portland riots.  Liberals love to pose that they are against "partisan echo chambers."  They actually say this with a straight face on CNN... and on PBS.

It's the old "phony struggling against the wind" act.
Weather Channel Busted In Their Coverage Of Hurricane Ida:  Utility Worker Trolls Fake News Reporter.  On the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, some forecasters said Hurricane Ida would be as intense as last year's Laura and the Last Island Hurricane of 1856.  Both were among the strongest storms on record to make landfall in Louisana.  According to CNN, about half a million people were without power in the region. [...] The situation is already serious and there is no need for the media to make things [appear] even more serious.  A quick clip caught a man doing a cartwheel during Weather Channel reporter Jim Cantore's live shot on Sunday amid Hurricane Ida. [...] In another video, Jim is looking like he is on his last legs but the situation at the moment is probably not that serious as a utility worker trolls him.  [Video clip]

Chicken little is real.  A recent front-page headline in my local paper read as follows:  "County bordering on high virus transmission rate."  A doctor with a large regional health system was concerned that the COVID-19 transmission rate had increased by 37% in one week and stated, "A transmission rate above 5% from the prior week is very scary."  It seems useful to provide some context regarding numbers such as these, considering all the numbers being thrown around regarding COVID-19, the apparent push to create a panic over the Delta variant of COVID-19, the obvious push for everyone to get vaccinated, and the fact that the United States is ranked so poorly in math and science.  The first number to be considered is the 37% increase.  It certainly looked pretty bad, but percentages do not always provide an accurate picture.  The county-wide cases went from 11 to 15 during the week in question, an increase of four cases.  So, a 37% increase does not seem to be all that concerning given a population of over 91,000 people.

MSNBC Contributor Spews HATE: Fox News Is Al Jazeera, Trump Is Bin Laden.  Jonathan Capehart's Sunday show on MSNBC devoted a segment today [8/1/2021] to slamming Fox News for its coverage of the January 6th Capitol breach.  And NBC contributor Dean Obeidallah slimed Fox News as Al Jazeera and analogized Donald Trump to the greatest mass-murdering terrorist in US history.  When columnist Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts asked what people would sacrifice, Capehart responded by claiming that Fox News and Republicans on Capitol Hill "have sacrificed their soul."  A bit later, Capehart, somewhat out of left field, blurted out that "whiteness is a [...] drug."  But capping all the inane commentary was Dean Obeidallah.  He said that Fox News is "the Al Jazeera of America after 9/11."  Plumbing even more absurd depths, Obeidallah claimed that President Trump is "the Osama bin Laden of January 6th."

The Panic Pandemic.  The United States suffered through two lethal waves of contagion in the past year and a half.  The first was a viral pandemic that killed about one in 500 Americans — typically, a person over 75 suffering from other serious conditions.  The second, and far more catastrophic, was a moral panic that swept the nation's guiding institutions. [...] The panic was started, as usual, by journalists.  As the virus spread early last year, they highlighted the most alarming statistics and the scariest images:  the estimates of a fatality rate ten to 50 times higher than the flu, the chaotic scenes at hospitals in Italy and New York City, the predictions that national health-care systems were about to collapse.  The full-scale panic was set off by the release in March 2020 of a computer model at the Imperial College in London, which projected that — unless drastic measures were taken — intensive-care units would have 30 Covid patients for every available bed and that America would see 2.2 million deaths by the end of the summer.  The British researchers announced that the "only viable strategy" was to impose draconian restrictions on businesses, schools, and social gatherings until a vaccine arrived.  This extraordinary project was swiftly declared the "consensus" among public-health officials, politicians, journalists, and academics.

Dear Reporters:  The Capitol Riot Was Not 9/11, and the story is not about the media.  There is a faction of the news media that seems stuck on January 6.  They need to get some perspective.  And political hucksters who claim that the Capitol riot was worse than the September 11 attacks deserve all the derision they get.  One symptom of the January 6 fixation is a recent Vice article entitled, "'So, So Angry': Reporters Who Survived the Capitol Riot Are Still Struggling." [...] Get over yourselves.  The Capitol Hill press corps are not the first people to deal with a traumatic event and be expected to keep doing their jobs.  This was not the worst of those, and some of those other events were also wholly or partly the work of political actors.  Ask any of us who went through September 11.

Pandemics are staged on Television.  When a new epidemic is launched and promoted, despite the lack of good science and good evidence, it is jacked up on television screens.  Images begin to flow:  An emergency medical vehicle on a street.  EMT personnel, in hazmat suits, load a man strapped down to a stretcher, into the van.  On another street, a man collapses on the sidewalk.  We see a quarantined man sitting inside a huge plastic bubble on a third street.  Cut to an airport lobby.  Soldiers are patrolling the space among the crowds.  Cut to a lab.  Close-up of vials of liquid.  Camera pulls back.  Techs in light green scrubs are placing the vials into slots of a table-top machine.  Auditorium — a man on a platform, wearing a doctor's white coat, is pointing a wand at a large screen, on which a chart is displayed, for the audience.  Back to the street.  People are wearing face masks.  These images wash over the television viewer.  Meanwhile, the anchor is imparting his prepared meaning:  "The government today issued a ban on all travel into and out of the city... hundreds of plane flights have been cancelled.  Scientists are rushing to develop a vaccine..."  The television audience has an IMPRESSION of knowing something.

The Left Is Now Scaremongering The COVID 'Delta Variant'.  COVID-19 infection rates are down.  Deaths are down.  Vaccinations are up.  So what's the response from the left?  It continues a desperate attempt to scare the public and blame Republicans.  The left's bellwether outlet, the New York Times, perfectly sums up this agenda with a story headlined "Red America's COVID Problem," in which the Times writes that "COVID remains a serious threat to unvaccinated adults, especially those middle-aged or older" and that it's rising in Trump-supporting areas of the country where vaccination rates, they say, are lower.  "No wonder, then, that the number of new cases keeps falling in Biden counties, while it has begun to rise in Trump counties," the Times goes on.  The Washington Post's increasingly leftist "conservative" columnist Jennifer Rubin declares that "Red states are dangerous to America's health."

Washington Post reporter troubled by 'racist legacy' of some birds.  According to The Washington Post, it's hunting season for cancel culture and its latest targets are "racist" birds.  The Post ran an expansive report on Thursday, titled "The racist legacy many birds carry," focused on the "birding community," which apparently is having a difficult debate "about the names of species connected to enslavers, supremacists and grave robbers."  "Corina Newsome is a Black ornithologist, as rare as some of the birds she studies," Post environmental justice reporter Darryl Fears began his piece, noting she was hired to "break down barriers" at the Georgia Audubon nature preserve.

The Editor says...
Lots of places and things are named after badly flawed people.  Get over it.  The people insisting on renaming them all are at least as badly flawed.

Someone Needs to Do a Wellness Check Over at CNN.  You'd think a "news" network that exists to shill and promote the party that gained power in the 2020 election would take a deep breath, but things have only spiraled further for the liberal outlet. [...] CNN and the media at large have reached the point of complete derangement.  They see doom and destruction around every corner, well, unless it's coming from any facet of the left.  In that case, they'll make excuses for torching cities and killing cops.  Regardless, imagine waking up this morning and putting together that homepage and thinking you are emotionally healthy?

How the American Media Perpetuates and Profits from Mass Shootings.  The American media currently has no industry standard practices for how to cover either suicides or mass shootings.  However, one can easily see the difference between how mass shootings and suicides are covered.  Whereas suicides are treated as somber tragedies, mass shootings often have the sensationalism turned up to 11.  There's a detailed discussion of the shooter's life story, motives and methods.  Strong evidence suggests that this both encourages and instructs potential mass shooters.

Oprah's new AppleTV+ show says celebrities aren't like the rest of us.  If you want to know what's going on in the world, don't (really, don't) look at the New York Times or Washington Post.  From them, you get only Democrat partisan spin.  Instead, check out the Daily Mail, an enlivening mix of news and gossip that, despite grammatically awful writing, manages to get a lot of information (and dreck) across.  What it succeeded in doing on Friday was to reveal the mental damage that affects so many of the celebrities who opine about and dangerously affect America's values.  AppleTV+ has released a series of interviews between Oprah and Harry (the prince formerly known as Prince) in which we are given a pathetic insight into the mind of a marginally intelligent, minimally informed man who tragically lost his mother in the most explosive way.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that he has emotional issues or that he married a woman who knows how to manipulate all of them.

If There's Nothing to Hide, Why Are Democrats Freaking Out about the Arizona Audit?  If you have been keeping an eye on the election audit taking place right now in Maricopa County, Arizona, then you also know that Democrats, news propagandists, and "concerned" NeverTrump Republicans are beginning to sound more and more like trapped rats squeaking in fear.  An army of lawyers — many of the same political operatives who manipulated the November election by contravening existing election laws and flooding battleground states with uncontrolled and unverified mail-in ballots — are begging state and federal courts to stop the audit midcourse and petitioning Arizona's Democrat secretary of state and Merrick Garland's Department of Justice to intervene under the absurd pretense that ensuring election integrity somehow deprives voters of their civil rights.  Arizonan and Biden-supporter Cindy McCain has publicly called the vote recount "ludicrous" because "the election is over."  And MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is so terrified of what the auditors might find that she insists that the whole exercise is not only "dangerous," but also the "end of democracy."

Are Covid Fatalities Comparable with the 1918 Spanish Flu?  [Scroll down]  It is common to invoke comparisons with the 1918 Flu Pandemic, as that was an extremely devastating virus that rocked the world.  The article makes multiple references to the 1918 pandemic but there are a couple that raise interesting questions for further investigation.  The first point is as follows, "Combined with deaths in the first few months of this year, Covid-19 has now claimed more than half a million lives in the United States.  The total number of Covid-19 deaths so far is on track to surpass the toll of the 1918 pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 nationwide."  Comparing the death counts between the 1918 Flu and Covid-19 without adjusting for population growth is extremely misleading.  In 1918 the population of the United States was roughly 103 million, while near the end of 2020 it stood at roughly 330 million.

The True Lunacy of Reparations.  With race relations apparently having a permanent place in the headlines and radical race activists doing all they can to keep us at each others' throats, we once again have the race-baiters out there calling for — you guessed it, reparations.  And when I say "back in the headlines," I mean that the "racial tensions" are a story because the media have a massive vested interest in keeping them in the headlines.  One of the media's goals is to keep Americans angry and believing that we all hate each other, because the headline "Everyone Is Getting Along Today" doesn't sell newspapers or advertising space and doesn't generate the Almighty Click.

Derek Chauvin — The great white defendant.  Cable channel HLN has covered the trial from gavel to gavel.  When bumping in and out of commercial breaks, HLN displayed a graphic, accompanied by foreboding music, showing two fists tearing an American flag in half, with the caption "America's Very Soul Is on Trial."  Black Lives Matter activist Maya Echols, in a since-deleted TikTok video, said:  "If George Floyd's murderer is not sentenced, just know that all hell is gonna break loose.  Don't be surprised when building are on fire.  Just sayin'."  And Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., says she is "hopeful" of a conviction, but if not, Waters said:  "We've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational.  We've got to make sure that they know we mean business."  No, America's "very soul" is not on trial.

Globalists Will Need Another Crisis In America As Their Reset Agenda Fails.  The mainstream media is pushing a non-stop narrative of covid mutation hype.  We hear about UK and Brazilian variants on a weekly basis, and the assertion has been that surely, these variants will be more infectious and more deadly that the original virus.  There is still no proof whatsoever to confirm this, but the globalists only care about planting the idea in people's heads.  They only care about reigniting the fear.  My feeling is that this strategy is going to fail, at least in the US.  Too many Americans are aware of the con game, and a new virus threat is not going to have the same effect as Covid-19 did in the early months of the pandemic.  None of us really knew what we were facing back then, and caution was a practical response.  Today, we know for a fact that covid is not a concern for the vast majority of the public.  Media attempts to amp up the threat will be ineffective, but they will of course still try.

Coordinated propaganda:
Major News Outlets Pledge to Begin Calling 'Climate Change' a 'Climate Emergency'.  A number of major news organizations worldwide, ranging from Scientific American and The Columbia Journalism Review to The Guardian and Al Jazeera, have signed a pledge to begin referring to "climate change" as a "climate emergency" in their reporting.  "Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term 'climate emergency' in its coverage of climate change," the publication announced Monday in a tweet to its 3.9 million followers touting "the impact we hope it can have throughout the media landscape."  "We Are Living in a Climate Emergency, and We're Going to Say So," the headline of a Scientific American commentary published Monday declares.  Claiming that that climate change is "the biggest environmental emergency to beset the earth in millennia," the piece announces the name change:  "Given the circumstances, Scientific American has agreed with major news outlets worldwide to start using the term 'climate emergency' in its coverage of climate change."

CBS reportedly paid $7M for Prince Harry, Meghan Markle interview.  CBS reportedly paid more than $7 million for the rights to air Oprah Winfrey's highly anticipated tell-all interview with Prince Harry and Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle.  The two-hour interview, set to air at 8 p.m. Sunday [3/7/2021], cost the network a pretty penny — likely somewhere between $7 million and $9 million, the Wall Street Journal reported.  CBS bought the lucrative rights — the network is charging $325,000 for every 30 seconds of commercial time — from Winfrey's Harpo Productions, and can also license the interview in international markets.  A spokesman for the Sussexes' told the Journal they were not paid for the interview.

Press focuses on Ted Cruz, ignores the building crisis at the border.  The media is intent on reporting on Ted Cruz's one-day trip to Cancun, because it wants to divert attention from Joe Biden's intentional destruction of America.  It is the same reason they lied that Biden was a 'moderate' during the election and why they buried the stories of all the Biden family corruption while they were effectively campaigning and de facto contributing to Biden.  The truth would have destroyed Biden.  The media manipulated and colluded in the election more than Russia or even China has ever done.  Biden is violating his oath of office to uphold immigration laws while flooding Texas and other states with illegals, including many violent criminals, yet Cruz should resign because he left the U.S. for a day?

Fake News Wannabes.  We had a pretty good snowstorm the other day.  I switched on the local news when I got up, naively imagining that they would give me a little useful information in between their usual dire warnings not to leave my home.  For the first time that I can remember they weren't much interested in ice or snow.  They were concerned, instead, that the weather not deter me from going to my local vaccination center.  They wanted to educate me, too, that today was the first day of Black History Month, that blacks die at three times the rate of whites from COVID-19, and that the black vote was suppressed in the recent election.  You remember that election?  The same one that the same station had declared, with smug satisfaction, that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won easily.  On the following day, a glutton for punishment, I watched these journalistic titans show a teaser for their upcoming investigative report — on the topic of the rise of extremism in America.  I didn't need to actually watch to know that they would not be talking about Antifa or Black Lives Matter.  Their extremists are my friends and neighbors.  The American middle class.  You know — that majority far-right fringe.

How your Washington news gets distorted by media priorities.  You may not see much news coverage on the world's 100,000 airplane flights that land safely every day.  Let one of them crash, however, and you'll see smoldering wreckage and sobbing relatives for 24 hours.  It's the same in news coverage of U.S. politics.  Now for the first time in memory a research team has examined thousands of news interview transcripts and documented what might seem an obvious but very important conclusion:  Extreme views and words by far get the most attention, air time and views online.  People who speak in moderate tones with reasonable views pretty much get ignored or forgotten. [...] The lesson in all this — especially for House members who must campaign every two years — is that being the mouthiest, loudest, most extreme interview and speaker is the way to get noticed by mass media.  And they often stage conflict and confrontations to obtain media attention.

California, land of delusion.  The latest verbal gymnastics our local San Francisco Bay Area, 11 o'clock news team tried and failed to explain was why, when COVID cases are rapidly plummeting, we are not opening the state.  There are only five counties that have "graduated" out of the deadly Purple Tier as of this morning [2/21/2021].  After months of touting the so-called crisis in ICU capacity, now we get no mention of that issue.  Instead, we're treated to ten minutes of proud stories about massive new vaccination sites.  These are immediately followed by stories about the lack of available vaccine doses.  It's almost funny.  We are exhorted to do our duty and get vaccinated, for the common good, if we can find any vaccine.  I know people who desperately wanted it and had to drive for hours to locate doses.  Personally, I wouldn't get the vaccine.  But that's another story.

Expect Overheated Climate Reports Advancing Radical Energy Agendas.  Don't be either surprised or alarmed to see lots of authoritative-sounding "hottest time ever" media reports in advance of President Biden's pledge to recommit America to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and support for his all-out war on fossil energy aimed at eliminating carbon emissions from electricity by 2035, and achieving "net-zero carbon emissions" by 2050.  An example appeared in a January 26 Wall Street Journal editorial "World's Ice is Melting Faster than Ever" citing "a new satellite study" which concluded that global melting had dangerously accelerated 65% between 1994 and 2017.  The research was conducted by a team of legitimate scientists from the U.K.'s University of Leeds Centre for Polar Observation and Modeling, the University of Edinburgh, University College London and an Edinburgh-based climate data company called Earth Wave Ltd.  Where the study conclusions go feverishly wrong concerns altogether unsupportable speculations that the melting was "driven by rising atmospheric and ocean temperatures resulting from greenhouse gas emissions."

Something's in a nosedive.  Scary news stories are the norm in the Age of COVID.  Earlier this month, on January 2, 2021, The Hill reported that experts at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicted 150,000 deaths by the beginning of February.  Just one problem:  Recent data suggest that the worst of the pandemic is over.  In the interest of unity, let's analyze the COVID data on daily new cases and deaths from the New York Times — in particular, the seven-day moving averages.  Using a moving average is important since there are obvious reporting problems from the relevant state agencies.  The raw daily data have a suspiciously consistent saw-tooth pattern.  There is an unrealistic drop on weekends and holidays and a corresponding explosion during mid-week.  Using the seven-day moving average effectively eliminates the reporting problems by incorporating data over the prior week.  Looking at the curves for new cases and deaths, the NYT data show something perplexing.  As seen in the graphs, the curves are going the wrong way for nightmare scenarios.  According to the NYT data, the IHME's January model's prediction of 150,000 deaths is a fantasy.

First Duty of the Press:  Make It About Race.  Even after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, the media felt the need to pile up the false accusations.  Their first order of business was to turn it into a story about race.  The Trump riot has as little to do with race as any story in 21st-century America.  COVID, immigration, tax cuts, the stimulus — I could come up with a racial angle for any of those.  Your assignment:  Make the siege at the Capitol a story primarily about race relations.  You, a normal person, one week later: I'm stumped.  But to our media, the main point to be made about the riot was:  Can you imagine what would have happened if black people had done that?

Imagine being this detached from reality.  This installment of unhinged hysterics comes to us from NBC News.  ["]WASHINGTON — After last week's deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump, members of Congress are expressing something once unthinkable:  that some of their own colleagues may be endangering their lives.  Not in a rhetorical sense, but in a direct and immediate way.["]  Yes, some Democrats in congress are genuinely worried that their conservative colleagues are going to actually murder them.

Do Not Believe These People.  Maybe I'm just cynical, which I know I am, but every single time one of those teleprompter-reading TV personalities masquerading as journalists use a phrase like "It's a sad day" or "It's impacted all of us," I want to throw up.  There has never been a phonier, less trustworthy group of people with more influence in history.  When idiots stormed the Capitol building, the pearl clutchers went into overdrive with the "this is horrible to see" and some "this is a tragedy" talk.  Yes, both are true, but does anyone believe they actually feel any of it personally?  Why would anyone care about a country when they hold half its citizens in contempt?

News readers consider themselves heroes, until the moment they consider themselves victims.
Jim Acosta goes after Trump supporters: 'A number of us received death threats... we feel endangered'.  CNN's prima donna White House correspondent Jim Acosta became a household name not for his reporting, but for his politically-motivated clashes with President Donald Trump.  Acosta has also targeted the president's supporters, only to then complain that he was receiving death threats, which helped ensure that he remained the center of attention.

The worst-case scenario is the only one that sells newspapers, books, or cable news.
MSNBC Doom and Gloom Doc:  Don't Get Overly Optimistic About the Covid-19 Vaccine, We're in For a "Decades-Long Battle".  MSNBC rolled out a doom and gloom doc Thursday morning [12/24/2020] who warned Americans not to get overly optimistic about a Covid vaccine because we are in for a "decades-long battle."  Dr. William Haseltine promoted his books on Covid as he fear-mongered.  Dr. Haseltine doesn't want Americans to forget about Covid and go on with their lives because he has books to sell.

How dumb would you have to be, to believe this?  So dumb that you'd intentionally watch CNN?
CNN's Sciutto:  Trump Not Conceding Could Put America in 'Potential Danger' for Another 9/11.  CNN anchor Jim Sciutto said Wednesday on CNN's "Newsroom" that President Donald Trump's refusal to concede the 2020 presidential election could put America at risk for a terrorist attack like the 9/11 attacks.  Co-anchor Poppy Harlow asked, "Yes or no, are the actions of the president is taking now putting this country in danger?"  Former Bush administration assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith said, "Clearly, it's not great for our democracy."  Sciutto said, "Yep, that's it fair.  Let's put some teeth on that if we can for a moment because they are sitting members of Congress who were around in their positions at the time of 9/11, and the 9/11 commission report specifically cited the shortened transition after the 2000 election for having an impact on national security.  I'm quoting here, 'It hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees.'[...]"

The Editor says...
Whose fault was that?  Who tore all the "W" keys off the White House typewriters in January 2001?  It wasn't a bunch of Republicans!  This whole argument is a red herring anyway, but the Left could at least come up with an honest analogy.

COVID Panic Porn is Meant to Suppress Trump Vote, But It May Do the Opposite.  Right on schedule, the panic pornsters are shrieking in unison that COVID-19 cases in the United States are on the rise.  Virtually overnight, dozens of stories have appeared in the press, on the internet, or broadcast on the nightly news about the renewed danger. [...] Grim-faced broadcasters on CNN and MSNBC might as well be wearing death masks as they solemnly intone the latest numbers of those who test positive.  They even throw in the story of an untimely death or two to add a human interest element to their tale of woe.  Somehow, however, they never find time to mention that mortality rates are way, way down.  It's always how we're all going to die from the China Virus.

'Truth' Over Facts.  In his memoir, Banana Sunday, the late British newspaperman Christopher Munnion described his first encounter with what was then called New Journalism.  This was a style of newswriting that got going in the 1960s and 1970s.  It was more like long-form fiction than conventional reporting. [...] The new style of journalist came to the story with a narrative in mind.  He was a storyteller who would provide the reader with a sense of what it was like to be in the story, at least the story the writer wanted to tell.  As Munnion explained, the journalist showed up with a prepared narrative and then went around looking for people, events, and images to fill in the details.  The facts were mere ornaments to decorate the story, not the point of the story.

Vile Scarborough:  You're 'Un-American' If You Vote for Trump.  While most left-wing journalists try to channel all their anger at President Trump, they will occasionally go straight to the punch and just start attacking people who support him.  On Tuesday morning [10/20/2020], the co-hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe scolded American voters who dare, for any reason, to vote for Trump.  With Election Day exactly two weeks away, and millions of Americans already voting, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski decided it was time to launch a brutal verbal assault against Trump supporters.  Apparently triggered by Trump speaking publicly about the Biden family's alleged corruption on Monday, Scarborough whined that it's unacceptable to vote for him for any reason.

QAnon: The Media's Latest Obsession.  Big media has had multiple obsessions during President Trump's first term.  From Stormy and Avenatti to the myriad tell-all books about Trump, his administration, and his family.  From Russia and an innocuous phone call to Ukraine, to his taxes and how many scoops of ice cream he is served.  These are all red herrings, a way to pick at Trump while studiously avoiding serious policy issues, what he is actually accomplishing as president, promises made becoming promises kept.  The latest obsession is QAnon, in the media and recently at the NBC town hall event.  Despite being billed as a question and answer session, it was more of a debate between President Trump and NBC's partisan newsreader Savannah Guthrie.  Of all the issues facing America in 2020 and of concern to voters, QAnon is not on the list.  Yet she laser focused on QAnon starting with[,] "Let me ask you about QAnon" to which Trump responded, "I know nothing about QAnon."  Rather than moving on to the economy or healthcare, she obsessively persisted, insisting that Trump denounce "the fringe conspiracy theory."

The End of Covid Hysteria.  Most of the nation was stunned by the news that Donald and Melania Trump had contracted COVID. [...] The amount of insanity and hysteria poured into Trump's diagnosis by the Democrat/media complex the rest of the weekend was almost funny to watch.  Did his doctor lie?  Did he lie?  What about the 25th Amendment, the procedure of presidential replacement, the coming election, the pending Supreme Court appointment, the number of people surrounding him who were infected?  How dare he take a five-minute ride with Secret Service agents to thank his well wishers!  Non-stop around the clock hysteria.  Almost none of it was helpful, and most of it was true as believing the sky is falling.  Gotta love our responsible, fact-driven media.

Corporate Media Is Vomiting Trump Coronavirus Reporting All Over The Bed.  The latest news cycle over President Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis illustrates yet again how destructive the U.S. corporate media are to national unity and a clear understanding of reality.  While we are all aware that COVID-19 can be a truly devastating and deadly disease for some, despite the volume of media coverage dedicated to it in the past seven months, the American public still lacks crucial context for understanding Trump's diagnosis.  Not only has major media coverage not brought clarity, but it has also, as usual, obscured reality.  This is especially harmful to a story with such significant potential ramifications for the nation and world.  As the president himself has alluded to in his post-diagnosis social media posts, it's common knowledge that the Wuhan virus hits the elderly especially hard.  Trump is 74.  Yet even among his age demographic, surviving the disease, not death, is by far the norm.

Here Were CNN's WORST Moments Immediately After Trump's COVID Diagnosis.  Throughout Friday's early hours, CNNers repeatedly expressed best wishes to President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump after having tested positive for the coronavirus.  But behind those best wishes, CNN not only levied their usual, poisonous rhetoric, but plenty of subliminal levels of apocalyptic brainstorming, gloating, and calls for a return to global lockdowns.  Perhaps worst of all, it led off CNN analyst and former Obama flack Sam Vinograd claiming the President's diagnosis could "be the most dangerous moment that the U.S. government has ever faced."  No word on why the Civil War, Cuban Missile Crisis, four presidential assassinations, September 11, 2001, or two World Wars tested America and her government less.

Please spare me the maudlin rhetoric about Ginsburg's 'tragic' death.  The insufferable Chris Wallace of Fox News kept referring to the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as "tragic" on yesterday's [9/20/2020] edition of Fox News Sunday.  While I am full of sympathy for her family, loved ones, and friends who all have lost someone they deeply mourn, I cannot see how her death is "tragic" — unless one is a partisan Democrat fearing loss of control of the Supreme Court.  Justice Ginsburg lived to a ripe old age and remained active until almost the very end of her life.  As even President Trump stated, she lived an "amazing life" and lived it to the full until the end.  We all are mortal!  Dying itself, while sad for those left behind, is not a tragedy.

What Has 2020 Taught Us?  [Scroll down]  Then the riots started.  Then the fires, the hurricanes, the election.  I do hope that with all this practice we've learned courage, and that we've learned we must depend on God and His infinite mercy.  We cannot fight this on our own.  We also should have developed an antipathy towards the media.  They have been culpable in spreading and stoking these fears.  They have twisted statistics, adulterated the language, slung clueless accusations, and propped up asinine excuses for the violence.

Eyes Are Rolling After 'Journalist' Jon Karl Equates Covering Trump Rallies to Taking Family Trip to Fallujah.  Every once in a while, the masks completely slip off and supposedly objective journalists accidentally reveal in no uncertain terms what their political colors to their readers and viewers.  Such was the case earlier this week when former White House Correspondents' Association president and ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl talked to National Journal, which did a story on how "the White House press corps finally drew the line" Sunday on covering President Trump's indoor campaign rallies, which they apparently find hazardous to their health in the age of the Wuhan coronavirus.

The Editor says...
The left-wing news media wants everyone in America to live in constant fear of the coronavirus (and the rioters, and the Russians, and 5G telephone service, and earthquakes, and hurricanes).  They want Americans to believe that it's dangerous to walk into a crowd without a face mask.  I'm not buying it.  It wasn't unsafe a year ago, and it's not unsafe today.  From where I'm sitting, it appears that the coronavirus crisis, if there really was one, is over now.  As soon as the presidential election is over, the news media will forget all about it, because America can go back to (the old) normal at any moment — just as soon as somebody sends out the "all clear" decree.

The Truth About Slavery.  We are continually misled by progressive propaganda on the issue of race.  Misinformation bleeds over to the conservative realm as well.  The media, Hollywood, and academia are consumed with race, tribalism, and hatred for our Founding.  The real agenda here is power, divide and conquer to pursue some ill-conceived Utopia.  The truth is that violence is part of the Left's playbook.  They are opportunists and provocateurs ready for any excuse to attack our freedom.  Much of the violence we see is a planned political strategy taking advantage of the crisis du jour.  Racism is not our Achilles Heel.  It is the ubiquitous manipulation and exploitation of race and racism that threatens our way of life.  Political operatives masquerading as journalists feed the hate 24/7.

The Black New Deal: 1) Abolish Welfare 2) Incentivize The Nuclear Family.  [Scroll down]  The time for black complaints is over.  Slavery happened in America like it has happened in every culture around the world since the beginning of time.  Slavery has been prohibited in the West, and apart from communist China and parts of Egypt, most of the East.  Moreover, as recent studies have shown, racial police brutality has declined to the point of statistical insignificance.  The raison d'etre for the Black Lives Matter organization is a rounding error.  Recent spikes in crime aside, broadly speaking, America has never been safer.  So why does everything feel worse?  For one, media and technology.  Mainstream media, citizen journalism, and nonstop social media all contribute to the sense that our racial divide is at the root of all evil.

MSNBC's Biden Backers Demand Voters End Trump's 'Reign of Terror'.  On Sunday afternoon's MSNBC Live with Alex Witt, during a discussion of President Donald Trump's use of federal agents to counteract rioters in Portland and how it might impact this year's presidential election, MSNBC contributor and liberal historian Jon Meacham conflated segregationist Democrat George Wallace with non-segregationist Republican conservatives like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater.  After Meacham encouraged viewers to vote against President Trump's "reign of terror" in November, MSNBC Republican Michael Steele agreed with him and encouraged Democrats to turn out to vote against the President.

The Left is signing up citizens to physically remove President Trump from office if he loses.  The left continued to spread the narrative that President Donald Trump may refuse to leave the White House if he loses the election in November.  And left-wing political commentator and Young Turks host Cenk Uygur added to the conspiracy theories on Tuesday [7/21/2020] as he, too, offered a way to rid the country of the president in case the United States military "does not remove him from office" after a supposed loss in November.

Media Malpractice on COVID Numbers.  COVID-19 data are and have been all over the map since this entire mess gained steam earlier this year.  It has gotten to the point that any "numbers" presented as news are suspect at best and fraudulent at worst.  Is this media incompetence or malpractice?  Ignorant or deliberate?  Fox News ran a constant side bar in the early days of the pandemic, with U.S. death counts, much in the way cable news business shows run a ticker of the Dow or S&P 500.  How morbid, but it provided fodder for media talking heads to run around like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, waving their arms and screaming in panic.  Now that death counts are dropping to the point that they blend in with normal birth and death statistics, the media have predictably pivoted to case counts as their new hair-on-fire statistic to stoke fear, keep the economy shut down, and hopefully banish their nemesis back to the land of Mordor, also known as Mar-a-Lago.

The Press Is Already Trying To Whip Up A New Pandemic Panic.  Oh, no!  With the planet still unlocking and some parts still tightly buttoned down, and with the world economy plummeting, "China Researchers Discover New Swine Flu with 'Pandemic Potential,'" blares CNN.  "Scientists Say New Strain of Swine Flu Virus Is Spreading to Humans in China," shrieks the New York Times.  Say it ain't so!  Okay, it ain't so.  Not in any meaningful way.  The media should go back to "murder hornets," or find another asteroid with a chance in a zillion of hitting Earth.

Not dying is bad for headlines.  As the bumpy COVID-19 path back to normalcy bounces along, you would never know that we were headed in the right direction.  Teasers on television and headlines in newspapers report a "surge" in new cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations.  The teasers and headlines fail to mention that the most important measure of our progress in getting ahead of the virus is the number of deaths recorded.  The fact that the rate of fatalities to infection is very low now is seldom if ever mentioned. [...] The CDC data show that as of July 1, 2020, death in people younger than 25 is less than 170 out of a total of 120,000.  It is almost non-pronounceable to state a fatality rate — too many zeros after the decimal point.  My point is this:  if you are young and healthy, you have nothing to fear from the coronavirus except the fear-mongering from the media.

The Huge Law Enforcement Scandal that Cries Out for Justice.  In the American Thinker (June 30), Jack Cashill offers an eloquent plea for an Atticus Finch to take up the cause of George Zimmerman in suing those responsible for perpetrating the Trayvon Hoax.  There is another case, also in Florida, awaiting its Atticus Finch, the product of an earlier moral panic, the now largely forgotten "mass sex abuse in daycare" hysteria.  These cases, replete with lurid charges the media mindlessly and breathlessly disseminated in the 1980s and '90s, are today widely recognized as a modern version of the Salem witch trials of the 1690s, down to allegations of Satanic rituals by caregivers.  Despite this, one victim remains incarcerated.  Frank Fuster has now served thirty-five years in prison for a crime not only that he did not commit, but that never happened.  His first parole hearing is scheduled an unbelievable 114 years from now — in March 2134.

Media Begging for a 'Second Wave'.  The media is churning out countless alarmist stories each day about the threat of COVID-19 and the dangers of societal reopening.  "Risk of new lockdown rises with fear of second COVID-19 wave," writes Reuters, as one example of the genre.  These stories generally incite, rather than inform.  They cherry-pick facts and lack context.  Only when the COVID picture is viewed in perspective are people able to make wise decisions about their actions.  It should be safe for society to continue broadly reopening while directing resources to specific at-risk populations, such as nursing homes and prisons, which are more vulnerable.

Don't fear a coronavirus spike.  Mainstream media are sounding the alarm about coronavirus cases spiking across the South and West.  They're distorting the facts to cause panic, instead of reporting the whole truth.  Gov. Cuomo is piling on, accusing states that have reopened of playing politics instead of acting "intelligently." Sorry, but "intelligent" isn't the word that describes his administration's pandemic response.  He caused carnage by forcing nursing homes to take in infected patients.  He also has no good answer for why New Yorkers unfortunate enough to catch the virus had a worse chance of surviving it than people in other states.  The Empire State ranks 48 out of 50 states for survival rates.  Dodging accountability for these [...] facts, Cuomo is bragging about his results and bashing President Trump for encouraging states to reopen.  Cuomo is flat wrong:  The US daily death count from the virus is down nearly 80 percent from its peak in March.  It's telling that the likes of Cuomo and his media allies don't focus on death and hospitalization rates anymore, but almost exclusively on infection rates, to build their doom-and-gloom scenarios.

Brad Parscale:  Campaign Was Not Duped, Media Scared Supporters from Tulsa Rally.  Trump 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale on Sunday [6/21/2020] berated the media for savaging the campaign's small crowd size in Tulsa on Saturday, despite boasting a million campaign ticket requests beforehand.  "For the media to now celebrate the fear that they helped create is disgusting but typical," Parscale wrote in a lengthy statement to reporters.  "And it makes us wonder why we bother credentialing media for events when they don't do their full jobs as professionals."

Pandemic to Protests:  Coverage Shifted But Outlooks Didn't.  After three months of wall-to-wall television coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, almost overnight the live infection dashboards and often-uttered phrases like "social distancing" have all but disappeared, replaced with images of a nation in racial turmoil.  How are the major cable news channels covering the protests and what do their different narratives teach us about how the media frames national events?  The data provide some clues.  Since late February, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have spent at least 15% of their daily airtime on the pandemic, based on data from the Internet Archive's Television News Archive processed by the GDELT Project.  CNN displayed a live dashboard of infection and death counts a total of nine hours a day, seven days a week.  As much as half of all news coverage worldwide mentioned the virus.

How do we explain the many thousands of Americans who believe they are entitled to steal?  Night after night, we have watched thieving thugs break windows of small and large businesses, charge into them, and run out with as much merchandise as they can carry. [...] It is very likely that they are proud of themselves.  The media certainly support them, seem to give them permission.  Why do the media do this, support the rioters?  Ratings, of course.  They love riots, cherish their power to get them going.  They love filming the looting without any police presence to stop it.  Do they care about the lives of the business-owners that are destroyed in the process?  Not one bit.  There is not an anchor or guest "analyst" on CNN or MSNBC who feels an iota of compassion for the victim of the destruction wrought by these riots.  To a person, they lend their on-screen approval to the rioters.

Imagining covid-19 under a normal press.  [The New York] Times embraced abnormalcy in August 2016 when it demanded journalists abandon objectivity when covering Donald John Trump.  The Times demanded that journalists treat every statement by him as a lie that he must somehow prove.  The Times also demanded that journalists no longer seek his side of the story when reporting the news. [...] The Pandemic Panic is on the press, not the president.  The press has politicized the covid-19 response.  A normal press would have been careful and balanced in its reporting.  This press is loony.  At one press briefing four different reporters in four different ways asked the president if calling the Chinese Virus the Chinese Virus was racist.

Showboating With 100,000 Dead.  On May 27, the American coronavirus death toll rose to six figures:  100,000 lives lost.  That's a very sad number, made sadder when we ponder that the virus prevents loved ones from saying goodbye in person and makes any funeral an extremely small event.  America's largest national newspapers have all made dramatic front pages out of the number.  The New York Times came first on Sunday [5/24/2020], filling its entire front page and three more pages with names of the victims.  USA Today followed on Wednesday with an entire front page in black and white and photos of the dead.  The Washington Post waited until we reached the horrible number but still printed some stories on the front page.

Carlson: Liberal Media Are 'Thrilled' with Division, Want People to 'Hate One Another'.  Between Wednesday [5/27/2020] and Thursday nights, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson was in rare form when discussing the riots in Minneapolis supposedly in appropriate response to the heinous, police-involved killing of African-American man George Floyd.  Carlson didn't mince words, noting that "news organizations like CNN" want Americans to "hate one another" and wondering if liberals would still support rioting if it involved destruction of their property.  On Wednesday night, he reminded viewers of how "[r]ioting is a form of tyranny" and "oppression," but "CNN welcomes it, however, in fact encourages it" since rioters are instead called "protesters."  Carlson added (as he would on Thursday): "America is a diverse country.  Diverse countries only survive if the groups within them can coexist peacefully and thankfully, almost everybody in America wants to coexist peacefully."  However, he noted that liberal media outlets like CNN don't seem keen on that: "[N]ews organizations like CNN do not want that and that's why every day they work hard to fan racial resentment to make different groups distrust and hate one another."

Trump wins the lockdown wars.  President Trump has won the lockdown wars as coronavirus-related restrictions on businesses are eased across the country, so far with few signs of dire health consequences for the population.  Just weeks ago, the question was whether to reopen, with the first states to press ahead accused of engaging in human sacrifice and killing their residents to appease the "Trump death cult."  New York Times columnist Paul Krugman asked, "How many will die for the Dow?" as recently as Thursday [5/21/2020].  Now, the debate is primarily over how quickly and to what extent reopening should take place, with the stragglers mainly blue states.

CNN Becomes Unhinged Because Trump Decided to Golf... Without a Mask.  CNN has made a name for themselves as one of the most anti-Trump networks out there.  After all, they heavily pushed "Russia!  Russia!  Russia!" When Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no collusion took place between the Trump campaign and Russia, CNN focused their coverage on Ukraine and a supposed quid pro quo.  Then it was impeachment.  Anything that is anti-Trump can be found on CNN.  So it's no surprise that one of their photographers captured pictures of President Trump golfing *GASP* without a mask on Saturday.  Not only was he golfing with a few other people but he was riding in his own golf cart.

Liberal Media Hypocrisy Never Ends.  If you watched CNN or MSNBC you'd probably think you're going to die. [...] Daily, viewers and readers are told they're going to die, that Republicans want them to starve and Democrats are their only hope... and they believe it.  They all believe it.  If it's unproven and scary, there is no shortage of media outlets lining up to spread that story.  Is there a link between coronavirus and Kawasaki disease, and inflammatory illness the strikes children?  Journalists have no idea, but there is no shortage of stories about how there might be.  Words like "tied to," "believed caused," and "possibly linked" are common in headlines trying to scare [...] parents thinking about going outside as their states reopen.  Lacking evidence used to stop a story from being run, now it's the basis for them.

Limbaugh says the media is using their climate change playbook on coronavirus reporting.  Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh compared the coronavirus to climate change and accused federal health officials and the national media of using a global pandemic to scare American citizens.  "It seems like every day we get some new scare tactic from some supposedly credible source," Limbaugh said on his nationally syndicated program Thursday.  "And what generally happens is after some reporting of what everybody would consider good news, in less than a day, a couple of stories come along, maybe three, that try to throw cold water on the good news and make it sound even worse than it was the day before — and that's what this is."

CNN's Brian Stelter Melts Down Over Conservative Media Exposing Russiagate Conspiracies.  Call it a symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome, CNN's Brian Stelter suffered an on-air meltdown Sunday [5/10/2020] over conservative media paying any attention to arguably the largest spy scandal in American history instead of breathlessly covering ongoing public health pandemic, which, center-right outlets are still doing.

The Editor says...
I think this exposes the real purpose of the coronavirus hysteria:  The media-induced virus panic is deflecting attention away from the Obama spying scandal, just as it comes to light in the middle of an election year.

CNN, MSNBC Suffer EPIC Meltdowns Over 'Nuts,' 'Terrifying' Flynn Decision; 'The Fix Is In!'  In a Thursday afternoon that felt like a trip back to life before the coronavirus pandemic, CNN and MSNBC were not only apoplectic over the Department of Justice dropping its case against retired General Michael Flynn, but despondent over the "demoralizing," "destructive," "nuts," and "terrifying" "injustice" that signaled "the collapse of the Justice Department" and "the rule of law."

The Media Racket And The Coronavirus Numbers Game.  The coronavirus is real, and tens of thousands of people around the world have died from it.  But it is not the pandemic we were told it was going to be.  That's not a complaint.  If anything it's gratitude.  Thank God it hasn't been worse.  Unfortunately, in the build-up to our current reality, the media noticed something — their ratings were up.  Obviously, people were tuning in to find out if they were going to die or not.  Telling them it was highly unlikely that they would only drive them back to their old viewing habits and away from cable news.  Print media found the same thing with their traffic.  This terrified Democrats too, with CNN and MSNBC, along with most newspapers, firmly in their camp and eager to spread fear and blame, something had to be done.  They broke out the boxes — a running total, always on screen, of cases and deaths which, without context, can only scare.  The context is never, ever given.

COVID-19 [is] turning out to be huge hoax perpetrated by media.  A recent Stanford University antibody study estimated the fatality rate from the virus is likely 0.1% to 0.2%.  The World Health Organization (WHO) had estimated that the death rate was 20 to 30 times higher and called for isolation policies.  On which version do you think the media focused? [...] The media has been hyping COVID-19 since Day One, alarming Americans to the point where they voluntarily went along with shutting down the entire economy — a mistake that will likely reverberate for a decade or more.  Even as U.S. states begin to re-open — based on the data, which shows a far lower fatality rate than reported and a much wider spread of the virus — the media continue to report on what they deem frightening numbers over the deadly virus.  They aren't, and it isn't.  COVID-19 is a bad flu at worst.  And the media should be held accountable for telling us otherwise before they knew the facts.

The Most Tragic Case of Governmental, Medical, and Media Malpractice In the History of the World.  [Scroll down]  The little real anecdotal evidence accidentally seeping into mainstream media indicates that the actual fatality rate in our nation from COVID-19 is less than the fear-merchants are displaying on their "Death Dashboards."  Potentially, far less.  Unbiased professional reporting could tell us the real numbers.  But then, that's the rub.  Much of the liberal mainstream media signed up for team "Doom and Gloom" from day one.  At first, they did so to create as much fear and panic as possible so they could use COVID-19 as the mother of all click-bait cash cows.  Once that was accomplished, many in that same liberal media chose to keep the fear-mongering going as a political tool.

A CNN journalist pens a fascinating insight into the left's dystopian worldview.  On April 7, Bill Weir, CNN's Chief Climate Correspondent, had a son.  Weir wrote an open letter to his son telling him that he was born into Hell on Earth, also known as the modern Western world.  The letter perfectly encapsulates everything the left hates and wants to see destroyed. [...] Weir is a tragic figure because he has eyes but cannot see.  The real tragedy, though, is that people like Weir, through the power of the media, drive too much of America's political agenda.

Chris Cuomo's coronavirus performance shows he is an insecure blowhard.  On Monday [4/20/2020], CNN posted video of pseudo-newsman Chris Cuomo "finally" emerging from self-quarantine in his Southampton basement — despite Cuomo having been out and about in East Hampton just last week, getting into a fight with a "jackass loser fat-tire biker" who dared to ask why an infected Cuomo was breaking quarantine.  Without a face mask.  "Who [...] are you?" Cuomo replied.  "I can do what I want."  Yes:  If we've learned anything about Chris Cuomo these past three weeks, it's that he's an insecure, self-important, entitled blowhard who suffers in the shadow of his much more accomplished and respected brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The Left Is an Existential Threat.  The March 2020 issue of Fortune magazine focused on the "existential threat" to the Earth posed by global warming, despite the fact that no significant global warming seems to be taking place.  With its appealing cover art — an image of the Earth tied up in a plastic trash bag — this issue is just what I'd expect from a liberal outfit.  It's typical of climate alarmists to begin by assuming their premise:  warming is an existential threat because, well, it is.  And anyone who questions that premise is a criminal.  Just what is meant by "existential threat" is a bit vague.

Chuck Todd Is Wrong (Again): There Are Huge Downsides To The Media Being Overly Alarmist.  There are no costs associated with being "overly alarmist" in the face of a global pandemic, "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd claimed on Sunday.  His comment encapsulates the attitude of the media and other elites as they drive people and state and local governments deeper into a panic that has resulted in the loss of tens of millions of jobs, the likely permanent closures of hundreds of thousands of businesses, a general inability to pay rent and other monthly bills, a lack of treatment for non-coronavirus health problems, the closure of churches and schools, the exacerbation of disparities by socio-economic status in educational attainment, disruptions to the supply chain, and the destruction of trillions of dollars of American wealth. [...] The problem is that the experts who are being listened to so carefully are solely focused on minimizing mal effects from the coronavirus, all other considerations notwithstanding.

President Trump needs to set the country free now.  For weeks now, nearly every media outlet has behaved as though the Covid19 virus was a cause for celebration.  They broadcast the numbers like they show the stock market or election returns.  It is positively ghoulish.  Even Fox News, which used to have more sense, has capitulated to the hysteria; that network, too, is all in on manufacturing panic and fear.  They are engaged in panic-mongering.  They are encouraging the wholesale destruction of the American economy.  The worst are hoping and wishing for that outcome.  That is how much they are willing to sacrifice to see the president defeated.  The American mainstream media is the most dangerous enemy of America.  There can no longer be any doubt about that fact.  For nearly four years, they have worked hand in hand with the Democrat party to do whatever harm it can to this country if it will take Trump down and out.

Does America need Journalists?  Here's a free tip for the media:  If you don't want to be accused of bursting with glee over America's misfortune, it is generally helpful to not cheer America's misery while doing all in your power to amplify and extend it. [...] Here are a few obvious suggestions.  For one, a journalist's reporting on the current crisis would show some sense of proportion and would weigh tradeoffs between protecting America's physical and economic health, since they can't be uncoupled.  In the long run, economic destruction if allowed to proceed unabated will do far more damage than the virus can ever achieve. [...] What we have are the media that cried wolf, completely incapable of informing when an actual crisis shows up since their faux outrage is always cranked to max power, even if indeed they wanted to inform.

Trump's not scaring people about the coronavirus:  The media are.  I understand critical reporting, but if anyone is guilty of scaring the public, it's the national media.  They have reported on this pandemic and the administration's response to it as though it were something out of the Book of Revelations.  Every single death is characterized as an avoidable tragedy — something that we should have been able to stop if not for an inept president.  In fact, the experiences of many countries not led by Trump has been strikingly similar.  The truth is that no one, not the president, not scientists, and certainly not the media, has a firm grasp on what will happen with the coronavirus.  So far, we've identified trends in how it affects people, and we have some projections about how bad things will get, but that's about it.

Trump's Kiplingesque Coronavirus Leadership.  [Scroll down]  The yellow journalism storm hit hurricane strength when Fox's Tucker Carlson told the Trump base that America would end unless the president came forward with a comprehensive national plan.  Even then, President Trump's next proposals were moderate.  They mostly loosened government rules restricting private medical responses and still emphasized federalism and decentralization.  But in the face of the media blizzard and Congress' belief that spending trillions was the only way to "do something," all Washington agreed on the need to throw trillions of their borrowed money at the crisis and exert drastic new controls.  The executive finally accommodated to this panic.  Even then, he expressed hope that extreme controls would last only for a limited time, setting the restrictions for 15 days.

Fear and Panic for A Purpose — The Coronavirus Evolves Into "The Blue Plague".  The "Blue Plague" is an intentional effort by various interests to create fear-porn amid the American population by intentionally hyping a mass hysteria about the coronavirus.  In many ways the Blue Plague is exponentially more dangerous than COVID-19 itself.  Earlier today [3/26/2020], The New York Times became the epicenter of the Blue Plague by stating people in hospitals throughout the city were dying, as desperately under-prepared and under-equipped doctors and nurses could not find ventilators for thousands of arriving patients in a state of panic.  This was/is incitement at its worst.

Explosion of leftist hate aimed at Dr Birx after she demolishes media's panic narrative.  Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, has proven to be a voice of reason in a time of crisis — much to the angst of the hostile, anti-Trump media.  The hair-on-fire media is pushing a panic-inducing worst-case narrative in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak, focusing on predictions of alarming increases in those who contract the Chinese virus while reporting on dwindling hospital supplies and do-not-resuscitate orders allegedly being discussed to free up more beds.  Yet, Birx stands calmly before the American people at the nightly press briefings and reminds agenda-driven journalists of a little thing called facts, beseeching them to be more responsible in their reporting.  "There is no situation in the United States right now that warrants that kind of discussion," she implored.

We Should Start Mocking The Media More; Two Suggestions They'd Hate.  The corporate political news media in America is an absolute disgrace that deserves something far less respectful than criticism.  They deserve mockery.  If you're paying attention and I don't blame you one bit if you're not, then you know that our nation just watched the corporate media in America 1) create a national panic meant to inflict economic and social destruction that they could weaponize and use against President Trump, and 2) further bolster that attempted domestic terrorism by siding with the Chinese Communist Party's every lie and attack on our nation and the Trump administration.  As if the last four years of being useful idiots for Russia and doing everything they can to stoke division, distrust and discord in America weren't bad enough — the corporate media in America, aka the swamp's marketing arm, are now actively trying to create economic and social carnage in America while literally cheering on the Chinese Communist Party's attacks on our President and nation.

The Manchurian Media.  Last Thursday [3/12/2020], the Media Research Center assembled a video clip of the media melting down over Republicans correctly noting the origin region of the coronavirus, screaming that it's rrrraaaaaccccccism and/or xenophobia to refer to it as either "the Chinese Coronavirus" or "the Wuhan Virus" — along with 35 times the media referred to the virus as "the Chinese Coronavirus" or "the Wuhan Virus." [...] I'm pretty sure that John Frankenheimer didn't intend for The Manchurian Candidate to be a how-to guide.  But if the media were paid Chinese agents, could they do more to harm this country than they're already doing now?

A little perspective helps.  What's worse?  The rapid spread of a novel virus which originated in China or the media hysteria created and broadcast around the world?  If it was the intent of the American media to create a state of fear and panic, they've succeeded brilliantly.  The dissemination of information pertinent to the virus has morphed into a murky river of rumors, innuendo, outright lies and blather proffered by pundits who are neither doctors nor experts on much of anything other than opinionating.

If It Bleeds, It Leads:  The Morbidity Of The News.  New York Magazine ran an article in 1989 titled "Grins, Gore, and Videotape — The Trouble with Local TV News" by journalist Eric Pooley.  Pooley was angry about the quality of the stories being published locally and the sheer volume of stories whose subject matter was grim and menacing.  Pooley said, "The thoughtful report is buried because sensational stories must launch the broadcast:  If it bleeds, it leads." The media in and of itself is a physical manifestation of our primal desires and fears, and they take great joy in using it for their own political purposes.  Most likely, the populace is the very cause of the demand.  Ever notice the number of rubbernecking motorists who slowdown in order to see something on the other side of a road or highway, often the scene of a traffic accident.  It's the same thing with this Covid-19 outbreak.  If it bleeds, it leads, and they are doing their best to panic America.

Here's Why the Deep State and Wuhan Virus Are Like White on Rice.  The Democrat-media complex and their Deep States allies have elevated the Wuhan virus crisis to virtually a mass hysteria over the past couple of weeks.  Their goal is transparent, of course:  to instill fear, to tank the economy, and to ascribe blame for everything on President Trump as a means of setting the table to take him out in the November election since their impeachment farce (and other gambits) have failed to get the job done beforehand. [...] This is precisely the reason why the Democrats and their lickspittle media are weaponizing the Wuhan virus crisis.  It is yet another overt attempt on their part to take out the president.  Compare their hysterical actions over the past few weeks to the virtual silence during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu epidemic.  Obama didn't even declare a national emergency until over 1,000 Americans had died of the disease, yet President Trump has been repeatedly castigated for his supposedly "chaotic response" to the Wuhan virus.

'Trump's Chernobyl': Media Wuhan Virus Hysteria Stokes Public Panic.  Since the coronavirus came on the horizon, media figures have been stoking panic, leading to mass shortages of basic health supplies, business travel cancellations, and market drops, all while the confirmed disease number hiked yesterday [3/10/2020] to around 0.000002 percent of the U.S. population.  So far, U.S. cases of the basic seasonal flu outnumber coronavirus cases by a factor of 45,000 (using federal stats for this year's flu and real-time tracking of coronavirus confirmations).  The flu season has even been especially bad this year, with between 20,000 and 52,000 deaths, compared to 29 so far from coronavirus.  According to infectious disease expert Dr. Paul Carson, who works for the North Dakota public health department, the flu appears to be about five times more contagious than coronavirus, which means containment is possible, although especially for the elderly coronavirus appears to have higher death rates.

Dr. Drew Pinsky slams media for inciting coronavirus 'panic'.  Celebrity physician Dr. Drew Pinsky said the media is stoking the flames of coronavirus "panic" in the United States, and the industry should "be held accountable."  "What I have a problem with is the panic and the fact that businesses are getting destroyed, that people's lives are being upended, not by the virus, but by the panic," Pinsky said in an interview with CBS last week.  "The panic must stop.  And the press, they really somehow need to be held accountable because they are hurting people."

Coronavirus By The Numbers.  Big media is all about ratings, view, and clicks, hence their axiom, "If it bleeds, it leads." A viral outbreak is the perfect story, on par with a missing Malaysian airliner or a celebrity football player named OJ on trial for murder.  The added bonus is that any negative news can be laid at the feet of a president loathed by the media, who just so happens to be running for reelection.  The media is in full campaign mode, trying desperately to drag the carcass of one of their corpselike candidates across the presidential finish line.  Stoking fear over quarantines and supply chain disruptions have sent the stock market on a downward roller coaster ride.  One of President Trump's major achievements is the roaring economy.  Taking the stock market down 25% or more may help the Democrats. [...] Look also at past viral illnesses, far more lethal than coronavirus.  The fatality rate for MERS and SARS was 34.4 and 9.5% respectively.  Neither illness generated as much media hysteria as coronavirus.

Can the Coronavirus-Panic-Creating Media be Sued for Closed Businesses and Lost Jobs?  The deliberate panic created over the coronavirus is not victimless.  Far from it.  When the radioactive dust settles from this orchestrated panic-strategy, potentially hundreds of billions will have been lost, thousands of businesses closed, and millions of employees fired.  When the coronavirus first reared its ugly head, many in the media instantly saw it as a cheap and easy way to increase clicks, newspaper sales, viewers, listeners, and most especially Ad revenue.  In the guise of "informing the public," they intended to run scare headlines and stories to spike attention to their sites.

Latest Climate Report Feeds into Alarmist Fearmongering.  The latest National Climate Assessment, released just last week, aims to plant yet another seed of climate catastrophism into the mind of the public.  Predictably, its worst-case scenarios got huge play in the media.  After all, disaster sells.  But the doomsday scenarios that animated talking heads throughout the weekend aren't just highly unlikely; they're close to impossible.

The Coronavirus Numbers Are Not Quite What They Seem.  Dr. Anthony Fauci, the articulate, veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, described at the presser how the efforts to prevent the spread — or "contain" the virus — would continue, but warned that we should expect the number of coronavirus cases in the United States to increase.  Fauci emphasized that the chance of becoming infected remains low and that the majority of those who contract the virus — 75 to 80 percent — will experience it like a "bad flu or a cold."  The other 15 to 20 percent, he said, may need "advanced medical care."  "For the most part, the people who get in trouble and ultimately tragically would die from this are people who are elderly and or have underlying conditions ... heart disease, chronic lung disease, diabetes, obesity," Fauci said.  Some of the "if it bleeds, it leads" media immediately jumped on the 15 to 20 percent figure, multiplied it by the entire U.S. population of about 330 million, and concluded that we might need 50-60 million hospital beds, for which we are unprepared.

Think Trump is 'outrageous?' He's nothing compared to these past presidents.  Unprecedented, unprecedented.  Everything is unprecedented.  Nothing like this has ever happened before.  Except it pretty much has.  Whenever you see the word "unprecedented" in the media, you should ask yourself:  Has this reporter ever read a history book?  Make the case against Trump if you want to, but if you pretend the sorts of things he does are without precedent, you simply make yourself look ignorant.

How Dumb Are America's College Students?  It is an article of faith on the Left that college girls are raped at a rate orders of magnitude above the national average.  If that were true, not only would law enforcement be devoting much of its resources to the college rape epidemic, but 18 year old girls and their parents would avoid our universities and colleges like the plague.  But, of course, that isn't happening.  The whole thing is nonsense.

Media Spread Gossipy Barr Resignation Rumor.  "Sources" tell ABC News that "Attorney General Bill Barr told people close to Trump Tuesday that he is considering resigning over the tweets."  Right.  Do any of these corporate media outlets have any credibility?  No, but it keeps the news cycle saturated with hysteria and occasions them a freak out on their political snuff shows and Twitter.  "News" of the Barr resignation was first reported by one the largest purveyors of fake news and gossip:  The Washington Post.  Shortly after the resignation rumor was reported the DoJ shot it down.  "Addressing Beltway rumors:  The Attorney General has no plans to resign," DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec tweeted.  It would be absolutely tragic if Barr were to leave because Trump would never, ever be able to get a good replacement.

Really Bad Things the Media Is Ignoring Because of Impeachment.  Have you heard that the president has been impeached?  Seriously, the trial is happening right now in the U.S. Senate.  I'm kidding.  Of course, you can't escape the news because it's the only thing the "news" is talking about.  We're in the middle of the most choreographed foregone conclusion in history and the media is treating it like a whodunit.

Nets Hype Alleged Trump Audio Only ABC Has Heard, Refuses to Air.  Without providing any evidence, ABC News made headlines on Friday when they claimed they had heard an audio recording of President Trump ordering the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine to be fired, something that would supposedly aid Democrats with impeachment.  Both CBS News and NBC News pounced on the reporting during their evening newscasts despite the fact ABC had not released the audio or commented on its authenticity.  For something that was supposedly a bombshell uncovered by his own network, World News Tonight anchor David Muir sure kept his distance when he kicked off the program with the report.

Don't buy the media hype over the new China virus.  A CNN reporter broadcasts from Wuhan, China, on the recent viral outbreak.  There is nobody near who could possibly infect him — unless the cameraman has Guinness Book of Records coughs and sneezes.  So why does he insist on wearing a blue surgical mask while talking?  It's called "drama," which is badly needed, because there appears to be nothing very special about this outbreak of the 2019-nCoV or Wuhan virus.  It should actually be called the DvV, or Déjà vu Virus, because we have been through these hysterias before.  Over and over.  Heterosexual AIDS, Ebola repeatedly, the H1N1 swine flu that was actually vastly milder than the regular flu and, especially, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003.  Once you start debunking mass hysteria over outbreaks, it gets easy, because the same patterns repeat themselves.

Another dud in the string of bombshells.  [Scroll down]  If it takes exhaustive and complicated explanations to pinpoint precisely why something is a "bombshell," then it is not a "bombshell."  That is the point of a "bombshell."  It is so powerful that it does not need to come wrapped in complicated explanations.  But there is no rabbit hole these people will not venture down in pursuit of President Trump.  There is no zany conspiracy theory they will not gulp down to keep the party going.  And there is no arcane strip of federal code from centuries gone by that they won't dust off to construct their rickety case for impeachment.

Greg Gutfeld Loses It Over the Pomp and Circumstance of Impeachment.  [Scroll down]  ["]We know this was an emotional tantrum directed at daddy who won the election, and they're mad at daddy.  So we have to go through this phony procession.  Ooh, let's show pictures of the cloak room!  Ooh, let's watch them walk down the halls!  Ooh, this is breaking news!["]

The Fantasy War That Never Was.  Over the past few weeks, the media have been singing in 100-part harmony that America is headed to war.  From Fox News and CNN, to MSNBC and the New York Times, media magpies have been proclaiming that America is going to war with Iran, thanks to the rube-in-chief who has no idea what he is doing.  The New York Times declares the U.S. and Iran are, "At the edge of war."  The Wall Street Journal at least asks, "Will the U.S. and Iran blunder into war?" [...] We have been at war with Iran for 40 years, since the Georgia peanut farmer thought the semi-thuggish Shah of Iran was a bad guy, and a religious fanatic would be a better choice to lead the country.

CNN's Brian Stelter Does Deep-Dive Data Analysis on Trump's Twitter Typos.  CNN's Brian Stelter used up three-and-a-half minutes of his basement-rated Sunday show to blow the lid off of President Trump's Twitter typos.  Well, two things we can all spell is "3.6 percent unemployment" and "a 40 percent decline in viewers."

When did routine bad weather become such big news?  Bad weather on Thanksgiving week can be stressful in the best of circumstances.  But this week's outbreak of TV weather hysteria was a sight to behold.  For days on end, even Trump news was booted from the top of the network evening newscasts by dire warnings of the "triple storm danger" heading across the country and the "holiday travel nightmare" likely to result.  The reports hit all the usual TV-weather bases: shots of skidding cars and chugging snowplows; airport scenes of passengers stranded by flight delays; Al Roker bounding among the weather maps as though he were plotting a military operation.  And, as always, the alarming statistics: 21 million people under winter-weather alerts; 97 million vulnerable to high winds; "2,000 miles' worth of winter-storm watches, advisories and warnings," stretching from California to the upper Midwest.

The Editor says...
On the other hand, very cold weather at Thanksgiving, including snow in southern California, is newsworthy because it's a little early in the year for all this snow.  What happened to "global warming?"

Everything You Hear About Billion-Dollar Disasters Is Wrong.  The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) counts the number of disasters in the United States that result in losses of greater than $1 billion, starting in 1980.  Over the past three decades that count has shown a sharp increase, from five or less such disasters each year in the decade of the 1980s to ten or more in each of the past 4 years.  That increase must be due to climate change, right?  Actually, no.  The billion-dollar disaster tally is easy to understand, simple to communicate, but — regrettably — incredibly misleading and just plain bad economics.

CBS Anchor Advertises Televised Impeachment Hearings Like Fight Entertainment.  By her excitement and choice of words, one could easily think failing CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell was promoting a pay-per-view boxing or pro-wrestling match during Wednesday's [11/6/2019] newscast.  But no, she was hyping the televised impeachment hearings that would start next week.  In addition to that, NBC Nightly News chided Republicans were wanted the public to know the identity of the infamous anti-Trump whistleblower who helped to start the investigation.  "Tonight, lights, cameras, testimony.  The stage is set for the first televised hearings of the impeachment inquiry," O'Donnell excitedly proclaimed during the program's opening tease.  "We now know when they will happen and who may be the Democrats' star witness."  Once they were finished with the teases, O'Donnell could barely contain her glee as she sprinted to call them "historic," adding, "televised impeachment hearings begin a week from today, and it promises to be must-see TV." [...] She was acting more like a fight promoter for a UFC match than a journalist.  S

Democrats may come to regret choosing impeachment over independents.  Ukraine.  Doral.  Impeachment.  Syria.  Schiff and Pelosi.  Hunter and Joe.  Trump and Trump.  Impeachment.  Secret hearings and secret Russian "assets."  Impeachment.  The media can't get enough of it.  Most people have had enough already.

Local California CBS reporter fired after jumping on, damaging cars during live news segment.  A local CBS reporter in California was apparently fired after he — during a live news segment — climbed atop classic, privately-owned cars, even seemingly damaging one of them in the process.  Angel Cardenas, a correspondent with KMAX-TV's "Good Morning Sacramento," was on air Sunday at the Sacramento International Auto Show, a weekend-long event at Cal Expo that was about to begin its final day.  Someone who caught the segment on air, Adam Copeland, posted a clip of it to Facebook, as he has "never seen such a disregard to someone else's vehicle."

The Editor says...
I've seen several so-called reporters over the years who played the role of out-of-control daredevil/buffoon on the Big Morning Show.  This is the reporter who is the first to ride a new roller coaster at Six Flags, or the one who goes bungee jumping on live TV, or goes rappelling down the side of a building.  (In larger TV markets, the Happy Team of Steve Serious and Suzie Plastique "anchor" the Big Morning Show, but after the first ten minutes, they've run out of news.  At that point they may have to resort to pie-in-the-face slapstick to retain viewers.)  At times, you may hear Steve and Suzie, back in the studio, gasp in phony astonishment at the risks being taken out in the field.  And then, after no more than three minutes, the buffoon in the field will wrap it up.  This is all done for the purpose of grabbing the audience's attention through whatever means necessary, much like a two-year-old screaming in a restaurant.  In this case, the buffoon/jackass thought he could get away with anything, and found out otherwise.

How the American Media Perpetuates and Profits from Mass Shootings.  The American media currently has no industry standard practices for how to cover either suicides or mass shootings.  However, one can easily see the difference between how mass shootings and suicides are covered.  Whereas suicides are treated as sombre tragedies, mass shootings often have the sensationalism turned up to 11.  There's a detailed discussion of the shooter's life story, motives and methods.  Strong evidence suggests that this both encourages and instructs potential mass shooters.  Statistically speaking, mass shootings represent a tiny portion of all deaths in the United States. [...] Despite the low frequency of these tragedies, the media pays outsized attention to them for self-serving reasons, which are both political and economic:  There's a demonstrated anti-gun agenda amongst America's media.  And there's the ongoing shift in the media's business model to attention-based revenue that results in ever-more sensational news coverage and "clickbait" headlines.

Another Newsweek Conspiracy: 'Greta Thunberg Snubbed for Nobel Peace Prize' By Big Oil.  Newsweek reporter Rosie McCall offered a conspiracy theory as to how a 16-year-old environmental activist somehow failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize this year: [...] This new theory comes courtesy of a magazine fresh off breaking the news that opening tanning salons in urban neighborhoods were a plot to give gay men skin cancer, or something. [...] Such speculation amounts to an insult of the actual Nobel Prize winner, Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia, who restarted peace talks with neighboring Eritrea and beginning restoring freedoms in Ethiopia.  He helped stop a war, but was barely mentioned by McCall.  A European teenager who performed some angry End Times-style rants was more deserving, in the eyes of the journalists at Newsweek.

Anti-Trump Psychodrama 10.0?  What do the Kavanaugh hearings, Jussie Smollett, the Covington kids, the Mueller investigation, and now the Trump phone call all have in common?  Staged melodrama, media collusion hysteria, progressive demands that justice be served immediately, promises of walls-are-closing-in blockbuster revelations from new witnesses, supposed surprise revelatory documents, fusions between Democratic politicians and Washington bureaucrats — and then bust, nada, and teeth-gnashing as the truth catches up to various rumor-mongers.

Disappointing State Department IG Meeting Deflates U.S. Media.  For two days the mainstream media were breathlessly reporting on an "urgent request" from the State Department Inspector General for a closed-door meeting.  Media sources whipped their left-wing audiences into an anticipatory frenzy with predictions of devastating information soon to come from an "explosive" and "highly unusual" request.  It must must be connected to President Trump and Secretary Mike Pompeo hiding devastating information, they said...  Well, the super-anticipated 'closed door' briefing was held today, and the IG handed out packets of information related to revelations of Democrats colluding with the Ukraine government.  The exact opposite of what the media and the professional left anticipated.

They Demand Our Respect, Yet Treat Us Like Fools.  Six months ago I wrote about the liberal media masquerading as journalists to scam the American people down a rabbit hole with their contrived high noon drama-filled fake news scandals. [...] Unfortunately, we are still bored with these manufactured scandals.  These snake-oil salesmen Washington "insiders" have not figured us out yet.  But we've figured them out.  They are desperados who cannot survive without their 'sky is falling' narratives.  As pathetic as these high-brow so-called intellectuals are, they are simply people who stayed in Washington long enough to drink the Potomac Kool-Aid, catch the fever, and delusively believe the universe centers on them — that all of America is riveted to their televisions and newspapers yearning to hear what these chatterboxes have to say.

CNN Counts Down The Number Of House Democrats Who Support Impeaching Trump With 'Impeachment Clock'.  CNN is anticipating impeachment proceedings to begin against President Donald Trump with an "impeachment countdown clock."  The network has a graphic behind the anchors that is adding up the number of House Democrats who support impeachment.

California ramps up efforts to combat invasive swamp rodents.  The swamp rodents, called nutria, are setting off alarms in California.  They weigh about 20 pounds (9 kilograms) each and eat the equivalent of about a fourth of their weight each day by burrowing into riverbanks and chomping into plants that emerge from the water.

The Editor says...
Nothing new here.  They've been around Houston for decades.

Network Morning Shows Hype Trump Impeachment 17 Times [in One Day].  On Monday [9/23/2019], the network morning shows managed to feature some variant of the word "impeachment" a total of 17 times while reporting on President Trump's phone call with the President of Ukraine about corruption allegations against Joe Biden's son Hunter.  In addition, ABC, NBC and CBS eagerly touted a letter from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accusing Trump of "lawlessness."

White House Press Secretary Says Daily Briefings On Hold Because Grandstanding Reporters Trying To 'Get Famous'.  During [George W. Bush]'s time in office, the White House press secretary held a briefing nearly every day.  Reporters crammed into the smaller-than-it-looks Brady Briefing Room and badgered the secretary with questions, usually for about an hour.  Some in the first row, usually employed by a TV network, would drone on and on, holding court, asking questions that sometime ran for two minutes (air time, don't you know).  And some, like NBC's David Gregory, would ask five, six, seven questions, often as his colleagues behind him moaned.  Barack Obama held fewer daily briefings, and under President Trump, they barely ever happen.

Yellow Journalism to Fake News:  Media lies against Justice Kavanaugh.  [Scroll down]  The stories were frequently alarming, nudging readers toward hysteria and, as the case usually was, largely fiction.  Today its lineage has continued to other gold medal aspirants:  The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and others. [...] But the gold medal remains in the hands of the so-called Gray Lady:  The New York Times.  Frank Luther Mott identifies yellow journalism based on five characteristics:
  •   Scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
  •   Lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
  •   Use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
  •   Emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips
  •   Dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.
Yellow journalism has had its day reaching its pinnacle during the early 20th century.

Good News.  I rarely watch cable news anymore.  It's all hysteria, all the time.  CNN: "We are destroying the planet."  MSNBC: "The middle class is disappearing!"  President Donald Trump says drug trafficking "is worse than ever!"  I'm glad my favorite magazine, Reason, cuts through the gloom and tells us the truth:  There is less war and more food.  We live healthier and longer lives. [...] It's a surprising message, since most journalists tell us everything's terrible.

There's A Good Reason People Hate The Media.  On Tuesday morning [9/10/2019], the liberal media was in a tizzy — National Security Advisor John Bolton had been fired or resigned.  It didn't matter which, there was a "shake up" in the Trump administration and these Democrats with press passes were ready to pounce. [...] The American people aren't watching, they aren't interested.  Who cares if Bolton was fired or resigned?  That he's gone now is all that matters, and that only matters to a very few.  The opening left by Bolton will be filled by someone else, and life will continue.  By next week, fewer people will remember this than care about it now.  The Bolton exit is the latest "STOP THE PRESSES" moment from an opposition media desperate to find something, anything with which to damage President Trump.

CNBC's Jim Cramer: 'The Only People Talking About a Recession Are Us'.  Have you noticed all the talk recently by the mainstream media about a recession?  Of course, many members of the MSM can barely contain their glee at the prospect of an economic downturn hurting President Trump's prospects in the election next year.  Well, Jim Cramer on Thursday's [9/5/2019] Squawk Box told host Joe Kernen that the only people talking about such a recession are "us," meaning members of the media.

Media Meltdown over Trump's Hurricane Predictions.  The Trump-hating media has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since November 2016, relapsing into insanity after each Trump tweet.  The latest trigger is Trump's tweet about the potential course of Hurricane Dorian. [...] It's a typical Trump tweet with presidential well wishes ahead of a massive potential hurricane.  It took only one word to send the media into a psychotic state.  That word was Alabama, one of several states that could have been affected by the hurricane.  CNN, blissfully unconcerned that Joe Biden often doesn't know where he is or who he was vice-president for, was outraged that Trump is "spreading false information during an emergency situation".  This is even more of a national crisis to CNN than when they learned that the President gets two scoops of ice cream.

Is It True That 'Getting Killed by Police Is a Leading Cause of Death for Young Black Men,' as the LA Times Claims?  As is the intent, the headline is an attention-grabber. [...] Most readers of course will not delve beyond the headline, but even those who do will not encounter anything resembling journalism as it was once practiced.  Rather, they'll find more than 1,400 words devoted to the racial-grievance agenda that drives so much of what appears in the Los Angeles Times.  And worse, not only is journalism itself perverted with the story, but so is science, for the story is presented as such on the page and was written by Amina Khan, who is billed on the paper's website as a "science writer."  So, if you dare to quibble with any of the story's details, or heaven forbid question its very premise, it makes you a "denier," one to be cast out into the darkness with climate-change skeptics, believers in sex differences, and all the other benighted deplorables who are so sneered upon among our sophisticated betters in the media.

How The Media Enables Destructive Climate Change Hysteria.  At a 2005 London conference of "concerned climate scientists and politicians" that helped launch contemporary climate rhetoric, attendees warned that the world had as little as 10 years before the Earth reached "the point of no return on global warming." Humans, they claimed, would soon be grappling with "widespread agricultural failure," "major droughts," "increased disease," "the death of forests," and the "switching-off of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream," among many other calamities.  Since then, the Earth has gotten greener.  This year, for the first time since we began logging data in 2000, there were no "extreme" or "exceptional" droughts across the contiguous United States — although we've come close to zero on numerous occasions over the past decade.  Every time there's a drought anywhere in the world, climate change will be blamed.  But world crop yields continue to ensure that fewer people are hungry than ever.

NASA map shows Africa has more fires burning than Brazil.  The dust up with France's Macron and the President of Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro regarding the fires burning in the Amazon left out one small detail.  Africa is on fire as well.  NASA maps show that there are more fires in the African region than in the Amazon.  The on again off again acceptance of money to fight the Amazon fire lost sight that we have fires everywhere.  The G-7 Summit raised $20 Million to assist in putting out the fires in Brazil.  No doubt more proof that humans are just too destructive to the "lungs" of earth.  Another detail never mentioned is that long before planes and humans, fires raged across the planet.  It was nature's way of regeneration.  Old growth was removed and new growth lead to food sources for animals and birds.

Don't Panic:  Amazon Burning Is Mostly Farms, Not Forests.  "Amazon rainforest is burning at an unprecedented rate," declares CNN.  The Daily Beast gives us "Record Number of Wildfires Burning in Amazon Rainforest."  Here's NBC News:  "Amazon wildfires could be 'game over' for climate change fight."  Interestingly, when NASA released the satellite image on August 21, it noted that "it is not unusual to see fires in Brazil at this time of year due to high temperatures and low humidity.  Time will tell if this year is a record breaking or just within normal limits."  So why are there so many fires?  "Natural fires in the Amazon are rare, and the majority of these fires were set by farmers preparing Amazon-adjacent farmland for next year's crops and pasture," soberly explains The New York Times.  "Much of the land that is burning was not old-growth rain forest, but land that had already been cleared of trees and set for agricultural use."  It is routine for farmers and ranchers in tropical areas burn their fields to control pests and weeds and to encourage new growth in pastures.

Yes, Immigrants Should Be Less Dependent On U.S. Welfare, And So Should Everyone Else.  The Trump administration announced long-awaited "public charge" immigration regulations this week, and the furor immediately kicked up to derangement level.  Reason's Shikha Dalmia called the policy a "complete abuse of the original understanding" of the law.  In the Washington Post, opinion writer Paul Waldman said the policy sends a message:  "We hate you and we don't want you here, and if you come we will treat you with all the cruelty we can muster."  CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin went so far as to call the proposed regulation "un-American."  There is very little nuance left in political discourse.  Every administration policy is said to be the key to saving America or the final step in dooming it, depending on your point of view.

(Anti-)Social Media Inciting Hatred.  Twitter artificially increases circulation of the most divisive and polarizing topics by making them Trending.  It directly benefits from inflaming conflicts through increased user engagement, translating into higher ad revenues.  It indirectly benefits from such conduct because lib jornos, MSM, and other agitators enjoy such conflicts and promote Twitter to further the contention.  Twitter was praised for fueling the Ferguson riots in 2014.  Facebook apparently so envied Twitter that it hired left leaning reporters to manipulate its own Trending section.

Press exploits the kids of illegals hauled off in immigration raid.  The press is having a field day exploiting children to attack President Trump and his effort to re-establish rule of law in immigration.  Tossing all previous compunction about showing a child's face on national television out the window, they put the cameras right in a little girl's face to get her to talk and cry about a recent immigration raid in Mississippi.  No blue dot for her over this little girl's face, they went full frontal instead, as if a child that young were capable of giving consent.  Now the video will follow the girl all her life, and will likely end up a topic for mocking memes, something no 11 year-old deserves.  Not a problem for the big-buck press, though, such as CBS, which in fact, does this a lot.

Red Flags and White Supremacists.  For the past two years, the left's 'go to' words were "Russia," "Mueller," and "collusion."  Mueller's investigation and report were a big swing and a miss and not surprisingly these words have quickly been erased from the vocabularies of cable news anchors and their panels.  On a dime, coincident with a handful of mass shootings, the left's new favorite words are "racist" and "white supremacist."

The Media's Disgusting Bloodlust.  If you pay serious attention to network and cable commentators after a mass shooting, you will see something nearly as alarming as the atrocities themselves.  Set aside, for a moment, the horror of the event about which they are holding forth and it will become obvious that their solemn expressions are well-rehearsed affectations that mask a morbid glee.  As you lament truncated lives and traumatized survivors, these creatures count eyeballs and clicks.  While you worry about the health of our society, they search for a connection to some conservative cause or politician.  And the print media are just as ghoulish.

The Media Crossed a Line This Week and There's No Going Back.  [Scroll down]  It really does feel like we are coming apart at the seams, with near majorities of the country being accused of "white supremacy" by some major figures simply for supporting a politician.  Driving the division, broad brushing, and hatred this week had been the liberal media.  Whether it's newspapers amplifying the disgusting rhetoric of people like Beto O'Rourke and Elizabeth Warren or the constant stream of divisive, racially tinged editorials that are being pushed out, there's no question of their role.  The cable news beat has been even worse, with one MSNBC host actually saying that Donald Trump wants there to be mass shootings while another threatened business owners as complicit in white supremacy who donate to the GOP.

CNN roasted over debate production, format: 'A disservice to serious people'.  CNN faced backlash for its first primary debate of the 2020 campaign season, with members of the media comparing its production to a sporting event or movie trailer and others lamenting the time spent to kick off the event.  Journalists noted that the event started on Tuesday night [7/30/2019] at 8 p.m. with an introduction video, a commercial break and opening statements.  The first question to one of the ten candidates was not asked until 8:23 p.m., however.

The latest pathetic chapter in CNN's quest to 'prove' Trump is a racist.  As LU's Howard Portnoy noted yesterday [7/21/2019], the first of what are likely to be a rash of stories in which "a person of color claims that he was told by a person of pallor to go back where he came from" occurred over the weekend.  The alleged victim, who has since walked back her accusation, is a black Georgia state lawmaker named Erica Thomas, whose title instantly catapulted the story to national news status.  The alleged perpetrator is a white man who was standing behind her in a grocery checkout line.  Enter CNN, which is never slow to jump on liberal bandwagons.  The network posted an "open casting call" to its Facebook page asking "immigrants" who have been victimized by Donald Trump or his policies to come forward and share their stories.

The Editor says...
The story turned out to be a fake hate crime.

Media cried wolf:  Calling every Republican a racist lost its bite.  Once upon a time in the world of cable news, a guest or host or anchor calling anyone a racist would have considerable impact.  From what we've seen this week, when it comes to that word, those days are long gone.  A person simply can't turn on the news or scroll Twitterfor even more than a minute before hearing the word "racist" or "racism."  For example, CNN and MSNBC said the word "racist" more than 1,100 times from Sunday to Tuesday, according to a tally conducted by Grabien Media, an online media production and news prep service.  The count, which doesn't include on-screen graphics commonly known as chyrons, [...]

The excerpt below appears to have been extracted from Closed Captioning.
Joe Concha:  According to Grabien Media, Since Sunday, Word 'Racist' [has been] Said on CNN, MSNBC More than 2,200 Times.  There is an actual number around this that since Sunday [7/14/2019] according to gradient [sic] media, the word racist has been said on CNN and MSNBC alone, more than 2200 times.  I don't even know if that is physically or magnetically possible, but that is what has been happening this weekend the myopic focus completely.  [Video clip]

Greg Gutfeld Mocks CNN, MSNBC for 1,100 Uses of 'Racist' in Two Days on Trump.  On Tuesday night's episode of The Five, Fox News pundit Greg Gutfeld mocking the collective mass hysteria of CNN and MSNBC over President Trump's latest tweets against radical first-term Congresswomen.  Gutfeld summarized the hysterics to a T with a simple word count:  "We are reaching peak racism right now.  CNN and MSNBC, according to The Hill this morning, had said the word racist 1,100 times.  That was this morning [7/16/2019] since Sunday [7/14/2019].  Ok, so today's Tuesday... I think when it's 1,100 times by Tuesday afternoon, I'd call that maybe an overreaction.  It's hysterical and it's hysteria."

Media coverage of Hurricane Barry was the real disaster.  There will be no media awards for Al Roker or the Washington Post in recognition of their coverage of Hurricane Barry.  At least if the people living in New Orleans have a say in the matter.  The weekend weather event, fortunately, was nowhere nearly as bad as was predicted in some media accounts.  That's a good thing.  The bad thing, though, is the over-hyped media coverage of Tropical Storm Barry that briefly became Hurricane Barry (a Category 1 storm) before it returned to being a tropical storm.  Barry made landfall Saturday at Intracoastal City, about 160 miles west of New Orleans.  Unfortunately, to read or listen to media coverage, you would have heard calls for mass evacuation in New Orleans, well outside of where the storm hit.  The word "evacuation" has its own connotations for residents on the Gulf Coast and it is not a word to be used lightly.  For a television weather forecaster to suggest such an action when the local authorities are not calling for it, the situation can turn unnecessarily dangerous.

Power Outage in New York — Dramatic Media — Rest of Country 'Meh'.  Fox News talking hair Leland Vitter uses his best dramatic voice, channels his inner Shep, and proclaims the end of the known universe is nigh, because the power went out in a part of Manhattan, New York City.

Could I have some news with my emotions, please?  Emotion now blankets the media landscape like an infant's crib at bedtime.  Google "Shepard Smith emotional," and up come nearly 3 million results, many of them focused on the Fox anchor's recent visceral response to immigrant suffering.  A search of "Rachel Maddow crying" delivers more than 1 million offerings, many for the MSNBC host's reaction to border detentions and the Mueller report.  "Brooke Baldwin tears" uncovers nearly 2 million entries for the CNN reporter's reaction to a variety of news events.  They are not alone.  Contemporary culture trusts feelings over facts, rewards heated emotion — tears or anger — and rejects medium cool.  The effect on journalism is unmistakable.  And a lot of the blame can be placed on those all-too-common twin devils:  television and the internet.

Debunked: The absurd story about smartphones causing kids to sprout horns.  The Washington Post on Thursday [6/20/2019] published a story suggesting that the use of mobile devices is causing young people to sprout horns from their skulls.  But a look at the scientific data behind the story finds that such a splashy takeaway is tenuous at best — and atrocious reporting at worst.  The Post's story was primarily based on a study published back in February 2018 by two Australian researchers.  It earned fresh attention last week after being mentioned in a BBC feature on how modern life is supposedly transforming the human skeleton.  The study was published in Nature's open source journal Scientific Reports, which is supposedly peer-reviewed.  But the study has significant limitations and flaws, and the Post breezed over them for a sensationalized story.

No, Teen Vogue, you should not promote prostitution as a career choice.  The Internet is a crazy place, made crazier with a desire from many platforms to be shocking just to get readership.  Clickbait headlines and outrageous, negative stories complete with aggressive phrases like "owned" and "called out" litter websites and their corresponding social media accounts, which all do their best to out-shock each other to capture readers' limited attention.  While this insanity is definitely detrimental to our health as a society, it deserves even more scrutiny when directed at children.

Arsenic found in bottled water sold at Whole Foods, Walmart, Target.  When you pay premium prices, you expect a premium product — but that's not necessarily the case with bottled water.  California nonprofit Center for Environmental Health has revealed that water bottle brands Peñafiel, owned by Keurig Dr. Pepper, and Starkey, owned by Whole Foods, contain levels of highly toxic arsenic that are above the legal limit. [...] Other symptoms of arsenic poisoning include stomach pain and nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, numbness, even paralysis or blindness.

The Editor says...
This is nothing but alarmism, brought to you by an environmental activist group and gladly passed along by the New York Post.  There's not enough arsenic in bottled water to give anyone arsenic poisoning.  The "legal limit" for arsenic content in bottled water is probably so low that it's easy to exceed that limit.

No, Your Kid Isn't Growing Horns Because Of Cellphone Use.  This week, the Washington Post grabbed plenty of attention for a story that claimed that kids are actually growing "horns" because of cell phone use.  The story, which leans on 2016 and 2018 research out of Australia, was cribbing off of [a] more nuanced piece by the BBC on how skeletal adaptation to modern living changes are kind of a thing.  The Post's more inflammatory take was accompanied by a wide variety of other stories proclaiming that today's children are growing horns and bone spurs because they use their [...] cellphones too much!

ABC's '08 Prediction:  NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015.  New York City underwater?  Gas over $9 a gallon?  A carton of milk costs almost $13?  Remember when that happened on June 12, 2015?  No?  This was the wildly-inaccurate world of 2015 predicted by ABC News 11 years ago this week.  Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.  The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, "It's June 8th, 2015.  One carton of milk is $12.99."  (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.)  Another clip featured this prediction for 2015 "Gas reached over $9 a gallon."  (In reality, gas cost an average of $2.75 four years ago.)

Paper to staff:  Use 'climate crisis' ... 'change' is 'too gentle'.  Staff at the Guardian newspaper of London, England, has been directed to address "global warming" more aggressively and use "climate crisis" or "climate emergency" instead of "climate change," which it considers "too passive and gentle."

The Media Press Dems for Impeachment Porn.  [This article examines] the motivation of the media as they continue to peddle impeachment.  They know it would be political suicide for the Democrats because only a minority of voters supports removing the President, yet they crave the countless clicks and eyeballs the circus would inevitably produce.  But the Democratic leadership, their antipathy for the President notwithstanding, is loath to take the leap just to provide impeachment porn for the media.

Climate change scare stories reach the point of psychological terrorism.  The corporate media cartels have become hubs of hatred and "journo-terrorism" that targets the psyche of the masses.  The quack science hoax of so-called "climate change" is used to terrorize the public into believing that their planet will somehow be destroyed by carbon dioxide — the very molecule that has been rapidly re-greening the Earth over the past four decades, according to NASA.  Now, a new round of "science" has been studying the mental stress of the victims of this psychological terrorism pushed by the dishonest media, and they've reached an even more bizarre conclusion.  Scientists now claim that climate change is causing "mental anguish" among humans.  Seriously.  Of course, the real source of the mental anguish is the lies and panic propaganda of the corporate media and the pathetic scientific establishment which has figured out that if you want more government grant money, you have to conduct "research" that identifies some new crisis to be blamed on climate change.  In fact, the very phrase "climate change" isn't scary enough yet to achieve the desired goal of mass mental terrorism, so media outlets around the world are now ordering their obedient writers to start using the phrase "climate crisis."

The hoax and due diligence.  Nothing illustrates the decline of serious journalism more than the fact that many of the major media, particularly CNN and MSNBC, have participated (and to some extent continue to participate) in massive hoaxes which would have been easily disproved with basic due diligence.  The first and least important hoax was that of Michael Avenatti.  He appeared on CNN and MSNBC more than 100 times where he was touted as an expert on many things, particularly the alleged misdeeds of President Trump.  Fawning hosts on these networks even referred to him as presidential material — yet he was nothing more than a conman.  He now faces about 400 years in prison if he is convicted on the many charges in several different courts.

Jussie Smollett [is] just a symptom of the fake outrage disease.  Remember folk expressions about the wisdom of being careful?  "Look before you leap."  "Measure twice, cut once."  "Don't go off half-cocked."  All of this should go double for online culture.  Instead lives are being destroyed over misleading, unfair or just plain false accusations.  People are being turned into public enemies or even fired after being framed for racism, homophobia or other perceived social crimes.  Others are casting themselves as victims of hate in order to line their pockets.  These days anyone with a phone in his hand can be P.T. Barnum.  And people who congratulate themselves for being unusually tolerant, kind-hearted and impervious to misinformation are the leaders of frenzied online mobs who are pitchforking innocent people.  Fake news is bad enough.  Fake outrage is even worse.

Climate hysteria.  The UK Guardian Newspaper decided that you're not sufficiently alarmed about climate doom.  Climate change is no longer the term of choice with the Guardian and other news outlets.  Get ready to hear the newly invented terms, "climate emergency," "climate crisis," "climate breakdown," and "global heating."  By the way, when did it become the job of a news organization to hype public concern over an issue instead of just reporting the facts?

Will the Media Ever Pay a Price For Its Irresponsibility?  [Michael] Avenatti was entirely the creation of the media, right down to the idea, which CNN and MSNBC took seriously, that he could be a presidential candidate in 2020.  It is emerging now that the media knew first hand that Avenatti is a first class jerk, from the outrageous and rude way he treated the low- and mid-level media people (producers, etc) he dealt with in his nonstop media campaign.  But because he was saying what the media wanted to hear (Trump is a horrible human being), the media were willing overlook all of the slime this reptile was leaving in media green rooms and on TV sets.

Democrats Claim 'Constitutional Crisis,' Media Repeat It 386 Times.  Evidently Democrats need only utter the words "constitutional crisis" for the media to report it as fact.  Watch cable "news" these days, and you'll surely see talking heads parroting the Democratic line that the Trump administration's noncompliance with House Committee subpoenas amounts to a constitutional crisis.  While a small handful of analysts and guest legal scholars disagree, TV hosts continue to push the idea uncritically, with some even urging the alleged crisis be used as grounds for impeachment.  MRC analysts looked at all coverage on broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC) and liberal cable (CNN, MSNBC) networks from May 8 to 12, finding 386 utterances of the term "constitutional crisis" by hosts, analysts, or guest journalists.  This count did not include cases in which the term was used by political partisans, such as members of Congress, former administration officials, or Democratic and Republican strategists.

Children Have to Listen to Fake News, Too, and It's Not Good for Them.  [Scroll down]  Kids are being propagandized about the ticking climate clock in school, on TV, and everywhere on social media.  It just doesn't help when the parents are scared, too.  A 40-year-old Salt Lake City mother said the release of the U.N.'s latest climate report caused her three teenage daughters a severe emotional crisis.  "There was a lot of crying.  They told me, 'We know what's coming, and it's going to be really rough.'"  Because mom believes it, too, there's not much help she can offer.  "I want to have hope," she said, "but the reports are showing that this isn't going to stop, so all we can do is cope."  I don't believe that these children are really studying climate reports; it's the media's hysterical coverage that's upsetting them.

CNN's Jim Acosta Makes A Fool Of Himself At The WH Medal Of Freedom Ceremony.  CNN's Jim Acosta is in a running gun battle with April Ryan for the worst White House reporter currently on the beat.  Acosta's self-aggrandizement and constant editorializing in briefings have become the butt of jokes everywhere.  His false sense of grandeur has led him to write a book proclaiming how dangerous it is to "tell the truth" in America.  Because Acosta's life is so harrowing.

Scarborough: 'History Has Chosen' the Dem Party to 'Stand Up and Defend the Rule of Law'.  As President Donald Trump continues to spar with House Democrats over subpoenas, MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough applauded Democrats, saying that "history has chosen" their party to "stand up and defend the rule of law" in America.  Scarborough said that as a former Republican, it makes him "sad" to see the GOP "breaking the law."  "You can look at all of the document requests that they've ignored," Scarborough outlined.  "They're in contempt of Congress."

What did she say that isn't absolutely true?
What strange personification:  Does History take a vote, or what does it take to make up History's mind?

Parts of the American Media Are Willfully Twisting News to Stoke Racial Tension.  President Trump is cheering on someone who has not only supported the President, but withstood an online campaign of harassment for doing so.  The media would prefer to make this a race issue and fan the flames of racial tension.  It is unfortunate.

MSNBC Reporter Sticks A Mic In Robert Mueller's Face After Easter Services.  MSNBC reporter Mike Viqueira confronted Robert Mueller with a microphone and camera crew after the former special counsel exited Easter Sunday [4/21/2019] church services with his wife.

CBS Incites Violence Against Political Opponents.  "It's time to punch a few Nazis."  It's hard to shock me, but I was shocked by the trailer for CBS's "The Good Fight." [...] Promoting violence in the abstract is not illegal.  According to the Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio, speech is legal unless it "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."  The trailer showed an unprovoked assault against a real person.  It told viewers it is time to punch Nazis.  If this isn't a call to violence — at least against Richard Spencer — what is?  If the show had named almost anyone else, there would surely be criminal charges.  While we are to attack "neo-Nazis," communists or non-white extremists are apparently off limits.

Mainstream Media's Worshipping of Michael Avenatti.  Remember celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti, the man who represented porn star Stormy Daniels?  Well, the media's favorite guest is back in the news after being indicted on 36 charges Thursday [4/11/2019].  Two hundred fifty-four — that's how many times Avenatti was featured on major TV networks in one year, according to NewsBusters.  CNN alone featured Avenatti a staggering 121 times.  Now he has been charged with numerous crimes, including tax evasion, fraud, and stealing money from clients — including scamming a paraplegic man out of a $4 million settlement.

Media exaggerate impact of US-Mexico border closure.  Let's hope that President Trump's "one-year warning" issued to Mexico Thursday to halt the flood of illegal drugs and migrants entering the U.S. — or face a border closure and new tariffs — will influence Mexico to make some real changes.  Unfortunately, the media's continual exaggerations of the dangers of closing the border may give Mexico the idea that the U.S. lacks the willpower to carry through on the president's threat.  If Mexican leaders conclude Trump is bluffing, there will be little reason for them to change their behavior.

Media ignore border debacle to feed us avocado stories.  Here at the Mexican border in San Diego, the local television press is always looking for ways to Get Trump.  The illegal immigrant sob stories aren't working all that much anymore.  So now they're reporting on President Trump's threatened border shutdown over it as a matter of the price of avocados in San Diego. [...] Obviously, the intent is to create a unified voice to whip up opposition to Trump's vow to shut the U.S.-Mexican border on public hysteria grounds, supposedly because we San Diegans just can't possibly live without our guac and margaritas, we're too la-la over here, and someone messing with our avocado supply should be enough to trigger the fury of Surfer Dude Nation.

Press goes Code Avocado against Trump.  How can you take seriously an occupation that repeatedly dives off the deep end over the tiniest of items?  Avocado sales in the United States are a little more than $2 billion a year.  In a $20 trillion dollar economy, that is 1% of 1% of all activity.  Mexico's $1.2 trillion economy will not suffer much either.  While shutting the border would be a hardship for avocado growers, open borders cost hundreds of Americans their lives every year.  But thanks to the media savvy of Steve Barnard, president and chief executive of Mission Produce, the largest distributor and grower of avocados in the world, the press is on a mission to save avocados, not American lives.

The Mueller-Industrial Complex Collapses.  So much media is premediated now, it's almost impossible to find something whose payload isn't partly composed of practice for future events.  Most of the time, nobody even notices this phenomenon.  Premediation works because it homes in on natural anxieties or desires amplified by the hyper-mediated ecosystem in which television, smartphones, social media, and all the rest rot and reanimate.  Whom should I consider voting for in the next election?  Am I going to die if I board a plane?  Those are questions whose future answers seem to demand consideration today.

CBS & NBC Cheer Student Climate Strike, Warn 'Future Might Not Exist'.  On Thursday [3/14/2019] and Friday, CBS This Morning and NBC's Today show celebrated left-wing student activists around the world preparing to walk out of their classrooms to "demand action on climate change."  The CBS report took a particularly dark turn as correspondent Tony Dokoupil warned of "a future that might not even exist" for the young protesters.  "Groups of students across America say they will skip class tomorrow for the first national school strike over climate change," co-host Gayle King proudly announced on Thursday's CBS This Morning.  "Tomorrow's protests are planned in more than 130 U.S. cities and about 90 countries worldwide," she added.

Study: White People Responsible for Blacks' and Latinos' Higher Exposure to Pollution.  A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims that white people contribute more to pollution than black and Latino people, but the latter suffer from it more than the white polluters.  "The air that Americans breathe isn't equal," USA Today says in its report on the study.  "Blacks and Hispanics disproportionately breathe air that's been polluted by non-Hispanic whites, according to a study," USA Today says.  "This new research quantifies for the first time the racial gap between who causes air pollution — and who breathes it."

Rebuttal:
Who Declared this to Be Crazy Week?  There are so many things stupidly wrong with this whole story that I don't even know where to begin.  First, this study, and many others like it, anchor their alarm on the supposed fact that particulate pollution causes about 42,000 premature deaths in the U.S. every year.  Though the EPA relies on this figure, the epidemiology behind it is very weak.  But without this scary statistic, a lot of regulations would fail even the most generous cost-benefit test.  Second, particulate levels have been falling fast for the last 25 years, and will continue to fall in the future.  Most studies such as this one are relying on obsolete data.  What this means is that most black and Hispanic Americans, even in the places that still have the highest air pollution levels like the Los Angeles basin, are breathing air today that is lower in ambient pollution than white people inhaled 20 years ago.  Don't expect NPR or anyone else to put it in perspective this way.  They've got an agenda and a narrative that needs to be kept up.

Alabama Tornado Victims Ask Trump To Sign Bibles; Meltdown Ensues.  Another day, another obtuse, ridiculous meltdown in the media over something Donald Trump did.  This time we head to Alabama, in the wake of dozens of deaths and hundreds who lost everything due to a vicious string of tornadoes. [...] This kind of petty craziness, played on a loop daily by our media, is why Trump has a much better shot of winning in 2020 than he otherwise would have.

American Air Is Clean And Getting Cleaner.  [A]ir quality is very good pretty much everywhere in the United States.  This fact stands in stark contrast to utterly absurd claims in the media, such as blaming air pollution for killing 155,000 Americans.  Why is there such a disconnect between reality and what the media say?  Because bad news is intrinsically more interesting than good news.  It's the same reason that murder and violence grab top headlines, even though both are near historic lows. [...] Air pollution is not a problem in the United States.  It is a problem in Europe, and it is a monumental problem in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Media Hypes Roger Stone 'Revelation' That Has Been Public For A Year.  News outlets and media pundits on Friday [2/15/2019] seized on a court filing in the special counsel's case against Roger Stone that referred to communication the longtime Trump confidant had with WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, the group of alleged Russian operatives suspected of stealing Democrats' emails during the 2016 campaign.  The court filing, which was touted as new, bombshell evidence by numerous news sources, including CNN and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, may be less than meets the anti-Trump eye.

Let's Chill about Hate Crimes.  "Jussie Smollett, one of the stars of the television show 'Empire,' was attacked in Chicago by 2 assailants who yelled racial and homophobic slurs," tweeted the New York Times on January 29.  Mark the tone of absolute certainty about an unconfirmed claim.  Many other news outlets took the same tack.  "Celebrities, lawmakers rally behind Jussie Smollett in wake of brutal attack," reported ABC News.  "Jussie Smollett Performs at Troubadour Just Days After Chicago Attack: 'I Had to Be Here Tonight'" read a Los Angeles Times headline.  Many commenters linked the alleged attack to larger alleged sicknesses:  "The racist, homophobic attack on Jussie Smollett is far-right America's endgame," tweeted GQ, in a sentiment echoed by many others.

Bezos vs. the Enquirer Could Be a Watershed.  What to make of the battle between Jeff Bezos and the National Enquirer, which we will delight in calling the affair of Bezos, Pecker and de Becker?  Under any circumstance, the world's richest man cheating on his wife with a sexy helicopter pilot, supported by racy texts and photos, would be a story for the National Enquirer.  Tasteful Americans may wish it weren't so, but Mr. Bezos is a public figure in the Supreme Court's definition.

WaPo Spends $5.2M on Vanity Ad in [the] Wake of 1,200 Media Layoffs.  After some 1,200 people lost their media jobs last week, the far-left Washington Post spent $5.2 million to run a vanity ad during the Super Bowl.  You have to watch the Post ad to understand just how vacuous it is.  What we have here is the highest form of propaganda narrated by a Big Movie Star (Tom Hanks), produced only to give you a chronic case of the FeelSoGoodz.

The MAGA-phobic manure-spreaders of media sensationalism.  [Scroll down]  Question:  How many racist, homophobic menaces wander around the upscale Streeterville neighborhood of liberal Chicago at 2 a.m. carrying rope and bleach, yelling about "MAGA country?"  Question:  How many racist, homophobic menaces have ever heard of "Empire," could recognize Jussie Smollett, or know or care anything about his sexuality?  Despite TMZ's claim that Smollett had the "hell beat outta him" and attackers "broke his ribs" plus subjected him to a chemical attack, an ambulance was not called and he instead "self-transported" to the hospital.  CWB Chicago, a local public safety watchdog site, reported on police dispatch records documenting that Smollett's friend "Frank" refused EMS services for Smollett; no mention of bleach was made; "no or minor injury" was observed; and "officers never sent a 'flash; message with offender descriptions to field units."

An example of news media sensationalism:
It Could Take Joshua Tree 300 Years to Recover From the Government Shutdown.  Though the government shutdown may have ended last Friday [1/25/2019], Joshua Tree National Park will be feeling the ruinous effects of it for hundreds of years.  Throughout the duration of the shutdown, which lasted a record-long 35 days, national parks greatly suffered: human waste piled up, lands were littered with trash, and some campgrounds and other public areas even closed to visitors, as the parks weren't adequately staffed to stay open.  It wasn't until after Joshua Tree closed on January 2, though, that humans became excessively reckless, during which they off-roaded, graffittied rocks, started campfires in illegal areas, and cut down protected trees.

The Editor says...
Sounds like a wee bit of an exaggeration.  Human waste does not stick around for 300 years.  Neither does litter.  Neither do tire tracks.  But aside from that, the obvious solution is to privatize the park.  (By the way, graffiti is not a verb.  Neither is off-road.)  But this whole story seems very far-fetched.  Were a bunch of anarchist maniacs taking advantage the government shutdown, during which they could enter the unattended national parks and spread garbage and feces everywhere?  Sounds like a false flag to me:  Somebody went into the park and trashed it, in order to make the "government shutdown" as ghastly as possible — something that must be avoided at all cost — when in reality very few people outside of a 200-mile radius from Washington DC even noticed the five-week shutdown.

The Famed 'Doomsday Clock' Is Little More Than A Liberal Angst Meter.  When the Doomsday Clock launched in 1947, the initial setting was seven minutes to midnight.  Since then, it's gone up and down.  The furthest it got from doomsday was 17 minutes in 1991.  But it's clear from its movements over the past seven decades that the Doomsday Clock is more about politics than any sort of scientific measure of the risk of nuclear annihilation.  After all, the Clock routinely counted down after a Republican wins the White House, and ticked up when Democrats reclaim the presidency.

Apocalypse Creep.  Nothing says "end of the world" like a big fake clock.  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists gave its annual Doomsday Clock presentation on Thursday [1/24/2019] and announced that it's still two minutes to midnight.  Last year, the group of 15 scholars and scientists moved the phony minute hand of fate 30 seconds closer to Armageddon, from two-and-a-half minutes to midnight to its present setting, 11:58 pm sharp.  By the Bulletin's logic, we're as close to the end as we've ever been.  The whole thing is adorably retro.

How the media convinces us we're all outraged — even when no one cares.  Lazy media reporters who are too lazy to even actually speak to people anymore are instead constructing Potemkin Villages of fake hate, fake disgust and fake outrage.  They're Contemptkin Villages.  No one really lives there.  The laziest hacks can build them using tweets, even tweets from anonymous Twitter accounts.  Somehow these hacks are employed at places like the BBC and the [New York] Times. [...] Shameless online editors today figure that readers will click through to anything that is supposedly making anyone mad.  And if the underlying story doesn't actually contain any evidence that anyone has blown his lid, too late!  Made ya click.

Government shutdown lessons — We could take a chainsaw to so much of government.  This government shutdown is now longer than any in history.  The media keep using the word "crisis."  "Shutdown sows chaos, confusion and anxiety!" says The Washington Post.  "Pain spreads widely."  The New York Times headlined, it's all "just too much!"  But wait.  Looking around America, I see people going about their business — families eating in restaurants, employees going to work, children playing in playgrounds, etc.  I have to ask:  Where's the crisis?

Media's anti-Trump addiction amps up the outrage and fuels the public's suspicion.  Alas, much of today's political journalism has fallen into advocacy, intentionally inflammatory, using or omitting selective details, quotes and background to make a case against President Donald Trump.  The criticism generally centers on something he did or said he would do — or something someone, usually unidentified, said he might do or is considering possibly doing.  And then in a kind of staged Kabuki dance, journalists run to gather reaction from waiting opponents who provide a predictably outraged quote calling for counteraction.  Yes, this president's name boosts ratings and clicks from both sides.  But the media's addiction to anything Trump lets this president manipulate them, which he does skillfully.  It squeezes out other important news.  And it denies Americans a set of generally-accepted facts to debate, merely providing fodder for an anti-Trump agenda and more argumentative ammo for both sides.

How many times have the media predicted doom because of Trump, and how many times have they been dead wrong?  On Thursday [1/10/2019], there was a screaming headline on Drudge saying, "Doomsday."  The article was from NBC News, and the source of the doomsday report was the ever reliable Mark Zandi of Moody's.  The purpose of the report was not to be objective news, because anyone with a brain knows that the shutdown will end soon.  The purpose was to scare the public, tamp down economic growth, and destroy Trump.

Sorry, I Don't Feel Sorry For Furloughed Feds.  Now that the nation has heard the President explain how he wants to address our immigration crisis, and we have all enjoyed the comic relief offered by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in lieu of a serious response, the media have launched a propaganda campaign they hope will pull the Democrats from the ditch they have driven into regarding "the wall."  But our friends in the Fourth Estate are approaching the project in a manner that merely highlights how divorced they are from the world beyond the Beltway.  Their primary focus involves the heartrending human tragedy of... idle bureaucrats.

The Media Was Still Unglued in 2018.  The comparisons to dictators (especially Hitler) were once shocking, but no longer.  These smears arrive almost daily.  Take perpetually malcontent Steve Schmidt lecturing on MSNBC. Trump "creates a mass sense of victimization amongst his base," he said.  "And then he asserts extraordinary claims of power to protect the victims from the scapegoated populations and the nefarious conspiracy.  That is fundamentally illiberal, deeply un-American, and, frankly, could be straight out of Munich circa 1928."  Then there's the racial panic.  "Killing black people is an old American tradition, but it is experiencing a revival in the Trump era," wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Trump & Co. is responsible for encouraging the murder of blacks?  O-o-K.  Krugman wrote this junk after a lone gunman killed two African-Americans at a supermarket in Louisville, Kentucky.  Any terrible event can be quickly blamed on Trump.

Chuck Todd's Perpetual Hype Machine: 'What If the President IS the Crisis?'.  Meet the Press host Chuck Todd has proclaimed he thinks NBC and MSNBC are a very "fact-based environment," unlike Fox News.  But his opening to his show on Sunday sounded like a dramatic editorial, underlining all of Trump's problems with Republican leaders and conservative radio and TV hosts, throwing together the shutdown, the resignation of the defense secretary, and the stock market decline into one grand opinionated summary:  [Video clip]

Flashback: Media Silence After Obama Fires General Mattis Without Even a Call.  The liberal media and DC establishment suffered a complete meltdown on Thursday [12/20/2018] after the sudden resignation by Secretary of Defense James Mattis.  Talk of impeachment, coups, and suicide abound over fears that Mattis was the last 'adult' keeping President Trump in check.  Mattis resigned as Trump moved to assert mastery over his presidency this week in key areas after nearly two years on the job.

Recap and overview of the Jim Acosta tantrum:
Profiles in Absurdity:  Jim Acosta as First Amendment 'Hero'.  The underlying facts are by now well-known:  The insufferable Acosta, surely the most obnoxious "correspondent" ever to hold a White House press pass — a dubious distinction in a competition that includes Sam Donaldson (ABC) and the late Helen Thomas (UPI), among others — had his credentials suspended after a particularly abrasive encounter with President Trump at a November 7 presser.  In a widely publicized incident, Acosta harangued at length, refused to relinquish the microphone when directed to do so, and pushed away a young female intern who was trying to pass the mic to another reporter.  White House press passes have always been viewed as discretionary and subject to regulation, in order reasonably to limit the size of the press pool and ensure proper decorum.  Reporters are expected to be courteous and to exhibit professional behavior.  The attention-seeking Acosta, as is his custom, was grandstanding at the press conference, and breached longstanding protocols by insisting on arguing disrespectfully with the president.  For this, his "hard pass" — necessary to gain entrance to the White House — was temporarily suspended.  CNN was not barred from the White House; only Acosta was.

Like Drug Addicts, Reporters Demean Themselves For Just One More Trump Story.  But, it's not enough.  It's not getting them the high they want.  The high they crave.  The traffic, the clicks, the views, the response... none of it is the same.  There's gotta be a stronger dose somewhere.  So, when it comes time to cover the funeral of the former president, they seek out something stronger.  Trump is sitting by the Obamas and the Clintons!  He's not reciting the Creed!  He is doing this or not doing that!  And in the process, the funeral is no longer about George H.W. Bush.  It is about Trump.  It's wrong.  They know it's wrong.  They can't help themselves, though.  They are addicts.

A little hysteria can make the news go down.  The mainstream/legacy/hothouse media has been rubbing sticks together for months, trying to start a fire under the White House to frighten the administration into abolishing fossil fuels before Christmas.  Hysteria used to be the sworn enemy of newspapers.  (Television, not so much.)  Now everyone manufactures it.  Helene Cooper of The New York Times thinks it's OK to spread a little hysteria because becoming "hysterical" is the right and proper response.

Trump hatred fueled media's yearlong obsession with Avenatti and Stormy.  2018 was the year the mainstream media willingly handed whatever was left of their credibility and dignity over to an aging porn star/stripper and her odious, ethically challenged attorney. [...] At one point, Mr. Avenatti had become such a fixture on certain cable networks that it almost appeared he had joined the prime-time lineup.  Analysts at the Media Research Center categorized his appearances on CNN over a two-month period.  The results are as startling as they are embarrassing.

Another nothing-burger?  Catherine Herridge breaks down Michael Cohen's guilty plea 'bombshell'.  Early Thursday morning word broke that President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen had pleaded guilty to lying to Congress during its investigation into possible Russian collusion.  Following the announcement, the perpetually hysterical left broke into cheers of gleeful applause over the belief that the president would soon be the next one to be indicted.

Trump has the goods on Democrats.  CNN was so excited on June 6, 2017.  Jim Comey was going to testify in Congress in two days.  The fired FBI director would start the ball rolling on the impeachment of the Orange Man.  The cable outlet posted a story, "Comey expected to refute Trump."  Wolf Blitzer cranked up his self-righteousness to Pope Level.  CNN attached a countdown-to-Comey clock to its chyron.  Then Comey released his opening statement to the public a day early.  Blitzer dialed down his attitude to DMV clerk.  The countdown clock disappeared.  The story was downgraded to "Comey unlikely to judge on obstruction."

Jim Acosta Will Only Behave When There's A Democrat In The White House.  President Donald Trump says he's drafting rules of decorum for White House reporters in the wake of the lawsuit involving CNN's aggressively misbehaving reporter Jim Acosta.  Funny how unruly press behavior never comes up when a Democrat is president.

White House has to tell reporters how to act like adults.  Sarah Sanders today issued rules of conduct for White House reporters.  Everyone in the press room should be embarrassed because like kindergartners, they have to be told to share the microphone and take turns asking questions.  These geniuses brought this nonsense on because they were too pathetically lame to tell Jim Acosta to sit down and shut up.  Instead, their self-important White House Correspondents Association issued a statement of support, "Journalists may use a range of approaches to carry out their jobs and the WHCA does not police the tone or frequency of the questions its members ask of powerful senior government officials, including the President.  "Such interactions, however uncomfortable they may appear to be, help define the strength of our national institutions.  We urge the White House to immediately reverse this weak and misguided action."

CNN Requests Emergency Hearing After Trump Warns Acosta's Press Pass in Jeopardy Again.  CNN host Brian Stelter reports that the White House may once again revoke White House correspondent Jim Acosta's press credential after a judge ruled to reinstate the "hard pass" last week.  The network has asked for an emergency hearing in response to the threat.  "Friday's court ruling means that a temporary restraining order is in effect for 14 days.  But W.H. officials sent Acosta a letter stating that his press pass is set to be suspended again once the restraining order expires," Stelter tweeted late Sunday [11/18/2018].

The Editor says...
The suspension of a press pass for a single ill-behaved reporter is not an emergency.

White House Notifies CNN Journalist Jim Acosta of Rules to Permanently Revoke "Hard Pass".  The White House sent a letter to CNN narrative engineer Jim Acosta notifying him his pass granting him temporary access to the White House grounds could be suspended after a temporary restraining order runs its course.

Acosta decision could make it easier for White House to kick reporters out.  In short, the judge said to the White House:  You can't throw out a reporter without going through a process.  But if you go through a process — which you, the White House, can design — then you can throw the reporter out.  In the end, it could be that Kelly's ruling will make it easier for the White House to oust reporters in the future — and to make the decision stick.

Jim Acosta is smug, and no court ruling changes that.  CNN's Jim Acosta scored some court points with a ruling that orders the White House to give back his press pass, at least for the time being.  But he still presents as a smug elitist.  He presented as an out-of-touch elitist the day he jerked away from the arm of the reaching White House intern — the day he refused to cede the microphone and cede the floor and cede his time to the many other journalists who were patiently waiting to pose questions to the president.

Jim Acosta and the Hubris of Celebrity Journalism.  When do Jim Acosta's 15 minutes of fame expire?  Has there ever been anyone less deserving of the spotlight who has managed to hog it quite so thoroughly as CNN's White House show horse?  Most recently, on Nov. 7, Acosta gave President Trump a moral lecture in the form of a loaded "question" about why Trump called the migrant "caravan" an "invasion."  According to Acosta, it is not an invasion because the migrants were hundreds of miles away, and besides, the migrants aren't going to be "climbing over walls and so on."  One week later, as we all know, members of the caravan (and of course it's not really a "caravan") were sitting astride the border wall and invading U.S. territory.  So much for Acosta's credibility.  Mind you, the president answered Acosta's "When are you going to stop beating your wife?" question, and acknowledged that he and the reporter have a difference of opinion about what an invasion is, but Acosta was pressing his left-wing agenda and not actually trying to elicit information with his "fake question."

Acosta Gets His Press Pass Back, But Trump Is the Real Winner.  It would be the easiest thing in the world for the White House to turn Acosta into a non-entity, just another cable-news squawker tut-tutting the president's decisions into a camera from the White House lawn.  Call on him, give him bland answers to his silly questions, and move on.  Or don't call on him at all!  Instead, time after time, Trump and press secretary Sarah Sanders have allowed Acosta to harrumph them into tiffs that become news stories in themselves.  Last Friday's foolishness, with Acosta white-knuckling the mic and Trump shouting and that poor intern visibly wishing she'd taken some other gig, was just the latest, greatest example.  Why?  Because the White House loves it when Acosta is in the spotlight.  He's the perfect foil to Trump, the perfect face for the administration's constant campaign against the "fake news media."

Trump everyone's hard passes then.  A federal judge today [11/16/2018] ordered President Trump to restore Jim Acosta's hard pass access to the White House despite Acosta's belligerence at a press conference.  Just about every media outlet who gets hard passes sided with Acosta. [...] Revoke all the hard passes.  Make them stand in line each day with every other reporter from outlets not so privileged seeking access.  The press wants to play hardball, so play hardball.  Why give them this privilege when they hate him?

Everyone Is Wrong About The Jim Acosta, White House Battle.  Jim Acosta is a pundit who works for CNN.  He was credentialed to attend White House press briefings, which he routinely used as opportunities to share his personal political views and animosity toward President Donald Trump.  The situation with Acosta, who is known as a shameless grandstander who seeks personal attention rather than a journalist who seeks to cover the news, came to a head last week when he repeatedly violated decorum at the White House by offering personal opinions in the place of actual questions, fighting with the president, interrupting the president, and belligerently refusing to return the White House microphone to a staff member.

Levin: 'No reporter has a constitutional right' to be in the White House.  Tuesday [11/13/2018] on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin called out the ridiculous stunt of CNN's lawsuit against the Trump administration over the antics of reporter Jim Acosta.  "The purpose of a presidential press conference is to allow as many reporters as possible to ask pertinent questions, and for the president to answer them.  In other words, a press conference is for the American people.  One of the difficulties the other members of the press and the president are having communicating with each other ... is Jim Acosta.  When Jim Acosta disrupts the press conference, monopolized the time, and basically gives his political opinions about a president who he constantly calls a liar, we learn nothing," Levin said.

Trump White House Responds to Judge's Ruling that CNN's Jim Acosta Has Right to Disrupt White House Pressers.  On Friday morning [11/16/2018] a federal judge ruled that the Trump White House must restore jackass Jim Acosta's hard press pass.  This is unbelievable.  In any other business this jackass would be fired — at CNN he is defended in court.

CNN's Acosta stopped being a journalist long ago.  Invariably, [Jim] Acosta makes his interactions with Trump all about himself.  The fact that the CNN reporter had his press credentials pulled — even if only temporarily — will surely feed the legend and perhaps add a couple of zeros to his speaking fee or a future book deal.  Still, Acosta deserved the rebuke.  He was arrogant, rude and sanctimonious.  He was sent to cover the story, and he made himself the story.  He was supposed to ask questions, but instead he tried to "challenge" the president about the refugee caravan.  He asked several questions, instead of one.  And when he got answers, he rejected them.

When reporters stick together — as a mob.  [Scroll down]  Acosta wasn't there to ask questions.  He was there to lecture and make accusations, as were they all.  But Acosta's disrespect and contemptuousness is special... especially obnoxious.  He is a hothead and, knowing his act, why he gets a front row seat at these briefings would be my first question.  He is no reporter, but rather a Resist Trump community organizer.

Progressive Politics Are Not Really Progressive.  When CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta stages his periodic psychodramatic shout-downs of Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Donald Trump, he is no Edward R. Murrow bucking Joe McCarthy, but rather he is one-upping his progressive like-minded journalists, virtue-signaling to his CNN liberal audience, and scoring career chits with his left-wing bosses and employers.

Jim Acosta isn't disliked because of his 'hard questions' but because he doesn't ask any real ones.  There are a lot of ways to describe what CNN's Jim Acosta does when he shows up for a White House press briefing or a press conference with President Trump: stunt, showboat, grandstand.  But you cannot say he's there to ask "hard questions," as the New York Times characterized his routine in an editorial Thursday [11/8/2018].

Fearmongering on the Left Has Been Ignored in 2018 Coverage.  A CNN screen graphic bluntly asked on the morning of Tuesday's midterms elections, "Will fear win?" I think the answer is "yes," but not necessarily for the same reasons as the Chyron With Attitude.  CNN was referring to President Donald Trump's aggressive rhetoric against illegal immigration, sending troops to the border, and warning of the consequences of Democratic victories in the 2018 elections.  It wasn't alone in portraying the race as Democrats Vs.  The Fearmongerers.  The Washington Post reported Sunday that Trump is "painting an astonishingly apocalyptic vision of America under Democratic control in the campaign's final days, unleashing a torrent of falsehoods and portraying his political opponents as desiring crime, squalor and poverty."

Senate report paints devastating profile of Justice Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick.  A new Senate committee report questions the credibility of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's three main accusers, dishing out the worst criticism at gang-rape accuser Julie Swetnick.  The 400-page report by the Judiciary Committee's Republican staff paints a devastating portrait of Ms. Swetnick.  She made the most sensational charges of the women accusers and won airtime on national TV.  The report depicts her as dangerous, a serial complainer, a liar, mentally unstable and cruel toward her parents.  It turns out that in one of Ms. Swetnick's previous sexual harassment complaints she was represented by Debra Katz, the Democratic-connected attorney who took the case of Christine Blasey Ford.  The Palo Alto, California, psychologist emerged as the first accuser of Justice Kavanaugh, who ultimately won Senate confirmation on Oct. 5 to the Supreme Court.

Democrats have intentionally divided the country and stoked fear among the public for a very long time.  Democrats have always tried to scare the people on food stamps, Medicare, social security and Medicaid.  Republicans want to starve children.  Democrats support Iran that spreads terrorism and pledges death to Israel and death to America.  Democrats are the ones who support Louis Farrakhan, not Republicans.  Democrats are the ones that had the KKK leader as an honorable leader in the Senate for years, not Republicans.  Democrats are the ones that pushed the fictional "hands up don't shoot" narrative to gin up racial hate and hate towards cops, not Republicans.  Who knows how many deaths and how much violence that caused.  Democrats are the ones who created a fictional dossier to destroy a political opponent and used the Justice Department to spy on them.  The person that shot up the Jews in Pittsburgh hates Trump yet somehow the media blames Trump.  The media has supported Democrats no matter what they say or do and now they are willing enablers and participants in seeking to destroy Trump and other Republicans no matter how much propaganda they have to spread.

'Nothing to Gain,' Kavanaugh Accuser Raises Nearly $1 Million.  During the crucible of Brett Kavanaugh's Senate confirmation hearings, Democrats repeatedly asserted that Christine Blasey Ford had "nothing to gain" by coming forward with her explosive accusation of attempted rape against the Supreme Court nominee.  "You had absolutely nothing to gain by bringing these facts to the Senate Judiciary Committee," Sen. Dick Durbin said during her testimony last month.  This sentiment was echoed by other Democrats, who presented it as evidence that Ford was telling the truth.  "I want to thank you," added California Sen. Kamala Harris, "because you clearly have nothing to gain for what you have done."  In fact, Ford stands to gain some $1 million and counting from national crowdfunding campaigns launched by friends and other supporters, while she is said to be fielding book offers.

Avenatti's media honeymoon is over following Kavanaugh accuser backlash.  No private citizen has enjoyed more free airtime on two-thirds of the major cable news networks than Michael Avenatti has in 2018.  Tune in to CNN and there's a decent chance you'll find him there.  If he isn't on CNN, there's an equally good chance he'll be on MSNBC.

Are We on the Verge of Civil War?  The internet and social media often descend into an electronic lynch mob.  In a nanosecond, an insignificant local news story goes viral.  Immediately hundreds of millions of people use it to drum up the evils or virtues of either progressivism or conservatism.  Anonymity is a force multiplier of these tensions.  Fake online identities provide cover for ever greater extremism — on the logic that no one is ever called to account for his or her words.  Speed is also the enemy of common sense and restraint.  Millions of bloggers rush to be the first to post their take on a news event, without much worry about whether it soon becomes a "fake news" moment of unsubstantiated gossip and fiction.

CNN's Jake Tapper Dedicates Segment to Trump's Penis.  CNN aired a segment about Stormy Daniels' new book that described what Donald Trump's genitals looks like on The Lead with Jake Tapper Tuesday [9/18/2018].

Weather Channel Defends Reporter Mocked for 'So Dramatic' Hurricane Florence Coverage.  The Weather Channel is defending one of their own after a video of Hurricane Florence coverage went viral.  The video, uploaded to Twitter, shows Weather Channel meteorologist and reporter Mike Seidel bracing in the wind during a live shot in Wilmington, NC.  As he is struggling to keep his footing, two people walk behind him showing no signs of struggle.  Twitter was not impressed.

Hilarious video shows journalist 'bravely' reporting on Hurricane Florence — until two men in shorts casually stroll past.  A Weather Channel reporter looked to have played up the drama and severity of Hurricane Florence in a hilarious video that has been circulating on Twitter.  Weather Channel reporter Mike Seidel was shooting a live segment in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Friday [9/14/2018] as winds barreled around him.  In the clip, Seidel appears to brace his feet deeper into the grass so that he won't go with the wind.

Teens Stroll Past Reporter Who Can Barely Stand in Raging Winds.  Weather Channel correspondent Mike Seidel in Wilmington, North Carolina, looks like he's gallantly fighting the raging winds as he courageously reported live from Hurricane Florence on Friday [9/14/2018].  "This is about as nasty as it's been," Seidel said dramatically.  Shortly after he made the comment, two teens in shorts are seen in the background strolling along, taking cell phone photos, having no problem at all. [...] As an aside, did you notice how the media now counts homes without power?  They don't count homes, they estimate the number of people who might be in a home and multiple [sic] it by the actual homes.

Media Hype:  Mueller Probe 'Bombshell' Turns Out To Be Major Dud.  According to various mainstream media figures this week, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was all but certain to drop a bombshell Friday [8/31/2018] that would shake Washington, D.C., to its core.  It didn't happen.  NBC's Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on Thursday kicked off the Mueller "bombshell" frenzy, warning viewers that Friday could go down in history as a turning point in the Russia investigation.

The 'Echo Chamber' Isn't A Conspiracy Theory, It's A Fact.  When I finally got to the end of a supposed blockbuster piece by the New Yorker's Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow regarding a dark conspiracy theory that had been spreading within the Trump White House, I was struck by two things:  1) the innocuousness of the memo in question, and 2) how the basis of the memo was plainly true.  The piece, in fact, goes a long way in substantiating the memo's contention about the media, allowing former Obama administration officials and their allies to offer ludicrous claims without even a scintilla of journalistic skepticism.

After Trump's "Worst Week" his approval plummets — I mean, barely changes.  The convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen had #TheResistance giddy with excitement.  This was the end.  He's a gonner.  WORST WEEK EVER. [...] The NBC/WSJ polls is almost exactly what Rasmussen finds as of August 24, 2018, 46% approval.  On August 24, 2010, Obama had a 45% approval rating according to Rasmussen.  So despite a massively negative media environment for Trump and a massively positive media environment for Obama, Trump's approval rating is the same as Obama at a similar time in his presidency.

Liberal media's desperate push for Trump impeachment may actually hurt Democrats.  The liberal news media have a new favorite word to use when discussing President Trump:  impeachment.  For example, MSNBC and CNN reporters, anchors and guests said "impeach," "impeachment" or some other form of the word on the cable news channels an incredible 222 times between 6 a.m. and 11:59 p.m.  Wednesday [8/22/2018].  And of course, they talked about possible impeachment other days as well, and newspapers and websites were also filled with impeachment speculation.  Most Democrats in Congress and their leaders are shying away from talking about impeachment before the November midterm elections — but that's not stopping the anti-Trump media.

All the Talk About Impeaching the President Is Nonsense.  The television-news media desperately need to fill twenty-four hours every day in order to sell advertising to support their stations, their management, their employees, and their negotiated settlements and non-disclosure-agreement pay-outs to women whom they must silence after one or another of their male employees has violated them. [...] So the television-news media have to keep the money pouring in.  Same with the print media.  They need to grab your attention and hold it all day and night, every day. [...] So they have to figure out how to keep the ratings up.  They love a murder — oh, how they love a murder!  Especially of a young pretty White girl.  That grabs the attention of everyone:  men, women, liberals, conservatives, young, and old. [...] Even an isolated unsolved murder of a single young White woman gets the media exercised into a frenzy:  Jonbenet Ramsey, Elizabeth Short, Chandra Levy, Kate Steinle, Mollie Tibbets.  The Seedier Media obsess over these individual murders round-the-clock until it emerges that the murderer was an illegal alien.

Summertime and the media are embarrassing — from hating America to loving Antifa.  In the space of one week, the press downplayed a Democrat governor saying America "was never that great" and watched as the governor's brother/CNN anchor defended Antifa.  Another CNN commentator bashed America and mocked a conservative while she told of the discrimination her disabled son faced.  And former CIA director John Brennan, now an NBC national security analyst, recanted his claim that President Donald Trump committed treason and spent the week whining about losing his security clearance.

CNN's Philip Mudd Tells Paris Dennard to 'Get Out' for Telling the Truth.  CNN counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd exploded at conservative CNN contributor Paris Dennard on Friday evening when Dennard made the completely factual claim that former government officials with security clearance can land top D.C. jobs.  Mudd and Dennard were debating on Anderson Cooper 360°, guest-hosted by Jim Sciutto, over the question of whether President Donald Trump had been right to revoke the security clearance of former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan.

Newsroom commando Ralph Peters cashiers [him]self.  This weekend, retired lieutenant colonel Ralph Peters went on CNN's dubiously titled Reliable Sources and, in the presence of the show's serially unreliable host, Brian Stelter, and all those unfortunate souls in airport waiting areas across the nation being force-fed this liberal Sunday-morning drivel, cashiered himself.  It appears that fulminating Trump Derangement Syndrome brought this former Fox News military analyst to perform this sad ceremony. [...] As a combat veteran, which Peters is not, I have to wonder if this sneering, whiny-voiced news show commando has a clue as to how many millions of his military family he has just branded as destructive, vengeful, racist couch-potato anarchists, followers of a false messiah and derelict in our oaths to the Constitution.  It is a fact that a substantial majority of military personnel, whether active-duty, retirees, or veterans, are conservative in their politics, so Peters had to know he was spitting in the faces of millions of his former comrades.

Enemies of the People.  [T]here is a certain equanimity that comes with realizing that so many of the daily crises are not crises at all, and that so much of the media screaming is like visiting an ice cream store — each day a different flavor, but all the same basic product ready to kill you if you don't control the portions, the frequency...

How Far Will the Left Go?  All the Way.  [Scroll down]  Each day brings a new outrage, a development enthusiastically promulgated by a brain-dead media that thinks a headline must contain the words "sparks outrage" or "comes under fire," to be newsworthy.  The foxes of anger and resentment have been set among the hens of political cohesion, and every day the squawking grows louder — as it will until that day comes when there are no more hens left to lay the eggs.

As the Swamp Turns.  It never ends, does it?  The daily cable-news soap opera installment.  A new crisis every day.  Sex.  Money.  Secret tapes.  A stripper whose upper torso gives new meaning to the term Silicon Valley.  And then her media-frenzied lawyer steeped in his own fun-to-watch divorce.  Bring out the popcorn.  Pull out some Raisinets.  Refill the Coke and Pepsi.  Sneak in a few plastic straws.  Another day's episode of "As the Swamp Turns."  Children separated from their parents.  Parents sent back with their children — and then telling the authorities:  "Naah, we'll go back, but leave the kids separated here."  Kids who do not even belong to the parents.  Russians — even red-headed Reds.  Secret courts.  Spies.  Married paramours exchanging mysterious messages:  "Andy."  "Secret plans."  An "Insurance Policy."  Smells at a Virginia Walmart.  Secret tape recordings.  The only thing missing is the "other woman" with the unwanted and hidden pregnancy, suddenly revealed — and the drama of whose baby it is.  Enter Bill Clinton!

The Conspiracy Theory That Ate New York.  This is the helpful illustration that New York Magazine published to help readers understand its convoluted — and, needless to say, #FakeNews — cover story alleging a Trump-Putin plot that began in... 1987.  Before the Soviet Union fell.  Before Putin had assumed any sort of true power.

What Critics Missed About the Trump-Putin Summit.  When Presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin ended their joint press conference in Helsinki, the punditocracy predictably swarmed all over it like ants around a pile of crumbs.  Was Trump winking at Putin?  Did he really say he believes Putin more than he believes Robert Mueller about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election?  Former Gus Hall enthusiast John Brennan, off his meds again, tweeted that the presser was "treasonous."  Professional chatterer Anderson Cooper said it was "perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit."  Every phrase, every gesture of the event will be picked apart and second-guessed to death in the next few days.

The Jim Jordan Hit Job Implodes:  Ohio State Held Hearing on Reputed Sex Abuser in... 1997.  I did some research on the story alleging that our warrior patriot, Rep. Jim Jordan was aware that his wrestling team members were being molested and did nothing about it. [...] We all have the facts and know that Rep. Jordan is not guilty of this allegation.

How to Read the News:  A Guide for Truth-Seekers.  The recent MSM and celebrity hysteria about the illegal immigrant children being separated from their alleged parents would have had some impact with voters had not the truth been exposed in the Internet on unbiased websites and twitter posts.  Those pictures of immigrant children sleeping in cages brought tears (crocodile?) to MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow, who apparently failed to note that these heartbreaking photos were taken in 2014 during the Obama administration.  The detention center used by the Trump administration was a far cry from Obama's if one viewed them on one of the more credible news sites like Breitbart.com.

The Zombie Media.  Journalism schools do not teach journalism anymore.  They teach persuasive storytelling.  They teach the Machiavellian black art of propaganda.  Like most black arts, left-wing "journalism" relies heavily on its own peculiar dogma of magical rites and incantations.  To shut down Herman Cain in 2012, our leftist adversaries invented (or at least exaggerated) the ever popular sex scandal — the trusted and true kill shot they have used to assassinate troublesome public figures for decades.  Republicans nailed by a weeping and well paid accuser have typically curled into the fetal position and faded away.

Chris Matthews Urges Communist Revolution to Stop Supreme Court.  So the Chris Matthews [plan] is for the Democrats to declare a Communist revolution, call in the Russians for help, start executing their own people for being insufficiently left-wing, go down to defeat, flee the country while kidnapping a bunch of children and stealing all the gold?  Actually I think that is their plan.

Journalists circulate conspiratorial claims against DHS Doc claiming it has Nazi code.  Multiple journalists circulated a conspiracy theory on Twitter that a document from the Department of Homeland Security contained a Nazi code Thursday [6/28/2018]. [...] The tweets reference a press release from DHS titled "We Must Secure The Border And Build The Wall To Make America Safe Again" and was released in February, garnering little attention until recently.

Ex-CNN producer blasts Jim Acosta for 'self-serving antics'.  A former CNN producer took to Twitter on Friday [6/29/2018] to blast Jim Acosta, the network's White House correspondent, for what he called Acosta's "self-serving antics," saying they "give all good journalists a bad name."  The posts by Steve Krakauer, a former senior digital producer for the network who is now is a top executive at Commerce House, a Dallas-based advertising firm, were prompted by a question that Acosta shouted to President Donald Trump on Friday [6/29/2018] during a White House event on the economy and tax cuts.

Immigration 'crisis' brought to you by the Media Matrix.  Starting a week ago Friday, the media discovered (surprise!) that the Trump White House is taking a hard line on illegal immigration — and the pharisees of CNN and MSNBC began dressing themselves in sackcloth and ashes to impress us with the sincerity of their shock and dismay at finding out that children coming across the border illegally are separated from the adults who accompanied them (not necessarily their parents).  Honestly, if you need a give-away (a "tell" as they say in poker) that the left-wing media is conspiring to damage this president, all you need to do is click back and forth between CNN and MSNBC for about three hours.  If every time you turn on one of these channels they are parroting the same story back at you with different talking heads pouring ashes on each other and cursing Trump, then you know you are in the middle of a feeding frenzy.

Delusion About Detentions:  On Family Separation at the Border.  Upstanding journalists, their fellow right-minded pundits, and progressive elected official friends are outraged!  According to them, the Trump Administration's approach to immigration enforcement is cruel, un-American, inhumane, barbaric, and even medically dangerous. [...] The problem is the facts are at odds with the conventional media interpretation of existing legal precedent, prior administrations' practices, and even relevant federal statutes.  You know, the law.  But being wrong on the facts has never stopped the media and their useful idiots in the commentariat from maligning the Trump Administration unfairly to suit their agenda.  Now they're shrieking about "baby jails."  It's insane.

News Fatigue?  Join the Club.  A Pew Research study recently found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans suffer from "news fatigue" — a phenomenon even more pervasive among Republicans.  The survey focused on the volume as much as the quality of the offerings.  But why wouldn't the public be emotionally expended from the anger and accusations, bullying and backbiting, "fake news" and "fact checks," insults and innuendo, posturing and protests, threats and trolling, and virtue-signaling and violent rhetoric and imagery spewed from every direction today?

The Editor says...
Whenever a big furor suddenly and simultaneously appears on every television "news" channel, there's a reason for it.  It is almost always a manufactured crisis designed to displace some other story.  The "anchor baby prison" and "kids in cages" hype is a false description of conditions that are nothing new.  The same laws and policies have been in place for months and years.  The reason all this is now front and center is that Donald Trump's popularity is steadily increasing — now surpassing that of Barack H. Obama — and it appears that he is about to single-handedly end the Korean War.  That is an accomplishment that must not be allowed to stay in the hourly news cycle if the news media's preferred party is to have any power.

Desperately Seeking Supremacists.  Talia Lavin is (or was, at last word) a fact-checker for the New Yorker.  She achieved overnight Twitter-fame by accusing an ICE agent of being a white supremacist. [...] Part of the story, I think, is that the Left is hard up for white supremacists.  Liberals talk about them all the time, but to the best of my knowledge, I have never met one.  Have you?  Liberals need to come up with someone other than Richard Spencer; hence the eagerness to libel a heroic ICE employee.

Update:
New Yorker staffer resigns after falsely accusing ICE agent of having Nazi tattoo.  The fact-checker for the New Yorker who mistook a Marine veteran's tattoo for a Nazi symbol has resigned, saying the "small mistake" has ruined her life.  Talia Lavin is out of a job following her June 18 tweet that caused mass outrage.  "I feel like I made a small mistake and it's destroyed my life," she told New York Magazine's The Cut.  Lavin's since-deleted tweet was about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Justin Gaertner, whom she falsely accused of having a tattoo of the Nazis' Iron Cross.

Drive-By Media Bombarding Americans With 'Manufactured Crises' to Distract from IG Report, Robust Economy.  The liberal media has been manufacturing crises ad-infinitum to divert the public's attention away from the Trump administration's tremendous achievements and the Democratic establishment's corruption, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh warns.

The Astonishing Silliness of CNN.  The good people at CNN can do what they want, but this blatant chyron-splaining sends a rather clear and unfortunate message:  that they think their audience is daft and incapable of figuring things out for themselves.  CNN is frequently breathless when no one should be breathless, which would be kind of exhausting, if anyone cared.  Take this headline from the network's website this week:  "The 45 Most Astonishing Lines from Donald Trump's Nashville Speech."

Lost Children?  Detention Cages?  Baby Prison Bus?  Trump's Critics Will Believe Anything.  Over the long weekend, President Trump's critics were in a sputtering rage over his supposedly losing 1,500 illegal immigrant children, sticking them in cages, and putting others on specially equipped prison buses.  Turns out, it was all 100% bogus.

Mainstream Media's Credibility Problem Is Of Their Own Making.  So, not only are the mainstream media biased, they're also incompetent.  Headlines and scandalous snippets that the news shows can flash on chyrons trump facts, and they are what is important to the mainstream media.  They eschew fact checking in favor of sensational headlines.  They create salacious news narratives, meant not to inform but to sell advertising.

The Firesign Theater Media.  The "mainstream media" (CNN, MSNBC, the three networks, the major newspapers, et al.) are so consumed by Trump hysteria that it places them squarely in this Firesign Theater zone.  Nicholas Kristof and his wife talk about the president in bed.  Brian Stelter describes himself as "Trump addicted."  Any psychiatrist can tell you that monomaniacal, pathological hatred has its surreal aspects.  Trump as the great white (orange?) whale and the media as Captain Ahab.  MSNBC's exegesis of the importance of the Mueller investigation in its various guises is a good example of this "Credo quia absurdum" (I believe because it is absurd) approach.  Rachel Maddow, Stephanie Ruhle, and Chris Hayes constantly strain to outdo themselves with conspiracy theories.  One would think there were more Russians involved with the Trump campaign than populate the pages of War and Peace.  More entertaining are the nightly shouting matches on Don Lemon's CNN show.

Mueller Year One:  The Real Heroes in Journalism.  CNN won an award for its January 2017 report about President-elect Trump being briefed on the bogus Steele dossier.  While we now know the story was improperly leaked by former Director of National Intelligence (and virulent Trump foe) James Clapper to shotgun the Trump-Russia collusion plotline days before the inauguration — and the celebrated CNN reporters did little more than regurgitate talking points spoon-fed to them by political operatives (one is known to have close ties to Fusion GPS) — the network was applauded for its "depth of reporting."

Estimate:  Cable News Nets Have Given Michael Avenatti $175 Million Worth Of Airtime.  [Scroll down]  Another thing:  He's doing it with no help from Fox.  If I'm not mistaken, the only FNC show he's been on is Shannon Bream's in March.  He was, allegedly, scheduled on Martha MacCallum's show recently but canceled at the last minute.  Tucker Carlson invited him on but Avenatti told his producer that he only wants to do Hannity's show, an obviously deliberate slight to Carlson.  (Or is it a compliment, with Avenatti suspecting he'd have a harder time outmaneuvering Tucker in an interview?)  Whether he's avoiding Fox because he's wary of the hostile reception he'd get there or because he's building a brand as a #Resistance hero and wants viewers to identify him with anti-Trump CNN and MSNBC, the fact remains that he's somehow achieved cable ubiquity without any exposure on the most highly rated cable news network in the country.

Court Documents Show Porn Star Lawyer Reported $8 Million Windfall in Feb.  When he Took on Stormy.  The Michael Avenatti Files — How did a bankrupt attorney come across $8 million after picking up porn star client Stormy Daniels?  Porn star lawyer Michael Avenatti is a huge hit with the Democrat-media complex.  The attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels has held 108 interviews on cable news outlets MSNBC and CNN since March 7th.

2018: When Orwell's 1984 Stopped Being Fiction.  When I trained as a journalist, we reserved a "Revealed" or an "Exposed" for those special occasions when we were able to bring to the reader information those in power did not want known.  These were the rare moments when as journalists we could hold our heads high and claim to be monitoring the centres of power, to be fulfilling our sacred duty as the fourth estate.  But today's Guardian's "exclusive" story "Revealed:  UK's push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance" is doing none of this.  Nothing the powerful would want hidden from us is being "revealed". No one had to seek out classified documents or speak to a whistleblower to bring us this "revelation".  Everyone in this story — the journalist Patrick Wintour, an anonymous "Whitehall official", and the named politicians and think-tank wonks — is safely in the same self-congratulatory club, promoting a barely veiled government policy: to renew the Cold War against Russia.

CNN Hosts Porn Star's Lawyer Michael Avenatti 59 Times in Less Than Two Months.  CNN has exhibited a fetish for the Stormy Daniels story, particularly for her Trump-smacking lawyer, Michael Avenatti.  In less than two months (from March 7 to April 30), Avenatti has been a guest on CNN a total of 59 times — an average of more than once per day.  MRC analysts combed through transcripts of all of CNN's 2018 coverage looking for references to interviews with Avenatti, and then double-checked using our video archive.  Since Avenatti's first appearance on March 7, he has been interviewed on CNN a whopping 59 times, more than one-third of which (19) were with Anderson Cooper — who, of course, interviewed Stormy Daniels on CBS's 60 Minutes back in March.

Black Coffee:  The Starbucks Story Is Trash.  This is a country of 325-million people.  If two guys getting tossed out of a coffee shop is news, then things in Donald Trump's America must be going [very] well.  But if the story were only meaningless trash, it would just be typical of American journalism.  But it's pernicious trash meant to advance a false left-wing narrative, which is — oh yeah! — typical of American journalism.

CNN's dicey interview with student on lockdown after Maryland school shooting.  CNN engaged a student to pass along casualty stats from a school shooting, even though the student himself made clear that his own familiarity with the details was limited.  And then, when police showed up to escort him and his classmates from the school, CNN asked him to stay on the line, presumably to get a guided audio tour of the aftermath.

A User's Guide To Media Coverage Of Political Protests.  Liberal protests are newsworthy because they're disruptive; conservative protests are too orderly to be worth discussing.  The news angle with the gun protests was the disobedience involved in walking out, something to be celebrated.  Leftist protests demand police activity because leftists break stuff, and they demand to be arrested because it somehow makes them heroic.  One hundred thousand conservatives could show up on the National Mall in our nation's capital and not leave behind so much as a candy wrapper on the ground.  Bo-ring.

The 'scandal' of Perla Morales-Luna's arrest is fake news.  The arrest of Perla Morales-Luna on March 3 in San Diego is an absolute nonscandal.  Yes, at first glance the video looks a little concerning.  It shows a mother being separated from her screaming family as Customs and Border Patrol officers struggle to put her in the back of a vehicle.  But only at first glance.  Because if you watch again you'll see that the CBP officers use proportionate force and good efficiency in getting Morales-Luna off the street and into custody.  That's the best way to ensure no one is harmed and the situation isn't escalated unnecessarily.  Moreover, the CBP wasn't simply detaining Morales-Luna because she was just a random illegal immigrant.

Nikolas Cruz Is the Result of 'It Takes a Village'.  Does everyone see what the Democrats have done?  They've pitted children against us, thereby mainstreaming and normalizing child exploitation.  What the Democrats did to Parkland student Emma Gonzalez was as sickening a display as any I've ever witnessed.  They coaxed an understandably distraught child to spew one debunked Democrat lie after another — and, of course, plenty of invective toward President Trump.  David Hogg, a 17-year-old Parkland student, asked on CNN:  "If you can't get elected without taking money from child murderers, why are you running?"  Normal question from a 17-year-old, right?  Wondering aloud if he came up with that question all on his own, with such emotionally vivid lingual sophistication and political acumen, must make me a grumpy old gun nut who thinks our youth are stupid.

The Portraits and the Obama Reality Distortion Field.  [T]he Obamas are the center of the most delusional cult of personality that the media has yet spawned. [...] This isn't journalism.  It's not a free press.  It's a bunch of cult members rushing out to explain that the flawed thing is flawless.  You're the flawed one for not seeing its gloriousness.  All hail the beloved leader.

Joe Concha:  Media's Trump Anger Mostly 'Performance Art at This Point'.  After it was made public that President Trump had requested the Pentagon to plan a military parade through Washington, DC, there was a steady stream of forceful condemnation of the President in which they claimed he was imitating foreign dictators.  And in an appearance on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight Thursday [2/8/2018], Hill media reporter Joe Concha knocked them for playing up their outrage and playing to an audience.

CNN: Undetected Asteroids Could Threaten Earth During Government Shutdown.  Two CNN correspondents claimed during an episode of The Lead with Jake Tapper that an asteroid could potentially threaten the Earth if the government shutdown continues.  CNN correspondent Tom Foreman recalled the time NASA could not monitor "potentially dangerous asteroids" for over two weeks, implying that NASA would not be able to prevent an asteroid attack if it hit Earth while the government shut down.

TV crew busted trying to sneak fake bomb into airport.  Seven members of a cable TV crew were arrested at Newark Airport on Thursday [1/18/2018] after trying to film themselves passing a fake explosive device through a security checkpoint and onto a plane, according to reports.  The crew was working for the cable network CNBC, according to nj.com.  The fake explosive device was in a carry-on bag and never made it past security, Transportation Security Administration spokesman Michael McCarthy said.  "They failed, were caught and were arrested on multiple charges," he said, without elaborating on the charges.

CNN's Sanjay Gupta Diagnoses Donald Trump With Heart Disease.  Wednesday [1/17/2018] on CNN's "New Day," Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the network's chief medical correspondent, proclaimed that based on President Donald Trump's coronary calcium scores going back to the previous decade, Trump has heart disease.  Gupta's diagnosis came a day after Trump's doctor, Navy Rear Adm. Dr. Ronny Jackson, offered his assessment of Trump's health at a White House press briefing.

Armchair diagnosis of a patient he has never examined:
Sanjay Gupta:  By all standards, Trump has heart disease.  CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, said Wednesday that he believes tests reveal that President Trump has heart disease.  Gupta said dating back to 2009, Trump started to have "these tests that are actually looking for the presence of calcium in the blood vessels that lead to the heart."  "Steadily, up until just this past week when he had it performed again, those numbers have gone up," he said.  "When they get to a certain range ... that means he has heart disease."

Leftist Toilet Mouths Condemn Trump as They Corrupt Nation.  President Trump denies having used a vulgar term last Thursday [1/11/2018] to describe dysfunctional Third World countries.  Yet there's no denying that the leftist media, believing he did, responded by repeatedly disgorging the term in a childish orgy of decadence.  Of course, the media no doubt think they're damaging Trump — but they're actually damaging society.  Let's be clear:  Leftists certainly object to the substance of Trump's comments, that we shouldn't continually absorb poor, unskilled, often functionally illiterate and unassimilable people from Third World nations.  But they also object to his alleged style, labeling as obscene the use of s-hole (toilet) to describe such places.  So to show us how bad such language is, the Crude News Network (CNN), for example, used it at least 36 times on Thursday.  It's sort of like inveighing against animal abuse and then bludgeoning dozens of dogs to death on air to prove your point.

CNN Leaps Into The Toilet:  Network Aired 195 Uses of 'S***hole' on Friday.  In the contest for Most Offended News Network after President Trump reportedly referred to African nations as "s***hole" countries, CNN wins hands down.  NewsBusters staff combed through CNN transcripts on Nexis for the S-hole word in the 24 hours of January 12 — the first full day after The Washington Post reported the controversy — and found CNN staffers and CNN guests uncorked the profanity 195 times in one day.  That doesn't count Saturday, Sunday or Monday.  They could be headed for 1,000 by now.  It also doesn't count the amount of time they put the S-word on screen (sometimes twice, as you can see on Cuomo's temporary prime time show.)  Compare that to Fox News Channel.  Their curse count was zero.  FNC told staff and guests not to say it.

Revealed:  Trump guzzles Diet Coke.  [Scroll down]  If not for Fox News we'd be totally in the dark, about everything, and it was from there that I first heard about CNN's alarming report:  [Something important?]  No, not exactly.  Rather, it's been reported, first from The New York Times, that Trump likes Diet Coke.  Wait — it gets worse.  He guzzles down a dozen a day.  So given such a scoop, CNN could not resist breaking it at around the same time that [a terrorist attack] was going on at Port Authority.  New Yorkers were running for their lives... but first things first; Trump is a glutton for Diet Coke

What Were the Motives of the Port Authority Bomber?  What were the motives of Ayaked Ullah, the Port Authority bomber in yesterday's attack?  There are many news headlines that address the issue, and they advance differing theories, each of them presented as fact.

CNN Promotes 'White Nonsense Roundup:' White Liberals Who Save Victimized People Of Color On Social Media.  In a piece titled "These are your white allies on Facebook," CNN enthusiastically introduces us to a group called "White Nonsense Roundup" (WNR).  Essentially, the group of roughly 100 "white ally" volunteers take turns swooping in to save African American people (already suffering from the "emotional labor" of systemic racism) from social media arguments when issues of race arise.  You know, because these white liberals are "woke" enough to recognize their inherent sin of whiteness and, apparently along with CNN, think people of color need white people to fight their social media battles for them.

New York Times forced to heavily amend another supposed K.T. McFarland 'scoop'.  The New York Times got ahead of itself again with yet another supposedly hot scoop involving former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, the Russians and the 2016 presidential election.  The story, now titled "McFarland's Testimony About Russia Contacts Is Questioned," reported originally that an email sent by the former Trump transition official indicated she lied to Congress this summer when she was questioned about disgraced Gen. Michael Flynn's communications with the Russians.  The article has been heavily amended since publication so that it is now mostly innuendo.  The initial references to the emails have been removed, and the story now leans mostly on Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who only questions whether McFarland was forthright in her testimony.

How D.C. political assassins use media to oust Rex Tillerson.  If several major media outlets are to be believed, at least two senior administration officials say Chief of Staff John Kelly has drawn up a plan to replace Tillerson with CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who would be replaced by Sen. Tom Cotton by year's end or soon after.  The Washington media lap up these anonymous leaks like starving kittens.  Personnel contests, like shallow election horse race stories, are easy to do, appear to contain drama and inside info and elevate the reporter to someone-in-the-know.  The fundamental problem with these self-serving reports is the sources are unknown, so news consumers cannot judge their trustworthiness and motivations.  Which, of course, is the point of hiding their identities.  Consumers must trust the reporters and media outlets, a dubious act in this era of rampant Trump antipathy.  The New York Times started this latest Tillerson-is-a-goner meme.

Unhinged coverage of Trump is hurting the media.  Not only is everything (still) hyper-politicized, but the lines between news media, lifestyle media and flat-out activism have faded into irrelevance.  On Wednesday [11/22/2017], the lead story in Teen Vogue, next to stories about how "I Will Never Use Regular Soap Again After THIS $6 Foam Body Wash" and "Everyone Basically Wore Lingerie to the VS Fashion Show After Party," was this screaming headline:  "The United States Voted 'No' on an Anti-Nazi UN Resolution."  It ran over a terrifying picture of crowds carrying banners, some featuring swastikas, with smoke in the background suggesting a terror attack.  Only when you click through do you discover that there is no news here whatsoever:  The US votes against this meaningless, nonbinding UN gambit every year because the US has this thing called the First Amendment.  President Obama's appointees also opposed the resolution.

A Year to be Thankful For.  I'm thankful my fears about Donald Trump seem to have been unfounded.  Not a fascist.  Not a secret liberal.  Not an incompetent.  ISIS is defeated.  GDP at 3% plus.  Some 60 great originalist judges nominated.  Regulations cut back at an amazing rate.  Our lying leftist press humiliated and discredited.  I'm thankful because, whenever I get tired of watching an America in crisis, all I have to do is turn off the mainstream news and America is not in crisis anymore.  In fact, America is doing quite well.

Whittle: The News Media Knows How To Stop These Massacres, But Refuses To Do It.  In his latest video, conservative commentator Bill Whittle discusses the most effective way to end the surge of mass murders that America has suffered in the last twenty years — and it's one that falls squarely at the feet of the national news media.  Citing forensic psychologist Park Dietz, who has studied mass murderers extensively, Whittle contends that we've seen a wave of mass shootings like Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs because the media insists on providing 24/7 coverage of the tragedies, turning suicide massacres into a chance for glory for the sociopaths carrying out the heinous acts.

The Puerto Rican Genocide That Wasn't.  The death toll in Puerto Rico currently stands at 48.  Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20.  As we approach October 20, the death toll from the hurricane is a lot less than the death toll from the deadliest month in Chicago.  Despite media arm waving, with only 117 people not accounted for, the actual death toll in Puerto Rico isn't likely to rise very much.  And even a death toll of 48 was only achieved by listing people who died of heart attacks and other medical problems that could not be treated because of hurricane damage.  It's unknown whether some of them might have lived without the hurricane.  It's guesswork.  The previous, incomplete death toll showed that the actual hurricane seemed to have only killed 19 people.  2 suicides were also attributed to the hurricane.  As were respiratory failures "indirectly linked" to the hurricane.  But the media has been working hard to inflate the death toll.  "We'll probably never know exactly how many people died," the Washington Post speculates.  "Hurricane Maria likely killed more people than Puerto Rico says," the Daily News ghoulishly insists.

No, Mr. Krugman, There is Not a Cholera Outbreak in Puerto Rico.  Yesterday [9/30/2-17], liberal pundit and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman incorrectly tweeted that cholera, a deadly bacterial disease caused by unsanitary water, had resurfaced in Puerto Rico. [...] Then moments later, he corrected himself with a follow up tweet. [...] You will notice his fake news has amassed thousands of retweets and favorites, while his correction has not.

Hurricane Irma And How The Left Has Politicized Even The Weather.  A number of years ago, I sat down with the general manager of a major television news station.  He told me that in their own survey, viewers tuned in for "weather first, sports second, and news last."  Therefore he stressed, weather forecasters were the "cash cow" of the station.  He further explained that much of television weather forecasting was a "sham."  He said that decades ago, they would give a "one-day" forecast.  But then Station B across town went to a "two-day" forecast.  So then they countered with a "three-day" forecast," until everyone went to the "useless seven-day" forecasts.  He emphasized that it was all done for reasons of competition and ratings and that with a "seven-day" forecast, the station and the networks were playing viewers for "fools," because they normally "couldn't even get the forecast for tomorrow correct."

While People Die, Washington Post Obsesses Over Melania Trump's Shoes.  Searching for a scandal the way a crackhead hunts for crack, the media decided that the real story of the natural disaster ought to be Melania Trump's shoes.  Because that is what the media is now.  Melania Trump wore high heels while getting on Air Force One.  The media howled that she was heading to a flood zone while wearing high heels.  Never mind that she was still far from the zone and was just boarding a plane.  Then she landed in Texas, wearing sneakers.  And that was also bad.

Between alt-right and 'antifa,' media still manages to be worse.  The only people dumber than the Neanderthals and Brass Knuckle Draggers are the insufferably tedious referees known as the Stupid Media who shape the country as a barking mad carnival, whipping up hysteria for every armed showdown.

CBS News joins O.J. Simpson on the hunt for the real killers.  In the wake of O.J. Simpson's parole last week, CBS News has a story today titled "Who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman?" Curiously, the story doesn't attempt to answer that question.  Instead, the entire premise of the story is that the investigation into the murders is officially still open in Los Angeles.

Worst media moments of the week:  NY Mag climate screed wins!  [Scroll down]  "There are now, trapped in Arctic ice, diseases that have not circulated in the air for millions of years," goes one of the milder passages.  It was so bad that climate alarmist and hockey stick creator Michael Mann teamed up with two others to write a response, arguing, "Doomsday scenarios are as harmful as climate change denial."  Mann and his compatriots criticized the New York Mag piece as painting, "an overly bleak picture, arguing that climate change could render the Earth uninhabitable by the end of this century."  They also called it out for errors.  Mann made an interesting comment that seems to go right over the head of eco-journalists, explaining, "fear does not motivate, and appealing to it is often counter-productive."  Yet fear is about 99.99 percent of all media climate catastrophe coverage.

"The more it sensationalizes the commonplace, the more boring its coverage becomes."
The Media's Endless Anti-Trump Show Trial.  It is a measure of the anti-Trump media's stupidity and malpractice that the phrase "breaking news" now elicits eye rolls.  The media's "breaking news" about Trump is rarely breaking or news.  It is usually recycled and old — some stale piece of information, relating to a practice both parties long ago adopted, that is sensationalized and dished up as novel.  Into this category falls much of its breathless "Trump-Russia" coverage, including its all-hands-on-deck stories about Donald Trump Jr.

The media's mass hysteria over 'collusion' is out of control.  Hysteria among the media and Trump opponents over the prospect of "collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin may have hit its crescendo this week.  That's right:  The wailing from the media and their allies about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with some "Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer" (whatever that means) may be the last gasp of this faux scandal.  Good riddance.  Predictably, the New York Times started the ball rolling with front-page coverage, going so far as to argue, "The accounts of the meeting represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign were willing to accept Russian help."  As if this were some breakthrough moment.  The Times followed up with a headline yesterday [7/10/2017] that the meeting request and subject matter discussed in the prior story were transmitted to Trump Jr. via an email. [...] The Times is so desperate to move the story that the meeting's arrangement over email is being made into Page 1 news.

What counts as treason differs depending on the letter after your name.  In 2012, Obama met with Russia and said he would be more flexible if he was re-elected.  The media and Democrats had no problem.  There were no investigations and no spying on Obama looking for collusion.  The Clintons, the Clinton Foundation, and their close associates got huge amounts of money from foreign governments including Russia.  In return, Russia got uranium, some of which it transferred to Iran.  There were no investigations by the FBI; Democrats and the media didn't care.  Kickbacks for uranium to the enemy looks like actual treason. [...] But Donald Jr. had a ten-minute meeting where he thought he might get dirt on Hillary in which he got nothing and gave nothing in return, and he and his father are essentially accused of treason.

Byron York:  Trump-Russia investigation takes sharp turn toward the dumb.  What a mess for the White House.  And all for nothing.  When the meeting actually happened, at Trump Tower on June 9, there was a reason Jared Kushner left after a few minutes and Paul Manafort spent the whole time staring at his phone.  The "Crown prosecutor" of Russia — there is no such position — was actually a shady lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who had no "official documents" to offer but wanted to harangue Trump Jr. about U.S. sanctions on Russia.  Trump Jr. quite reasonably saw there was nothing there and cut the meeting off after about 20 minutes.  But in a capital consumed with Trump and Russia, the revelations, first reported in the New York Times and then substantiated by Trump Jr. himself, blew up into the Scandal That Ate Cable TV.

Some subways are literally held together with zip ties.  At more than $1 million per subway car, you'd think they'd be held together with something more than zip ties. [...] An MTA spokeswoman said Wednesday that the zip tie was being used as a temporary fastener to attach a cable to the new R186 cars while a special part is being made.  She added that the cable is attached another way, and the zip tie is just a back-up.

The Editor says...
The article immediately above, as you can see from the two sentences excerpted above, is an example of self-contradictory sensationalism.

NYT's Latest Trump Story Follows A Familiar Pattern Of Breathlessly Reporting Routine Procedures.  The establishment media's hysteria is once again in high gear after news that members of the Trump transition team were ordered to preserve documents and other materials pertinent to the investigation into Russian interference of the election.  Trump's transition team's counsel, issuing a memo to satisfy routine requirements in any investigation, hardly called for the tone and seriousness with which it was reported.  The New York Times asserts that the request "illustrated the seriousness of the inquiry" conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller, and how "deeply they are delving" into President Donald Trump's activities.  Such rhetoric follows a longstanding pattern of the establishment media's propensity to overreact to even the most routine circumstances with anything related to the president.  The Washington Post's Tom Nichols says that media personnel "seem determined to overreact on even ordinary matters."

Winners and Losers from Comey Hearing.  Mainstream media cable networks like CNN had countdown clocks.  Broadcast networks covered the hearing as if it would go down as one of the most seminal events in the history of the country.  "Never Trump" Republicans were getting ready to be used as the mainstream media's useful idiots and get their predictable television hits and quotes in mainstream media publications.  Left-wing Democrats were dreaming of drafting articles of impeachment.  They lionized Comey as their hero who would help them destroy Trump once and for all.  Not so fast.

I think they do this intentionally.
Grrr 59% say news media make them angry, dissatisfied.  Nearly six in 10 Americans are upset with the news media, claiming in a new poll that it makes them angry and dissatisfied.

CNN Goes Bonkers:  Spends 10 Hours on Comey Before a Single Word of Testimony.  Former FBI Director James Comey has not said a single word in public, but the liberal media have been salivating for days over his upcoming testimony on Thursday.  Case in point:  from noon on Thursday (June 1) when the date for the testimony was set, until noon today (June 7), CNN has already devoted more than 10 hours of coverage to testimony that has yet to even occur.

The Media Is Now Leaking Classified Info Just Because They Feel Like It.  This morning, The New York Times brought us another breathtaking exposé of classified national security information that is really important for the public to know because... um, well, because they just kind of felt like it.  The story is about a contractor for an international shipping company who was captured and held hostage by rebels in Yemen before being released last year.  Without the man's permission or cooperation, The New York Times gives details of his capture and imprisonment, his name, his age, his exact job description with the shipping company, and the location where his wife and children lived at the time (none of which I will repeat here). [...] The whole report is inexplicable, and you get the sense that the reporters just wanted to tell a splashy, thriller-like story.  Except that there's a larger pattern:  it has become acceptable to open the floodgates of classified information because Trump.

The News Is Propaganda.  Non-stop distractions are deliberately used by those in power as instruments of policy for the purpose of preventing people from paying attention to reality.  Propaganda is used by those in power to manipulate language, thought, and opinion in a way that causes the progression from thought to action artificially.  When the public is reduced to a state where people no longer care about the truth and are unaware of what that truth even is, propaganda takes hold and shows them what to do. [...] Under the conditions in which we find ourselves living crisis to crisis, there can be no thought as the steady stream of propaganda is fed to us in the form of "news" that never strays from a certain narrative.

The Anonymous Sources Of Washington Post And CNN Fake News.  Media fake news is everywhere.  No, the new health care bill does not treat rape as a pre-existing condition and Republicans did not celebrate its passage with beer.  The latest media outrage is driven by a Washington Post story about intelligence disclosures based on claims by anonymous sources.  The Post's big hit pieces are mainly based on anonymous sources.  Its latest hit piece runs a quote from, "a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials."  That's an anonymous source quoting hearsay from other anonymous sources.  This isn't journalism.  It's a joke.

Anonymous Nation:  America's Papers of Record Have Turned into Tabloids.  Donald Trump made a name for himself in part by regularly appearing on the cover of New York City tabloids in the 1980s and 1990s.  Fast forward to 2017, and the guy is now president, still appearing on the cover of various grocery store check-out scandal sheets — like the New York Times and the Washington Post.  Journalists from these institutions conduct their reporting like they're covering Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's divorce.

Hysteria, overblown hooey part of the fake news cycle.  Turns out Mr. Trump is a germaphobe and wasn't in that Russian hotel room.  The bust of Martin Luther King is still in the Oval Office.  He didn't abandon conservatives by naming his sister to the Supreme Court.  Mr. Trump's Tower — and people involved in his campaign — were, in fact, surveilled.  Slowly, agonizingly, Truth becomes very inconvenient for all these people predicting Mr. Trump's certain demise.  In the end, they are all left clinging to the smallest Styrofoam shard of their original story, bobbing in the harsh sea of Donald Trump Derangement Syndrome.

How many buzzwords can the liberal media write in one sentence?  I was reading a very poorly written Los Angeles Times article about North Carolina legislators introducing a bill to define marriage as between a man and a woman, and I was surprised to read the following sentence:  ["]Opponents of the legislation castigated it as an unnecessary step that will stoke division in a state still reeling from the fallout of a controversial bill regulating which bathrooms transgender people can use.["]  I have rarely seen a sentence so sensationalistically, so chock-full of so many liberal buzzwords.  The over-dramatization of facts makes this news article read like an action thriller.

Trump's Budget is an Attack On the Bureaucratic State.  So according to journalists, Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts are "big," "deep," "dramatic," "massive," and so on.  With each breathless adjective — often coupled with excellent verbs like "gut" and "slash" — they add to the apocalypticism that's engulfed the Left.  "Reading through the Trump budget," tweeted The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, "I feel as the Romans must have felt in 456 AD as the barbarians conquered and ushered in the dark ages."  Vox claimed that the budget plan is a proposal to "dramatically remake the federal government."  If only.  In perspective, all of this melodrama is over probably less than 1 percent of the national budget.

Fake News Frenzy — Remember the Great Black Church Burning Hoax?  The recent "fake news" about bomb threats at Jewish Community Centers and desecration of Jewish cemeteries recalls a much earlier chapter in the history of Fake News — the Black Church Burnings of the 1990s.  Bomb threats phoned in to Jewish Community Centers across the country caused a spasm of "Trump is not denouncing these fast enough" tweets.  At around the same time, there were multiple cases of reported desecration of Jewish cemeteries, including the toppling of tombstones.  All this was presumed to be part of an imagined Trump Effect: [...] When Trump suggested that some of these might be typical Hate Hoaxes, he was denounced for that, too.  Well, it turned out that many bomb threats could be traced to one black disgruntled reporter (Juan Thompson) who was attempting to lay the blame on his white girlfriend.

ICE Calls Out CNN, NBC, Etc., For "False, Dangerous & Irresponsible" Fake News Reporting.  President Trump told a gathering of news media yesterday, namely the Mainstream Media that is not accustomed to having its status questioned, that they were constantly perpetrating fakes news to create an intended reaction from the American people.  ICE, the nation's largest immigration enforcement agency, just did the very same thing, calling out the media for its fabricated/highly slanted coverage of recent immigration raids and reminding everyone that under previous administration these raids were far more numerous — and the media then said NOTHING.

ICE: Raid reports fake news, Obama grabbed 350% more.  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pushing back hard on media reports that President Trump has unleashed a mean-spirited national raid on immigrants, noting that it rounded up over 350 percent more during one sweep under former President Obama.  In a series of tweets, ICE called the reports, in the Washington Post and elsewhere, "dangerous and irresponsible."  The agency this week said that had made 683 arrests of mostly criminal illegal immigrants, or those with multiple cases against them beyond illegally crossing the border.

NBC News Spreads Fear, Lies With "Ghost Gun" Fake News.  Here's the thing: former ATF agent Rick Vasquez and Jeff Rossen are boldly and directly lying to the viewers/readers of NBC News.  I know this from firsthand experience, as I've built semi-automatic firearms from the ground up, including AR-15s and an AKM.  You cannot buy "all the parts" for any firearm online and simply slap the pieces together to build a functioning firearm as they mislead viewers, and this is a very easy claim to debunk.  Every firearm made or imported into the United States has a part of the frame or receiver that the ATF recognizes as the actual firearm that carries the serial number.  All the other pieces are just parts.

Iceberg Story, Slim.  In the post-November 8 universe, one man's fake news is another man's vitally important scoop.  The third-most emailed article in today's [2/7/2017] New York Times is surely both things depending on who's reading it. [...] Here's the gist of it:  A crack is growing in the Larson C Ice Shelf, "in an area already vulnerable to warming temperatures" and may soon create a very large iceberg. [...] This is literally a story about an iceberg that could form — and then do no appreciable damage.  And lest you think there's any new information here, the Times reports that scientists have been monitoring the thing since 2014.

NBC's Holt Lectures Viewers on the Meaning of the Statue of Liberty.  With the debate over the legality of President Donald Trump's immigration and travel ban still raging Monday evening [1/30/2017], NBC broadcasted their Nightly News program "from the shadow of the Statue of Liberty" accompanied by a lecture from anchor Lester Holt. [...] But neither ABC nor CBS treated it as a time to seemingly pontificate about the morality of the issue, let alone march out to the Statue of Liberty and use it as a prop.

Trump's Reassertion of Common Sense is a shattering experience for death-wish liberals, bishops, and RINOs.  The grandstanding hysteria over Trump's travel ban on people coming from seven terrorist countries falls into the category of sound and fury signifying nothing, save the persistence of death-wish liberalism in our politics.  It happened so "abruptly," harrumphed the chattering class.  Really?  Trump has only been talking about the ban for over a year.  People in those countries had since his victory in November time to "prepare" for it.  Besides, since when has it been a constitutional right for peoples residing in terrorist hotbeds to travel inconvenience-free to America?

The Famed 'Doomsday Clock' Is More Like A Liberal Angst Meter.  When the Doomsday Clock launched in 1947, the initial setting was seven minutes to midnight.  Since then, it's gone up and down.  The furthest it got from doomsday was 17 minutes in 1991.  The closest was 2 minutes to midnight in 1953.  But it's clear from its movements over the past seven decades that the Doomsday Clock is more about politics than any sort of scientific measure of the risk of global nuclear war.  After all, it has routinely counted down after a Republican wins the White House, and ticked up when Democrats reclaim the presidency.

Grasping for Metaphor, Reporters Flock to Burning DC Garbage Can.  As chance would happen, many of the people upset by the presidency of Donald Trump took to the streets of Washington today [1/20/2017] to express their displeasure with the new administration.  Shortly after Trump was sworn in, a large march organized by the DisruptJ20 protest group set out from Union Station to McPherson Square, where it is holding a large rally.  When the march passed by 13th and K streets, Northwest, some in in the demonstration broke away and started throwing newspaper boxes, garbage cans, and other objects in middle of K Street and set them on fire, using Trump T-shirts as kindling.  And as any event involving the combination of garbage, fire, and a large crowd — coupled with its convenient location right outside the office of a major news organization — does, the small blaze caught the attention of seemingly every reporter within sprinting distance.

No, Trump's Dismissal of Obama's Ambassadors Is Not an Unprecedented Crisis.  President-elect Donald Trump's order for all politically-appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day is "breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods," according to the New York Times.

The Election Was Not Hacked.  Despite the histrionic claims of the press, the election was not hacked.  The Democratic National Committee's lousy IT security allowed someone to access their emails which were then leaked.  Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta fell for an age-old phishing scam that was as believable as getting millions of dollars from a Nigerian prince.  Using the spotty media understanding of cybersecurity, they can claim that the DNC and Hillary's campaign were "hacked," but the election decisively was not.  And the press knows it.  In order to "hack" an election, a nefarious group would have to inltrate the voting systems of 50 states, plus DC and territories.  All of these systems are unique, with completely different architecture, ballot formats, tabulation processes, etc., etc.  This did not happen.  In fact, some hackers tried breaking into a few different states' systems weeks before the election, were quickly identied, and prevented from doing so.

'Russian hackers' penetrate US power grid with 'outdated Ukrainian malware'.  A Vermont utility sounded the alarm after finding malware code on a laptop that the FBI and DHS had touted as associated with Russian hackers.  However, cybersecurity specialists say the code came from an outdated Ukrainian hacking tool.

The Editor says...
This is one of the biggest mountains ever made out of a newsroom molehill.  Utility companies don't transact their business or control the power grid with laptop computers.  In any event, the presence of malware on one computer doesn't mean that any other computer was affected — or even the one with malware.  This story is a whole lot of nothing, probably intended to make Russia look like a villain, at a time when president-elect Trump is showing he's far more capable of dealing with Russia than Barack H. Obama ever was.

Russian Hacking Malware Found on Vermont Utility Computer.  Malware associated with Russian hackers was found on a computer belonging to a utility company in Vermont, according to the company.  After being alerted last night by the Department of Homeland Security about malware code used in Grizzly Steppe, Russia's hacking campaign against U.S. political institutions, Burlington Electric Department performed a scan, the utility said in a statement.  "We acted quickly to scan all computers in our system for the malware signature.  We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization's grid systems," the statement said.  "We took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials of this finding."

Washington Post Publishes False News Story About Russians Hacking Electrical Grid.  The [Washington] Post [12/30/2016] story was titled, "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, officials say."  The story said, "A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials."  The Post published the story before being able to get comment from the two utility companies in Vermont.  The Burlington Electric Department would end up putting out a statement showing the premise of The Washington Post story as being untrue.

Update:
Wait, Never Mind, Russia's Not Trying to Destroy Vermont After All.  Hey, remember that ominous Washington Post story about Russia hacking a Vermont electrical company, and the scary warnings from Vermont Democrats that Vladimir Putin was attempting to shut down the grid in the middle of winter?  This morning [1/3/2017] the Post reports, "Whoops!"

Vt. utility not specifically targeted for hack, official says.  Federal investigators have found no information suggesting this city's electric utility was specifically targeted after Burlington officials found malicious software linked to Russian hackers on a department laptop, the utility's general manager said Saturday [12/31/2016].  Evidence of Internet traffic associated with Grizzly Steppe, a notorious Russian distributor of malware, was disturbing but did not pose a threat to Burlington Electric Department's highly computerized grid or its customers, said Neale Lunderville, general manager of the city-owned utility.  The stealth software, isolated on the one laptop, was discovered Friday [12/30/2016] as part of ongoing routine vigilance.

The Great Hacking of Vermont's Electrical Grid That Never Happened.  For starters, the computer that had the malware was an employee's laptop, and it was never connected to the Vermont electrical grid itself.  Vermont had not been specifically targeted, and the Post's original headline — "Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont, U.S. officials say" — was false.  The statement from Burlington Electric Department General Manager Neale F. Lunderville not-so-subtly urges the media covering this news to get their facts straight: [...]

Washington Post corrects story on Vermont utility breach.  The Washington Post has corrected a story that originally said Russian hackers penetrated the U.S. electric grid by breaching a utility company in Vermont.  "An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid.  Authorities say there is no indication of that so far.  The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid," an editor's note attached to the original article said.  The original story was published Friday, one day after the Obama administration announced new sanctions against Russia for its cyber activities.

Washington Post retracts story about Russian hack at Vermont utility.  The Washington Post has retracted its story about Russian hackers penetrating the nation's electricity grid with a virus found in a Burlington, Vt., electric company laptop.  "Authorities say there is no indication of that so far [that Russians had penetrated the US electric grid]," according to an editor's note attached to a corrected version of the story on the paper's website.  "The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid," the editor's note read.

These Are the Media's Top Ten Embarrassments of the Year.  According to the major networks, Fidel was awesome, Hillary rallies are the best, and white people ruined America.

The Scourge of Dumb News.  Media is a product.  Firms that provide this product are servicing a need, and we'd only be kidding ourselves to claim news consumers desire only to be informed.  This isn't a matter of simple bias confirmation.  News outlets have begun to cater not just to partisans but the minimally informed for whom fleeting and shareable controversies provide a sense of feeling informed. [...] "Fake news" is a real problem, but it attracts a credulous audience because news consumers have been primed to expect emotional satisfaction from the news.

12 Fake News Stories from the Mainstream Media.  [For example,] Dateline NBC rigs a truck to explode:  In 1993, NBC News delivered a historic public apology for staging the test crash of a General Motors pickup truck for the Dateline NBC program.  The reporters wanted to demonstrate that gas could leak from the truck's fuel tank and cause a dangerous fire after a crash, so they rigged it with explosives. [...] Dateline NBC was far from the only example of dubious product-safety reporting.  It wasn't even the first time a vehicle was rigged to explode for a major network consumer report.

Amanpour: Media Should Fight Trump Because He Might Start Putting Us In Cages.  CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour urged journalists Tuesday night to protect their profession from the "existential threat" of President-elect Donald Trump, who she implied might try to put the media in "cages."  Citing Trump's tweet about the media "inciting" some of the protests against him following the election, Amanpour warned gravely of authoritarian leaders who dismantle the free press and imprison journalists.

Corporate Media Berating Fake News Should Look In Mirror.  The corporate media has been abuzz recently about the surge of fake news stories tainting our digital ether, cautioning consumers against being conned by those pushing fantastical falsehoods online.  The glaring problem with this:  the messenger.  As reflective as the Democratic (and Republican) establishment should be in the aftermath of the Trump-nado that swept itself into the White House, the elites in our media should be looking themselves in the mirror morning, noon, and night, perhaps more than any other institution in the U.S.  Complacent for decades in a system of its own tone-deaf creation, political media elites have long operated by chasing the "horse race" of he-said, she-said politics — or in Trump's case, he-tweeted, she-tweeted.

Trump Sticks with People Who Stuck by Him, Media Bewildered.  As soon as the news broke that President-elect Trump had named Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist, the media began acting as if he'd just freed Charles Manson and given him the launch codes.  After helping Trump win in states where Republicans have sought nothing but moral victories for decades, Bannon seemed like a perfectly logical choice to keep close in an advisory capacity.

The Misinformation Age.  Consumers of mass media are not seeking to be informed, because they assume it is all nonsense.  They just want to be entertained.  It's probably why Trump is one nominee and Clinton is the other.  Everyone is looking forward to the brash bully tearing into the corrupt old cow.  It may be awful for the country, but it will make good TV.

Obama's legacy:  Dead cops.  [Scroll down]  For one thing, if Obama did his homework at all, he would know that what appears to be an explosion of killings-by-police is actually just an explosion of media hype on the rare occasions when it happens, often without any of the context that would help people explain why a certain thing happened.  A responsible president would urge people to wait for the facts and recognize that even though they can make mistakes, police officers have dangerous, difficult and crucially important job such that they do not deserve to be painted with a broad brush as a bunch of racists.

CNN's Liberal Meltdown:  Brexit Means 'Xenophobia,' 'White Identity' Win.  Liberal CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour suffered an epic meltdown on Thursday night [6/23/2016] as it became clear that Britain was asserting its national sovereignty and voting to leave the European Union.  The sneering Amanpour repeatedly derided it as an example of "xenophobia" and "white identity" politics.  Early in the evening, with the result still in doubt, Amanpour told Anderson Cooper:  "A lot of the Leave movements are led by the hard-right, very, very xenophobic, anti-immigrant, very populist, nationalist, white identity politics."  Later, as reality set in, the journalist referenced the current issue of The Economist and raged, "This marks a victory for the kind of economic nationalism, to quote this article here, for the kind of xenophobia, that will imperil the liberal world order that has guaranteed western prosperity and stability since World War II."

'This is the end': Media hysterical over Brexit.  Reporters around the world were left terrified, heartbroken and angry over the vote in the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union.  "No words.  The dream is over.  Britain has voted to fall into the sea.  This is the end," Fusion's Felix Salmon opined on social media.  "I despair.  This is not my England."  "I feel like there's been a death in the family.  There needs to be some kind of funeral," he added.

My Shared Shame: The Media Helped Make Trump.  Those of us in the news media have sometimes blamed Donald Trump's rise on the Republican Party's toxic manipulation of racial resentments over the years.  But we should also acknowledge another force that empowered Trump:  Us.  I polled a number of journalists and scholars, and there was a broad (though not universal) view that we in the media screwed up.  Our first big failing was that television in particular handed Trump the microphone without adequately fact-checking him or rigorously examining his background, in a craven symbiosis that boosted audiences for both.

Hillary's Really Bad Week No One Heard About because Guess Who.  Hillary Clinton had a gaffe-filled, staggeringly bad week last week.  It started with her politicizing Nancy Reagan's funeral and ending with more explosive allegations that her informal adviser Sidney Blumenthal had directly cut and pasted classified intelligence into an unsecured personal e-mail account.  But you wouldn't know it from media campaign coverage, which has been far more occupied with the GOP primary and the escalation of violent incidents at rallies.

Of Course Whites Commit Most Of The Crime In Fargo You Idiots.  It's time for another fantastically stupid "exclusive" news story from the folks at Fargo-based television news station Valley News Live.  Their big revelation?  White people commit most of the crime in Fargo.  A city where, according to the U.S. Census, is 90.2 percent white.

The myth of the cop killing 'epidemic'.  To hear the media tell it, America is in the grip of an unprecedented crime wave, an orgy of wanton murder in which heavily armed thugs randomly gun down innocent unarmed people, some of them teens, just for sport.  Except that these homicidal goons are wearing the blues and badges of American police departments.  It's the narrative that's given rise to the protest movement Black Lives Matter and to a growing public mistrust of the police in general.  From Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., to the recent shooting of a middle-aged woman and a teen in Chicago, the body count seemingly keeps rising, exacerbating racial tensions and keeping the nation on edge.  And each incident is breathlessly reported by a media determined to show that America remains deeply, irredeemably racist.  Problem is, it's simply not true.

5 Devastating Facts About Black-on-Black Crime.  The mainstream American media is, again, happily hitting the Black Lives Matter crack pipe in its pernicious pursuit of high ratings. [...] [T]he ugly truth behind #BlackLivesMatter is that black people killing other black people does nothing to advance its political power in the same way that one white cop killing a black criminal can.  Despite the media's overindulgence on white cops killing blacks, there is still a far-larger amount of black bodies being sent to morgues by black killers.  Here's five devastating facts, liberals can't deny, that prove it.

The System Worked, So Why The Protests In Chicago?  The truth is the awful death is demeaned by another outbreak of the nation's protest industry, one that unfortunately doesn't move itself overseas.  The telling tip-off is the presence of Jesse Jackson.  Or Al Sharpton.  And protest leaders' choice of target, in this case a nationally familiar tourist area that — Oh, look! — is handy to all the local TV newsrooms.  And it piggybacks on a traditionally slow news day's fascination with holiday shoppers.  A perfect public-relations storm for protesters.

Don't Believe the Media!  You must keep in mind that the media industry is exactly that; an industry.  They must make greater and greater profits to satisfy their stockholders.  Dramatic reports of a child that is shot by another child increase ratings much more than reporting that 28 women used a gun to fight off rape today and every day, for that matter (the national average).  A heart rending image of a mother who just lost a child to a drive-by shooting drives ratings much higher than a dry report that violent crime is down in states with the least amount of gun control.  The simple fact is that violence sells! [...] Splashier news makes for more profit.  You can't blame someone for wanting to make more money, even if you disagree with how they do it.  So, it is imperative that you remember that those in control of the media have their own agenda and that agenda does NOT serve YOUR best interest.  Since violence sells and legal unrestricted gun ownership reduces violence, it is in the media's business interest to promote restrictions on legal gun ownership.

Media Coverage Foments Copycat Suicides, Including Mass-Shooter Suicides.  Earlier this year, the deranged 26-year-old gunman who snuffed out the lives of nine innocent human beings before taking his own life on the campus of Umpqua Community College provided some real insight into the minds of the young men involved in what is a disturbing — and growing — trend in America:  mass-shooter suicides.  And that's what these are, these mass shootings.  They are suicides that would not be big national stories without a body count that included innocents killed in movie theaters, churches, schools.  And, to judge from the shooter's words, they are mass shootings that might not have happened at all had there been no prospect of mass-media coverage.

No, You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day.  If there is one health myth that will not die, it is this:  You should drink eight glasses of water a day.  It's just not true.  There is no science behind it.  And yet every summer we are inundated with news media reports warning that dehydration is dangerous and also ubiquitous.  These reports work up a fear that otherwise healthy adults and children are walking around dehydrated, even that dehydration has reached epidemic proportions.  Let's put these claims under scrutiny.

The Plight of the Unarmed Perp.  This is the point I really want to make: the constant emphasis on police shootings of unarmed men that we see in the press is, for the most part, crazy.  If you are a perp, or a suspect, or an inoffensive person walking down the street, you may be unarmed, but the police officer is not.  Nor, in most cases, will he have any immediate way to know whether you are armed or not.  If you attack him, what do you expect him to do?  Challenge you to an arm-wrestling match?  He is entitled to use deadly force to defend himself.  Attacking a police officer rarely ends well.  Likewise with fleeing a police officer who is ordering you to stop.  If there is a problem here, it does not demand a thorough revamping of American police practices.  Rather, it suggests that those who have influence with a small demographic group — 6% of the population, according to the Post — impress upon them that they should not attack police officers under any circumstances, and if told to stop, they should stop.  If they put their hands up, they are not going to get shot.

Priceless Liberal reactions to allegedly violent black burglar shot by police.  We don't know all the facts.  Maybe he fought with the cops and they shot him in self defense.  Maybe he didn't fight at all and they still shot him.  What we do know, however, is that he rammed a dealership with his car and started to deface the cars in the lot.  He wasn't shot walking home from the library; he was shot while committing an act of violence and destruction of property.

Police Fatally Shoot Unarmed College Football Player.  Officers were responding to a burglary call about 1 a.m. Friday [8/7/2015] in Arlington when they discovered someone had driven a vehicle through a front window of the Classic Buick GMC, according to a statement from the Arlington Police Department.  The statement said police approached the suspect and a struggle ensued.  At some point during the struggle, an officer shot Taylor.

The Editor says...
Why is the perpetrator identified, every time this story comes up, as a football player?  What difference does it make if he plays football?  He certainly wasn't playing football in the closed showroom of a car dealership well after midnight.  The clear implication is that the liberal press considers football players to be on a plane above all others.

In Zimbabwe, We Don't Cry for Lions.  When I turned on the news and discovered that the messages were about a lion killed by an American dentist, the village boy inside me instinctively cheered:  One lion fewer to menace families like mine.  My excitement was doused when I realized that the lion killer was being painted as the villain.  I faced the starkest cultural contradiction I'd experienced during my five years studying in the United States.  Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people?  That all the talk about Cecil being "beloved" or a "local favorite" was media hype?

Nets Spend 30 Minutes on Lion; Censor Abortion Videos.  The broadcast news shows covered Cecil the lion more in one day than they spent on the Planned Parenthood videos in two weeks — and that discrepancy only continues to grow.  In two days, ABC, NBC and CBS have spent 30 minutes, 1 second on Cecil, a famed African lion shot by an American dentist.  But anchors couldn't spare nearly as much time for the videos exposing Planned Parenthood's harvesting of aborted baby parts.  Since the release of the Center for Medical Progress' first video two weeks ago, the networks have spent only 11 minutes, 13 seconds on the story.

World Explodes over Dead Lion, Ignores Planned Parenthood.  On Tuesday [7/28/2015], the world lost its collective mind — whatever is left of it, anyway — when media discovered the identity of the killer of a Zimbabwean named Cecil.  Cecil is a lion.  Cecil, a lion, was by most accounts "one of Africa's most famous lions."  Cecil, incredibly, was famous for being a lion, not for curing cancer, although you wouldn't know that by the media coverage.  The man who shot Cecil, a lion, to death is Dr. Walter Palmer, a big game hunter who allegedly paid $55,000 for a big game permit.  He hired a guide, who lured Cecil, a lion, out from a protected area, where Cecil, a lion, then met his end.

The War on Black People in South Carolina: the First Casualty is Truth.  Mass murder was not enough.  Not for the army of reporters who soon after the South Carolina killings surrounded this truth with a bodyguard of lies.  The shooting was part of a pattern of white on black violence wildly out of proportion, journalists told us over and over.  The tragedy also reminded many scribes of the so-called epidemic of arson against black churches in the 1990s.  Neither of which are true.

If You're Going To Fake A Rape, Remember To Take Off Your Fitbit.  Technology can be a useful tool for the rape hoaxer, but inevitably it leads to the hoaxer's downfall.  Social media can catapult a mattress-carrying liar all the way to the State of the Union Address, but then her text-message record can show her for the fraud she is.  (And if she subsequently decides to post amateur porn online, well... )  A once-respected magazine can put a rape hoaxer in the headlines, but then a handful of bloggers questioning the story can bring it all crashing down.

ABC's '08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015.  New York City underwater?  Gas over $9 a gallon?  A carton of milk costs almost $13?  Welcome to June 12, 2015.  Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago.  Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015.  The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, "It's June 8th, 2015.  One carton of milk is $12.99."  (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.)  Another clip featured this prediction for the current year:  "Gas reached over $9 a gallon."  (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.)

Media distorts Bibi's statements, then claims he's walking them back.  The distortion of Benjamin Netanyahu's pre-election statements on a two-state solution and Arab voting was a classic Obama and media distortion.  If you take the actual text of Netanyahu said, he never ruled out a two-state solution and never discouraged Arab voting.  But those were the headlines and the foaming-at-the mouth hyperbole, fomented by the Obama administration in numerous anonymous statements to the media.

58,000 children 'abducted' a year: yet another fishy statistic.  [Scroll down]  In other words, these numbers come from an era that predates the wide use of mobile phones, which allow parents to keep much closer track of their children, or the creation of the Amber alerts (which are also on phones, in Facebook news feeds and so forth).  There is an update in the works but the results will not be released until sometime later this year.  So, first off, you see this is an estimate, based on a survey, not based on actual incidents.  NBC News claimed this was FBI data, which makes it sound like actual reports, but instead this was simply derived from a study conducted by academicians for the Justice Department.

NBC Devotes Nearly Four Minutes to Dress Debate, Seconds to Clinton Corruption.  On Friday [2/27/2015], NBC finally noticed the corruption scandal swirling around Hillary Clinton.  However, the coverage on the Today show was relegated to a 49-second mention within a story slamming Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  By contrast, the morning show devoted 3 minutes 56 seconds to a social media debate about the color of a dress.

Another Bogus Academic Study Creates Bogus Headlines.  Thanks to the Washington Post, we have new entry in what is surely the fastest-growing industry in academia: bogus studies that purport to show there is no difference between black and white rates of crime. [...] This latest headline from the Post tells a shocking story:  "Black teens who commit a few crimes go to jail as often as white teens who commit dozens."  Or it would be shocking if it were true.  But it is not.

Reporter is Maced After Storming a Police Station with Protesters.  If you run with radicals, expect to be treated like them.  You storm a police headquarters and you get maced for being part of the mob.  Oh, boo hoo!  This reporter should not have expected anything less.  He's lucky he didn't get shot.

CBS: Voter ID Laws Are Like Violent Attacks on Blacks at Selma.  The journalists at CBS This Morning on Monday [12/15/2014] compared the violent, bloody attacks on African Americans during civil rights marches in 1965 to voter ID laws passed by various states in the last few years.

The great campus rape hoax.  Americans have been living through an enormously sensationalized college rape hoax, but as the evidence accumulates it's becoming clear that the entire thing was just a bunch of media hype and political opportunism.  No, I'm not talking about the Rolling Stone's lurid and now-exploded fraternity gang-rape story.  Whatever the truth behind that story, it's now clear that basically nothing that Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely told us happened, actually happened.  But the hoax is much bigger than one overwrought and perhaps entirely fictional tale of campus goings-on.

Hysterical Media Tell Us to Calm Down.  In the past week, The New York Times has ridiculed Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Gov. Chris Christie for having "fed panic" by ordering quarantines for health workers arriving from Ebola-plagued countries.  [...] I haven't noticed any panic.  If you want panic, review media coverage of the police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.  That hair-on-fire coverage was based entirely, it turns out, on the media's gullibly swallowing inaccurate accounts of the incident.  For decades liberals have terrified soccer moms about a slew of imaginary terrors:  global warming, Alar on apples, breast implants, heterosexual AIDS, nuclear war, and Republicans taking away their birth control.

Ebola and the Media's Multiple Personality Disorder.  While The Daily Mail suggests that terrorists could transform the virus into a weapon, The Daily Beast declares that the "Ebola Panic Is Worse Than the Disease."  Fox raises the specter of illegal immigrants bringing the virus over the border, and MSNBC assures us that the authorities have things in hand.  One outlet asks an author of medical thrillers to speculate about the ways the threat might mutate into something more frightening; another declares that we're watching an "epic, epidemic overreaction."  Wait, sorry:  Did I say that was "another" outlet?  Actually, those last two both came from CNN.

Media Should Stop Lecturing Americans About Their Ebola Concerns.  The very moment that the news was confirmed about Dr. Ebola, various reporters started telling everyone to calm down.  But nobody was panicking.  I mean, expressing interest in an unbelievably deadly disease that has spread quickly is not panicking.  Panicking is loading up your car like a prepper who just won the Lottery and heading to your cabin in West Virginia.  I mean, maybe there's someone who has done just that.  But there is no evidence that we have any serious problem with people panicking.

Race-Baiting CNN Falls For Another Trayvonesque Hoax.  Desperate to frame the shooting death of Michael Brown in racial terms, CNN has bitten hard on what appears to be faked evidence.  The network did the same thing during the Trayvon Martin case.

Ebola Optics and Questionable MSM Smiley Narratives.  Conservatives can be forgiven if, after having carefully reflected upon a sampling of MSM Ebola narratives, they conclude that something seems a bit askew.  Certain optics and associated stories appear to put a giant smiley face on the Ebola situation.  Nothing to worry about here.  Move along.  However, certain omissions raise troubling questions in regard to what we have been told — especially when the omissions are conjoined with scientific findings on Ebola. [...] The MSM is obviously populated by many people whose mouths are as big as their brains are tiny.  It is therefore no surprise that many such people do not know how to recognize when a question is really statistical in nature and, if it is, how to analyze it.

About That 'World-Ending' Solar Storm...  News of a devastating solar storm 'just missing' Earth in 2012 made the rounds last week.  Turns out that storm was nowhere near us, and similar storms have happened before.

Taliban sets oil tankers on fire in Afghanistan.  Television footage showed black smoke billowing above the site of the attack, with the charred wreckage of dozens of trucks scattered around a vast parking space.  The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the trucks carried fuel intended for U.S.-led NATO forces.

The Editor says...
The sensational headline would lead most readers to believe that somebody had set fire to two or more ocean-going oil tankers.  In reality, only a few thousand gallons of oil — in ordinary trucks — appear to be involved.

The new oil crisis: exploding trains.  Communities throughout the U.S. and Canada are waking up to the dark side of North America's energy boom:  Trains hauling crude oil are crashing, exploding and spilling in record numbers as a fast-growing industry outpaces the federal government's oversight.

The Editor says...
The article immediately above is one of those "We need more legislation" commercial for Big Government.  Big Oil is outrunning "the federal government's oversight."  Railroad companies apparently don't care if trains derail, you see, but if the government takes over, there will never be another train wreck.

U.S. passenger jet nearly collided with drone in March: FAA.  An American Airlines Group Inc aircraft almost collided with a drone above Florida earlier this year, a near-accident that highlights the growing risk from rising use of unmanned aircraft, the U.S. air safety regulator said.

The Editor says...
Don't be deceived by the sensational headline.  It was a small plane, a small drone, no collision, very small story.

Barbara Walters is TV personality, not a journalist.  Walters broke into the media business as a behind-the-scenes writer at NBC, eventually working her way up to be co-host of "Today."  She entered the network news world with no journalistic credentials, a fact that bothered the grizzled news veterans of the day.  She made history in 1976 when ABC hired her to be the first woman to co-anchor a network evening newscast.  The gimmick of hiring a "Today" host to do a serious newscast never worked.  Walters had built her career as a morning gabber, and that didn't translate to the serious news anchor desk.

Dateline producer suing NBC.  Women working at NBC's Dateline show are regularly asked to pose as 'sexual bait' for stories about prostitution, sex trafficking, and sexual deviants according to a female producer who is now suing the network.  New York-based Kimberly Lengle, 33, says she quit the program last April after a senior HR director failed to follow-up on her complaints about the practice.

Logic Gets Sucked into the Polar Vortex.  North America is presently experiencing the kind of abnormally cold temperatures that can wreak havoc on computer climate models.  The mainstream media is overflowing with headlines about coldness raging unexpectedly across Canada in January, Jack Frost nipping at people's noses, and other signs of the Apocalypse.  Naturally, then, it was only a matter of time before these media outlets — aka the global Ministry of Propaganda — let the other shoe drop, and explained how all this routine winter weather is the result of man-made global warming, and therefore can only be halted by international totalitarianism.

Obama portrayed as victim.  Some may think reporters and editors are simply clumsy or indifferent writers, and sometimes they are.  But much of the time they choose their words (and photos) with exquisite and subtle care.  They also realize that most people only look at the headlines and photos of most articles, and that those are therefore the most important elements, and that even people who do read the article often read only the first few paragraphs.

The media war over George W. Bush's stent.  From Benghazi to the health of former President George W. Bush, wild unsubstantiated assertions by the news media take the place of real reporting.  Fox News is left to set the record straight, yet frequently it doesn't get the credit it deserves.  The stent placement in President Bush's coronary artery is the latest example of the world of Fox News versus wild speculation.

Media Coverage of Benghazi Leans Toward Political Theater.  First, we learned from the Obama Administration that it was a YouTube video that sparked the protests — a false narrative gladly perpetuated by the media as long as possible.  Currently, the media and the administration are pushing the story that attempts to investigate Benghazi constitute a Republican vendetta, the perpetuation of a "phony scandal" to incite the populace against the President and former Secretary of State — and presidential hopeful — Hillary Clinton.  To this end, it is not surprising that key details of the recent congressional hearings on Benghazi went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media.

Art Horn Letter to Connecticut State Department of Agriculture.  Hurricane Sandy was not a "Super Storm".  This label was assigned by the news media.  Those who called Sandy a Super Storm did so because they liked the sound of "Super Storm."  Having worked in television news rooms for 25 years I am well acquainted with these exaggerations.  The term "Super Storm Sandy" sounds much more dramatic than "Sandy is a category one Hurricane on a scale of one to five" which is what it was.

Breaking News! Seventh First Climate Refugees Discovered!  BBC, your climate reporting is pathetic.  Doesn't anyone there think to check up on some dewy-eyed reporter gushing on about the tragic fate of the latest batch of pseudo-refugees?  Missing the facts in this story would have been understandable a decade ago, but in 2013, you guys are a running joke.

The Media's Moral Decline: Standards, Story Selection Now Tabloids On Steroids.  For those who don't live in New York and aren't familiar with the Daily News, it should be noted that while it sometimes reads like a tabloid, it is a legitimate news source and is mentioned in the same breath as The News York Times and New York Post one of the city's top newspapers.  In fact, the Daily News has won ten Pulitzers and is the fourth-most circulated newspaper in the United States.  To that end, these headlines aren't too different than what we see dominating national or local cable news today, and by extension (since we cover this stuff), Mediaite as well.

An Abortionist's Unglamorous Victims.  He's allegedly killed more people than Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy combined, but most Americans have never heard of him. [...] We have wall-to-wall coverage of Jodi Arias, a lone nut who admits to killing her boyfriend in Arizona, but a blackout on Kermit Gosnell.  And why wouldn't we?  The Arias trial involves nude pictures, kinky sex, and an attractive woman.

The 10 Absolute Worst Media Reactions To The Boston Marathon Bombings.  In the media business, what's the one thing you can consistently expect from reporters, pundits, "experts," and anchors on the day of a major news event?  Speculation.  Wild, unabashed speculation.  Oftentimes, their conjecture is based on their own political beliefs and agendas.  And this can lead to some particularly ugly comments while the wounds are still fresh during major tragedies like the Newtown and Aurora massacres... and Monday's Boston marathon bombings.

The Media's Privacy War.  Sensationalizing the news and publicizing the story non-stop allows advertisers to count on human nature.  The public tunes in and/or buys the newspaper.  Media networks bet that if you get hooked on the drama, the personalities of the reporters, you will keep watching or buying the particular outlet for your news.  High viewership and readership increases the likelihood of advertising sales.  The media wages a privacy war for money.

Woodward-Sperling Flap May Turn Tide.  The more superficial the brouhaha the bigger its impact.  What public figures say is more important than what they do, because cable TV and political blogs can cover a mud fight more cheaply and more easily than they can a real story.

Geraldo Rivera and Common Decency.  There are those who will dismiss Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera's announcement that he is considering running for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 2014 as a Republican as just one more publicity stunt in a career replete with them.  Rivera's public record is mixed, as it has combined serious advocacy on a number of issues with the sort of foolish excess that has given a bad name to tabloid journalism.  If people think of him more as a celebrity than a journalist, it is his own fault and not something that he has seemed to mind very much.

The media love maniacs.  The same media that pointedly ignore frequent life-saving defensive uses of firearms consistently pours hours and days and weeks of attention upon the latest maniac who chooses a firearm as his tool of mass murder, so that the next potential insane villain cannot fail to notice the easy path to fame and immortality that the misuse of a gun can bring.  But the greatest fame will only attach if they can beat the previous body-count record, a number constantly and loudly broadcast, so that no one can fail to hear it.  The message to the unstable is clear:  Come on, you crazy guys, can't you at least murder your way to thirty?

Newtown is the Latest Example of Media Overkill.  On behalf of all us, I beg the media:  Please go away.  Please stop cold calling my friends who live in Sandy Hook for potential news nuggets.  Please stop harassing people like my mother as they leave funerals.  Please stop parking on people's lawns without permission.

CBS presents hype as news.  Does anyone remember when CBS used to be a respected news organization that did its own research — or at least quoted independent experts?  Or even conducted interviews?  When it comes to health and science news, alas, it seems like they've been reduced to rewriting alarmist or sensationalist press releases.

The 'Screw Science' Media and Super Storm Sandy.  When science departs from the scary-story script, journalists are the first to dismiss its importance.

"The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were."

— David Brinkley *    

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2020 by Andrew K. Dart

News Media Dishonesty
  ... aside from the specific cases cited above and elsewhere.

Overview and recap articles:

Radio Free America — Rush's Legacy.  For decades — before the internet and satellite TV — news in America was controlled by a select few entities, all of which were closely aligned with the Democrat party.  ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN controlled television and radio news.  The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times set the tone for printed news.  The media and leftist politicians they supported were creating narratives to shape public opinion.  They crafted their narratives by being selective in what news they presented, or by outright distortion of facts. [...]
  •   Walter Cronkite told us the Vietnam war was lost after the Tet Offensive.  In fact, Tet was a devastating loss for the North Vietnamese.
  •   We were told that socialism was superior to capitalism.  It just needed to be implemented correctly.
  •   We were told that Ronald Reagan was a fool and a dangerous warmonger.  Yet he won the Cold War without firing a shot.
  •   We were told that Cuba was a workingman's paradise with free education and medical care.  Yet people were fleeing the island on anything that would float.
We knew what we observed didn't quite fit the narrative being presented, but we weren't sure why.  We began to question our worldview.  We were being gaslighted.

The Media That Cried Wolf.  "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is one of many of Aesop's fables. [...] The moral is that nobody believes a liar, even when he is telling the truth.  How is a twenty-five-hundred-year-old story relevant today?  Let's rewrite the fable bringing it up to date.  The shepherd boy today is the collection of social justice warriors throughout the media, academia, and entertainment worlds, basically the core of the modern Democrat Party.

The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin.  When Cronkite returned from Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive and declared the war stalemated and unwinnable, no one dared to offer the dissenting viewpoint that Tet was actually a decisive American victory.  The mainstream-media narrative in 1963 that Lee Harvey Oswald, the Castroite, Communist assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was a product of right-wing Texas hatred was completely crazy — but largely unquestioned. [...] MSNBC anchor Brian Williams sermonized about the so-called "fake news" epidemic.  Williams failed to remind us that he was removed as NBC's evening news anchor for serving up all sorts of fake details about his supposedly brave trips abroad in search of edgy news stories.  After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the co-hosts of the show CNN Newsroom collectively put up their hands in "hands up, don't shoot" solidarity — echoing a narrative of police murder later proved to be completely false by a lengthy federal investigation.

The Myth of the Good Old Media.  Donald Trump recently noted that the media had become much worse since Walter Cronkite, which is an honest mistake by a man who grew up as a Democrat leaning to the left.  But there was no "Good Old Honorable Media."  The establishment media have been utterly biased and often outright dishonest for many decades.  The 1965 CBS documentary Hunger in America began with outright lies, citing an infant dying in a hospital as the victim of malnutrition, which was pure invention.  The 1971 CBS documentary The Selling of the Pentagon actually took the answer of an assistant secretary of state to one question and edited it so that he was giving the answer to another question — and the documentary did that over and over again.

Journalistic standards have had nothing to do with the truth for a long time.  The media knows that Trump gave aid to Ukraine with nothing in return and Obama/Biden withheld aid and only gave a loan to Ukraine after they demanded and got a prosecutor fired, but they say Biden/Obama did nothing wrong and Trump should be impeached.  We don't have the right to hear from anyone who disagrees on climate change.  How does so much of the U.S have exceptionally low temperatures if 150 years of fossil fuel use, 150 years of CO2 increase and an exponential increase in the number of people worldwide causes warming?  While the media intentionally hides the truth for things negative to Democrats, they collude with Democrats to perpetrate a known lie that Trump colluded with Russia in 2016.  They perpetrated gossip to take out Kavanaugh in 2018 with no evidence.  They intentionally lie about what Trump said about Charlottesville to gin up racial hate and violence.  They treat congenital liars Schiff, Brennan, Clapper, Rice and others as credible people as they seek to destroy Trump and elect democrats.

If Anyone Should Be Impeached, It's the Liberal Media.  For decades now, in violation of the public trust, liberals in the American mainstream media — including the news, information, and entertainment media — have willfully corrupted the values and institutions that made the United States of America into the greatest nation in the history of humanity.  Their lies and immorality have wrought havoc on families, churches, schools, businesses, corporations, governments, and so on.  Contrary to their sacred duty to provide what is truthful, they have willfully presented false and misleading information to the public at large concerning, but not limited to, the following:  [#1] The election of Democrats over Republicans. [...] [#2] The role of good government — especially in most every fiscal matter. [...] [#3] The nature and details concerning radical Islam and Islam in general. [...] [#4] The nature and details of the burning of fossil fuels as it relates to global climate change — specifically what is often referred to as "global warming."

Trump, Kavanaugh, Lewandowski and our malignant Left.  This new attempt by the NYT and two wholly unethical reporters at that paper again crosses all lines of respectable, legitimate journalism.  The NYT is no longer, and has not been for ages, an honest broker of the news; it is rag that dispenses fake news intended to deceive.  The facts of this campaign to ruin Kavanaugh and his family, because the left wants to protect unimpeded abortion rights, are well-known and obvious.  They are also a stain on all those who participated in the scheme, a scarlet letter of a sort.  Nothing any of them ever writes again can be or will be trusted.  Nothing published by the NYT can be trusted.  Nothing on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS or NBC can be trusted.  They are all agents of corruption and deceit.

The Best Of CNN 2018.  CNN's version of "news" has become outright parody so many times in 2018 it was difficult to keep track of.  Thankfully, Mark Dice has done just that with a "Best of CNN" video that lays out just how idiotic the Establishment Media now is as they get completely lost within their own anti-Trump hysteria.  Anyone who still considers CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, etc., actual news needs to get their collective heads examined.  It's globalist propoganda — all of it.  [Video clip]

Who Watches the Media Watchdogs?  Who was it that told America Al Gore won the 2000 election?  Who told us the Fort Hood shooter wasn't an Islamist terrorist?  Who told us a meek and mild Michael Brown was shot with his hands up, begging to surrender?  Who told us CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood front in the U.S., is a "civil rights organization"?  Who is still telling us that after 9-11, there was a violent "backlash" against Muslims in America?  Who told us climate change is settled science?  Who ducked the story about abortionist Kermit Gosnell's Philadelphia slaughterhouse?  Who told us all the troubles in the Middle East are caused by Israel?  Who told us that Robert Mueller's list of indictments proves Trump colluded with Russia?  Who told us it was Trump who initiated the "policy" of family separation at the southern border?  Who ran a fake magazine cover to show Trump looming over a crying Honduran toddler?

Hall Monitor Nation.  The media relentlessly lied to the public about Hillary's health, denouncing conservatives as "conspiracy theorists" for mentioning it.  Then an alert citizen with an iPhone captured Hillary having to be carried to her car at the 9/11 memorial service in 2016.  Mainstream media outlets painted a cherubic picture of Michael Brown after he was fatally shot by Missouri.  He was a "gentle giant," gunned down like a dog as he plaintively cried, "Hands up! Don't shoot!"  HEY!  Wait a second!  How did that video get out of Brown manhandling a tiny Indian man while robbing a convenience store?  That should have been suppressed like the Broaddrick interview!  Would we ever have known about Monica Lewinsky, but for the Drudge Report publishing the blockbuster story that Newsweek had killed?  Currently, the establishment media are in a rage that the public has found out about the modern genocide being waged against white South African farmers.

The 2018 Breitbart News Fake News Awards.  Until you actually take the time to research the amount of lies and lies and lies the establishment media deliberately spread, you can't begin to fathom just how bad things are.  By the time I was done going through the entire year, I literally, no joke, had 11 pages of headlines to choose from for these awards.

Timely news and commentary:

Age-Adjusted Mortality Is at 2004 Levels.  Yet They Tell Us Covid Is Worse Than the 1918 Flu..  Last week, the media again tried to ratchet up the public's fear over covid-19 by labeling it more deadly than the 1918 flu epidemic.  "COVID-19 Is Now the Deadliest Disease in U.S. History," reads one headline from an NBC TV affiliate.  Considering the realities of cancer and heart disease, that headline is absurdly false.  Perhaps the author meant "communicable disease."  A TIME headline was at least arguably factual, declaring, "COVID-19 Is Now the Deadliest Pandemic in American History."  But even the TIME headline is only arguably true if stripped of all context.  If we actually look at disease mortality proportionally to the population, the 1918 epidemic was far worse than covid.  Considering that the US population in 1918 was one-third its current size, we find that deaths per million from the flu epidemic totaled about sixty-five hundred per million.  Covid, by comparison currently comes in — in the official numbers — around twenty-two hundred per million.  But this is all part of a larger pattern — one well embraced by the media — of presenting information with as little context as possible.

Gallup: Trust In The Media Sinks to 36 Percent, Second Lowest Ever.  Can the mistrust of the media get much greater?  Gallup pollsters reported on Thursday [10/7/2021] that American trust in the media "to report the news fully, accurately and fairly has edged down four percentage points since last year to 36 percent, making this year's reading the second lowest in Gallup's trend."  Overall, just seven percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" and 29 percent "a fair amount" of trust and confidence in newspapers, television and radio news reporting — which, combined, is four points above the 32 percent record low in 2016, during the Donald Trump vs.  Hillary Clinton battle.  More than half of respondents sound fed up:  29 percent of the public currently registers "not very much" trust and 34 percent say they have "none at all."

Critics Accuse ABC Of Selective Editing In Obama Interview.  ABC News is being accused of selective editing following the release of an interview with former President Barack Obama.  The recently aired interview on Good Morning America shows Obama scolding Republicans over immigration reform.  However, analysts quickly pointed out the news network excluded Obama's warning about open borders.  ABC ultimately conceded and included the clip online, eventually airing it, but not until late in the night.  [Tweet with video clip]

What the press is leaving out about the Arizona election audit.  The ethical corruption of our national new media has extended to a degree that once would have seemed unimaginable.  We were exposed to yet another remarkable example with the reporting on the long-awaited audit of the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona. [...] While the audit did find that a hand-recount of all of the original ballots did widen Joe Biden's margin by several hundred votes, the press deliberately and steadfastly ignored and left unreported the most critical results of the draft audit.  Included among those original ballots, the most comprehensive election audit ever conducted established the following:
  •   More than 23,000 mail-in votes were cast under voter IDs from people who should not have received their ballots by mail because they had moved.
  •   More than 10,000 voters cast ballots in more than one county.
  •   More than 9,000 mail-in ballots were returned and counted than had been mailed out of registered voters.
  •   Thousands of official results did not match those who voted, and thousands more were cast in-person in the name of those who had moved out of state.
  •   Logs and data files related to the election had been deliberately erased from the Election Management System (EMS) server, in violation of the law.
  •   Thousands of original ballots were duplicated more than once.
  •   Auditors were never provided with the required chain-of-custody documentation for the ballots, causing increased ambiguity regarding the accuracy of the election results.
  •   None of the various systems related to the election had numbers that would balance and agree with one another.
  •   Maricopa County officials actively interfered with the audit, withheld subpoena items, and refused to answer questions that are normally standard in such audits.

Outlets That Poured Gas on Phony Border Patrol Story Forced to Correct Their Fake News.  Mainstream media outlets are, with egg on their face, issuing clarifications and corrections to their stories that falsely smeared Border Patrol agents who were defending America's southern border for actions they didn't take using equipment they don't have.  The timing makes sense as attention strays again from the U.S.-Mexico border following an influx of some 15,000 illegal immigrants — many of them Haitians who'd previously fled to South America — who set up a makeshift "Bidenville" under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas.  Despite the half-hearted mea culpas, their mission to distract from the border crisis by creating a new boogeyman has already done its damage.  The El Paso Times, one of the original propagators of the phony story, issued a meek "clarification," rather than a correction or retraction which would have been more suited to the literal fake news that launched a national firestorm and triggered condemnation from the White House that caused an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Activist Media Has Done an Exemplary Job of Deceiving the American People on COVID-19.  When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, the activist media has performed masterfully. [...] Ever since it became apparent that the COVID-19 outbreak would be a serious issue, the Democrats and their close friends and allies in the activist media have been trying to convince us that we're all gonna die slow, painful deaths after being infected.  The press has been on a full-on crusade to terrify the American people into abiding by lockdown orders and mask mandates.  They used fear to make us more amenable to government encroaching on our lives. [...] Since the government wants to push mandatory vaccines and use the pandemic as an excuse to impose intrusive measures to control the populace, the activist media seeks to persuade the public that this is all for their own good.  It launched a whole persuasion campaign specifically designed to confuse and terrify people into complying with the government.

Look past the hand-waving, and you'll see a wide open Mexican border.  Soon after Bill Melugin of Fox News began beaming drone footage of the many thousands of Haitians gathered under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas, Biden's open borders zealot in charge of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas, ordered two nearby border checkpoints abandoned.  The reason given was to redirect those personnel to help process the Haitians.  The media reported that those checkpoints had been "closed," leading the viewer to believe that traffic had been rerouted.  But that was not the case.  The fifty thousand vehicles those checkpoints inspect during an average week continued to move through, only now no one was checking them for drugs or trafficked humans.  This happened while Mayorkas was giving a news conference under the Del Rio bridge, insisting that the U.S. border was definitely "not open."  In fact, the border in the Del Rio sector was wide open.

Russiagate, More Like Watergate.  CNN Chief Media Reporter Brian Stelter hopped on the set of Reliable Sources last weekend, and offered his take on Special Counsel John Durham's recent indictment of former Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussmann, calling Durham's probe a "total bust."  This was in the context of accusing other networks like Fox and OAN of a pattern of "lie, rinse, repeat." [...] A long list of press figures — from Stelter's own CNN colleague and shameless intelligence community spokesclown Natasha Bertrand, to reporters from The New Yorker, Time, MSNBC, Fortune, the Financial Times, and especially Slate and The Atlantic — were witting or unwitting pawns in a scheme to sell the public on a transparently moronic hoax, i.e. that Donald Trump's campaign was communicating mysterious digital treason to Russia's Alfa Bank via a secret computer server.  The story sounded absurd from the start, and was instantly challenged by experts.

What the New CDC Report on Unvaccinated Left Out.  A newly published CDC study prompted the MSM to run headlines like "New study finds unvaccinated are 11 times more likely to die from Covid, CDC says," "Unvaccinated people were 11 times more likely to die of covid-19, CDC report finds," and "Unvaccinated People Are 11 Times More Likely To Die Of COVID-19, New Research Finds."  It surely looks scary if you read only those headlines.  I was curious about what the report actually says, and doesn't say.  Below is what I found.  [#1] The purpose of the report is for propaganda:  The report admits in its Discussion section that "the data assessed from 13 jurisdictions accounted for 25% of the U.S. population, and therefore might not be generalizable."  But it still suggests that "[t]he data might be helpful in communicating the real-time impact of vaccines (e.g., persons not fully vaccinated having >10 times higher COVID-19 mortality risk) and guiding prevention strategies, such as vaccination and nonpharmacologic interventions."  No wonder the MSM outlets quickly spread this message around.

Sensational headline alert:  There has been ONE CASE of measles reported.  This is hardly worth reporting.
Army base hit with highly contagious disease as thousands of Afghan refugees flood into America.  A case of measles has been identified at Fort McCoy Army Base in Wisconsin as thousands of Afghan refugees are housed there temporarily while they await resettlement in the United States.  Fox News was able to view an internal government email on Sunday [9/5/2021] that confirms a case of measles at Fort McCoy.  "All those who had been in contact with the infected person at base have been isolated, and post-exposure prophylaxis and inoculations are in process," the email stated.

The Masked Ball of Cowardice.  What's transpired since has been a predictable spiral into the abyss, aided and abetted at virtually every stage by a media apparatus that has perpetuated the fraudulent lockdown narrative.  The Chinese government has financial stakes in almost every top media outlet and friends in corporations, universities, and governments.  Preexisting financial relationships with China led institutions to trust information from China, endorse the CCP's narrative, and ultimately advocate for the global adoption of the CCP's policies.  Owing to this combination of naivete, groupthink, and outright corruption, scientists and journalists have been incorporating information from China into their work as true, when in fact nearly every bit of information that has come from China with regard to the virus has been a lie.

Shooter opened fire on Miami Beach tourist, danced over body: witness.  A Georgia man "randomly" shot and killed a tourist in a Miami Beach restaurant and danced over his body as the man tried to protect his 1-year-old baby from the gunman, reports said.  Tamarius Blair Davis, 22, of Norcross, Georgia, was allegedly high on psychedelic mushrooms when he opened fire on 21-year-old Dustin Wakefield at close range before he danced over his body in view of horrified onlookers dining outdoors at La Cerveceria de Barrio on Miami Beach's famous Ocean Drive on Tuesday night [8/24/2021], witnesses and police said.  "After the shooting, he was dancing on top of the guy," a witness, who didn't want to be identified, told CBS Miami.

The Editor says...
Why do reporters think blacks always shoot "randomly" selected white people?  The selections are not random.

How Data Manipulation Is Used to Support the Desired Narratives.  Who uses data manipulation?  Governments, businesses (individual or entire industries as we constantly see in martial arts/self-defense), the media, and social organizations with an agenda.  These groups or organizations utilize information to create a narrative on a topic for a specific reason, most often for their own benefit.  The data itself could be entirely legitimate and authentic (though it may not be).  It's how it's spun that's important, and most people rarely dig deeper [...] Remember, data manipulation has multiple benefits, and it's usually very subtle yet sudden.  If it fits a person's narrative, they will often support it.  Even if it's different from the original source manipulating the data in the first place.

Covid Disinformation:  Post Reporter Tries to Make Mask Fanatics Seem Heroic.  Sydney Page, in an "objective" news piece, amplifies the opinion of a mother, Wendy, whose extreme opinions lack scientific evidence and logic.  Page does her best to make Wendy's opinion seem common when in reality it is an extreme position in response to a mask policy with which many agree.  The author's implicit assumptions and tacit agreement with the view she reports destroys her credibility. [...] First, Page does not mention that Tennessee Holler is a far-left website that promotes its own agenda by amplifying voices in favor of universal mask mandates and COVID vaccinations.  This is missing context that would allow the reader to understand that this is another issue campaign for a left-wing pressure group.  Second, to say that the mother's take has gone "viral" is Page's opinion stated as fact, though unsupported by evidence.  To go "viral" takes a bit more than 30,000 likes on a social media site.  You can buy 30,000 likes on Twitter right now for about $360 for context.

Memphis Media Reports 16 Year Old Dies Of COVID, Waits Until End Of Report To Inform He Was Fully Vaccinated.  This is FAKE news at its most dangerous.  Memphis media has reported this week that a 16-year-old football player at Westwood High School died from COVID-19 and pneumonia over the weekend.  Sunday, the principal at Westwood High sent out an automated message to students and parents about the death of Azorean Tatum but did not say how he died.  SCS has not released any details.  Quintina Bucker said her son Azorean Tatum, who went by the name Zo, collapsed at school on Aug. 13 and was taken to Baptist Children's Hospital, where he was diagnosed with COVID.  Buckner admitted her son, who had asthma, [and] was vaccinated.  [Video clip]

Untruths and consequences.  To any sane person, it appears our elites and their media sycophants are engaging in an unprecedented preposterous statement tournament.  They must get up every day, snicker once or twice, and try to think of the most ridiculous, least verifiable piece of ludicrous prevarication they can attempt to pass off as truth.  And why shouldn't they?  A significant percentage of Americans seem willing to believe anything at all.  So, President Biden says there are no Americans trapped in Kabul.  Alright, now tell us the one about the three bears.  His Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, says we need to get the military out of Afghanistan first, so we don't risk anyone getting hurt.  Yes, forget about the thousands of American civilians trapped in Kabul.  Ignore the pictures of mothers throwing their babies over fences.  Um, Jen, we send our troops to places specifically to confront danger and instability... and often to fight the bad guys.  That's why, unlike civilians, they are armed to the teeth and wear body armor.  That's why they have attack helicopters, A-10 Warthogs, missiles, rocket launchers, grenades, and submachine guns.  Or used to, before the Biden administration decided to donate them to the Taliban.

Another DeSantis 'Scandal' Implodes.  Did you year about the latest "evidence" reported by the "news" media that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is both terrible on COVID and corrupt?  The Associated Press published a story yesterday that quickly gained traction among the "Ron Deathsentence" crowd — primarily comprised of bored resistance warriors and nervous leftists seeking to kill his political career (many journalists fall into both categories, of course). [...] Beyond the headline, which seems specifically engineered to generate shares, go viral, and create the appearance of an ethical and COVID-related cloud over DeSantis (we've seen this play before), the "story" falls apart.  There's nothing newsworthy here, aside from the governor of a large state in the midst of a nasty seasonal COVID spike proactively providing life-saving treatments to eligible residents.

'Case': Another semantic Trojan Horse.  In our new world of pandemic panic porn, it is important to remember that the word "case" is not a term of art.  It is not a medical term or a legal term.  It is just another word with a broad meaning that has been commandeered by people who want to control you.  This seemingly innocuous word is being used as a blunt instrument to stampede you into doing what the globalist elites want you to do.  It is widely used when the media, Big Tech, and government experts (the "infomob") lie by omission.  When you hear that there are x "new cases" in any context, this should immediately prompt you to ask questions about the number:
  •   Are these just positive COVID tests?
  •   Are these hospitalized people?
  •   Are these people who are not sick at all?
  •   Are these re-testings of the same people who have to be tested daily to keep their jobs?
  •   Are these people with other medical conditions?
The infomob wants you to envision these "cases" as hospitalized people on respirators, gasping for breath.  What if most of these are just positive tests?  If so, were these done with the PCR test?  The fact is, the PCR test is so highly parameterizable that you can set it to find whatever you want.  This is one of the reasons the CDC has quit using it.

Phony Doctor Starts To Laugh While Pretending To Cry About COVID Live During Newscast.  A good crisis actor is hard to find these days.  That is what CBS found out during the evening news with Norah O'Donnell.  This supposed doctor who goes by the name of Mia Meyers starts out talking about how people need to take the Delta variant seriously because of its transmissibility.  She then starts into something about 'our children before launching into her crocodile tear routine, which morphs into full-blown laughter.  Fake news strikes out again!  [Video clip]

Why Don't They Believe Us?  Imagine your confusion as the same people who spent three months telling you not only that masks don't work, but that there are several reasons you shouldn't wear or purchase them, suddenly introduce mask mandates.  We're "following the science," they tell you.  This seems to make little sense, but a pandemic is no time for questions. [...] The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don't, that masks don't work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during pandemic lockdowns are a form of "health intervention," that ransacking African American communities in the name of fighting racism is a "mostly peaceful" form of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are "still learning," that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn't have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until maybe it isn't, that you shouldn't take Trump's vaccine, that you must take the vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths is one thing and then another ... are the same people telling you now that the vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don't, you will be a second-class citizen.  Understand vaccine hesitancy now?

Conservatives are Obsessed With My Pillow Vote Fraud Conference, According to Obsessed News Networks.  Funny how we only hear about dangerous threats from those networks who declare them dangerous.  Let's take a look over a list of items we are told are absolutes in our political landscape these days:
  •   Conservatives the country over are committed to The Big Lie.
  •   Donald Trump is blindly followed by every Republican.
  •   Qanon feeds the mindset of anybody who is right-of-center.
These truths are well known and perpetually broadcast, but there is a core foundational reality behind these maxims.  The subjects in each of these entries is followed more intently and the information is disseminated to the populace with far more energy by the mainstream press industry.  It is interesting that while I am supposedly obsessed with President Trump I learn about his opinions and activities mostly through journalists.  While I get accused of fostering the push of denying the 2020 election results I only hear instructions on the matter via CNN and MSNBC, and as someone allegedly transfixed by Qanon's dictates I only ever hear about the directives from this nebulous source from clips of Brian Stelter and Chris Hayes.

Are These Stories Real?  Or Are the Media Trying to Overcome 'Vaccine Hesitancy' by Using Fear Porn?  [Scroll down beyond the highly dubious anecdote.]  On the whole, I'd take my chances on my own rather than to submit to the tender mercies of someone who obviously holds me in contempt.  I have some questions about the entire story.  For instance, according to the CDC, there has not been a single COVID-related death in Alabama under 40 in over a month.  There have only been 110 such deaths in Alabama since the pandemic started.  There is no public data, so far as I can find, that gives the number of intubated patients, the number of patients in the ICU by age, etc., since the vaccine became available.  The absence of empirical data to back up undocumented anecdotes doesn't give me great confidence in the story.  And the source is a Facebook post.

Media Reports Florida Hospitals are 'Overrun' — Then One Person Actually Went to Hospital at the 'Center of Storm' to Check.  There is a tremendous amount of effort being expended in the mainstream media to hold up Florida as a complete failure when it comes to the COVID pandemic.  On Friday, the Associated Press reported that Florida broke the 'record' with more than 21,000 new cases in the state.  One of the key contentions was that hospitals were closed to being 'overrun,' a common claim in COVID reports that have nearly all turned up hollow.  "The Florida Hospital Association said Friday that statewide COVID-19 hospitalizations are nearing last year's peak, and one of the state's largest health care systems, AdventHealth's Central Florida Division, this week advised it would no longer be conducting nonemergency surgeries in order to free up resources for COVID-19 patients," the AP reported. [...] One citizen decided not to take the Associated Press or any other mainstream media outlet's word for it and decided to check it out for themself.  Dr. Shay, Phd., who goes by AMA Black Patriot on Twitter (@DrShayPhD) went to a hospital at Cape Canaveral, Florida, which the AP had used as the location for one of its report.  "So the Associated Press wrote an article saying that Cape Canaveral, FL hospital is bursting at the seams with Covid patients," Dr. Shay tweeted.  "I had to go see for myself, so I drove there.  The first set of pictures are of the hospital's parking.  More to follow."

Mollie Hemingway:  Partisan Hearings Taking Jan. 6 Riot Out Of Context Are A "Joke".  Mollie Hemingway made the case Sunday [8/1/2021] on FNC's "MediaBuzz" that the January 6 Capitol riot committee hearings are being held by partisan Democrats who are taking events out of the wider context of escalating political violence in 2020.  ["]If you want to talk about consistency, you have to deal with the fact that we have a political party that embraced a movement to defund the police for an entire year and now we're pretending that they care so much about the police. [...] The defund the police movement, which the media and other Democratic partisans strongly celebrated, which was supported across the country by Democratic politicians, was something we saw in the past year.["]

Here is an example of tabloid sensationalism.
Three Americans create enough carbon emissions to kill one person, study finds.  The lifestyles of around three average Americans will create enough planet-heating emissions to kill one person, and the emissions from a single coal-fired power plant are likely to result in more than 900 deaths, according to the first analysis to calculate the mortal cost of carbon emissions.  The new research builds upon what is known as the "social cost of carbon", a monetary figure placed upon the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, by assigning an expected death toll from the emissions that cause the climate crisis.  The analysis draws upon several public health studies to conclude that for every 4,434 metric tons of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere beyond the 2020 rate of emissions, one person globally will die prematurely from the increased temperature.  This additional CO2 is equivalent to the current lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not carbon, nor is it a lethal pollutant, in the quantities seen in ordinary air.  With the exception of coal mine accidents, volcanic eruptions, or extremely rare events like this one, nobody dies from inhaling carbon dioxide.  You will likely never see a death certificate that lists inhalation of second-hand CO2 as the cause of death.  Carbon monoxide is poisonous, but carbon monoxide is not carbon dioxide.  Follow the science!

Unrestricted Mass Border Invasion Continues.  The head for the Rio Grand Valley (RGV) sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, Brian Hastings, sent an alarming tweet message earlier today [7/25/2021].  According to Hastings:  "It's the hottest part of the summer and apprehensions are skyrocketing!  USBP Apprehensions surpassed the 1-million milestone in June.  NOW, this week alone, #RGV has apprehended more than 20K illegally present migrants."  One million illegal aliens walk into the country while Joe Biden claims to be concerned about the spread of COVID-19?

The Editor says...
Another million illegal aliens walked into the country, yet the total number of illegal aliens (reported by the news media) remains a constant 11 million.  It never increases.

The Antifa/FBI Coalition.  Over two dozen people were killed during the Antifa and BLM protests in 2020.  It is routinely reported that "five people died as a result" of the Jan. 6 disturbance.  This is a totally accurate statement, however, it is still misleading.  Only one of the deceased died as a result of violence.  She was actually murdered by a government official.  Relating these deaths allows the media to routinely describe Jan. 6 as a "deadly insurrection" as opposed to the "mostly peaceful" protests by Antifa and BLM.

A reporter lies about Trump's statement regarding vaccines.  My mantra for some time now has been that there was nothing "abnormal" about Trump's presidency.  Since Trump has left the White House, it's become patently clear that the abnormality during the Trump years came entirely from the Democrats and their media operatives, with support from the Vichy Republicans. [...] But the Trump haters were relentless and, as if to prove that the sickness was all theirs, on Sunday [7/18/2021] one of them instantly and proudly perverted Trump's words to claim that he was anti-vaccine.  Remember, please, that Trump was the one who pushed aside regulations and freed up money so that there was a vaccine within less than a year of COVID's appearance in America.  It was also Trump who began the vaccine program with assistance from the military, which is very good at processing vast numbers of people.  Since he left the White House, Trump has watched the Biden administration make a complete hash of the program.

The contempt and loss of trust people harbor for the corporate media is completely justified and well-earned.  [Thread reader]  The part of the media that feigns anger at misinformation is uncritically promoting a story today by Luke Harding that Russia was blackmailing Trump — the same Harding who has published many false stories, championed the Steele Dossier and claimed Trump was long a Russian agent.  It was Harding who published was one of the most sensationalized stories of the Trump era: that Manafort repeatedly met Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy.  It was utterly fabricated.  Everyone knows it's [false], never happened.  Yet the Guardian has never corrected or retracted it[.]  Now suddenly, Harding claims he obtained leaked, highly sensitive Kremlin documents that just so happen to prove all the lies he's been peddling for years, that not even Mueller's huge team found.  Because it advances liberals' interests, journalists are uncritically spreading it.

The Democrats' Topsy-Turvy Spin Machine.  Everything appears to be topsy-turvy: the chairman of the joint chiefs and the chairman of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, made almost identical statements about critical race theory.  The Democrats now claim the Republicans are the ones who wished to defund the police, and now they suddenly have discovered the virtue of voter identification, which, up until yesterday, they had been shrieking from the roof-tops was tantamount to the restoration of slavery.  Apparently, it's not Jim Crow after all.  The media are so absurdly partisan they will try to allow the Democrats a free pass across the barricades on those issues.  But the accumulating disasters for the Biden Administration will not be entirely absorbed by the (agonizingly slow) return to work of Americans after COVID and the miracle of the Warp Speed vaccine development, (for which Trump must receive no credit). The media can't cover for this "Gong Show" administration indefinitely, but I must admit they have lasted longer than I expected, given their invertebrate response to almost everything else.

MSNBC Agrees With Radical Race-Baiter:  GOP Wants 'American Apartheid'.  In [the] wake of President Biden huddling, on Thursday [7/8/2021], with radical left-wing activists who pretend to be "civil rights leaders," MSNBC on Friday [7/9/2021] touted National Urban League President Marc Morial coming out after that meeting and hurling the vile accusation that Republican-sponsored voting reforms and the U.S. Supreme Court were conspiring to create "American apartheid."  Rather than fact-check such a horrendous lie, the partisan cable channel endorsed the disgusting rhetoric instead.  "Civil rights leaders gathering with President Biden....We know they want more action on federal voting rights," anchor Chris Jansing announced while filling in for Stephanie Ruhle in the 9:00 a.m. ET hour.  She eagerly pointed out that "all of this is happening after the Supreme Court upheld Arizona voting restrictions and the president of the Urban League, Marc Morial, talked about that after the meeting at the White House."

Democrats Can't Stem the Flow of Revelations No Matter How Hard They Try.  Virtually every legacy media story about the 2020 election includes the phrase "baseless claims of voter fraud" in disparaging President Trump and anyone else who dares to point out the need for full forensic audits to sort out the mountain of election irregularities that continue to be uncovered.  It reminds me of the endless repetition of the word "gravitas" during the 2000 presidential campaign, as the Democrat-media agitprop worked overtime to disparage George W. Bush.  Check out the DuckDuckGo search results for "baseless claims of voter fraud" below.  The leftwing and legacy media are good at repeating Democrat narratives; after all, most of them are Democrats (or at least vote Democrat).

Biden Does Not Need A Domestic "Terrorism" Agenda Unless He Is About To Violate American Rights.  One of Joe Biden's first actions upon entering the White House was to initiate a 100 day review of the government's domestic terrorism policies, and I think this says a lot about what path his presidency is bound to follow.  Yes, the media continually argues that the Capitol protest on Jan 6th was a vast conspiracy on the part of conservatives to "overthrow" the democratic process and commit insurrection.  In fact, all it really amounted to was a large protest which was less violent than the majority of Black Lives Matter protests across the nation over the past year.  The media also incessantly mentions the five deaths that occurred on the day of the protest while continuing to ignore the fact that NOT ONE of those deaths has been attributed to the direct actions of protesters, and at least three of the deaths were due to natural causes.  Why does the mainstream media keep lying by omission?  Because they have to keep the narrative alive that the capitol protest is a sign of some underlying conservative "evil" that must be contained or destroyed.  We don't really give them much to work with, so they have to create reasons out of thin air to convince people to hate us.

"Trigger" is being canceled because it triggers.  [Scroll down]  The media often refer to groups they like as "communities."  As in the "gay community" and the "black community" and alphabet groups such as "LGBTQ community."  They could instead simply refer to "gays" and "blacks" and "LGBTQs" but they gratuitously add the word "community" because they like the nice connotation.  As an aside, the media's lumping of the members of this or that group together as a "community" suggests that the members all think the same.  But to the media, that's OK, so long as the sameness in their thinking is media-approved.  Meaning they are all thinking like the media thinks — like leftists.  As you learned a few paragraphs ago, diversity in viewpoints is bad.  And so the media will tell you that the "gay community" hates Republicans (hate is now OK, so long as it's directed at Republicans, because Republicans are hateful) as if gay Republicans don't exist.  Here's my bigger, trigger point.  Notice that they never use "community" in connection with groups they dislike, some of which are truly and consciously communal.  They never mention the "Christian community" or even the "church-going community."  And you'll never hear them mention the "gun-owner community" or the "hunter community" or the "gay Republican community."  Nope, the word "community" carries good connotations which the media reserves for groups it deems good.

You've got to be kidding:  WaPo lavishes credit on Biden for recovering economy.  This post would be more appropriate in the Babylon Bee as satire, as journalists and the Biden administration collude to rewrite history to give Biden the credit for the economic recovery that was well underway because of Trump and red states before Biden took office.  Even though the vaccines were developed so fast because of Trump and one million shots were being given each day prior to Biden taking office, the Democrat talking points regurgitated by most of the media say there was not a distribution plan prior to Biden taking office.  It is pretty [...] amazing that one million doses were already being given and tens of millions more were in the pipeline when supposedly the Trump administration had no plan.

Subterranean Homesick Blues 2021.  Some guy using the handle Cultural Husbandry had a string of tweets about the media's string of lies.  [For example,]
    Epstein committed suicide
    McAfee committed suicide
    Biden won the election
    COVID came from a wet market
    Conservatives are all terrorists
    Ivermectin doesn't work
    HCQ doesn't work
    Biden doesn't have dementia
    The jab isn't making anyone ill
    Fauci was consistent
    Masks work
    Cuomo didn't kill old people
    Dominion systems were secure
    Hunter Biden is an artist
    Trump colluded with Russia
    Jan 06 was an insurrection
    Transwomen are real women
    BLM is mostly peaceful   [...]
We have got to win the White House back.  And this time, fire every political appointee on Inauguration Day, and ditch everybody above a one-star general or admiral.  And then shrink the central government — including the Milley-ized Military — to the point where a presidential election is less important than a soccer game.  And readers know how little I care about soccer.  If covid 19 taught us anything, it is that the government is too big, too powerful, and too stupid to protect America.

Controlling the World Is Easy.  [Scroll down]  Whenever you heard raw numbers of cases, hospitalizations, or deaths it was because those numbers were bad.  When they weren't so bad, you started hearing percentages.  Why?  Because certain ways of presenting information can make it seem better or worse than it really is. [...] Going from 10,000 deaths per day to 20,000 deaths per day is a 100 percent increase in the number of deaths.  So is going from 1 death per day to 2 deaths per day.  If you want to scare [...] people in the hope that they continue watching your news program, you headline the story with, "There has been a stunning, 100 percent increase in the number of COVID deaths in just 24 hours."  You're not lying, it's an accurate statement.  It's just presented in an absolutely fraudulent way to manipulate the audience.  That's what so much of what the left does has become.

Disclosure: The Four "Swedes" in Custody For Gang Rape Are Somali Citizens.  Ostentatious headlines in Aftonbladet, Expressen and other media declared that "six Swedes", later "eight Swedes" had been arrested for a rough gang rape on a Finland ferry.  Nya Tider is now the first newspaper to reveal that not even the white lie that the arrested Somalis are "Swedish citizens" is right — all the detainees are Somali citizens, and of all the suspects only one has a Swedish citizenship.

Fox News's Chris Wallace accuses Republicans of being the party that is defunding the police.  "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace pushed Republican Study Committee Chair Rep. Jim Banks on the Democratic issue of defunding police departments, suggesting that the Indiana lawmaker's party was actually responsible for cutting funds to law enforcement.  During a segment on rising crime in U.S. cities, Banks appeared after former Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), now a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, who blamed Republicans for "defunding" police by failing to support what amounted to a $350 billion bailout for poorly-run blue cities that suffered additional economic distress during the COVID-19 pandemic due to extensive, prolonged shutdowns.

The Not-So-Great American Pastime.  [Scroll down]  Perhaps the easiest example of pretending is CNN.  It pretends to be a news organization, a reliable source, journalistic in its approach.  Its sillier sister, MSNBC, at least affords viewers some respect by delivering its preposterous daily scripts via personalities so cartoonish in visage, voice and delivery that one cottons on rather quickly to the schtick — propagandizing, after all, differs from pretending.  Both networks amount to 24/7 televangelism for leftist doctrine, but CNN folk are obvious hypocrites, while MSNBC's on-air personalities seem to be actually insane.  The executives at each of these cultural ministries are culpable of Felony Pretending, while their audiences are essentially accomplices after the fact.

Rep. Nunes:  Republicans Shouldn't Talk to Mainstream Media.  Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) claimed that 95 percent of media are the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and urged Republicans to stop talking to them or going on TV with them.  "I still — for the life of me — can't understand why Republicans talk to 95 percent of the media, which is fake news," Nunes told Alex Marlow [...] on Wednesday [6/16/2021].  "But look, fake news isn't the proper term.  It's the propaganda arm of the Democrat Socialist Party.  That's what it is," Nunes said.  Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly called mainstream media "fake news."  "So it's no different than the Chinese Communist Party — it's the propaganda they put out.  [It's] no different than what the Soviet Union did with the old Pravda media.  And it's, quite frankly, no different than how Putin controls the media today, where 95 percent of his media in Russia is propaganda for the Putin regime," Nunes continued.

Former Trump Official Slices Fauci Apart Over Hydroxychloroquine Fiasco.  Donald Trump scored a major win over the liberal media. [...] Hydroxychloroquine has finally been proven as an effective treatment for COVID.  Russian collusion was a hoax.  The Russian bounty story in Afghanistan was another whopper.  Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op.  And Hunter Biden's laptop is real.  The hydroxychloroquine one is significant since it was weaponized heavily against the Trump administration.  The president was trying to save lives and all the media did was attack him.  It's why they're the opposition press.  And Dr. Anthony Fauci's refusal to endorse the treatment caused thousands of unnecessary deaths.  That's the allegation that Peter Navarro, Trump's director for now-defunct Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, said he had around 60 million tablets of this stuff that could have been used to treat some 5-6 million patients.  Fauci refused to budge.

My Top 10 media lies.  No. 1 is the oldest and biggest:  Trump colluded with Russia to win in 2016 and might be a Russian agent.  That scam involved crooked FBI agents and led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who took two years to conclude there was no evidence to back the charge. [...] Remember Lie No. 2, the "Muslim ban" that wasn't?  Or No. 3, the mantra that the 2017 tax cuts were only for the "rich" despite studies showing 80 percent of the population benefitted?  How about the "kids in cages" firestorm, complete with gripping photographs of migrant children in metal containers?  That was Lie No. 4 and the hottest story going, with Democrats such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rushing to the border with photogenic outrage.  They vanished when it was revealed the Obama-Biden administration built the cages and the heart-wrenching photos were from 2014.  Apologies, corrections and retractions came in bunches, right?  You must be kidding.  Big media and big tech are too big to admit error.

The State of Black America.  Listening to all the rhetoric in the popular media, you would think America is the most unfair, racist nation in the world.  You would think that black Americans are uniformly living in oppression and poverty, with no hope for the future, save the federal government arriving on the scene to their rescue.  Sorry, liberals, to trouble you with facts.  But indeed there are facts.  And the facts tell a far different story than what we are hearing.  Let's start with the most recent annual report of the Census Bureau:  Income and Poverty in the United States:  2019.  According to this report, annual real median household income in the U.S. increased 6.8% in 2019, the largest annual increase recorded by the Census Bureau going back to 1967.  Black median household income in 2019 increased 7.9%, the largest on record and, per American Enterprise Institute economist Mark Perry, "almost nine times the average annual increase of 0.90% over the last half-century."

The Editor says...
Hmmm... Who was the President in 2019, when blacks were doing so well?

Media Caught In Yet Another Massive Anti-Trump Lie; Will Election Fraud Be Next?  More than a year after the events at Lafayette Square happened, and after endless media claims that President Donald Trump had peaceful protesters forcibly cleared for a photo op, we finally know the truth.  Trump was right.  The media were lying.  And anyone who trusted the news accounts was a fool.  It's enough to make us start to wonder why anyone should trust the media's insistence that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.  Yesterday, the Interior Department's inspector general released a report about what actually happened in Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020.

When "Fake News" Is Actually Fake.  In the last 24 hours, we've seen what a complete shambles the mainstream media have become.  First up, someone at the New York Times was formatting a fake story about watermelons on Mars — perhaps this was a training exercise for a new employee? — but somehow managed to press the "publish" button, and this appeared on the Times website: [...] But wait — there's more!  At yesterday's presser for Vice President Harris in Mexico, a Univision reporter got up and slobbered all over the VP.  The Media Research Center has the story, and here's the relevant part of the transcript: [...] There's only one problem:  Univision says Maria Fernanda doesn't work for Univision.  Univision issued multiple statements distancing themselves from Fernanda.

Father Biden Celebrates Mass(Acre).  The press did its part to help usher in Tulsa Massacre Day, running breathless stories with inflated casualty figures ("300 black dead!  No, 3,000!  Wait, make that 30,000!"), always being careful to avoid mentioning the white dead or the fact that the authorities pretty much had the situation under control until the armed black mob showed up (most historians agree that it was a black who fired the first shot).  And although airplanes were indeed used in the course of the riot for observation of crowds and fires, the press added — unchallenged — lurid and questionable accounts of planes dropping bombs on blacks, blitzkrieg-style (in fact, the only offensive use of a plane during the riots was when a white pilot flew over the black part of town dragging a banner depicting a massively overweight white woman, hoping it would make the blacks look up and stare long enough to be disarmed).  Of course, the good news — trumpeted by Biden during his speech — is that black Tulsa was rebuilt, and today the community is stronger than ever at almost 16% of the city.  Not mentioned by the president was that the city also has one of the worst crime rates in the U.S., hitting a three-decade high in 2020, a year in which far more Tulsa blacks died due to homicide than in 1921 due to the riot.  But don't worry; no one will call that a "massacre."

The Media's Wuhan Lab Scandal Looks Worse and Worse.  You'd think that after the Covington kids disaster and the Steele dossier calamity the American news media would get the message.  Which is to say, report facts, not liberal narratives.  But of course, ain't happening. [...] Trump Derangement Syndrome is a disease that continues to amaze.  Otherwise rational people — journalists in this case — are so consumed with TDS that they quite voluntarily throw any semblance of standards over the side to guarantee their anti-Trump bona fides with their also-TDS infected liberal media colleagues.  The Covington kids were racist!  Liberal media heads nod in unison, eventually brought to the realization — not coincidentally helped by lawsuits — that there was zero truth to their carefully structured narrative of arrogant white kids tormenting an aging Native American.

Facebook's Speech Suppression Argues for Repeal of Section 230 and a Facebook Stock Price of Zero.  A lot of people have egg on their face for dismissing the COVID-19 lab-leak theory.  As ABC News's Jonathan Karl said this week.  "Some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them."  Or if Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton said them.  "We still don't know where coronavirus originated," Cotton said in January 2020.  "Could have been a market, a farm, a food processing company.  I would note that Wuhan has China's only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world's most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus."  Cotton never said he was certain the virus came from a lab leak and never suggested a leak would have been deliberate.  But as a Trump supporter, he was quickly smeared, as liberal writer Matthew Yglesias shows in a painstaking analysis, for pushing "conspiracy theories" (CBS News), "spreading rumors that were easily debunked" (Politico), "repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked" (Washington Post), and "repeat[ing] fringe theory of coronavirus origins" (New York Times).  In each case, Yglesias points out, writers mischaracterized what Cotton actually said.

Reporters Say Wuhan Lab Leak Theory Was Disregarded Because It Came From GOP.  A number of reporters from mainstream media outlets have recently admitted that the Wuhan "lab leak" theory was originally dismissed because it came from Republicans.  Jonathan Karl, ABC News Washington correspondent admitted to ABC's "This Week" host on Sunday [5/30/2021] that the lab leak theory was not taken seriously because it came from the Trump administration but, "now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."  "Yes, I think a lot of people have egg on their face," Karl said.  "This was an idea that was first put forward by Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, Donald Trump, and look, some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them.  Because Trump was saying so much else that was just out of control ... he said flatly this came from that lab, and it was widely dismissed ... but now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."  Besides Trump and Pompeo, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) argued that the origin of the virus should be investigated because it does not appear to have come from the animal market, as claimed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Another Deranged Trump Vengeance Fantasy from Vanity Fair.  It takes no great imagination to determine what is probably the focus of the mind of Vanity Fair's Bess Levin.  Even a quick perusal of her articles over the past year reveals her disturbing obsession with Donald Trump 24/7.  So obsessed is Levin with Trump that she will even lie in her articles to make up fake quotes about him such as her March 8 screed in which she put a false quote in Lindsay Graham's mouth where he supposedly said, "I'm willing to overlook the fact that Trump has probably beaten a few homeless people to death."  Most responsible periodicals would have said "no" and maybe had her checked by a therapist.  The fact that she remains employed at Vanity Fair says something about the ethics that magazine.

Transgender Censorship:  USA Today Erases 'Hurtful' Words From Female Athlete's Op-Ed.  On Saturday [5/22/2021], USA Today published an op-ed written by Chelsea Mitchell, one of three female athletes at the center of a legal challenge to Connecticut's unfair transgender rules that allow biological males to compete against females in women's sports.  Apparently facing some backlash a few days after publication, USA Today altered Mitchell's words and claimed that she had used "hurtful language."  On Tuesday, USA Today slapped an "Editor's Note" at the top of the article.  The note reads, "This column has been updated to reflect USA TODAY's standards and style guidelines.  We regret that hurtful language was used."  What language was so "hurtful" that USA Today altered it three days after publication?  The publication removed every mention of the biological term "male" and replaced it with the indeterminate word "transgender."

Fact-checking the fact-checkers.  It is time for the news business to admit that "fact-checking" is a tiresome, misleading, and dishonest blight on actual reporting.  It hardly existed in Fleet Street when I left Britain in 1997.  Checking facts was understood to be the core of a reporter's job, not something sloughed off to someone else.  Perhaps this was because British education was mostly essay writing, not checking multiple-choice boxes.  Students quickly learn to write fluently when faced with blank sheets of foolscap and limited time to fill them.  Quality obviously varied, but educated people were assumed to be capable of coherent composition.  The residual challenge was knowing the facts or, in the case of reporters, finding them out.  So, it was startling at first to encounter America's bifurcated system, in which "fact-checkers" monitor reporters like gamekeepers trying to catch poachers.  And it's far worse now than it was back then.  Fact-checking has grown beyond recognition in the past 25 years and chokes the news business like a parasitic vine.

The Covid Lab Leak went from terrible, racist conspiracy theory to plausible overnight for the mainstream media.  [Thread reader]  If you don't believe me, look at these stories side-by-side, then vs. now.  You may remember that much of the really bad coverage was focused on @SenTomCotton's suggestion that we better understand the potential for a lab leak from Wuhan.  The difference in framing here from @nytimes between May 2020 and May 2021 is... stark.  [Illustrations]  But it wasn't just NYT.  There's a lot of ammo from @CNN, too.  Not even two months ago, they ran a piece writing off the lab leak theory as "like something out of a comic book."  Yesterday, the tone had changed, without any reference to their own role in the previous debate.  [Illustrations]  But if you go back further, @CNN's coverage gets even worse.  Early in 2020, they ran CCP talking points suggesting it was all a political tactic based on "disinformation."

Don't let the media get away with U-turning on the lab leak theory.  The theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory has completed its year-long trudge — from fringe nutjob idea to mainstream and expert-approved opinion.  Leading scientists and epidemiologists such as none other than Dr Anthony Fauci were so quick to dismiss the 'lab talk'.  It was first portrayed as a hare-brained wild and tacitly racist conspiracy theory driven by paranoid Republican senators and fever-dream right-wing media.  Now it is seen as not only an acceptable theory worth more study, but one that has broken through into the mainstream.  This has happened in a matter of days.  Where does Sen. Tom Cotton go for his apology?  Interestingly enough, the lab leak theory started gaining more traction — not only in the international community, but in the scientific community in the United States — right around the same time that questions of United States government funding of EcoHealth Alliance, a research and collection group of bat coronaviruses in China, may have lead to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Will the 2020 Madness Last?  Before 2020, the American people tired of the media farces surrounding such events as the Duke lacrosse team, the lies about the Covington kids, and Jussie Smollett's hoax about being attacked by white racists.  Will they return to their earlier skepticism about media hype when it increasingly seems like the media and the government mostly lied when denying the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab engaged in "gain-of-function" engineering of dangerous viruses?

Exactly How Corporate Media Launders Opinion To Attack Inconvenient People And Facts.  A New York Times business correspondent in Hong Kong, a weekend editor at The Guardian who lives in New York, a British Business Insider reporter with a focus on the Saudis, and the executive editor of The Daily Beast.  A 48-year-old blogger who works for Rachel Maddow, a union activist who covers "extremism, far-right politics and media disinformation" for The Huffington Post, and the 29-year editor of the Arkansas Times.  A breaking news reporter at The Washington Post who wrapped up her most recent internship in May 2016, a 2016 University of Pennsylvania graduate who covers "young people doing big things" for Forbes, a 45-year-old former George Will intern who writes for CNN, and David Frum.  What do these people have in common, aside from their political ideology?  Every one of them is a part of a machine that launders smears and opinions through newspapers, magazines, and television channels, presents the cleaned-up product as unimpeachable truth to the public, and then uses the fresh-minted facts to protect friends and hurt enemies.  It's called "the news," and here's how it worked for Arkansas' Sen. Tom Cotton's completely plausible theory that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab.

Cruz Decimates Brian Williams After He Goes Full Dem Operative on Him.  Folks on the left have been freaking out at Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for criticizing the "woke ad" put out by the military. [...] CNN's Jake Tapper even pushed the garbage that Cruz was spreading "Russian propaganda," as we reported earlier.  CNN once again showing their "objective reporting."  But even Tapper wasn't as bad as MSNBC's Brian Williams.  Again, remember, Brian Williams is promoted as an objective journalist.  But he's hardly that.  Here was his response to Cruz's remarks, giving him the nickname "Kremlin Cruz."  [Tweet]  How is that journalism?  Or even close to being an accurate description of what Cruz was saying?  They know his point; they simply choose to twist it to attack him.  It's not news, but flat-out bias, acting like a Democratic operative.  Now, let's remember these are the folks who spread Russian disinformation for the past four years to try to delegitimize the duly elected American president.

LA Times slammed for article praising lockdowns and downplaying effect on economy.  The Los Angeles Times was slammed Wednesday [5/19/2021] over a business column claiming coronavirus lockdowns saved lives without harming the economy.  The column, titled "The evidence is clear — COVID lockdowns saved lives without harming economies," cited published data and concluded "lockdowns played a significant role in reducing infection rates" and "had a very modest role in producing economic damage."  In the article, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Michael Hiltzik criticized red-state governors like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for opposing lockdowns.  He also suggested that California's stringent lockdowns are the reason why the state now "boasts among the lowest case, hospitalization and death rates in the nation, as well as a recovering economy."

LA Times Op-Ed:  The Evidence Is Clear... The Lockdowns Didn't Trash the Economy.  Whoever wrote this is on bath salts.  Is this for real?  I mean I know media bubbles are dense, but this is something else.  This is not even grounded in reality, folks Apparently, the COVID lockdowns didn't trash the economy and it saved lives.  Both are demonstrably false.  That's the hottest of hot takes regarding the virus.  Dare I say, it may be worse than what Anthony Fauci has said about the vaccine and mask-wearing.  It could rival that, maybe.  The fact is that millions of jobs were lost, mental health issues spiked, our children weren't learning, people did die, and the lockdowns didn't do anything to stem that.  It's an airborne virus.  It was going to spread no matter what and what we've learned is that staying locked up inside was probably the worst thing for people to do.

Let's Talk About Reporting in War Zones.  The AP reporters certainly knew they had Hamas neighbors. [...] Terror groups use human shields, and the press apparently volunteers to shield them.  Here's the thing:  There's nothing surprising about Western press organizations making arrangements with terror regimes.  It happens all the time in the Middle East.  CNN refrained from reporting on Saddam Hussein's atrocities in Iraq in order to keep its office in Baghdad open.  The New York Times famously led a tour group to the Islamic Republic of Iran.  This situation is even more overt and obvious in Gaza.  The only reason a press outfit like the AP has to open a bureau there is to cover Hamas, but it's never been interested in reporting on how the group stores missiles in homes, schools, and hospitals, or on how little of the money it receives from Tehran goes to building civilian infrastructure or responsible governance.  That's because the only story Hamas wants coming out of Gaza is about the fundamental evil of the Zionist entity.

Propaganda War, Maricopa Board of Supervisors Leaks Senate Letter to Media Before Sending [it] to [the] Arizona Senate.  Earlier today [5/17/2021] Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward noted the Maricopa Board of Supervisors (BoS) was engaging in a propaganda war against the people of Arizona and the State Senate.  It didn't take long for evidence to surface.  The Board of Supervisors [sent] the media a copy of the 13-page letter they claim to have sent to the Arizona Senate.  However, AZ Senate President Karen Fann has never even see the letter.  The BoS sent the letter to the media before they sent it to the AZ Senate.  Yeah, propaganda.

The decline and fall of the Associated Press.  Once, long ago, in a land far away, the best journalists tried to stand aloof from the stories they reported.  The idea was simple and powerful.  If journalists tried to be neutral and kept their reporting separate from their opinions, analysis, and speculation, then the public would believe them.  Those days are long gone — and the media's credibility is gone with them.  Journalists and media organizations are now smack in the middle of many stories they cover, in part because they want to be.  They want to spin them, to set 'the Narrative'.  Imbued with this new mission, many journalists have become partisan protagonists.  They have deliberately blurred the lines between facts, analysis and opinion — and downplayed the traditional role of presenting the facts neutrally and letting readers decide.  That's a dramatic change in journalistic norms and a disturbing one for both the media and the public.

Israel exploded AP's offices; Hamas exploded AP's reputation.  This weekend's literally explosive revelation that the Associated Press served as a human shield for Hamas has repercussions.  In an editorial today [5/18/2021], the New York Post called into question years of AP's coverage of the Hamas terror group's attacks on the sovereign state of Israel.  This comes after Israel told AP to evacuate its offices in a Hamas-owned building because it was going to blow the building up because it housed Hamas's spy operations.  AP howled and cried unfair.  The rest of us said, huh?  Hamas was AP's landlord?  How [...] is that ethical?  Imagine AP renting from Al Qaida or ISIS.  Maybe it did.  The New York Post asked, "If AP really didn't know it shared space with Hamas, why trust its reporting?"  Good question.

How the AP Slanted Border Coverage to Hide the Crisis.  Typically, news organizations rush to cover crises, real or perceived.  The Associated Press has taken a different tack, using its influential style guide to play down the human drama unfolding at the southern border.  While internal Customs and Border Protection documents repeatedly refer to an immigration "surge" at the border, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, the AP recommends journalists no longer use such descriptions to avoid offense and maintain supposed "neutrality." Other documents, circulated internally throughout Customs and Border Protection in May, instruct officials on processing "the surge of undocumented individuals as efficiently as possible."  The move by AP, a response to left-wing activists who demanded gentler language from reporters when covering immigration, fundamentally changed how newsrooms across the country covered the Biden administration's response to a historical influx of migrants in the president's first 100 days in office.

Ri-i-i-ght.
AP Denies Any Knowledge Gaza Office Building Was Shared with Hamas Terrorists.  The Associated Press (AP) denied any knowledge that Jala Tower, the building housing its offices in Gaza, was also shared by Hamas terrorists, as claimed by the Israeli military and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the office block was bombed on Saturday [5/15/2021].  AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt denied that the news organization knew Hamas was in the building.

The Editor says...
To put this as politely as I can, I find it impossible to believe that the people working in a professional news-gathering organization, in a volatile part of the world, would have been oblivious to terrorists in their office building.  That level of cluelessness is almost incomprehensible.  I'm not the only one who's skeptical.

AP Pretends It Didn't Know It Was Sharing a Building With Hamas.  After an airstrike struck a building with terrorist tenants that included Hamas and Al Jazeera, controlled by Qatar, a backer of Hamas, the main story in the media was about... the media.  Specifically the AP's presence in the same building.  "We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP's bureau and other news organizations in Gaza.  They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there.  We received a warning that the building would be hit," the AP's statement says.  And the AP is complaining about what?  Israel warned it that the building was a target.  AP chose to share a building with Hamas and pretend not to know about it.

Confirmed: the AP Is Incredibly Ignorant and Yes, Hamas Was in the Building.  We reported yesterday how the AP was furious that Israel had leveled the building in which they had offices in Gaza because they were sharing it was Hamas.  We asked the basic question: how could they not know they were sharing the building with Hamas?  The AP issued a statement saying they'd been in the building for 15 years — and had no indication that Hamas was in the building.

If AP really didn't know it shared space with Hamas, why trust its reporting?  After an Israeli airstrike Saturday destroyed a high-rise office tower on the Gaza Strip, the Associated Press, which had offices there for 15 years, complained, claiming it had no idea the building was also home to Hamas.  If it's true that AP was so unaware — and the evidence suggests it's unlikely — how can anyone trust its reporting in the region?  The Israeli military ordered the 12-story al-Jalaa Tower, which hosts AP and Al Jazeera offices, evacuated an hour before the strike, saying it was being used by Hamas military intelligence.  For a week, tensions between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza, have been at their highest since their 2014 conflict, with Hamas raining thousands of rockets into residential areas of the Jewish state.  Israel later shared some intelligence with the United States.  "We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building," a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi told the Jerusalem Post.  "I understand they found the explanation satisfactory."

Associated Press is slammed for saying it was unaware of Hamas intel operation in their building.  The Associated Press has been accused of lying about whether it knew Hamas maintained a military presence in its Gaza headquarters.  Israeli forces destroyed Jala Tower which had been the AP's headquarters in the Palestinian territory for 15 years, and was also where Al Jazeera was based.  Politicians and journalists in the United States rushed to condemn the bombing, claiming the Israelis had endangered the lives of the journalists.

Israel showed US 'smoking gun' on Hamas in AP office tower, officials say.  Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.  Officials in more than one government office confirmed that US President Joe Biden's phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday was, in part, about the bombing of the building, and that Israel showed Biden and American officials the intelligence behind the action.  "We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building," a senior diplomatic source said.  "I understand they found the explanation satisfactory."

The AP goes Sgt. Schultz.  After its customary warning to protect civilian life, the IDF took out the 12-story Jala Tower housing Hamas military intelligence offices as well as offices for Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.  As far as I can tell from reports such as this photo-filled story in the Daily Mail, no lives were lost in the bombing.  The Biden administration nevertheless found the occasion fit to lecture Israel yesterday "that ensuring the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility."  According to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli authorities have showed Biden administration officials the "smoking gun" proving that Hamas worked out of the building.

USA Today Editorial Says Republicans Are Bigger Threat Than 9/11 Hijackers After Cheney Ouster.  Rep. Liz Cheney's ouster proved Republicans are a bigger threat than the 9/11 hijackers who killed thousands of Americans, according to a USA Today editorial.  The removal of Cheney from her leadership position suggests that the GOP has endorsed election fraud conspiracy theories, USA Today editor David Mastio wrote in a Thursday editorial.  Endorsing such conspiracy theories, which allege that President Joe Biden didn't actually win the election, poses a bigger threat to the U.S. than 9/11 hijackers ever did, he said.  "The fact that the majority of Republicans believe our election was stolen is a sure sign that more violence is to come," Mastio wrote, according to USA Today.

How the New York Times has published lies to serve a biased narrative.  On April 15, the Biden administration acknowledged there was no evidence that Russia ever offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan, walking back a report that wounded former President Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election.  Four days later, the Washington, DC, medical examiner revealed that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had not been murdered by rampaging Trump supporters during the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, as reports had claimed, but had died of natural causes.  Both stories were based on anonymous, unidentifiable sources, but had become deeply enmeshed in the public consciousness.  Both confirmed the assumptions of the nation's left-leaning media and academic elite, while damaging their political enemies.  And both were driven by The New York Times, where malicious misreporting has been the practice for a century, argues journalist and media commentator Ashley Rindsberg.

The Incredible Vanishing Flu.  Seasonal influenza, also known as "the flu," visits America every year, similar to tornados, thunderstorms, heat waves, and snowstorms.  As tracked by the CDC, over the past decade symptomatic flu cases ranged from 9 to 45 million cases per year in the US.  Hospitalizations varied from 140 to 810 thousand, and deaths from 12 to 61 thousand, depending on the particular year, strain of influenza, and effectiveness of the vaccine.  This year, "flu activity is unusually low at this time" according to CDC surveillance.  Since late September 2020, they recorded only about 2000 cases, a minute fraction of the tens of millions of cases in past years.  Hospitalizations this flu season are minimal with only 224 confirmed influenza hospitalizations from September 2020 to mid-April 202, nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations in past seasons.

Hey, LA Times — Don't Tread on Hillsdale College.  On April 23, Julie Appleby, a senior correspondent with the Kaiser Health News network, published a piece in the Los Angeles Times headlined, "Michigan's Outbreak Worries Scientists.  Will Conservative Outposts Keep Pandemic Rolling?" implying that both the sleepy Michigan town where I live, and the college I attend, are biohazards: [...] Appleby needs to choose.  Is Hillsdale bad because it "jumped the line" to distribute unused vaccines or is it evil because it isn't properly concerned about the illness?  She won't, of course.  Her obsession with a college in a region of the country where she has no obvious connection belabors a more deep-rooted hatred.  Appleby's "reporting" isn't a good-faith criticism but an attempt to call down the Eye of Soros on her political enemies.  She wants to destroy the way of life my neighbors and I enjoy.

Corporate News Outlets Again "Confirm" the Same False Story, While Many Refuse to Correct it.  One of the primary plagues of corporate journalism, which I have documented more times than I can count, just reared its ugly head again to deceive millions of people with fake news.  When one large news outlet publishes a false story based on whispers from anonymous security state agents with the CIA or FBI, other news outlets quickly purport that they have "independently confirmed" the false story, in order to bolster its credibility (oh, it must be true since other outlets have also confirmed it). This is an obvious scam — they have not "independently confirmed" anything but rather merely acted as servants to the same lying security state agents who planted the original false story — but they do it over and over, creating the deceitful perception that a fake story has been "confirmed" by multiple outlets, thus bolstering its credibility in the public mind.  It was the favored tactic for spreading debunked Russiagate frauds and is still used.  One of the most vivid examples occurred in December, 2017, when CNN falsely reported what it hyped as "a major bombshell":  that Donald Trump, Jr. had advance access to the WikiLeaks archive.  Within an hour, NBC News' Ken Dilanian and CBS News both claimed they had "independently confirmed" this fairy tale.  When it turned out that it was a complete lie, all based on a false date on an email to Trump Jr., these outlets embarrassingly corrected it hours later and then simply moved on as if it never happened, never explaining how multiple outlets could possibly have all "independently confirmed" the same blatant falsehood.

The Giuliani Walk Back Gets Worse and Exposes Collusion in Mainstream Press.  The fact that the news organizations are working in tandem on narratives blows up in their hands.  It was another example of an important news outlet having to retract a major news story, as Bonchie reported yesterday, when The Washington Post had to retract its prior claim that both Rudy Giuliani and the news network One America News had been informed by the FBI that they had part of a Russian disinformation campaign.  "This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings," the outlet says in part of its retraction.

Fake News Still Gaslighting America with Phony Polls.  Opinion polls, particularly in the buildup to a presidential election, are not designed to reflect public opinion, but instead to shape it.  For the media, objectivity is only of historic interest, a journalistic tenet from a bygone era.  Now most of the media is embedded within the Democrat party, serving as an advocacy arm or political action committee to influence elections and agendas.  A CNN staffer, who bragged that he was "one step down" from a director, admitted to an undercover Tinder date, actually a real journalist working for James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, that CNN was "creating a story" that "we didn't know anything about," calling it "propaganda" to help remove President Trump from office.  The epitome of fake news.  Fake news media have many gaslighting tools at their disposal.  Some outlets doctor audio or video tapes to make their "bad guy" appear racist or doing something illegal.  Or, they make their "good guy" look like Mother Teresa.

Media Promotes Fake Narrative That Biden a Moderate.  Stephen Collinson is well-known among conservatives as the most hackneyed of the hacks at CNN.  The Twitter account called CNN Politics promoted Collinson's latest online essay with the words "President [Joe] Biden to showcase his moderate radicalism in his big congressional address."  "Moderate radicalism"?  Doesn't that make about as much sense as "quiet loudness"?  Collinson argued:  "Biden's quiet radicalism is expressed through a huge pandemic rescue bill, a larger proposal that redefines the concept of infrastructure, and a massive health and child care blueprint."  In other words, a socialist blueprint. [...] But Biden's "superpower" here is the media elite.  They are the ones who have sold Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden as moderates.  This has grown increasingly ridiculous, but they keep shifting the "center" to the extreme left. [...] This isn't "news."  It's just sales.

Meghan McCain calls out 'rigged' media, throws 'The View' under the bus for burying Hunter Biden scandal.  Reacting to a discussion about Fox News supposedly pushing false narratives, self-described "token conservative" and vocal Never Trumper Meghan McCain dropped a truth bomb about how corporate media liberals, even on her TV program, seemingly pick and choose what stories to cover, with advancing a left-wing agenda foremost in mind.  Ignoring Hunter Biden's various alleged scandals was a fundamental error of omission by the mainstream media, she asserted.  "Let's go down the list of things every day that are inaccurate on CNN and NBC, and then we'll talk about fairness in the media," McCain also declared on The View.

The Fourteen Most Troubling Obama And Kerry Lies About The JCPOA Iran Nuke Deal.  Joe Biden and his foreign policy team are negotiating with Iran, trying to get the U.S. back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA") Iran nuclear deal.  Many support this objective, not realizing that the JCPOA allows Iran to build nuclear weapons in the near future, and place the United States, the Sunni Gulf States, and Israel in grave danger.  The support for returning to the JCPOA stems from naïvité.  Much of Obama and Kerry told America about the JCPOA was not true.  Most of the MSM covered up the lies back then and are still not reporting the truth about the deal.

The far-left Los Angeles Times says...
There is no absolute right to refuse vaccination.  We're getting closer to the point where every American who wants to be vaccinated will have gotten their needle stick.  A quarter of Americans say they don't plan to be vaccinated; in vaccine-friendlier California, that's 1 in 5.  Of those who don't plan to be immunized, some worry about the newness of the vaccines, while others just don't like vaccines in general, despite the mountains of proof about how many lives they save, and some stubbornly refuse to believe that COVID-19 is all that dangerous.

The Editor says...
Tyranny is far more dangerous than any disease — especially a disease which isn't "all that dangerous," as many sensible people believe.  Mandatory vaccination is especially dangerous when the vaccine — or whatever it really is — is experimental, and it is impossible to know its long-term side effects.  Mandatory vaccination(s) will inevitably put everyone in a position of having to prove they've had their shots, which would require a so-called vaccination passport to enter public buildings, fly on an airplane, or vote, to name a few examples.  This is a quick and easy recipe for abject tyranny.

Master Class In Speaking Truth To Power As Ben Domenech Exposes Chris Wallace's Journalism Grift.  Ben Domenech visited Fox News tonight and gave a master class in speaking truth to power when he humiliated Fox News' most insufferable, nepotism-enriched grifter and BlueAnon conspiracy theorist, Chris Wallace.  Wallace had just finished his regular routine of pretending to be totally oblivious to the lavish praise he heaps on America Lasters and the seething hatred he harbors for America Firsters.  This time around, specifically, he was pretending to be really surprised at just how well he thinks Biden's speech went (shocker!), and how well he truly believes in his heart of hearts it will be received by the American people (shocker!).  Wallace, of course, is doing what he and his propagandist pals always do:  they tell whatever story they want to be true for as long as they want and then when it's revealed to be a steaming pile of idiocy and lies, they simply turn the page and pretend it never happened.

'There's No Liberal Bias': Joy Behar Claims News Outlets Are 'Basically Balanced' Except For Fox And MSNBC.  Joy Behar claimed Wednesday that most news outlets — with the exceptions of Fox News and MSNBC — are "basically balanced."  Behar joined a discussion on ABC's "The View" about recent corrections on Fox News — on reports of Vice President Kamala Harris' book being distributed at the U.S.-Mexico border and that President Joe Biden planned to limit red meat consumption — and argued that because there were both liberals and conservatives on all of the major outlets, they were effectively balanced.

USA Today's publisher Gannett apologizes after being caught helping Stacey Abrams hide encouragement for Georgia losing the All-Star Game.  The largest publisher of newspapers in the United States by total circulation has been caught red-handed engaging in Orwellian rewriting of history to help Stacey Abrams hide her promotion of the boycott of her home state of Georgia by the MLB all-Star Game.  Ms. Abrams is regarded as a savior by many on the left, even future presidential material, and is even excused for delusionally claiming to be the actual elected governor of Georgia after losing that race by tens of thousands of votes, despite the left's new dogma pronouncing it a crime against democracy to question the legitimacy of Joe Biden's election.  Her promotion of the doctrine of Black "voter suppression" when IDs are required for voting, and her energetic promotion of registration and vote gathering efforts by Democrats have given her a status as an untouchable goddess, apparently.  Even as Black registration and turnout in Georgia put the lie to the suppression narrative.

A Great New Idea for Reducing Police Shootings.  [Scroll down]  The "news" that is plated for us mostly is fake.  It is not the Torah.  It is an enterprise that seeks to generate profit among us by baiting us into clicking and into becoming "followers" and ginning up their ratings, all while the media also seek to sway public opinion.  Hitler proved with Der Stürmer that an entire country could be brainwashed and turned politically by newspapers.  Stalin proved the same with Izvestia and Pravda.  Americans have proven no different, no less gullible and malleable.  A concerted full-court press by CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Twitter, and Facebook is enough to sway elections.  Lies may abound before the voting, with other uncomfortable news stories suppressed like the one about Hunter Biden's laptop.  Then, after the final election tallies are announced, a day or two of apologies for lying can be offered to Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley at Senate hearings, and that refreshes the ground until next time.  We live amid lies.

Fake Chicago Police tweet about Derek Chauvin not being removed by Twitter, CPD says.  Twitter is refusing to remove or attach a warning to a doctored image that purports to show a Chicago Police Department tweet that states, "We are all Derek Chauvin" — despite that the post is not real and the agency has made several attempts to have it taken down, CPD officials tell Fox News.  The altered image began circulating on Twitter at the beginning of the weekend and features a picture of Chauvin, the recently convicted Minneapolis Police officer, underneath the five-word sentence, which appears in bigger font than is customarily used on the social media platform.  By Saturday, the post had garnered approximately 38,600 retweets and 175,000 likes, according to local news site CWBChicago.

Abortion Pills Are Not 'Medication'.  Many in the media are increasingly referring to abortion pills as "medication" — but their terminology couldn't be further from the truth.  That's because the purpose of medicine is to save lives.  The purpose of abortion is to end them.  The most recent example came when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that women may temporarily receive the drug mifepristone — the first of two pills in a chemical abortion — by mail.  The news comes months after the Supreme Court granted the FDA's previous request to reinstate a federal requirement that says women must obtain it from a health care provider in person.  Now, the FDA will halt enforcing this requirement during the pandemic.  In their reports, outlets from the New York Times to Teen Vogue referred to mifepristone as "medication."  In order to distinguish from surgical abortion, many in the media already use "medication abortion," "medical abortion," or "chemical abortion" to describe an abortion administered by pill.  But only recently have major outlets begun switching the words around to use phrases such as "abortion medication" to call abortion itself a type of medicine.

WaPo Writer Doesn't Get Concerns About Driving Near Protesters, Here's an Explainer.  Washington Post opinion writer Radley Balko tweeted that he didn't quite get why some people were so worried about "inadvertently driving near a protest, getting stuck in front of a wall of protesters, then getting pulled out of their car and beaten."  [Tweet]  In his tweet, he referenced a ridiculous article from "The New Republic" which claimed Republicans wanted the "right to crash cars into people" and that Republicans were endorsing a "terroristic tactic" against "protesters."  [More tweets]  As I've covered the protests/riots over the past year, I've seen many encounters that have ranged from minor harassment to someone ending up dead.  I'm not sure what Balko has been watching over the past year, but BLM/Antifa people are constantly blocking cars in the street and getting into encounters with drivers.

Corporate Media And Other Race-Baiters Have Incited More Violence Than Trump Ever Did.  Adam Toledo is a name that has likely saturated your newsfeed over the past month.  He was a 13-year-old Mexican-American boy who was fatally shot by a police officer on Chicago's West Side not one month ago.  This week, that name was overshadowed by Ma'Khia Bryant, a black teenager who died at the hands of law enforcement in Ohio.  In both cases, leftist politicians and Twitter-verified "journalists" couldn't get the story out fast enough, absent facts, video, or nuance — but the headlines wrote themselves:  "Racist Cop Shoots Unarmed Minority."  Also in both cases, the stories turned out to be completely wrong.  On Wednesday we learned that Bryant wasn't just standing in her driveway unarmed, or just casually holding a knife, or even dueling with another armed kid in a "knife fight" when the officer discharged his weapon.  After the officer arrived, she lunged with a knife at another black girl she had pinned against a car, after having already charged a different girl nearby.  She was armed and dangerous.  And the officer, although accused of being a racist pig by even the White House, instead saved at least one black girl's life.

The Real Crisis Is the Media's Disregard for Facts and Truth.  Two different topics, but the same problem: [#1] There is no crisis at the border.  [#2] And "authorities say (Ma'Khia Bryant) was wielding a knife."  Thus reported, successively, Politico and NBC News produced two vivid examples of exactly why millions of Americans no longer trust the mainstream liberal media. [...] Mind you, the video of this incident was everywhere.  There, quite clearly, was Bryant, with knife in hand, quite obviously and visibly preparing to stab another black teenage girl with a considerably-sized knife, her hand raised for the strike.  For NBC to say police were "saying she was threatening others with a knife" when, quite obviously, there she was on video with knife in hand, was a preposterous omission.

Cuomo, Lemon:  NBC Committed 'Malpractice' By Not Showing Knife.  While doubling down during Thursday's [4/22/2021] CNN Tonight handoff on their support for Officer Nicholas Reardon's decision to shoot knife-wielding Ma'Khia Bryant, CNN hosts Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon blasted outlets like NBC who didn't show the knife in Bryant's hand while reporting on the shooting.  The pair accused such outlets of "journalistic malpractice" because they weren't being honest (an ironic notion given who was flinging it).  Their knock came as NewsBusters drove part of the Thursday news cycle with a report exposing NBC's deception against their audience; editing out a key part of the 911 call and not showing the knife, before silently adding them in an update.  "And, we've got to be honest about these things.  And if we're not honest about these things, as journalists, then it is a dereliction of our duty as journalists.  It's journalistic malpractice not to do it," Lemon opined to his friend.

Will the Times apologize for lying about Officer Sicknick's death?  An unruly crowd entered the US Capitol on Jan. 6, while then-President Donald Trump addressed a rally several blocks away.  One member of that crowd, Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed woman and a veteran, was shot by the Capitol Police.  The next day, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died in the hospital.  On Jan. 8, The New York Times reported that Officer Sicknick had died after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher by violent Trump supporters.  This story was quickly repeated by numerous other media outlets.  Millions believed it.  The story was false.  Sicknick died of two strokes, which occurred many hours after the invasion of the Capitol.  The blue-check-media fallback was that bear spray used by the Capitol invaders had caused the officer's strokes.  That also turned out to be false.  After a curiously long delay, the DC medical examiner's office released its report this week, and it concludes that Sicknick suffered no injuries, internal or external.  He didn't have a reaction to bear spray, the chief medical examiner reported.

Media Pants on Fire.  Media trust is at an all-time low, a majority of Americans believing that, "Most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public."  An Axios commissioned survey found that only 46 percent of Americans trusted traditional media, the lowest number ever recorded in the 20 years of this survey.  Gallup found similar distrust of the media, with only 40 percent of Americans having "a great deal" or even "a fair amount" of confidence that the media reports the news "fully accurately, and fairly".  The low point was a 32 percent level of trust in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president and he correctly labeled the media as "fake news".  20 years ago, media trust was much higher, in the mid 50 percent range, despite Dan Rather at that time, a major network news anchor, lying about George W Bush's National Guard service.  In other words, the media is lying to us and we are catching on to the lies.

Officer Sicknick Died of Natural Causes, Not Riot Injuries.  This was just another massive lie used to gaslight the American people and justify an ongoing manhunt for Trump supporters who had the audacity to protest an illegitimate election.

Glenn Greenwald on what the truth about Officer Sicknick's death says about the media.  We learned yesterday that Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes.  The significance of that admission was not just for Sicknick's immediate family, some of whom already seem to have known he didn't die from an attack with a fire extinguisher.  The real significance was the way in which this undercut the media's confident framing of his death as a victim of the Jan. 6 riot.  Yesterday, Glenn Greenwald took this occasion to point out how this lie got going and why the media desperately wanted it to be true. [...] The partisan motivation for this to be true was so overwhelming that doubt about it was treated as a kind of heresy.  The media's progressive voices worked as the equivalent of Hockey goons to punish anyone who dared to say different.

The New York Times Has Just Been Caught In Two Monstrous Lies.  On Tuesday, the public learned that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes.  Just a few days before that, the public learned that the "Russian Bounty" story was fake.  In other words, in the span of a week, the "newspaper of record" has been exposed for grossly misleading the public about two major stories — both designed to discredit President Donald Trump. [...] Start with Sicknick.  The New York Times was the paper that reported he'd been killed by a pro-Trump protester who threw a fire extinguisher at Sicknick during the Jan. 6 incursion into the Capitol Building.  The Times claimed that, after being struck and suffering a "bloody gash on his head," Sicknick "was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support" where he later died. [...] What did the Times base its story on?  Unnamed sources, of course.  There were no pictures.  No videos.  No on-the-record accounts.  No medical examiner's report.  The story fell apart, as news emerged — no thanks to the mainstream press — that Sicknick had texted his family about being in good spirits that night.  Then we learned that he'd returned to his office after the events at the Capitol, and only later went to the hospital.

A New Poll Shows the Pollsters Aren't Even Trying Anymore.  You've probably noticed a barrage of approval rating polls being released in the past month or so, and nearly all of them show Joe Biden as a president for the ages.  We've seen such high numbers as 60% approval in some surveys.  Perhaps Biden is just that much of a unifier, despite pushing the most radical, divisive agenda in modern history?  Or perhaps there's something else going on with these polls.  Yeah, it's the latter.  Random thought, but if your sample is coming out to a raw D+31 sample, perhaps there's something wrong with your pool that you are originally drawing from?  Are they just calling people in blue states?  Further, if you look at the internals, they only weight the poll to D+9, while the 2020 election was Biden +4.  The margin was even smaller in the vote totals for the House, for example.  In other words, the country much more evenly divided than shown here, but according to these pollsters, we are in a new era of peace and unity.  The purpose of this is clear: to push a narrative of inevitability going into 2022 for Democrats.

Democrat-run institutions are cheating to prop up the Biden administration.  In three months, Joe Biden has exffectively erased all American norms.  Worse, he's done so by executive fiat rather than the legislative process.  It's likely that only Democrats (and not even all Democrats) support him.  Nevertheless, a Pew poll, which the media is shilling, assures us that he's got a 59% approval rating.  Dig into the poll, though, and it's a lie [...].  In other words, we are being sold a narrative that has nothing to do with the truth.  First, about that poll. [...] It turns out that, as to some of those things, we know that most Americans oppose Biden's policies.  On Court-packing, an October poll that the New York Times conducted showed that 58% of likely voters oppose it.  Americans feel even more strongly about voter ID:  75% of them support it.  Americans also disapprove of Biden's border policy, with 55% of them saying he's doing a bad job and only 29% saying he's doing a good job.

MSM Edits Police Bodycam Footage And Removes The Part Where 13-yr-old Adam Toledo Is Seen Holding Firearm.  Dan Herbert, a Chicago attorney who has represented a number of police officers involved in deadly use of force incidents, says the officer who shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo "absolutely had a reason to fire" if he believed the teen possessed a gun while turning toward him.  The Civilian Office of Police Accountability — the city's police oversight agency — on Thursday released body camera videos and other related materials two days after Adam's family was shown footage of the March 29 shooting in Little Village.  The footage shows an officer chasing Adam in an alley while shouting at him to stop.  Adam appears to pause near a fence bordering a parking lot at the end of the alley and turn toward the officer with his hands up but just moments before he threw away his gun.

CBS News Edited Police Body Cam Video To Mask Teen Holding A Gun Before He Was Fatally Shot.  CBS News deceptively cropped body camera footage that showed a 13-year-old boy holding a gun before he was fatally shot by Chicago police in March.  A law enforcement officer fatally shot Adam Toledo during an encounter in response to gunshots heard on a police scanner.  Police said Toledo ignored "verbal directions, fled, used significant force, and was armed with a semiautomatic pistol," which is why the officer fired.  Body cam footage released this week appears to show Toledo holding a weapon moments before he was shot, but CBS News posted a clip to its website and Twitter page that cropped out the footage showing the teen's alleged firearm.

Media pushes false narrative of racism.  The riots that have erupted after the killing of Daunte Wright reinforce a familiar pattern.  This response is rooted not only in tragedy, but in a distorted perception of reality.  Chelsea Handler, for example, suggested that people of color have a "50-50" chance of being shot by police.  This is a complete distortion, but fits a broader pattern.  My latest report for the Manhattan Institute, based on multiple surveys, shows that being exposed to news and social media, having left-wing views on race, and being anxious or depressed explains a great deal of how much racism a person perceives.  And when someone says racism in America has risen, this perception is almost entirely a figment of their imagination.  In fact, racist attitudes and behaviors have been declining for decades.

Liz Cheney Plays the Fool After Anti-Trump 'Bombshell' Collapses.  Yesterday, Joe Biden's own intelligence community dropped the news that the "Russian bounties" story used to target President Trump was absolute garbage.  Of course, some of us knew it before the 2020 election and reported that (see That 'Bombshell' Russian Bounty Story Was Just Officially Shown to Be Garbage).  Once again, "right-wing" news outlets were proven right while CNN and other "unbiased" outlets were made to look like the unreliable, partisan sources they are.  But on the political side, there was one figure who went all-in on the nonsense in order to try to keep the perpetual war in Afghanistan going.  That person was Rep. Liz Cheney.

Fake news on Afghanistan and Russia:  The media's bounty of lies.  Remember when the press and leftist politicians badgered President Trump?  A story came out from the New York Times in 2020 claiming that Russia was paying bounties to Talibanites to kill U.S. troops stationed there.  (As if these Islamofacist maniacs might not be motivated otherwise to do it themselves.)  Oh, the brouhaha it drew!  President Trump was constantly blamed for not taking the problem 'seriously' and America-hating Democrats had a field day of playing patriot.  It came out during election season, and Joe Biden played it to the hilt, being Mr. Patriot and all, despite never serving.  The aim of all this tiresome crap, played over and over and over on the nighttime news, was to Get Trump, by bringing back that old dead cat about Trump being Putin's puppet.  Turns out that this bounty claim was, like a lot of these stories, a naked, total lie.

U.S. Intelligence Now Says Story of Russian Bounties on American Troops Likely False.  After the media blew up a story about Russian military putting bounties on American troops in an effort to shape a Russian collusion narrative against the administration of President Trump, the U.S. intelligence community now says that story was likely false.

Conrad Black's Tour de Force.  Today [4/13/2021] Conrad Black has an outstanding take-down of the WSJ's foolish anti-Trump editorial (on Friday).  The WSJ editorial is titled "The GOP's Trump Problem" — see, Trump is the problem. [...] Black covers a lot of ground.  I'll try to summarize the main points, while urging readers to follow the link — you won't regret it.  Black talks turkey, explains the facts of political life in lucid terms.  Black's basic thesis is that the WSJ has things exactly backwards.  Trump is not the problem for the GOP. Rather, the Never Trumps are the problem.  Trump had a remarkably successful term, especially in light of the constant betrayals and the concerted Dem and Deep State assault on our constitutional order.  The reality, contrary to the WSJ's view, is that Republicans want more of the Trump agenda — whether led by Trump himself or by a Trump approved proxy.  In fact, the disastrous start and likely deepening national crisis we are experiencing under the Zhou Baiden regime (whoever or what cabal actually is pulling the strings) favor this solution for the GOP, in Black's view.

The GOP's Trump Solution.  The Wall Street Journal on Friday [4/9/2021] published an editorial headlined "The GOP's Trump Problem."  It gets things terribly wrong.  The GOP is Trump's party and it is the Wall Street Journal that has the Trump problem.  Having been commendably supportive of the former president through most of his term, the Journal joined in the general embarkation of NeverTrumpers over the ostensible election results.  The theory that inspired this headline is Trump had his chance but lost the election in a manner practically indistinguishable from defeated incumbents Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H. W. Bush in 1992 (when there were no suggestions of questionable results).  The editors suggest further that Trump had exhausted any grounds he had for contesting the fairness of the counting of ballots, and that it was his duty to go quietly into that good night and do everything that he could to elect Republican senators in Georgia to preserve the Republican majority in the Senate and to enhance the likelihood of the reelection next year of Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia and his secretary of state Brad Raffensperger.

Dangerous Word Games:  Nets Drop 'Mostly Peaceful,' Riots Are Now 'Protests'.  The left's Orwellian redefining of words took a dangerous step Monday as all three of the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) started to refer to the riots of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota as "protests," effectively dropping the "mostly peaceful" label they were mocked for using in the summer of 2020.  All of this followed an apparently accidental shooting where a police officer seemingly went to use her Taser but discharged her duty pistol instead.  The first showing of the media's dangerous rebranding of riots came earlier in the day when an activist journalist screamed at Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, saying "there was no riot" as he described how his officers were attacked with projectiles.  "The officers that were putting themselves in harm's way were being pelted with frozen cans of pop, they were being pelted with concrete blocks," he told the press.  The truth didn't matter to the broadcast networks as they gaslit their audiences.  "A curfew now in place following protests and clashes with police," announced ABC's World News Tonight anchor, David Muir during the opening tease.  And as CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell teased the "violent protests," NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt noted that "protesters clashing with police."

Our Honesty Crisis:  How We Talk about Race.  Less than two weeks later, Noah Green rammed his car into Capitol Police officer William Evans and killed him near the fencing that surrounds the Capitol.  When Green emerged from his car with a knife, he was shot and killed.  Afterward it was revealed that Green was a follower of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.  It does not bother me that Green was black or followed Farrakhan.  It bothers me that he killed a Capitol Hill police officer a week ago, and we won't talk about that story for very long.  On the other hand, three months after Officer Brian Sicknick died, many people still believe he was beaten to death by white supremacists with a fire extinguishers at the "insurrection" because the media lied so loudly about it.  All of it goes to show that if the lie is big enough, a lot of people do not even notice the correction — even if the victim's own mother tries to correct the narrative.

Another, Clearer Take on the Chauvin Trial.  I leave it to you to decide why, from the Trayvon Martin case to the George Floyd case, the media has so consistently misrepresented the facts.  Whether it is that unskilled reporters are covering these matters, or that the press is simply looking to attract consumers with florid tales, or that the media looks forward to destroying urban areas with false tales of murderous white racists (amid a shortage of real ones), I cannot say. [...] (I'd also note that it is my experience that reporters' deadlines often conflict with the way trials proceed, so that too often the prosecution (or in civil matters, the plaintiff) case is presented just before deadline and the cross examination occurs too late to be covered in that day's edition, leaving only a false, one-sided version of the day's action.)

The Hunter and Jim Biden story: 
  •   Wasn't hacked material
  •   Wasn't Russian misinformation
  •   Is something people deserved to know before voting
  •   Big tech + corporate media tried to make sure that didn't happen
  •   And now they're going to gaslight you about all of it.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Offers Correction After Printing Biden's Lies About GA Election Law Bill.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) issued a correction on a story that made some false claims about Georgia's election law reform legislation.  The newspaper made the mistake of printing Democrat talking points, specifically remarks made by President Biden, instead of the truth.  AJC originally falsely reported that voting hours had been cut in the bill and failed to note that early voting days had been added for general elections while shortening the time for early voting in primary run-offs.  The newspaper printed the correction at the end of a story on liberal filmmaker and actor Tyler Perry.  Perry owns a large production company in the Atlanta area.  Perry was quick to come out against the Georgia legislation signed into law by Governor Kemp.  He voiced hope that the Department of Justice will look into "the unconstitutional law".

Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselves.  The daily newspaper USA Today is the second-most circulated print newspaper in the United States — more than The New York Times and more than double The Washington Post.  Only The Wall Street Journal has higher circulation numbers.  On Sunday [3/28/2021], the paper published and heavily promoted a repellent article complaining that "defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network of fundraising platforms, despite a crackdown by tech companies."  It provided a road map for snitching on how these private citizens — who are charged with serious felonies by the U.S. Justice Department but as of yet convicted of nothing — are engaged in "a game of cat-and-mouse as they spring from one fundraising tool to another" in order to avoid bans on their ability to raise desperately needed funds to pay their criminal lawyers to mount a vigorous defense.

These 6 Stupendous Hoaxes Are Reasons to Give Media Narrative About 'Asian Hate' the Hairy Eyeball.  But not every political battle is 1963 Birmingham and not every political foe is the KKK.  Reported violence against Asians is not necessarily Birmingham all over again.  The narrative that it's President Trump's fault because he used the phrase "China virus" last year strains credulity.  The all-too-eager anti-Trump media, however, amplifies this message.  Indeed, this story and others, including the COVID lockdown/mask information, and the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6th, all have taken on the tell tale signs of hit-and-run narrative-run journalism.  Caveat emptor.  We've seen the media fail to let facts get in the way of a too-good-to-check-story with disastrous results.  Here are just a few. [...]

Chris Wallace Falsely Claims New Georgia Law Bans Drinking Water While In Line For Voting.  Fox News' Chris Wallace claimed Sunday Georgia voters are prohibited from being given food or drink in line at the ballot box under a law the state's governor signed last week.  "Let's take a look at some of the provisions in Georgia," Wallace said during an interview with South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.  "The one that I think is creating the biggest fuss, it prohibits, it makes it a crime to give food or drink to voters waiting in line.  Senator, why on Earth if Americans are willing to wait hours to vote, would you make it a crime for people to come and give them a bottle of water?"  [Video clip]

The Commonalities Between the Rise of the Nazis and the Tactics of the American Left Cannot be Ignored.  [Scroll down]  Third, the Nazis perfected the art of indoctrinating the citizenry through propaganda and "fake news." Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, is credited with saying:  "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." and "Think of the press as a great keyboard on which government can play."  This strategy has been and continues to be used to great success by the American left and their fellow travelers in the mainstream (Democrat) media.  Whether it is the Russian collusion hoax, the so-called armed insurrection on January 6, 2021, climate change as an existential threat to mankind, suppression of voting rights, white supremacy running rampant, the necessity of lockdowns for the Covid pandemic or a myriad of other fabrications, they left lies with impunity as a means to their ends... as did the Nazis.

Grassley To DoJ: Why Has No One Been Charged With Crimes Over False Kavanaugh Allegations?  Good question, especially since this happened two and a half years ago.  Will the Department of Justice enforce false-statements laws consistently, or only when special counsels are involved?  Thanks to Senate Democrats' sandbagging in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process, a number of people came out of the woodwork to make clearly false allegations to the Senate as a way to derail his appointment to the Supreme Court.  Grassley wants to know when they will face charges — and it's not the first time the ranking Senate Judiciary member has asked.

Truth And Lies In A Digital Media Era.  Those in the media who speak to us and desire to control us, but still want to avoid outright lies, do so by shading the truth, offering spin, or using phrases such as, "it's my opinion", "as I remember it" and, the chart-topper, "at this point why does it matter?".  They know they operate in an environment where falsehoods and misrepresentations can take root before there is an opportunity to measure the validity of allegations or assertions.  Such liars know the truth but deform and simulate it. [...] We live in a time when the bulk of our fellow citizens have been indoctrinated rather than educated.  Rather than learning facts — including relatively objective history — they are encouraged to think of themselves in terms of relationships to one another.  What is important to them is what is trending in digital social media and who the influencers of the moment are.  Status comes from horizontal acclaim.  Digital social networks have replaced real social networks.  This leads to a society adrift, with people desperate to have someone to guide them.  Mainstream news organizations and digital social media platform providers seek to fill this need.

US Media's Misleading Framing Of Atlanta Police Officer's Comments About Shooter Used In Chinese Propaganda.  American media's misleading framing of a police officer's description about why a man shot up multiple massage parlors in Atlanta was used by China's state-run media outlet Sunday [3/21/2021].  The Xinhua News Agency, the official state-run press agency of the People's Republic of China, repeated a misleading claim suggesting Cherokee County Sheriff Capt. Jay Baker made excuses for Robert Aaron Long, who stands accused of killing eight people in Atlanta.  The misleading claim suggested Baker told reporters — in his view — that it "was a really bad day for" Long.  "8 lives taken, 6 of them Asian.  And the killer was just 'having a bad day'!" Xinhua News Agency tweeted Sunday.

The mainstream media's anti-White racism is escalating.  [Scroll down]  The media's racial obsession is a way to maintain the Democrats' political power, by silencing the opposition, and to drive ratings.  Eventually, though, the real-world consequences are going to be disastrous.  If our children are consistently told that Whites are not just racist, but akin to the KKK or even Nazis, the means that waging war against them is within the pale of moral behavior.  I am deeply concerned that the media will incite someone — or a group of someones — to take up arms in the imaginary war against "White supremacists" and start targeting people based upon their skin color.

The Real Reasons Why Millions Of Americans Will Defy Covid Mandates And Vaccines.  I suspect a large portion of the public is at least partially aware when they are being pushed or lured into a specific way of thinking. [...] The media does not objectively report facts and evidence, it spins information to plant an engineered narrative in the minds of its viewers.  But the public is not as stupid as they seem to think.  This is probably why trust in the media has plunged by 46% in the past ten years, hitting an all time low this year of 27%.  Except for pre-election season spikes, mainstream outlets from CNN to Fox to CBS to MSNBC are facing dismal audience numbers, with only around 2 million to 3 million prime time viewers.  There are numerous YouTube commentators with bigger audiences than this.  And, if you sift through the debris of MSM videos on YouTube, you'll find low hits and a majority of people that are visiting their channels just to make fun of them.

Numerous Liberal Outlets Claimed to Independently Verify Debunked WaPo Story.  Shocker: the media lied to the American public once again.  We learned recently that the Washington Post, after claiming to have verified a story from anonymous sources, did no such thing for one particular "bombshell" story.  The Post initially reported in January that Trump told an official working in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office to "find the fraud" in the state, telling them that they would be a national hero if she did.  The call took place on December 23rd, and was just released, proving that Trump never said that.  In reality, Trump said that this unnamed official would be praised when the "right answer comes out" and encouraged them to examine mail-in ballots in Fulton county.  The recording was discovered in this unnamed official's computer trash bin after they said they didn't think a recording existed.  Without their gross incompetence in what appears to be them trying to cover her tracks, this bogus reporting would've never been exposed.

5 Other Totally Bogus Stories Designed To Hurt Trump The Media Got Away With.  The correction by The Washington Post concerning false information about a phone call between former President Donald Trump and the Georgia secretary of state's chief investigator is no anomaly.  The neglect of truth and preference for anonymous sources is deeply ingrained in the corrupt left-wing media's strategy.  "You will notice that establishment media errors, omissions, mistakes, and outright lies always slant one way — against me and against Republicans.  Meanwhile, stories that hurt Democrats or undermine their narratives are buried, ignored, or delayed until they can do the least harm," Trump said in a statement Monday in response to widespread corrections from The New York Times, CNN, ABC, and so on.  The Washington Post correction struck right to the core of why journalism is dying and has been for years, and it served as a reminder of the media's lack of ethics and standards throughout the Russian collusion scramble.  Here are five major Trump-Russia stories the media botched. [...]

The Media Lied about Brian Sicknick's Death.  Remember how we were told, shortly after the mass trespass at the Capitol, that 5 people had died because of the "act of sedition" or "coup" and that all Trump supporters were responsible for their deaths?  I do.  In any case, it turned out that that information was, at best, partially true.  In regard to Brian Sicknick, the police officer who sadly died that day, it was absolutely untrue.  For one, the only person actually killed on Jan. 6 was Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot in the neck by an LEO for crawling though a window.  She was unarmed and not doing anything violent.  The other three people who died died of "medical emergencies," whatever that means, not injuries sustained during the day's events.  And that leaves Brian Sicknick, the police officer who sadly died on Jan. 6.  The problem is that, while Democrats blamed Trump supporters for his death and even let his body lie in state, there's no evidence that he died because of anything protesters did.  In fact, despite the media preaching for months that he died after being bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher, that appears to be entirely untrue.

Audio That Debunked Fraudulent Trump Quotes [was] Found On GA State Government Device:  Report.  An audio recording that forced multiple major news outlets to issue corrections to stories that attributed fraudulent quotes to former President Donald Trump was reportedly found on the device of the chief investigator of the Georgia secretary of state's office.  Trump made a call to the chief investigator, Frances Watson, on Dec. 23 to discuss alleged fraud in the 2020 election, asking her to look into votes cast in Fulton County, Georgia, especially.  Reports of the call published the next month by The Washington Post, CNN, and others quoted Trump as telling Watson to "find the fraud" and claiming she would be a "national hero" if she did.  An audio recording of the call published last week showed that Trump made neither statement, debunking news outlets' claims that were sourced back to a single anonymous source.  The recording of the call was obtained through an open records request to the Georgia secretary of state's office.  Officials reportedly located the file in a trash folder on Watson's device, according to CNN.

Audio shows the media got the Trump-Georgia story all wrong.  It's one thing if a single news outlet publishes a fraudulent anonymously sourced "scoop."  It's another thing entirely if multiple newsrooms claim they independently "confirmed" the fraudulent "scoop" with anonymous sources of their own.  The former can reasonably be explained away as a simple error; the latter is not so simple.  It's unrealistic so many sources would be wrong about the same thing.  It's more likely competing news outlets spoke with the same anonymous individual or individuals, which leads to uncomfortable questions about whether the media were merely fed bad information or were intentionally manipulated. [...] If you can believe it, the Washington Post bungling its "bombshell" report isn't the most scandalous thing about this episode in media malfeasance.  No, the most scandalous thing is:  Several newsrooms claimed they independently "confirmed" the most [condemnatory] details of the Washington Post's since-corrected "scoop."

If This Week You Learned Biden is 'Hopeful' And Tucker Carlson Is Evil, Congratulations, You've Been Lied To.  If you hadn't watched the president's prime-time address, you might think it was something — anything — other than the most depressing, defeated, and resigned speech since President Jimmy Carter held the office.  You might think he hadn't devoted his third sentence to a baseless attack on his predecessor, and the entire rest of his address to death, sadness, loneliness, and despair.  You might think he hadn't literally threatened the American people, warning, "We may have to reinstate restrictions to get back on track, please, we don't want to do that again."  Rather, to read The Washington Post homepage's featured commentary on the address, you'd think "Much of that speech was about hope."  "It was about seeing a shaft of light at the end of a dark horror," Robin Givhan, a 56-year-old woman who once won a Pulitzer for "witty, closely observed essays that transform fashion criticism into cultural criticism," wrote.  "His white French cuffs and his crisp pocket square," she went to tell us, "evoked all of the institutional power and authority at his disposal to make things better."  "[H]is mere presence on television," she insisted, was a declaration of "his pride in the country's progress."  If you're wondering why you didn't see any of this, don't worry:  It didn't happen.

Another Opinion Columnist Pushing War With Iran Who Doesn't Actually Exist.  There is at least one more foreign policy opinion writer from the Mujahideen-eKhalq (MEK) whose existence is dubious, based on a study by a social media analyst and statements from a defector from the group.  Amir Basiri, who contributed to Forbes 9 times, the Washington Examiner 52 times, OpenDemocracy, Algemeiner, and The Hill once also appears to be a fabrication.  The MEK is an Iranian exile group for which John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, and other foreign policy luminaries have given paid speeches.  Dems like Joe Lieberman and Howard Dean have also spoken on their behalf.  But the group has American blood on its hands, has been accused of practicing forced sterilization, and their belief system has been described as a mixture of Marxism and Islamism.  Its supporters claim they, and their front group the National Council of Resistance of Iran, are a sort of government-in-exile, despite nearly nonexistent support for the group within Iran.  They also have waged a substantial disinformation campaign in the Western press, in particular targeting conservative media.

When Minorities Vote GOP, the Media Smears Republicans as Racists.  In just one week, the Washington Post churned out two op-eds on the same theme, "The GOP is Now Just the Party of White Grievance" and "The Republican Party is Making Jim Crow Segregationists Proud".  The D.C. Democrat paper doesn't bother clarifying why Democrats from two generations ago would be thrilled that 1 in 5 black men voted for President Trump.  Ever since the election, the media has been beating its narrative drum with one message.  CNN howls that Republicans are the worst racists.  The New York Times insists they're even more racist than that.  And MSNBC will counter that only white racists would vote Republican.

So where are the nightly network news pictures of all the 'kids in cages'?  The media posted fake news stories with "kids in cages" pictures dating the Obama/Biden years in their four-year collusion with Democrats to destroy President Trump.  So where are the nightly televised pictures today of kids sleeping on cement floors in crowded facilities?  Somehow, we do not see them. [...] Where's Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who went down for a photo-op wearing white, in order to weep in front of an empty parking lot, and compare illegal immigrant detentions during the Trump administration to Nazi concentration camps?  Where is the Hollywood crowd who have always protested Trump's actions?  I must assume none of them really cared and it was always a political attack or else they would be actively protesting.  The Biden administration also clearly doesn't care about how contagious the coronavirus, which migrants are bringing in with them, is.  They are not quarantining the migrant kids who are sick or the kids who have had contact with other sick people.  Nope, they are crowding them into jail-like facilities and then sending them around the U.S. to expose others.

The Roots of Insurrection:  Antifa Exposed.  The mainstream media — silent on the Marxist ideology, violence, and militancy of groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) — deceptively reported that the protests they inflicted on over 200 U.S. cities in 2020 were "mostly peaceful."  It deceitfully transformed the mayhem into a "summer of love."  Widespread rioting, looting, arson, murder, assaults, and destruction of property and businesses went unreported.  Such abject failure explains why polls consistently rank the media among America's least trusted institutions.  Given media complicity with radical groups, it's not surprising that the Los Angeles Times dismissed Andy Ngo's Unmasked:  Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy as unserious, "supremely dishonest," and "self-serving." [...] It says he's fixated on the "imaginary threat of Antifa" and ignores the "real danger" from far-right extremists.

How the Media Distorts Debate and Details of HR 1.  A piece of legislation working its way through Congress would upend further the way Americans conduct elections.  But the way many media outlets are covering it, one would think the bill — which Democrats designated as HR 1 or the so-called For the People Act — is just a simple, uncontroversial "reform" that most Americans agree with.  It's far from that. [...] For instance, media outlets frequently portray HR 1 as a "voter rights" bill.  Outlet after outlet describes the legislation this way, despite vagueness about exactly what voting rights are being threatened. [...] Are Americans really uniformly in favor of effectively nullifying state voter ID laws, or handing over all power for overseeing elections to an increasingly partisan federal agency?  As studies have shown, voter ID laws don't appear to affect minority voter turnout at all.  So why is that election integrity measure considered voter suppression?  It looks like HR 1 has nothing to do with protecting voter rights and everything to do with manipulating and nationalizing how we conduct elections.

Things that don't make sense, except to Democrats.  [Scroll down]  Now that cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are declining rapidly we see fewer stories.  They have to get the $1.9 Trillion leftist slush fund passed before the public is allowed to learn the truth.  I also am seeing frequent reporting complaining that not as many people are getting tested.  The media, bureaucrats and other Democrats should be cheering that fewer people are scared and fewer people feel the need to get tested but they are complaining.  The cheers should be very loud because even with fewer people testing, the positivity rate has dropped rapidly.  It's as if the media and other Democrats would rather keep destroying the economy and children instead of getting schools and businesses open.  The cheerleading and campaigning for Democrats is what reporters do.  How is that valuable to the American people?

Correcting the Biden Administration's Lies About the Border Crisis.  What is happening right now on the border and within the United States regarding illegal immigration is being misrepresented by the Biden administration and much of the media.  Most nightly television broadcasts do not even mention the chaos on the border, what is causing it and what the government is doing in response.  When they do, they merely copy the administration's talking points that are inaccurate and misleading.

Developing some perspective on the Capitol riot.  In the last few days we've seen a series of hearings in the House and Senate on the January 6 riot at the Capitol.  After all the talk, we still don't know some of the basic facts of the riot, especially the circumstances surrounding the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, the only law enforcement officer and only non-rioter to die in the violence.  But in spite of the gaps in our knowledge, a sense of perspective on the riot — Who was involved?  What did they think they were doing? — has begun to emerge.  First, the riot is often referred to as an "armed insurrection." A search of the Nexis database of newspapers, websites, and cable news transcripts finds 2,339 times since January 6 in which the riot was described as an "armed insurrection."  On many other occasions, the rioters were described simply as "armed."  But the description requires an asterisk that is rarely, if ever, applied.  A small number of the rioters did indeed have baseball bats or bear spray, and a few used flagsticks or even, in one case, a crutch as weapons to assault Capitol police.  But the armed insurrectionists did not use any firearms.

Ron Johnson Gets FBI to Admit That No Firearms Were Seized During the Capitol Riot.  Ever since the riot in the US Capitol on January 6, we have struggled to find out exactly what happened there.  As time goes on, we are finding that just about everything we were told about that event is false.  We know, for instance, that one of the rioters, the one who took the video of the execution of Ashli Babbitt, was on the payroll of CNN and NBC, see ["]Leftist Videographer John Sullivan Was Paid by Major Media Organizations for Footage of the Capitol Unrest["].  We know that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was not beaten to death, and we also know that nearly two months after his death, the FBI still refuses to give a cause of death or charge anyone with a crime, see ["]FBI Director Wray Is Asked About Brian Sicknick's Cause of Death, His Response Is Just Not Acceptable["].  We know there were no "kill teams" looking for Mike Pence or anyone else.  We know the guys with zip ties picked them up from where Capitol Police dropped them.  We have yet to see any evidence that any member of Congress or senator aided the rioters.

Attack of the Woke Teen Career Killers.  [Scroll down]  This is why newspapers can't be trusted anymore.  Reporters need to have a normal person's understanding of what words mean, so they can get on with the story.  If a field is described as "barren," we don't need to know the precise size, type and amount of vegetation per square foot.  But if we find out that by "barren," reporters mean "lush," then every word becomes suspect, and we're going to need six paragraphs detailing the precise amount of greenery in the field.  Not one word they use can be believed.  More to the point, if reporters call someone a "white supremacist," we need to know if the Times' definition of "white supremacist" includes a person who:
  ·   questions race preferences in hiring and college admissions;
  ·   believes most people are in prison because they committed crimes; or
  ·   admires Western culture.
[...] These sourpuss zealots are in such a mad race to show their wokeness, they are useless as conduits for the news.  What they do isn't "reporting."  It's terrorism.

The Great Hacking of Vermont's Electrical Grid That Never Happened.  Prominent media critics keep insisting that inaccurate reports from prominent institutions are completely different from the made-up "fake news" found on Facebook and other social media networks.  But do news consumers see them as completely different?  The net effect is the same: something that is not true gets communicated far and wide, and the correct information is spread on a much smaller scale.  A new poll found 52 percent of Democrats believe Russia "tampered with the vote tallies" to make Trump the winner in the presidential race.  There is no evidence of this.  When the big-name media institutions and elected Democratic officials twist the news to the point of falsehood, it's not surprising that so many of the rank-and-file would believe something that isn't true.

Lying About Obama.  Jack Cashill has written over a dozen books, including two about the mysterious 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800, one about the Trayvon Martin case, and two — now three — about Barack Obama.  His new book, Unmasking Obama:  The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, is a definitive account not only of Obama's eight years in office but also of the transformation of most mainstream American political journalists, largely during the Obama era, from relatively objective reporters of the facts — emphasis on "relatively" — to dedicated partisans of the left, ready and eager at every turn to cover up unpleasant truths (however important) about Democrats and to promote outrageous lies (however destructive) about Republicans.  Fortunately, in the age of the Internet, the mainstream media have competition.

A culture of lies.  Almost everything you are being told to believe by the mainstream media is a lie.  The legacy media has long since chosen sides and will brazenly cover up anything that could reflect poorly on Democrats, yet will assiduously traffic in any and all innuendo, hearsay, and slander that they feel will harm Republicans/conservatives/Trump supporters.  They gleefully promulgate prevarication in their unending quest to damage Democrats' political opponents.

How many people would still be alive today without media COVID malpractice?  If there's one thing we've learned from the COVID-19 lockdowns, it's that the mainstream media duped us time and again.  Not surprisingly, trust in the Fourth Estate is at an all-time low.  According to Axios, nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with the statement that "journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations."

What a Reporter's Arrest at a BLM Riot Tells Us About the Media.  [Scroll down]  While working for the Des Moines Register, [Andrea] Sahouri had repeatedly covered publicity stunts by Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad.  Even after her arrest, the paper continued to use Sahouri to cover the protests and Samad, including glamorizing the arrest of a BLM organizer busted over the vandalism of a cop car.  There's a basic conflict in having an activist, especially one that has a history with a hate group, covering a cause she's passionate about, especially after she's been arrested.  The Des Moines Register has gone on insisting that Sahouri is a journalist who was wrongly arrested.  But Robnett, her fellow activist and boyfriend, isn't a journalist.  He appears to work in marketing.  Journalists don't bring their boyfriends along to a rally unless they're there to take part in the event.  During the BLM riots, leftist members of the media frequently blurred the line between activism and journalism.  But Sahouri may be one of the more egregious examples.  The Register, Amnesty International, and other left-wing organizations continue to attack the police, but have refused to ask basic questions about Sahouri's extremist background.  Or why she was arrested, along with her boyfriend, while another Register reporter wasn't.

Brainwashing Achieved!  Democrat Voters Overwhelmingly Believe "Trump Supporters" Are The #1 Problem In The Country.  The #1 goal of the liberal media ever since Trump came down the escalator in June of 2015 was to smear his supporters as "racists, bigots, sexist, deplorable scum of the earth".  In early 2021, they added "domestic terrorist" to the list.  Sadly, according to a brand new poll, the media smear campaign has proved to be effective.  A new poll from Echelon Insights shows that the #1 "concern" for Democrat voters is "Trump supporters".  Yes, really.  Not police brutality, gun violence, healthcare, student debt, or 7 of the other items they were asked about.  Trump supporters. [...] The media makes the money machine churn when they can divide the people, and the results of this poll show they are doing an exceptional job.

Why The Texas Blackout Has The Greens So Scared:  Deflecting blame to a more exciting apocalypse.  Within days, most of the country was seeing "with our own eyes" and feeling "in our bones" a cold wave so severe that five million people lost electricity and, in a special irony, nearly half of the ballyhooed wind turbines in Texas, which had risen to supply 23% of her energy, were left frozen (and inoperable).  This constituted a double whammy to the huge global warming establishment.  First was the cold, when the "science" had confidently predicted a steadily warming Texas.  Second was the failure of renewables, vastly exacerbating the problems for the energy grid.  Within hours the mainstream media had risen to the challenge.  Journalists employed their familiar word games, quickly substituting "climate change" for global warming.  Readers might be a tad confused if they read "The brutal cold striking Texas is emblematic of a world facing more unpredictable weather due to the rising impact of global warming" but substitute "climate change" for the last two words and presto, the sentence works.  To be sure, that's only because "climate change" is a meaningless term.

Exposing Fact-Checker "Mistruths" on 2020 Election Lawsuits.  Virtually all "fact-checkers" are members of the Democrat-media complex.  They are an important component of the Left's political tactics seeking to discredit contrarian voices they deem not to be "politically correct" and undermining dissent on Democrat agendas.  Not surprisingly, "fact-checking" has nothing to do with checking the facts, but rather is a tactic to discredit material that effectively undermines the Democrat-media narrative.  A good example is Snopes: [...] Snopes is not alone in their leftwing bias.  The same bias applies to the "fact-checkers" at Politifact, Facebook, Twitter, Washington Post, and other media-connected checkers and supposed ombudsmen.  All are supposedly affiliated with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies' International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), but they routinely and blatantly violate the number 1 principle of ICFN:  a commitment to nonpartisanship and fairness.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The mainstream media's quandary ... and panic.  [Scroll down]  When mainstream press isn't covering up information that is damaging to the progressives cause, it fabricates stories against conservatives like the Russian collusion hoax or reporting that the riot in the Capital on Jan. 6 was an insurrection led by Donald Trump.  Both of these stories were lies from start to finish.  But both lead to poisoning the minds of countless Americans against the president and two impeachments against him.  Yet during the summer of 2020, the press presented the Antifa and BLM riots as mostly peaceful demonstrations.

Everything is Fake in Utopia.  When Democrats gain power through fraud, everything that follows becomes fake as well. [...] When deception is normalized, tech giants can routinely conceal Biden's unpopularity.  On Biden's campaign trail, mass manipulators scripted questions for audience members to ask him.  Not even a month into office, the phony administration requested its media allies brief them on questions they intend to ask.  White House press conferences will still be theatre, but Jim Acosta will no longer have a part.  Our fraud-in-chief was filmed repeating "salute the marines" after someone likely relayed the command to him through an earpiece.  If you ask the fraudsters, Biden actually said "good-looking marines," and we all misheard him.  We're supposed to believe that Biden complimenting the looks of male marines is more sensical than a party of manipulators secretly telling a senile puppet what to do.  I'll take door number two.  When everything is fake, Joe Biden is a "devout Christian" who supports abortion, Black Lives Matter, and the most radical factions of the LGBTQ lobby.  It doesn't matter that these movements are antithetical to Christianity because fake is the new normal.

Boycott the Gaslight Media and Save America.  There is one major lesson that conservatives and frankly all Americans must learn:  never accept at face value the reporting of any news event.  By foolishly acquiescing to the version of a story put out by the denizens of the mainstream media, the citizenry allows the ruling oligarchy to set the narrative and exploit the inevitably fabricated incidents that further their cause.  In place of "mainstream media," they ought to be called Gaslight Media, for their role is not to report the truth, but rather to manipulate the public into a mental state conducive to obedience. [...] These statists are aware that once their version of a story has been repeated ad nauseum for days or weeks the bulk of the populace will accept it as the truth, thus, achieving near-permanent status in the national discourse.

The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.  What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot.  As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode.  Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented and condemned.  But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news media.  Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was.  There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists.  The more consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods are.  Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago.

The Media Has Been Lying About The Capitol Protests.  Look up any story about the storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters, and you will find it described as a "deadly riot" that killed five people.  Worse still, one of the deaths was that a police officer who — the story goes — was killed by rioters after getting hit in the head by a fire extinguisher.  Then there is the story of the protestor who "carried Zip Ties into the Capitol," which led to accusations that the protestors intended to take hostages.  There have also been endless media descriptions of the event as an "armed insurrection."  And there were stories claiming that, as Reuters put it, "Capitol rioters meant to 'capture and assassinate' officials."  What is common about all of these media-fed narratives?  Not one of them is true.

The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.  What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot.  As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode.  Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented and condemned.  But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news media.  Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was.  There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists.  The more consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods are.  Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago.  And anyone who tries to correct these falsehoods is instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you want only truthful reporting about what happened, then you're trying to "minimize" what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.

The Impeachment Show.  Lost in the tedium and general lack of interest in the impeachment show put on by the Democrats last week is the general weirdness of our ruling class.  What we see in politics and in the media is presented as if it is completely normal.  No one ever points out the facts or the contradictions with reality.  The presenters and their subjects are all super-serious, as if everything they are saying and doing is completely normal.  The reaction to the very peaceful demonstrations by Trump fans last month is a great example of this weird disconnect.  We live in an age where everything is monitored by millions of mobile-phone cameras.  As a result, everyone got to see hours of amateur video shot during the subdued protests in Washington back in January.  Yet the carrying-on by the politicians and media is disconnected from what we saw online.  If you are a left-wing partisan, all of it confirms your belief that Trump is a magical orange Hitler commanding an invisible army of Hitlers.  Of course, for these people, everything confirms this belief.  They are insane.

NYT Retracts Story First Published on Jan. 8 That Capitol Hill Police Officer Was Killed by a Fire Extinguisher Thrown by Protesters.  Wow, what coincidental timing.  The story claiming that a police officer was murdered by Trump supporters during the Capitol Hill protest on January 6 is, for all practical purposes, retracted by the NYT the day after Pres.  Trump is acquitted on the impeachment charge of having instigated those protests — which were declared by Democrats and the media an "insurrection" against the government. [...] Julie Strong at American Greatness has been aggressively pursuing this story for weeks, and two days ago she published a column that noted efforts by media outlets — including the NYT — to slowly back away from narrative created by the early reporting done by the NYT and acknowledging that the cause of Sicknick's death was still undetermined.  The narrative built around that early reporting was that he was struck by a demonstrator wielding a fire extinguisher — a narrative advanced by both liberal and conservative media outlets in their effort to railroad Donald Trump over the past 5 weeks.  That narrative has now unraveled because there simply is no evidence to support the claim that the fire extinguisher episode actually happened.

The 'Insurrection Hallucination' and How We Got There.  It's no secret the media has lots of ways to gaslight you.  One of those is failing to report significant happenings.  Another is booking and quoting people whose views they want to advance because they target those they dislike.  Yet another is spreading outright lies, like the contrafactual assertions that Antifa-BLM riots around the country for the past four years were "mostly peaceful" or that President Trump wanted people to inject bleach to kill the spreading virus.  This week, despite their best efforts, a lot of those lies and liars have been unmasked.

The Times' Superspreader Lie About Officer Sicknick.  Like so many fabricated storylines intended to damage Donald Trump and his supporters, the New York Times cited anonymous sources to support a shocking claim in an article alleging Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by a Trump "insurrectionist" on January 6.  "[P]ro-Trump rioters attacked that citadel of democracy, overpowered Mr. Sicknick, 42, and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to two law enforcement officials," Times reporters claimed January 8, the day after Sicknick died.  "With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support.  He died on Thursday evening."  That horrifying account quickly made its way into the vernacular of journalists, lawmakers, political pundits, and regular Americans without dispute.  CNN, as Raheem Kassam detailed here, for weeks repeated the line as fact.  Ditto for MSNBC.  In a tirade earlier this week, "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough called Donald Trump a "cop killer" and raged that GOP Senators wouldn't vote to convict. [...] But the narrative about what happened to Sicknick is quickly unraveling, as I wrote earlier this week.  Not only is CNN, the network that helped perpetuate the initial storyline for more than a month, questioning the circumstances about Sicknick's death, so too is the New York Times.

Our Tarnished Institutions and the Boy Who Cried Wolf.  The only bright side to this situation is that the people now cannot ignore the lies being pumped out by what we thought were our institutions.  We can thank Trump for that.  He said what he would do, and then did it.  The contrast to business-as-usual was stunning and refreshing.  We liked it and wanted more of it.  Which the swamp could not allow.  Russia!  Russia!  Russia!  Ukraine!  Impeachment!  Systemic racism!  BLM!  Pandemic!  Insurrection!  Is there a previously-trusted institution which hasn't cried wolf about the bad orange man in the last four years?

Tucker Carlson Lays out Some Uncomfortable Questions About the Capitol Riot.  Recently, RedState reported on a CNN article that included a very interesting passage regarding the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who passed sometime after the Capitol riot on January 6th.  Though a story that he had been beaten to death by a fire extinguisher had spread far and wide in the media, it turns out that an investigation found no signs of trauma on his body, nor have investigators been able to find any video of him sustaining wounds that could have taken his life.  The latest theory by investigators is that he may have had a reaction to pepper spray being used that day, though that's purely speculation at this point. [...] One of the things Tucker talks about is the idea that five people died as a direct result of the riots, a statement that has been made more times than one can count by the news media.  In regards to what we actually know right now, he notes that one person died of what appears to have been a heart attack while on the phone with his wife.  Another man had a stroke, and there's no evidence he was even part of the riot that day.  Another woman died after passing out, possibly being trampled by the crowd as a result.  In other words, of the five people listed as dying that day due to the riots, three of them were unquestionably accidental.

Jake Tapper and Chris Hayes Lose Their Minds 'Inciting' Against GOP And Reveal Next Step to Control the Narrative.  [Scroll down]  The GOP got "hundred of thousands of Americans" killed?  When did that happen?  "Then helped a deadly attack on the Capitol."  No, as far as I know, the GOP denounced any violence and were themselves threatened with a bomb at the RNC.  No, actually there wasn't "unprecedented death" for a pandemic.  Unfortunately, there are deaths in a pandemic as there have been all over the world.  Had Trump not been in power, if Biden had been there, it would have been far worse.  Biden wouldn't have cut off travel with China and it would have been exponentially worse.  "Destruction and misery and mourning."  Yes, there was a lot of that from mostly Democratic lockdowns, where Democrats denied aid, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proved, until after the election, exacting the most harm to the economy believing it could adversely affect President Donald Trump.  There was also a lot of that during the BLM/Antifa riots that the Democrats not only failed to condemn, but actually embraced by donating to a rioter bail fund, supporting violent rioters over the people and the police being harmed, and attacking efforts to curtail the riots by law enforcement and the federal government.

Accurate List of 2020 Election Fraud Cases Shows 81 Cases Total, 30 Still Active.  We've heard over and over from Big Media that President Trump and his team lost numerous court cases linked to the 2020 election.  But this is not accurate.  Here's what we identified from our research of an accurate and updated list of court cases:
  •   There are 81 court cases to date based on the 2020 election
  •   In 45 cases President Trump was the plaintiff
  •   In 34 cases President Trump is not the plaintiff
  •   In 2 cases President Trump is the defendant
  •   In 72 cases illegal voting is alleged
  •   In ZERO of the 72 cases where illegal voting is alleged has evidence been allowed to be presented
  •   30 cases remain active

CNN Finally Acknowledges the Story Media Spread About Officer Sicknick's Cause of Death Isn't True.  Earlier this week, the body of Officer Brian Sicknick lay in state in the U.S. Capitol.  Everyone honored his life and service.  But the government is having trouble building a murder case there has still not been an official determination as to his cause of death.  After being part of the force during the actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6, he went back to his office.  Some hours later, he collapsed and then later died.  But what has been determined is that the story largely spread about his death, that he was hit by a fire extinguisher by protesters has been discounted, according to a CNN report, because they found no blunt force trauma to his body and there has been no evidence otherwise found, such as video or witnesses, that the incident even occurred.

Hit-job journalism misses the target again.  The hit-job interview is a staple of British journalism.  There is, I suppose, an obvious attraction to it: while it can destroy its subject, it can also make the career of a journalist.  And yet for the reader, listener or viewer, it can also be deeply boring — for the simple reason that if the journalist makes clear their conclusion from the outset, there's no chance of having a reasonable discussion.  People who agree with it rejoice, those who don't switch off.  Nothing gets learned; no ideas are properly discussed.  Such was the case with an interview published in last week's Sunday Times by the journalist Decca Aitkenhead.  Her subject was Professor Jordan Peterson, and, like everything to do with Peterson, the interview has kicked up a fair amount of fuss — principally because it was so mean and hostile.

Crucifying Jordan Peterson.  [Scroll down]  Emerging from this nightmare and prepared to step back onto the public stage, Peterson agreed to a major interview with Decca Aitkenhead for the Sunday Times of London.  The story appeared on January 31; on the same day, Peterson posted on YouTube a recording of the nearly three-hour Zoom conversations that he and his daughter, Mikhaila, had with Aitkenhead.  In the recording (which as of Wednesday had accumulated half a million hits), Peterson is friendly and forthcoming, but emotionally fragile as a consequence of his long torment; at one point he breaks into tears and has to step away from the microphone.  Mikhaila, for her part, spends an hour and a half telling Aitkenhead the full story of Peterson's illness, complete with vivid particulars.  And Aitkenhead poses throughout as entirely sympathetic, sounding more like a compassionate social worker than a journalist.  But — and this is why Peterson felt compelled to post the audio of the interview — Aitkenhead's piece for the Times proved to be a masterpiece of pure snideness and dishonesty.  She reduced Peterson's deep learning and richly nuanced wisdom about life to "bracing advice about how to be a real man."  She caricatured the multitudes of people whose lives he's helped to turn around as "young men who idolise him" as a "fantasy father figure."

The war on Jordan Peterson.  Leftist hatred for the Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson is really something to behold.  He stands as an example of what happens to someone who strays from the crazy line of thinking by modern campus bigots.  Mr. Peterson is the canary in the toxic coal mine of political correctness and petty thought police.  Let's start with the professor's crime.  Simply put, Mr. Peterson does not share the monolithic, prevailing liberal orthodoxy on university campuses dictating that Western White males are the world's evil oppressors and anyone who does not belong to that evil race is a victim trapped in circumstances beyond his or her control.

The 'Big Lie' And Big Liars.  There's a media-perpetrated myth that Joe Biden is a moderate; that he's an honest man.  He is not, and never has been.  He's a politician, a Democrat, who now has the authority of the United States government behind him.  The Big Lies are spread daily from the podium of the White House press briefing room.  Jen Psaki and her red hair have returned from a CNN contributor gig, and after disseminating lies for the Obama State Department, this "Ginger Goebbels" freely spouts whatever words fit their needs at the moment.  Unbound by reality or any challenge of the one they paint daily, even when it contradicts the one they painted the day before, the lies just keep getting bigger.  They inherited "no plan" for vaccine distribution?  Schools can't reopen unless billions are spent hiring more teachers when all data shows schools are safe?  But they're the "party of science"?  No lie is too small to tell, none too big to swallow, and none are or will be challenged.

Op-ed calls very real conservative censorship, purge a 'vapid new conspiracy theory' by Rupert Murdoch.  From the left's standpoint, claims that the 2020 presidential election — which was marred by millions of unsolicited mail-in ballots sent out because of the pandemic — was stolen is a "big lie," insisting there is "no evidence" to support the assertion.  Never mind that three out of four Republicans with eyes that can see believe it to be true — an anomaly dismissed as just a bunch of rubes being manipulated by former President Donald Trump.  This being the same cabal that insists conservatives are not being censored by Big Tech.  No, it's just more conspiracy-mongering on the right.  Just ask Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall, who said in op-ed that "there is a new dangerous conspiracy afoot, and it's being amplified by arguably the most important person in all of political media:  Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch."

Stop credulously calling China a 'people's republic'.  The effect of re-labeling is well known, and it is widely used by the politicians. [...] Oppressive regimes, aware of the power of labels, use them to their full advantage, and include positive labels right into the official names of their states.  Names like "United States" or the "Russian Federation" tell you little about those countries' political organization, but how about words like "democracy" or "republic"?  I started wondering, why do we in the West parrot those words even when they are manifestly misleading?  Is there really a "Peoples' Republic of China"?  In the huge geographic area so designated, people have zero input into how they are governed.  This is decided for them by the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wise chairman of the Communist Party.  So why not call it — in the Western press at least — the "Communist Dictatorship of China"?

The Media Told Us a Violent Revolt Was Coming.  What Happened?  It is worth noting today that media outlets are reporting Joe Biden will serve his first full day as President of the United States, and no American cities are burning.  No one is calling for the end of the Republic.  America still stands. [...] We have been told conservatives were going to revolt, trying to overthrow a fairly elected incoming President.  Instead, what we saw yesterday was a peaceful transfer of power.  Alleged flyers calling for an armed protest never happened.  The protests at 50 state capitals never materialized.  It's like all these hyped-up mini-revolutions were never going to happen, but some people who are not conservatives needed for these events to happen to further their own agenda.  Let's get something straight:  The armed mob that attacked the Capitol building was not representative of the 75 million people who voted for Donald Trump in November.

Media trust hits new low.  For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media, according to data from Edelman's annual trust barometer shared exclusively with Axios.  Trust in social media has hit an all-time low of 27%.  56% of Americans agree with the statement that "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations."  58% think that "most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public."  When Edelman re-polled Americans after the election, the figures had deteriorated even further, with 57% of Democrats trusting the media and only 18% of Republicans.

Trust In Media At All Time Low:  Majority Believe Reporters Purposefully Trying To Mislead People.  Each year, the American people seem to trust the media less and less.  This year's annual survey from Edelman shows trust in traditional media and social media are at all-time lows.  The annual trust barometer, shared exclusively with Axios, found fewer than half of Americans trust traditional media for the first time since the survey began.

GOP Leaders in D.C. Don't Represent 74 Million Trump Voters.  The media lie.  All the time.  They lied about former President Barack Obama's economy; they tried to make us believe the worst economy since the Great Depression was a great economy.  Then they lied about President Donald Trump's soaring economy.  They tried to make us believe the best economy in 50 years, maybe the best economy ever for middle-class Americans, was a bad economy.  They lied about the Black Lives Matter riots.  For months, we saw radical communists, Marxists and violent thugs riot, loot, burn, mug and murder while attacking police officers with bricks, pipes and Molotov cocktails.  They burned entire downtown business districts to the ground, such as those in Minneapolis and Kenosha, Wisconsin. [...] They killed over 30 people.  They caused over $2 billion in damage.  Yet liberal politicians and the liberal media ignored it all, or made believe it never happened, or made believe it was "peaceful," or encouraged it, or supported it.  In many cases, they did all of the above.

Media Lie About Supposed Capitol Hill Attacker, Here's the Real Story.  It's almost like the mainstream media want to raise the temperature and stoke unsubstantiated fear.  Actually, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they want to do.  That was made apparent again today after a lie was trumpeted by several major media outlets before being shown to be mostly false.  I'm talking about the story that a man provided "fake" inauguration credentials while carrying 500 rounds of handgun ammunition on his person in an attempt to enter the Capitol area.  This was supposed to be proof of an elevated threat, with the assumption being that this guy was there to shoot the place up as a probable QAnon disciple.  The real story is way, way less exciting.

In today's America, the wise person willfully suspends belief.  Twenty years ago, I believed most of what came over the nation's airwaves.  Ten years ago, I was becoming quite the skeptic.  Today, after years of unrelenting attacks on the President, I don't believe any of it.  It's all lies, half-truths, and misinformation, designed to influence elections and steer the collective mentality toward accepting the loss of freedom, the loss of constitutional rights and, eventually, to embrace communist ideas and authoritarian policies.  I'm not sure when it all went south, but I think it was probably long before I first became aware that there was a problem.

Trump, supporters likened to Nazis, Saddam's Ba'ath Party in cable-news demonization duel.  President Trump and his supporters were likened to dictators, despots, terrorists, and genocidal maniacs this week by dueling cable news competitors and elected officials.  MSNBC viewers watched programming on Wednesday with analogies to the Ba'ath Party under Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, while CNN's were warned about large amounts of "Nazis" and "Klan" members permeating the Republican Party.  The cable news punditry was punctuated by Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California likening Mr. Trump to the terrorist who orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — Osama bin Laden — during an interview with "PBS NewsHour."

Three crucial questions remain unanswered about Capitol siege.  One thing recent history has taught America is the first storyline of major tragedies or controversies is never the most accurate.  Americans were told by the Bush administration that they were sucker-punched by a surprise attack on 9/11 by terrorists, only to learn the CIA and FBI had significant advance evidence of the plot and its players and failed to connect the dots.  Susan Rice originally told the nation that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was carried out spontaneously by a mob angered by an anti-Muslim video.  The attack, it turned out, was pre-planned and carried out by an al-Qaeda-aligned terror group in Libya.  The country was assured Christopher Steele's dossier provided credible evidence of Donald Trump colluding with Russia, when in fact the CIA and FBI knew almost immediately it was uncorroborated and based in part on Russian disinformation.  And now just a week after the heinous and deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol, the final narrative of what actually happened is still being written, revised and unmasked.

We Need a New Media System.  Media firms work backward.  They first ask, "How does our target demographic want to understand what's just unfolded?" Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.  It's why Fox News uses the term, "Pro-Trump protesters," while New York and The Atlantic use "Insurrectionists." [...] What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population.  For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a "Just the facts" newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

Is Truth Irrelevant?  It is amazing how many people seem to have discovered last Wednesday that riots are wrong — when many of those same people apparently had not noticed that when riots went on, for weeks or even months, in various cities across the country last year.  For too many people, especially in the media, what is right and wrong, true or false, depends on who it helps or hurts politically.  Too many media people who are supposed to be reporters act as if they are combatants in political wars.  Someone once said that, in a war, truth is the first casualty.  That has certainly been so in the media — and in much of academia as well.

Media Have Hypocritical Double Standard on Trump vs BLM Protests.  Wednesday was proof that how corporate media and Democrat politicians report and comment on acts of civil unrest depends upon who is engaged in the rioting.  Six months ago The New York Times, which has been described as the national "newspaper of record," made excuses for rioters who attempted to take over the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon.  It reported that "the nightly assault on the federal courthouse has been part of a much wider peaceful resistance ... that began assembling nearly two months ago in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of the Minneapolis police."  The Times continued, "the aim, as it has been in other cities, was to assemble for sweeping police reform and racial justice."  Reporting on Wednesday's protest in Washington, D.C., The Times' "peaceful resistance" suddenly became a "mob."  Instead of "assembling," the protesters engaged in "rampage" and "chaos," incited by President Trump, which became a "part of his legacy."

Enough! There Was No Riot, Insurrection or "Storming!"  Enough!  Enough of the gaslighting by the press.  Enough of the gaslighting by the party of slavery, Jim Crow, the KKK, want, deprivation, envy and murder of the unborn in the womb.  Most especially, enough of their "Republican," enablers, who believe they can gain political favor or DC cocktail circuit invites, by promoting these blatant lies.  What is even more egregious, these lies have already become, "common knowledge." [...] Aside from a couple of bozos who broke a window to get in, I clearly saw Capitol Police opening doors for protestors to enter, while appearing to cordially chat with them as they strolled through the building.

Death of Capitol Police Officer After Protest May Not Be as Initially Reported.  The death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was a tragedy.  But as it turns out, the facts originally reported about his death may not have been accurate.  The initial story implied that he died from an attack by protesters at the Capitol, it was even reported that he was hit with a fire extinguisher.  Apparently though, the facts as of this moment are not there to confirm that claim.  Yet that has gone everywhere as "facts."  Indeed, according to ABC, they are reporting that Sicknick's death may have been "driven by a medical condition." [...] Now his death may have been been related to interactions with the protesters, but we should wait until the evidence is in.  People are being whipped up based on unconfirmed or outright false reports, in a highly charged political climate.  Meanwhile, folks on the left on Twitter are spreading a video which they allege is Sicknick being beaten to death by Trump supporters, after his family asked people not to make his passing political.  It isn't him and it's not entirely clear what the video shows.

The Editor says...
[#1] Beating a cop with a fire extinguisher doesn't sound like something a Republican would do.  But it does sound like something an Antifa infiltrator would do.  [#2] I'm sure the Twitter Thought Police will remove the video if it's being used to spread misleading ideas.

Only In Your Imagination Was That An Attempted "Coup".  At no point yesterday was the American government at risk of being "overthrown," as members of Congress have laughably suggested.  Per usual, our guardians of consensus can't bring themselves to describe what unfolded with any degree of dispassion or calm.  Instead we're told by the incoming Senate Majority Leader, for example, that January 6, 2021 will now "live in infamy" right alongside December 7, 1941.  Elected officials issued emotional notices that they were "okay," like they had just narrowly avoided being crushed in an earthquake, or escaped the World Trade Center on 9/11.  This is made all the more odd because the only person upon whom lethal force was committed appears to have been a Trump-supporting woman who was shot point-blank in the throat by a Capitol Hill police officer.  She's now dead.  Congress was temporarily inconvenienced.  Journalists and pundits, glorying in their natural state — which is to peddle as much free-flowing hysteria as possible — eagerly invoke all the same rhetoric that they'd abhor in other circumstances on civil libertarian grounds.  "Domestic terrorism," "insurrection," and other such terms now being promoted by the corporate media will nicely advance the upcoming project of "making sure something like this never happens again."  Use your imagination as to what kind of remedial measures that will entail.

Things That Need to Be Said About Today's Chaos in D.C..  [Scroll down]  Secondly, it's fascinating that the media and Democrats have all of a sudden figured out that violence and rioting are wrong and should be condemned.  We all remember how for months last year they painted violent Antifa/BLM rioters and agitators as "peaceful protesters" even as businesses were looted and burned to the ground, entire city blocks were turned to ashes, federal courthouses and officers were attacked with incendiary devices, and neighborhoods were invaded.

Just What Were You Expecting?  [Scroll down]  Whether walking on the street or gathered on the Capitol steps, people were waving flags and as far as I could see, nobody was throwing punches.  Nobody was throwing bricks or Molotov cocktails.  In fact, one video clip I found very interesting, was one group of protestors who managed to gain entry to the Capitol Building, was walking/strolling through Statuary Hall, and they were all staying inside the velvet guide ropes running down the center!!  Nobody toppled any statues over or anything like that.  Surely not some "maddened mob" as the media kept hyping all afternoon long.  Here are some things that bother me.  First of all, the media.  The way they were hyping this, you would think there was an all out assault by heavily armed rioters, hell bent on killing everyone inside the building.  The media kept using the words, "shots fired," implying that the "mob" had shot somebody, maybe even a policeman.  Turns out, it was a Capitol policeman who shot an unarmed female protestor.

Politico reporter urges journalists to drop 'conservative,' switch to 'extremist'.  Journalists have one job:  to fairly and accurately report the news.  But, in today's climate, many do quite the opposite.  The left-wing media conglomerate works tirelessly to put Democrats on a pedestal, all while making republicans look like eternal villains.  Now, a top Politico reporter is calling on his fellow journalists to stop referring to republicans as conservatives.  Instead, refer to them as "extremists."

C-SPAN Brings Steve Scully Back After He Admitted To Lying About Debate-Related Incident.  C-SPAN announced on Tuesday that it is bringing back disgraced host Steve Scully effective immediately despite Scully's admission, last year, that he lied about a debate-related incident that unfolded on social media.  Last October, before the second presidential debate, Scully falsely claimed that he had been hacked after a tweet appeared on his Twitter account that solicited advice from Trump opponent Anthony Scaramucci about how to deal with President Donald Trump at the debate, which he was set to host.

Cosmopolitan now promotes obesity as 'healthy'.  After decades of promoting stick-thin, big-cleavage women as sexy, Cosmopolitan women's magazine has a new schtick:  Promoting obese women as healthy. [...] They use young women of course, whose bodies can probably resist many of the problems of obesity at first.  That's a deception, because obesity eventually accumulates in problems if it's not eventually gotten rid of.  But this isn't stopping Cosmo.  Its obesity-is-healthy claim is about as accurate as the other falsehoods going around — that men can become women, or that racism causes COVID.  It's fantasyland stuff, and coming more and more from the left.  So much for "following the science."

The media are lying about Trump's phone call with Raffensperger.  The mainstream media and Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, are utterly disgraceful, dishonest, and manipulative people.  Raffensperger released a private phone call that the media immediately claimed — falsely — showed Trump begging Raffensperger to fraudulently find enough votes for Trump to win.  In fact, Trump called Raffensperger to get him to stop obstructing the fraud investigation. [...] Here's what really happened on the phone call.  First, Trump wasn't the only person on the phone.  Also present were Mark Meadows, Mike Pompeo, and multiple attorneys.  There isn't the slightest chance that they would have allowed Trump to beg Raffensperger for illegal votes or to threaten him.  Second, contrary to what the media implied, Trump was not operating off the premise that he lost Georgia.  If that had been the case, it would indeed have been wrong for Trump to beg for Raffensperger to "find" votes for him.  Instead, Trump was operating from the assertion that he won Georgia.

Gallup Poll Shows Most Americans Share Trump's Lack of Trust in Honesty of Media.  One important public service President Donald Trump has performed for the American people has been to pull the veneer back and fully expose the incredible bias of the establishment media.  Only 28 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup last month rated the honesty and ethical standards of journalists as either "very high" or "high."  Contrast that with police officers, who earned a combined 52 percent rating in those categories, down just 2 percentage points from 2019, despite the massive "defund the police" protests nationwide.

Biden is Not 'President-Elect' Until Congress Counts Electoral Votes on January 6, 2021.  Let us say it all together, "Joe Biden is not the president-elect."  Americans have been bombarded with fake news about Biden's status in the 2020 presidential election.  Facebook, Twitter, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, PBS have all declared Biden the winner.  But this is far from over.  We have reported on massive election fraud from multiple sources.  The media refuses to do so, therefore we must tell the truth.  [Video clip]

How to Steal an Election in Four Steps.  [Scroll down]  In truth, President Trump likely received between 74.5 million and 76.5 million votes, winning both the popular vote and the electoral vote handily.  The media reported none of this, except anecdotally as Republican griping.  They reported that Biden had won, and that he was the president-elect, though he was not because the count was still in progress.  Major broadcast media refused to carry important updates by the President of the United States and ridiculed anyone who questioned the integrity of the election:  Trump was a cry baby:  Giuliani was unbalanced; Sidney Powell was a conspiracy theorist.  When Fox News chose to ignore stark reality in favor of the lie (Tucker Carlson accused Powell — perhaps the most respected attorney in Washington — of making claims she could not substantiate) it lost a huge chunk of its viewership to Newsmax and OANN, networks on which the news is not scripted in advance.  The Left went into, "Why can we all just get along" mode.  "A time for healing," said the newspapers.  They defended mail-in voting, the count stoppages, Dominion software, etc.  Evidence did not matter to them, only selling the narrative that Biden was the victor.  They enlisted the help of Trump-hating Republicans like Mitt Romney, Chris Christi, and Paul Ryan to implore Trump, the overwhelming winner, to concede.

5 Reasons Why You're Not Crazy to Question the Election Results.  You've gotten the memo from the leftist chin-strokers on social media.  It's simple.  You're insane for questioning the 2020 presidential election result.  Joe Biden is the president-elect, so you just run along and ignore the copious news stories about election fraud and get over it.  Man up!  Political titans on Capitol Hill look visibly concerned when asked by MSM reporters about the president and his millions of voters who aren't convinced that this election wasn't filled with fraud.  The party of Governor Stacey Abrams, President Hillary Clinton, and "Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances" dares to point the magenta cat-toy-feather-wand of shame at Republicans who can't believe that the candidate with the most momentum and the power of the incumbency didn't win.  You're not wrong.  And you're not crazy.

The Trump-Hating Media Prepare For A Long Nap Under Biden.  [Scroll down]  The national media are, by virtually any recognized metric, now collectively far to the left on the political spectrum.  They hate Trump, capitalism, America's history and culture, and all the blue-collar, hard-working, tax-paying schlubs out there who make it all possible.  The media began the year in COVID-19 denial, pretending, along with leading Democrats, that the fast-spreading virus was nothing to worry about.  They quickly did an about-face after realizing that virus could be weaponized politically against Trump.  Since then, Americans have been subjected to non-stop propaganda on everything from vaccines and hydroxychloroquine to lockdowns and mandatory masks.  The goal:  weaken Trump, and turn Americans into terrified "yes" people, subservient to bureaucrat-scientists such as Anthony Fauci.  That's what's also behind the media campaign to blame Trump, not the communist Chinese, for the novel coronavirus.  No sooner had the virus emerged than the media were reporting that Trump had "slashed" Centers for Disease Control spending, implying he had left us vulnerable.  Wrong.  His budgets increased CDC spending every year.

This Tennessee Data for Masked vs. Unmasked Counties Would Be on Every Front Page, if the Results Were Different.  As you may have heard, we've sort of got a "casedemic" problem here in Tennessee.  That means lots and lots (and lots) of people are testing positive for COVID-19.  That's about all we know for sure, of course.  Nevertheless, hand-wringing from media, politicians, and local 'health authorities' is seemingly neverending, as are local reporters in my neck of the woods being filmed standing in front of that FEMA body truck they don't bother to tell us has been sitting in front of the regional hospital, unused, SINCE MARCH.  Hospitals aren't overwhelmed by any measure, and even the death toll isn't really all that impressive either considering that Tennessee is actually below the national average in deaths per million and most people who are dying are either already super old or super sick.  Indeed, while COVID does tragically hit some people hard, most 'cases' are quite mild and often non-symptomatic, driven by panic at every sniffle or people being forced to test for work and other reasons.  And there is increasingly solid evidence that not everyone counted as a 'COVID death' is really a death caused by COVID, but rather someone who had a positive PCR test at some point in 2020 before dying.  When you have a highly contagious respiratory virus going around, particularly one that is seasonal and seems to be boxing out the flu, an increasing percentage of those who die will likely have it.  These 'scary' numbers lie at the root of the ongoing panic and give continued justification for our overlords to continue to exercise control over society.

Soviet-Style Media Propaganda in America.  Pick a theme from the last four years:  Trump-Russia collusion, Trump has told a bazillion lies, Trump is an authoritarian, Trump will get us into a war with North Korea, it's impossible for Trump to get a vaccine by the end of the year.  Yada yada yada.  All of these things and more — including themes that have nothing whatsoever to do with Trump — were flatly untrue.  Which, in a society where the media is honest, would have been reported by that media.  A real media this minute would be investigating the results of the 2020 election and whether or not the President and his supporters are correct that there was indeed at least some election fraud.  But, of course, that's not what the media is doing.  They simply ignore the evidence, repeatedly label the very idea of voter fraud "baseless" — and move on.

Mike Pompeo slams reporter over coverage of wife's alleged COVID diagnosis.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is slamming a reporter over the handling of coverage of his wife's alleged COVID-19 diagnosis.  In a series of tweets Thursday, the nation's top diplomat refuted a now-deleted post which claimed that he and wife Susan Pompeo had attended a State Department holiday party one day before testing positive.  "My wife and I did not attend any State Department nor White House holiday parties — your statement is patently FALSE," Pompeo wrote.  "This isn't journalism and it's worse than gossip — it's unethical and potentially unlawful.  Stay tuned."  After Bloomberg reporter Nicholas Wadhams took down the tweet, Pompeo posted a screenshot along with a message reading, "Good to see this tweet — with patently false information — was deleted.  I won't hold my breath for an apology."

Are Democrats In Trouble In 2022?  [Scroll down]  [W]hat Democrats like Adam Nagourney determinedly call "protests against police abuses" consist largely of arson, assault and looting.  Nothing says "I'm against police abuses" like looting a pharmacy, liquor store or jewelry store.  There is a reason why countless stores in urban areas were boarded up, and in many cases remain boarded up, and the reason isn't that someone is "protesting against police abuses."  Further, Democrats in a number of cities, like Seattle, Portland, Chicago and Minneapolis, proved to be so sympathetic to rioters that they were unwilling to take effective measures to stop them.  Voters noticed.  One more thing:  Nagourney's statement that riots, looting and arson were "heavily covered on local television" is revealing.  The [New York] Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the broadcast networks and other reliable Democratic outlets tried to suppress information about the riots that took place across the country, precisely so that such information would not damage the Democratic Party.  But they failed, mostly on account of local news coverage, which was less dedicated to the Democratic cause and more interested in letting viewers know what was going on.

Tainted Tallies Tell Tall Tales.  [Scroll down]  Speaking on an episode of War Room:  Pandemic, [Rudy] Giuliani asserted that the American people have not yet had the opportunity to examine evidence that appears to have corrupted some vote counts in key battleground states.  "Facts have been kept from them," Giuliani declared.  "Not a single court decision has had a hearing yet.  They haven't heard from a single witness.  They haven't looked at a single tape.  They haven't listened to a single recording.  There are thousands of them."  Amber Athey voiced the sentiments of many when she wrote, "The media has been claiming since the election ended that President Trump's claims of voter fraud are 'baseless' and 'without evidence'.  That just is not true.  The President's lawyer gave examples of [voter fraud.] ... But everyone is too busy mocking him to pay attention." [...] A December 2020 Fox News national survey of registered voters found that 68% of Republicans, 26% of independents, and 10% of Democrats believe that the election was stolen from Trump.

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Yes, It Was a Stolen Election.  As Americans continue to watch the 2020 election controversy unfold, the very same publications that spent years lying about President Trump's "Russia collusion" are once again telling us what we are dutifully supposed to believe.  The Los Angeles Times, for instance, assures us that Trump's "baseless" and "dangerous" claim "that the election was rigged to benefit Joe Biden" has been thoroughly "debunked."  The New York Times proclaims that "Trump's false election fraud claims" are founded upon nothing more than a "torrent of falsehoods."  Sneering at "how Trump drove the lie that the election was stolen," The Washington Post mocks Republicans who "are still pretending that there was election fraud."  And CNN.com warns that "Trump's obsession with overturning the election" has now begun to spiral "out of control."  But so much for what the comic books have to say.  What follows is a compilation of vital facts that will demonstrate, to anyone interested in following the truth wherever it may lead, that the 2020 presidential election was indeed rife with fraud, and that Joe Biden, if he should in fact be sworn into office next month, will be an illegitimate president from the very start.

A thread on this viral map, which attempts to paint a very scary picture.  [D]epending on where you live, it is almost certain someone at your Thanksgiving gathering will have COVID.  Look at all that red!  But, the map has massive problems.  The map comes from the Washington Post, but it is based on the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning tool from GA Tech.  The goal of which is to show what the chances are of having a COVID positive person attend a gathering.  A worthwhile project. [...] This is the Washington Post map, side by side with the map from the actual data source.  Same map, but Wapo makes the "artistic" choice of making the reds much darker and scarier. [...] The larger problem lies at the bottom of the Wapo map.  It says the map "assumes actual case prevalence is 10 times as high as laboratory-confirmed case count."  This, for lack of a better word, is bonkers.

The Vaccine Naysayers Got It Wrong.  Today I'm reminded of the host of media experts who flogged the seriousness and reliability of the Steele dossier for months and years only to evaporate when we later learned that document wasn't reliable.  To his great credit, the Washington Post's Erik Wemple devoted 10 articles to tracking down some of the dossier's promoters and asking them how they felt about it in retrospect.  As I pointed out at the time, a lot of the journalists he spoke with had no comment.  People like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who made the dossier a key part of her program for years simply moved on to greener pastures.  There was zero price to pay for being so wrong for so long about something so important.  I'm reminded of that today because of this Twitter thread by Glenn Greenwald highlighted by Twitchy.  Greenwald points out that some of the same outlets flogging the the dossier were also confident that a vaccine by the end of the year was a pipe dream.  Stop and enjoy the smug condescension in this first clip from MSNBC:  [Video clip]

When Journalism started to die.  Some conservatives may believe that the Fourth Estate lost its luster in the '90s and signed its integrity over to the Democrat Party, but the death throes came much earlier during the Vietnam War.  We lost over 58k casualties in that war and it is the only military conflict that we walked away from.  Yet the truth is that we never lost a major battle in Vietnam, even Barack Obama admitted that fact.  We lost the war over here, thanks to the fake news spread here by the most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite. [...] Don't know much about his personal beliefs but he blatantly lied about the war and the Tet offensive.  Until Cronkite's public verdict that the 1968 Tet offensive was a "defeat" for the U.S. the majority of Americans supported our nation's involvement.  Cronkite falsely claimed that the Vietcong had held the American embassy for six hours and that the offensive "went on for two months."  The facts show that Tet was actually a major defeat for the communist enemy[.]

Frauds: The Election, Media, Congressional Dems, and the FBI.  The first of this week's two biggest stories was Friday evening's action by the Supreme Court refusing to hear the lawsuit brought by Texas and other states respecting the evident fraud in the balloting in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan. [...] The second most significant matter, in my view, was the clear gaslighting the media and former intelligence officials carried out on the Hunter Biden story, hiding the fact that he's been under criminal investigation since 2018 for bribery, tax evasion, and money laundering from, among other sources, China.  Drew Holden and Arthur Schwartz rounded up the evidence of this gaslighting.  That it was effective in its bad faith effort at keeping relevant information about Chinese bribery of the Biden family and their consummate corruption in time to affect the election is clear.  One survey reports that nearly 10% of those who voted for Biden in key states would not have had they known about this scandal which the major media deeply hid from them.

Video: TV Journalists Flat-Out Lying About Hunter Biden's Laptop.  For almost a week, liberal cable and broadcast networks have ignored the FBI saying it has "nothing to add" to DNI Ratcliffe's assessment that the alleged Hunter Biden laptop is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign.  Despite these statements from both Ratcliffe and the FBI, TV journalists continued to warn viewers that the entire story looks like a Russian intelligence op.  The media have been defending Biden and his son from the President's attacks for as long as Trump has been making them.  Just over a year ago, when allegations surfaced that Biden had interfered in Ukrainian politics for personal gain, journalists and reporters insisted tirelessly that there was "no evidence" that the former Vice President "had done anything wrong."  [Video clip]

Will Anyone Face Any Consequences For Gaslighting Americans On The Hunter Biden Story?  So now that it is overwhelmingly evident the New York Post's initial Hunter and Jim Biden story wasn't based on hacked material, wasn't Russian misinformation, is clearly something people deserved to know before voting, and that big tech and America's corporate media tried to make sure that didn't happen — and that once again rather than alter their behavior or ask for forgiveness, they're going to instead attempt to gaslight you about all of it — I have a number of questions.  First, when did Joe Biden first learn that his repeated claims the stories about his son and his brother were Fake News — or in his phrasing, debunked, smears, and the like — were in fact false?  When was he briefed on this exactly, and by whom?  And why, given that every effort was made to distance Hunter from the campaign, did the defensive announcement come from the Transition instead of just from Hunter himself if Joe, as he has always claimed, has nothing to do with this?

Here Are All The Times Joe Biden Falsely Claimed Stories About Hunter Were Debunked.  For months, former Vice President Joe Biden has vehemently denied that any evidence exists that his son, Hunter, was involved in criminal activity or wrongdoing.  These denials now look like dishonesty after the Biden-Harris transition team released a statement Wednesday [12/9/2020] acknowledging that Hunter is indeed under investigation by the Department of Justice for potential tax crimes.  "I learned yesterday for the first time that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs," Hunter wrote in the statement.  This news, as Federalist Editor Mollie Hemingway pointed out, is not actually new and was reported before the election, but was purposefully suppressed by gatekeepers like Facebook, Twitter, and corporate media outlets who ignored the reporting on Hunter Biden's affairs.

How to Steal an Entire Country.  Investigations and impeachments have been blasted forcefully into our faces for years, thanks to the author of the MSM's Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Joseph Goebbels, of Third Reich fame, who said, "The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly — it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. ... A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth." It appears he also wrote the SOPs for Facebook, one of which is clearly "propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will."  Now, all across the MSM, Biden's "victory" consequences are given the fait accompli treatment.  We should all just behave and accept reality.  It sounds and reads like this:  "Trump is baselessly contesting the results."  "Trump campaign court cases have been thrown out due to baseless claims."  All the "doing" is from the Trump side, and it's wasting everyone's time.  The Democrats haven't done a thing, obviously.  They are the innocent victims, once again, of Trump's craziness.  "Meanwhile, President-Elect Biden saw his shadow again today."  There is nothing baseless about what happened.

Setting the Stage for Revolution.  The 2020 election had a series of unprecedented results, any one of which would be a miracle.  For example, Trump increased his vote by 17% and lost, which has never happened in American history.  There was a 20% increase in the vote, something else that has never happened in electoral history.  Compounding all of this is the stunning dishonesty we are seeing.  The media lies so much that they have become worthless at news reporting.  Outside of sports scores, nothing they "report" can be accepted at face value.  In fact, the prudent way to consume American media now is to just assume what they are saying is false.  At least one possible option is eliminated as you guess at the truth.

Australian pundits not buying American media's mantra, call claims of no evidence or fraud 'a lie'.  President Donald Trump is getting some support for his claims of voter fraud from as far away as Australia.  Some members of the media in the land down under are openly challenging the premature crowning of Democrat Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, accusing the press in the U.S. of "willfully" misleading the public with the "lie" that Trump has lost his reelection bid.

Did President Trump Spring a Trap on Treasonous Democrats on Election Night?  So certain were the complicit media of a win for Clinton that they predicted a 95% probability of her winning.  But the same blunder — born of Democrat arrogance and overconfidence from years of triumphant cheating — would not occur a second time in 2020.  The media would, during Trump's first term as president, embark on creating the illusion that the most popular president since Ronald Reagan was actually reviled.  This Big Lie would be endlessly repeated, in hopes of making enough people believe a loss to Biden was in the cards for Trump.

Media Childishly Dismissive of Gettysburg Vote Fraud Hearing.  The mainstream media, rather than cover in any real detail the serious allegations of voting fraud that were presented at a Gettysburg hearing of the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee on Wednesday, instead mocked and dismissed the event.  CNN made no effort to hide its extreme bias over the hearing in its headline which described it as a "baseless voter fraud event," "Trump invites Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers to White House after calling in to baseless voter fraud event."  In addition, the story put "hearing" in quotes so as to present it as somehow not a real hearing.

Neither the Media Nor the Electoral College Calls Races — the GSA Does & They've Been Silent.  In a Nov. 2 piece recounting the longstanding role of The Associated Press in determining winners of presidential elections, New York Times reporter Katie Robertson wrote "In the United States — which, unlike many other countries, does not have a national electoral commission — the news media takes the role of race-caller in presidential elections."  According to who?  Robertson conveniently left out that it's not the self-anointed media experts who call elections, but rather the General Services Administration, which issues a letter of determination in a race.  So far, the GSA hasn't done that, regardless of what the media "race-callers" dictate.  Interestingly, Robertson's article included commentary from Sally Buzbee, executive editor for The Associated Press, who actually explained in clear detail why it's premature and disingenuous for anyone in the media to declare Joe Biden the victor right now.

Don't Give an Inch.  For five years, the Democratic party and their allies in the corporate media, the coddled government bureaucracies, and the Big Tech platforms have fought Trump with every weapon at their disposal.  They uncritically and feverishly repeated every deranged theory that Trump was really a Russian asset operating as Putin's Manchurian candidate, and then cheered on his impeachment for it. [...] Media outlets that breathlessly ran with a fake story about Trump killing an entire pond of koi fish refused to cover the violent riots that broke out across the country this summer.  They stood in front of buildings that were literally on fire, claiming the protests were "fiery, but mostly peaceful."  They told us that border walls don't stop illegal immigration, riots don't spread COVID-19 (but schools and church services do), and Joe Biden would win in a landslide.

ABC News Claims Accusing Black Lives Matter of Being Communist is Disinformation.  Before the election, the media rolled out repeated fact checks that Biden hadn't eulogized a KKK Exalted Wizard, but a KKK Grand Cyclops.  Put this ABC News hand wringing over Black Lives Matter in the same category.

'Antifa:  Rise of the Black Flags' Shows the Chaos, Anarchy Hatched by an 'Idea'.  Director David Lugo has a warning for the mainstream media.  Citizen journalists are coming, ready to counter the false narratives peddled by the press.  In a way, Lugo is part of that movement.  His new film, "Antifa:  Rise of the Black Flags," captures the threats posed by what one presidential candidate flippantly called an "idea."  That "idea" has trashed cities across the country, and there's little indication Antifa will stand down in 2021.  [Video clip]

Why is challenging suspicious election results 'a threat to our democracy'?  On Thursday, President Trump's legal team presented many pieces of information about the election that deserve to be investigated.  But the media have no interest in that.  Instead, they essentially black out the news and ask Trump to concede so they can crown their chosen king.  Worst of all, they continue to falsely claim there is no evidence of fraud.  The New York Times and others have written about the potential fraud on universal mail-in ballots in the past, as have other outlets, but now they call Trump a liar.  The media outlets know that rules were changed to make verification of mail-in ballots less verifiable, but they don't care.

Flat Out TDS: Media Is Already Trying to Erase Trump Being President.  News broke yesterday [11/20/2020] that President Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump, Jr. had tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus.  Now most normal people on both sides of the aisle would wish him well, perhaps even telling the president they wished his son well.  Not so much Yahoo.  Here's the headline from the Yahoo article about the news:  Former reality TV show host's son tests positive for COVID-19.  Yes, that's how they're now trying to describe President Donald Trump.  They're so incapable of accepting the reality they can't even put it in a headline and they're hoping to obliterate his presidency simply by obstinacy.

Democrats And Media Are Reaping Fruit Of 4 Years Of Anti-Trump Conspiracy Theories.  A prominent liberal legal academic who spent the last four years pushing outrageous, discredited, and debunked conspiracy theories about Donald Trump stealing the 2016 election said on Fox News Sunday that refusal to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election threatens the country.  "He is undermining democracy because there are millions of people who will believe him even though there is nothing to his arguments and no evidence to back them," Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe said of President Trump's litigation regarding the November election. [...] Tribe began pushing the Russia collusion theory on July 25, 2016, well after the Hillary Clinton campaign had secretly developed and begun running its "Russia collusion" campaign operation, but before the FBI had started its Crossfire Hurricane investigation.  "I'm not into conspiracy," he wrote, before suggesting Russian oligarchs had compromised Trump with business deals and made him develop a foreign policy that U.S. allies should be responsible for more of their own anti-Russian defense budgets.  A follow-up tweet said Trump was hiding his tax returns in order to hide his business relationship with Vladimir Putin.  By July 28, 2016, Tribe was wondering if Trump had committed the capital crime of "treason."  By July 29, 2016, he was proposing wringing Trump on charges of violating the Logan Act.  On October 17, 2016, he began suggesting Trump had rigged the election against Clinton.

A Vegas oddsmaker's take on Fox News and the election grift.  [Scroll down]  At that point, something very weird occurred.  It didn't happen at CNN or MSNBC, it happened at Fox News.  You all remember that Fox refused to call Florida, Ohio, or Texas for Trump, even though Trump was miles ahead in those three states.  Additionally, even though Trump was also significantly ahead in Virginia, Fox nevertheless called the state for Biden.  But that wasn't the worst: ["]And then it happened.  It was the most bizarre call in Election Night history.  Fox News called Arizona for Biden.  Why?  It wasn't even close to over.  There was no reason on earth to make that call.  Arizona is STILL not over 8 days later.  CNN still hasn't awarded Arizona.  ABC pulled it back from Biden only 24 hours ago.["]

There is evidence, actually.  The media has been claiming since the election ended that President Trump's claims of voter fraud are 'baseless' and 'without evidence'.  That just is not true.  The President's lawyer gave examples of it during today's press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington DC.  But everyone is too busy mocking him to pay attention.  I tried to listen to what Giuliani actually said and not what he looked like or the characterization of him by the rest of the media.  The cameras started feverishly clicking the first time he wiped the sweat from his face, all but guaranteeing that would be the focus of the presser.  Giuliani did in fact present evidence of voter fraud today but many people simply didn't want to hear it.  He cited multiple Americans, one by name, who have signed sworn affidavits stating that they witness some type of fraud, whether it was pro-Trump ballots being thrown out without cause, ballots being backdated to before the election, poll workers being told not to ask voters for identification, and more.

Vainglory of the Press.  Of all the claims that have been made in this election, the most astounding is the idea that the proper authority to certify the winner — and dispose of all objections — is the press.  That would be the same press that proved to be so inaccurate in respect of what would happen in the past two elections.  It is now in high dudgeon over the fact that millions of Americans lack for confidence in its decision to call the race for Mr. Biden.  What vainglory.  "Day by day," the Washington Post editorializes this morning, "President Trump's efforts to overturn the results of a free and fair election grow more brazen." Notice the en passant nature of its reference to the election being free and fair.  It dasn't acknowledge even a possibility that determining the freeness and fairness of the blasted election is the point of all the challenges and litigation.

Chaos and Anarchy in DC.  In case you missed it, over the weekend tens of thousands of protesters marched in the District of Columbia to voice their support of the president and opposition to voter fraud.  The "Million MAGA March," held Saturday afternoon, was a peaceful event.  But as the sun went down and the pro-Trump demonstrators left the protest, violent agitators and counterprotesters emerged and descended upon them to harass and, in many cases, to commit violence.  [Seven video clips]  Police arrested 21 people in connection to the violence, according to NBC Washington.  NBC Washington described some of the various charges of the suspects in this maelstrom, which included disorderly conduct and assault.  Though many local outlets covered these incidents extensively, the story gathered little attention from national media.  One would think that widespread violent attacks on peaceful protesters expressing their First Amendment rights would elicit a strong response from journalists.  But coverage was both lukewarm and deceptive, portraying the incident as if it was Trump supporters who were the originators of the violent behavior.

The press conference the media mocked, derided, and refused to cover.  I watched the news conference Thursday conducted by President Trump's campaign attorneys, and later visited the websites of the major networks to see what their interpretation of the bombshell would be.  CNN said they wouldn't even air the news conference because it was 'so bananas' and 'full of BS.'  Yes, really.  MSNBC linked to a Chuck Todd commentary saying:  "This has been a bonkers press conference."  ABC linked to this headline:  "Promising more lawsuits, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani recycles debunked claims."  CBS News, at 9:32 p.m., had no mention of the news conference at all.  NBC News put out:  "Rudy Giuliani baselessly alleges 'centralized' voter fraud at free-wheeling news conference."  Fox News's Kristin Fisher blatantly called Giuliani a liar.

'We no longer have' an 'honest press'.  Imagine if Joe Biden had enjoyed a healthy lead on election night only to see it evaporate as the numbers dripped in from Republican strongholds.  Does anyone believe the mainstream media would have rushed to anoint Donald Trump the winner?  Would the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR and other outlets have cast the inevitable Democrat demands for ballot reviews and recounts as a constitutional crisis or would they have run wall-to-wall coverage about the inherent problems associated with mail-in ballots?

Red Flags in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  The mainstream media continues to pitch the idea that the November 3 presidential election was free and fair.  Yet the numbers just don't add up.  Looking closely at outcomes in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin, certain "red flag" patterns emerge.  First, both states experienced an anomalous 89% voter turnout, a number between 14 and 22 points higher than the turnout in the 2016 General Election.  Secondly, both states had a surprisingly high number of ballots that were not completely filled out with a large portion of incomplete ballots either cast for Biden but not for a U.S. House Democrat (95% in Minnesota; 57% in Wisconsin) or a disproportionately high number of incomplete ballots cast for a US House Republican but not for Trump (43% in Wisconsin).

Contesting Election Results in Court Isn't the End of Democracy.  Quite the Opposite.  Is a disputed presidential election the end of democracy as we know it?  That's what many pundits and members of the legacy media are claiming as President Donald Trump has challenged election results in a number of states — both legally and rhetorically.  It seems that much of the media hivemind now insists that voter fraud never happens, that it's equally impossible for an election to be stolen or tainted in any way, and that going a few weeks with two rival candidates both declaring victory (including one they really don't like) means we are witnessing the end of America as a free country.  It's amazing that this is the case after countless Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, insisted that Trump colluded with Russians to steal the 2016 election, a story that most major media outlets ran with for years without providing any hard evidence.

Mainstream Media United in Forcing 'President-Elect' Biden Down Your Throat.  Some skepticism is called for when the mainstream media are so uniformly in agreement about anything, let alone about a hotly disputed presidential election.  "President-elect" is the legal term for the person with 270 or more votes cast in the Electoral College, which doesn't even meet this year to cast those votes until Dec. 14, a month in the future.  Then, and only then, will we have a "president-elect."  And maybe not even then if the investigations of corruption in several states haven't concluded and hold up certifying state election results.  So, at least until then, the correct term for Joe Biden is not "president-elect," despite the mainstream media gratuitously hanging that title on him.

Disgraced Fox News Retracts False House Race Projection — 8 Days Later!  Obviously, the biggest Election Day loser will either be President Trump or Joe Biden, depending on who ultimately wins the presidential election, and the second biggest loser will be congressional Democrats, who lost seats in the House and failed to retake the Senate majority, but another major loser — without any question — is disgraced Fox News.  The bottom is falling out of Fox's reputation, and there are reports that the once-respected outlet is suffering in the ratings.  None of this should surprise anyone, especially with the countless botched calls and outright lies still being uncovered during the dumpster fire that was Fox's Election Night coverage.

Time to cut the cord on media's Trump bashing.  [Scroll down]  Here's a few other things that are bugging me:  A pablum-puking MSNBC "historian" who swoons over how great Joe Biden's speeches are, and then it turns out he's been writing them. [...] Any Democrat who doesn't put air quotes around "glitches" anytime he or she mentions one fraud or another.  Any alleged pundit who says President-Select (as opposed to Elect) Joe Biden faces the greatest challenges of any president since the Civil War.  (Too many to list.)  Anyone who compares Dementia Joe to FDR. [...] Anyone on TV who spent the last four years screaming "Russia!  Russia!  Russia!" who is now saying that anyone who has doubts about the election is not "patriotic."  Anyone who says that all reports of ballot fraud have been "debunked."  Anyone who says that the "adults" are now going to be in charge.  Anyone who mentions the potential of a "coup," without acknowledging what the four-year-long Russia-Russia-Russia hoax was.

Every MSM Outlet:  Postal Voting Fraud Whistleblower Recants!  Whistleblower:  No I Didn't!  We've reached the point in the post-election cycle where the mainstream media is so desperate to make Democrats' election fraud for Joe Biden stick that they're not just ignore election fraud stories, they're outright lying about them.  Take for example the recent news story of a U.S. postal worker whistleblower Richard Hopkins recanting his accusations of being instructed to backdate ballots.  Just one tiny little flaw in the story:  he did no such thing.

Extortion Day.  In the days preceding last week's election, the downtown corridors of many American cities resembled coastal hurricane zones.  Business owners boarded up their stores, fearing that the election might unleash another wave of destructive rioting.  In Washington, D.C., luxury shops and office complexes constructed fortifications with boards, chains, fences, and barriers.  In the neighborhood surrounding the White House, the Secret Service, laborers, and left-wing protesters all prepared for Election Night.  Then something miraculous happened.  The following morning, as the election returns began to favor former vice president Joe Biden, the fences, boards, and chains came down.  Small business owners reopened their shops, and the anticipation of violence evaporated.  The national media, which had been stoking fears about Proud Boys and white supremacists flooding the cities with political violence, simply dropped the story — as if it had never been a story.

Don't Give an Inch.  For five years, the Democratic party and their allies in the corporate media, the coddled government bureaucracies, and the Big Tech platforms have fought Trump with every weapon at their disposal.  They uncritically and feverishly repeated every deranged theory that Trump was really a Russian asset operating as Putin's Manchurian candidate, and then cheered on his impeachment for it.  An FBI lawyer altered evidence to spy on a U.S. citizen while texting "viva la resistance" to his colleagues.  When, less than a month before the election, Facebook and Twitter outright banned the circulation of a New York Post story involving corruption in the Biden family, media outlets happily did the same.  The New York Times accused Trump of faking his post-COVID White House appearance with a green screen and using secret Twitter code to activate right-wing extremists.  CNN is now settling libel suits for its role in instigating a vicious social media campaign and physical threats against a Catholic high school kid — all for the crime of wearing a MAGA hat.  Media outlets that breathlessly ran with a fake story about Trump killing an entire pond of koi fish refused to cover the violent riots that broke out across the country this summer.  They stood in front of buildings that were literally on fire, claiming the protests were "fiery, but mostly peaceful."  They told us that border walls don't stop illegal immigration, riots don't spread COVID-19 (but schools and church services do), and Joe Biden would win in a landslide.

New York Times' Kevin Roose Calls Accurate Stories About Election Integrity Fight 'Misinformation'.  In a sign of things to come from the blacklisters in the corporate media, New York Times' tech writer Kevin Roose attacked Facebook for allowing stories that are 100 percent accurate to rise to "the 10 most-engaged URLs on the platform over the last 24 hours."  "Facebook is absolutely teeming with right-wing misinformation right now.  These are all among the 10 most-engaged URLs on the platform over the last 24 hours," the far-left propagandist tweeted from his verified account on Monday [11/9/2020]. [...] All four of those stories are news stories.  All four of those stores are reporting on events that actually happened.  All four of those stories are informing readers of what is going on.  A Republican in Michigan did win an election after a glitch was found.  That's a fact.  That happened.  Attorney General Barr did authorize his staff to look at voting irregularities.  That's a fact.  That happened.  The Michigan legislature did hold an emergency session about election irregularities.  That's a fact.  That happened.  Both of Georgia's Republican U.S. Senate candidates — Loeffler and Perdue — did call on Georgia's secretary of state to resign.  That's a fact.  That happened.

Voter Fraud Plus Bait-and-Switch Equals Tyranny.  [Scroll down]  Biden was simply the front man, and he knew pollsters would rig the numbers to show him with a massive lead.  The establishment media confirmed they had learned nothing.  Fox News polls were among the worst and on election night, as Kimball noted, Fox refused to call Florida for Trump even after he had won the state.  They called Arizona for Biden when it still in play, with lines at the polls.  Two days after the election, Fox refused to call Alaska and other states for Trump, even though the president's win was clear.

The Darkness Where Democracy Dies.  [Scroll down]  President Trump brokered real peace between Israel and an ever-expanding list of long-hostile Arab nations that so far includes UAE, Sudan, and Bahrain.  The press ignored it or disparaged it, so the people are in the dark about it.  American cities have been devastated by riots that the media called "mostly peaceful protests."  Millions of Americans don't know the extent of what happened or were poisoned with regard to interpretation of those tragic events.  For three years, the Deep State and the media propagated a complete fabrication known as Trump/Russia Collusion.  No evidence was found for it.  It never happened.  Yet they still report that it did.  Today, nearly half the country believes it happened.  That is known as propaganda, which is very dark.  Tony Bobulinski came forward with hard, credible evidence of Joe Biden's egregious corruption of American foreign policy for the purposes of enriching his family with laundered millions from China, Ukraine, and others.  Social media censored the story.  Incredibly, the entire MSM dismissed it as Russian disinformation.  The result is this:  a compromised man with regard to national security has been crowned president by the same media that kept the people in the dark.

Corrupt Media Desperate to Close the Books on Contested Election.  Joe Biden is not "president-elect."  Joe Biden has not won the 2020 presidential election.  Donald Trump's re-election has not been defeated.  Right now, Joe Biden is merely "ahead in the count" of enough states to win the presidency.  But this is a contested election and we have a long way to go, probably more than a month and a plethora of legal filings, before a winner is declared.  Per our own Constitution, there is only one institution legally entitled to declare a winner in a presidential election, and that's the Electoral College, which does not meet until the middle of December.  Only the Electoral College can dub someone "president-elect."  The fake news media, of course — the corporate media, the same corrupt media that told us to be patient if Election Day lasted weeks, now want us to forget all that, want to close the book on the election before it has been audited, want us to believe unelected liars who sit in anchor chairs have the legal authority to declare Joe Biden "president elect."

'Since when did the Lamestream Media decide who the President is?' Trump doubles down on refusing to concede.  President Donald Trump pushed out more unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen by firing off a series of angry tweets Sunday, even as the vote count continued to move against him and Joe Biden shifted into transition mode.  The tweet from Trump came more than an hour after George W. Bush issued a message telling him the election's outcome was 'clear' and that it was held with 'fairness and integrity' and Chris Christie, one of the president's most prominent allies, said it was time for him to show evidence or 'move on.'  With his political options narrowing and his hold on power becoming more tenuous by the hour, Trump also blasted the media for getting to 'call' who will be the next president.

Why Hasn't Fox News Retracted Its Wrong Call on the House?  Despite what Fox News might think, this election — as it drags ever closer to unreality — is not decided by Fox News.  On Election Night, Fox News Channel's decision desk "called the House," saying Democrats would gain five seats.  This happened while Californians were still voting.  Why does that matter?  Because there are four districts in California that Democrats won from Republicans in 2018 and which Republicans were trying to retake.  They are likely to win at least three of them.  In all, a source close to House Republican leadership says the GOP is likely to go into the next Congress with between 210 and 214 seats.  That means they gained 11-14 seats and substantially trimmed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's majority.  Fox News could not have been more wrong, but they still have not retracted their very wrong, very badly timed call.

Saturday's Media Declaration Is A Naked Attempt To Silence Republicans, And Nothing Has Changed.  Nothing has changed since Friday night.  You might find that strange, given the media stampede to certify the election results for their man, but it's crucial.  The calls made Saturday morning are as arbitrary as they were last Tuesday, could just as easily have waited for Monday, and fly in the face of massive evidence of voter irregularities that, at minimum, should be heard in court before anyone considers calling the election.  Add pending lawsuits and official recounts in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, and the conclusion is an attempt by the American media to pick our president and decide our election.  The danger comes now, when in concert with Silicon Valley censors they use their own decree to dismiss and silence anyone who says otherwise.

The TV networks can make all the declarations and pronouncements they like, but they are not official.
Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, AP Call Presidential Election for Joe Biden.  Corporate media outlets called the presidential election for former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).  CNN, MSNBC, and the Associated Press called the election for Biden at 11:28 a.m., just minutes before President Trump's lawyers were expected to speak at a press conference about challenging votes in Pennsylvania.  Fox News ultimately followed suit at 11:40 a.m.

The Editor says...
Television stations and networks operate on the age-old principle of "monkey see, monkey do."  If two or more competitors simultaneously declare that the moon is 53 percent uranium, the others will soon follow suit, attributing the story to the competition if necessary.  But they don't want to be the last ones to report that they know about a "breaking" story, even if it's questionable.

Media Declares Joe Biden Winner of 2020 Election.  The strategy of using of mail-in ballots to structurally steal the 2020 election predictably contained an inevitable series of events to support it.  The media's preemptive declaration of a Biden victory is one cascading domino in that very predictable sequence.  The media effort is to build a wave narrative strong and heavy enough to block any sunlight upon the fraud perpetrated by regional election officials.  The statistical improbability of the U.S. election outcome are glaring; there are hundreds of examples that just don't make sense.  Thus the need for the media narrative becomes more important.  Perhaps the most unnerving aspect to this election fraud is knowing that Joe Biden is merely a puppet for a group of political and deep state interests; the Milli Vanilli candidate with a giggling high-school-minded VP.

Newsmax rises, Fox falls.  Fox won Election Night bigly.  Their 14 million viewer [ratings] were yuge.  Then the network began showing its RINO side, and then its liberal side.  WTMA reported, "Conservatives ditched Fox News for Newsmax TV's election coverage in droves.  On Election Night, celebrities, political pundits in the White House, and staunch Fox fans tuned into Newsmax TV to get their election news, more proof of the meteoric rise in popularity of Newsmax TV.  "Many began flipping the channel after Fox News called Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden.  According to Newsweek, Fox was the only network at the time to show the state going to Biden.  Newsmax was the first major news network to project Florida for Trump."  Fox went downhill when the Family Murdoch kicked Roger Ailes to the curb.

Time for Fox News to climb out of the hole it's dug.  Fox News was early in predicting that Arizona would go for Biden, even though the people at the network knew that the most Republican county in the state was not yet counted.  When they saw Trump's lead in Georgia dwindle to nothing, they reported it as though it were the weather.  When they heard Trump's claims of voter fraud, they found "experts" to proclaim that Trump had no evidence.  I credit Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham for daring to bring up the subject.  Is there evidence of voter fraud?  A postal worker reports that his boss wanted him to backdate postmarks in Michigan.  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court legislated election procedure changes in the last few months.  Some ballots were found literally hiding under a rock in Arizona.  In all, thousands of votes were illegally cast.  This means that there are thousands of criminals on the loose.  This apparently does not count as evidence.

Cutting the Cable News Cord.  Having worked a significant portion of my life as a news reporter and editor, journalism will always be in my blood.  I crave news and information like some crave chocolate.  That will likely never change.  What will change is where I get that news and information.  While there are many reasons which factored into my decision, the final proverbial straw came when Fox News continued to deny any "credible evidence" of election/voter fraud.  Such declarations were often delivered by anchors with a sneer and a smirk.  With social media and big tech-monopolies banning and censoring evidence of verifiable election fraud, even Fox News likely feels safe in perpetuating the "nothing to see here" lie.  The problem for these censoring overlords and truth-deniers is that election fraud is, in fact, taking place.  When dead people somehow rise from the grave to vote, that is election fraud.  When people who are not legally permitted by law to vote somehow manage to do so, there is election fraud.  When states defy court orders and violate the law by refusing to allow one party access to vote counting, that is election fraud.  When statistically impossible ballot percentages magically appear in the dead of night, election fraud is likely the cause.  When thumb-drives miraculously appear from thin air, election fraud possibilities should, at the very least, be investigated.  One need not be a legal scholar to comprehend what election/voter fraud is.

Media Calls the Race For Joe Biden But Is it Really Over?  The television networks have called the 2020 presidential election, announcing Joe Biden as the winner in Pennsylvania — giving him, in theory, enough electoral college votes to become the next president.  But is it over?  Election officials have yet to call the win, and the Trump campaign has several legal challenges in play.  Networks rushed to the airwaves to announce that Biden had taken the 20 electoral votes in PA less than 15 minutes before Trump's legal team was to hold a press conference in Philadelphia, PA.  Trump campaign attorneys represented by Rudy Giuliani spoke about irregularities in the voting and ballot-counting process.  Leftist media outlets immediately launched sensationalized headlines such as "You're Fired" but the president vowed in a statement that the fight is not yet over.

The Democrats' Chickens Come Home to Roost.  The majority of Americans do not trust the mainstream left-wing media.  Four years of hatchet jobs, defamation, character assassinations, and such leave Independents, no less than conservatives, unable to believe ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.  For those few who still cling to their doubts but hopes about media credibility, the nonsensical polls sealed the deal.  Only die-hards on the left now believe Jake Tapper or Rachel Maddow or their ilk.

Media gaslights GOP voters with false attributions to Republicans supposedly 'rebuking' Trump.  Major media outlets have begun to gaslight GOP voters in the wake of a contentious and still unsettled election using false or misleading claims attributed to Republicans who are supposedly rebuking President Donald Trump.  The UK's Daily Mail, for instance, published a story under a lengthy headline that is blatantly false:  "Mitch McConnell says EVERY vote must be counted in a veiled rebuke to Trump — as GOP's Pennsylvania senator calls president's conspiracy-theory rant 'hard to watch' and says there is NO large scale fraud."  "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ignored President Donald Trump's wild claims of widespread election fraud, sending out a sober tweet Friday morning," the lead paragraph claimed.  But the very next paragraph — which is a quote from McConnell himself — directly refutes what was just claimed.

Vote Against the DC and Manhattan Media Elite.  [Scroll down]  From Election Day 2016, the mainstream media originating from Manhattan and Washington, DC, have thrown off the shackles of objectivity and re-envisioned their role in the American political conversation.  From The New York Times to the Washington Post to all the network newsrooms to MSNBC and the once-respected CNN, the fourth estate has revealed itself as a fifth column.  They've stopped pretending to report the facts.  They've become the voice of the resistance, and they've aligned their resources, talents and waning influence for one objective:  To end the Trump presidency.  First, they tried to undermine his inauguration by publishing the phony "Steele dossier" days before his swearing-in.  The narrative to the American people was to plant the seed that our new president was a traitor and puppet of the Russian government.  It was a complete lie.  But the damage was done.  It led to the anonymous leaks that suggested Trump was trying to stop an investigation into his campaign.

The Mainstream Media's COVID Cover-up Continues.  The mainstream media's double standard when it comes to accuracy is undeniable to anyone with a shred of integrity.  For stories that favor the Left or damage the Right, the bar couldn't be lower.  For stories that are vice-versa, however, the media's scrutiny has no end.  We've seen the phenomenon ad nauseam for years now, but its frequency and impact has reached a critical level.  We saw it with Christine Blasey Ford and her uncorroborated accusations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh that were willingly regurgitated by Democrats and their media.  We see it currently with the unfolding scandal involving Hunter Biden, as the media scoffs at its legitimacy in spite of the validated authenticity of the emails that kick-started the whole hubbub.  There is arguably no story, however, where the media's duplicity is more evident and more detrimental than what we've seen regarding their reporting on COVID-19.

Will the Mainstream Media Disappear a Trump Election Victory?  Entrepreneur and Dilbert-creator Scott Adams has put forth an intriguing possibility about the election outcome.  Even if President Donald Trump wins re-election, the mainstream media may attempt to undo the election by reporting that he lost.  The half of the country that lives inside the media misinformation bubble may believe this, and it may instigate a period of instability and uncertainty.  Before Trump, anyone who said anything like what Adams has proposed as a possibility would be deemed a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist, and with good reason.  But during Trump's presidency, the mainstream media have disregarded the truth, to the point where they openly tell lies that half the country immediately recognizes as disinformation.

The real story behind the New York Times's big 'anonymous' op-ed is exceptionally sleazy.  Indeed, based on what we know now, everyone involved in this sad episode comes across as remarkably unethical, most especially the op-ed's author, former Department of Homeland Security employee Miles Taylor.  For starters, Taylor and the New York Times grossly exaggerated his credentials as a "senior" member of the Trump administration.  Taylor served as a "Deputy Chief of Staff" at the time he submitted his op-ed to the paper.  He did not hold the position of chief of staff until later.  Yet, the New York Times billed him anyway as a "senior official in the Trump administration," an overblown descriptor that Taylor himself made no effort to correct.

Yes, [the] Media Are Rigging [the] Election Against Half The Country.  Here's How.  This week saw the news that the supposedly high-ranking "Anonymous" government official that published a 2018 New York Times op-ed about secretly undermining a president he personally disagreed with was in fact a 30-year-old mid-level bureaucrat nobody had ever heard of.  The fake narrative that the New York Times knowingly promulgated roiled the administration for months, if not years, as high-level cabinet officials took turns denying that they were secretly and unconstitutionally undermining the elected president of the United States.  Miles Taylor was the Homeland Security Department policy analyst who turned out to have written the op-ed and a best-selling book about how he and other Resistance members put their personal political preferences over the ones chosen by the voting populace when they elected Trump president.  That little op-ed was nothing compared to the preposterously false Russia collusion hoax that the media promulgated for years thanks to dubious and selective leaks from politically motivated sources.

Facts Matter:  Trump's Real Record on Race.  Whether it's Chris Wallace, or Savannah Guthrie, or Jim Acosta, some other loudmouth reporter screaming the "denounce" demand as the President walks by, this demand, premised upon a lie, gets repeated ad nauseam by dishonest journalists.  Their purpose is to create a false impression that Trump has done something, or said something in the past, that makes him a "racist."  But nothing could be further from the truth.  The president's record shows something quite the opposite of the insinuations shouted by the Trump-hating members of the liberal media.  In fact, the president's record, over time, pictures a man with a huge heart and great compassion and love for the African-American community in the United States.

Leslie Stahl's Behavior in that Trump 60 Minutes Interview Got Even Dumber.  60 Minutes is really, really mad.  As Kira Davis and Nick Arama both covered yesterday, Trump preemptively released the interview to counter the selective editing and narrative pushing Leslie Stahl, the interviewer, and company were looking do.  Initially, anonymous claims were made to major networks that Trump had "stormed out."  The President's video shows that was false.  Then you got idiocy like this, where Stahl insists that the Hunter Biden emails shouldn't be reported on because they "can't be verified." Ignoring the fact that the media report on all manner of unverified gossip when it's anti-Trump, Stahl's excuse is also nonsensical, as the emails have been verified in multiple ways.

Media's Uphill Battle to Create a Self-Fulfilling Election Prophecy.  The media effort in 2020 is indeed very similar to 2016 in that current narratives are a psychological effort to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Baseline 101: Everyone naturally wants to be on the winning team.  The media effort, and that means all media including social media and big tech, is to push down Trump support and elevate the appearance of Biden support.  I really wish people would deeply consider this. [...] Everything you are witnessing right now is about psychological control to create the false illusion of reality within your own mind.  Essentially, professional media gaslighting with an agenda and purpose.  This is not a conspiracy theory, those who are coordinating the effort have admitted exactly what they are doing.

'Struggling' bar owner in Biden ad is wealthy investor who supported lockdowns.  A Michigan music venue owner featured in a Joe Biden ad campaign lamenting his struggles to survive during coronavirus restrictions is actually a wealthy tech investor — who supported local lockdowns, according to reports.  Joe Malcoun was featured in the heart-tugging Biden ad that aired during NFL games Sunday complaining about the chances of his Ann Arbor bar and music venue, the Blind Pig, surviving the pandemic. [...] The ad suggested Malcoun's future and his family were at risk, but made no mention of the bar owner's numerous other businesses as a wealthy "angel investor" in tech companies.  Malcoun admitted in a 2018 interview with Click On Detroit that he made his start thanks to a huge inheritance from his wife's grandfather, a real estate investor, that he admitted was "almost like winning the lottery."  It soon made him "the go-to guy when it came to seeking investments," the local news outlet said, helping companies raise millions.

Biden's Big Media Malarkey Machine.  If you believe the media, Joe Biden is heading toward a landslide of such historic proportions that even Texas may tip into the Democrat's column.  Of course, no intelligent person actually believes this, but the propaganda organs of our national media are so devoted to Team Joe that the possibility of turning Texas "blue" continues to be the subject of allegedly serious reporting.  A well-informed source in Texas tells me GOP internal polls show a tighter-than-usual contest there, and Democrats are bombarding young Texans with get-out-the-vote text messages, but this is a state Trump won with a comfortable margin of more than 800,000 votes in 2016.  Nevertheless, the media are dreaming the impossible dream.

5 Other Things We'll Learn About Biden After The Election.  [#3] The economy has been doing much better than the public had been led to believe.  Back in 1996, when George H.W. Bush was running for reelection, the press treated the economy as though it were in another depression, which just so happened to coincide with Bill Clinton's campaign messaging.  As soon as the election was over, coverage of the economy suddenly became more upbeat, and the public learned that the very mild recession had ended way back in March 1991.

What the MSM TV coverage doesn't show you at a Biden Potemkin rally.  Mainstream media coverage of Joe Biden's campaign rallies depicts a false façade, giving an impression of a normal political event.  But the reality is as phony as the façades of prosperous villages that Catherine The Great's political advisor (and lover) Grigori Potemkin erected for her to view from her imperial barge, masking the misery of her subjects.  Potemkin today is remembered chiefly for the expression "Potemkin village," defined as "an impressive facade or show designed to hide an undesirable fact or condition."  (Check the link quickly before Merriam-Webster changes the definition to conform with the political interests of the Democrats.)  A hilarious Twitter video has survived the "fact checkers" at the social media giant (for now), panning from away the podium to show the handful of people — apparenlty, mostly media — standing around and sorta watching Biden's bizarrely impassioned speech to a parking lot in Novi, Michigan (a Detroit suburb) last Friday, [...]

Steve Scully suspended indefinitely by C-SPAN for lying about his Twitter account being hacked.  The man who was to have moderated a town hall-style debate tonight between President Trump and ex-VP Biden has been suspended from his job as C-SPAN's political editor after admitting to lying about his Twitter account being hacked. [...] Scully had asked Trump-hater Scaramucci for advice on dealing with Trump's criticism of him as a NeverTrumper.  By lying and claiming that his account was hacked (the third time he made such a claim) Scully opened Pandora's Box, with his employer, the Commission of Presidential Debates, and the FBI announcing investigations.  He likely concluded that his lie was going to be exposed and may have feared legal consequences if an FBI investigation came to that conclusion.

C-SPAN's Steve Scully suspended after admitting to lying about Twitter hack.  C-SPAN suspended political editor Steve Scully indefinitely on Thursday [10/15/2020] after he confessed to lying about his Twitter account being hacked following an exchange with former White House aide-turned President Trump critic Anthony Scaramucci.  Scully was slated to moderate the second presidential debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden scheduled for Thursday night.  The Commission on Presidential Debates canceled the event Friday after the president declined to do the debate virtually after testing positive for COVID-19.  C-SPAN announced last week it was conducting an investigation into the alleged hack.

AP Forced to Issue Correction For Using Democrat Language on Court-Packing.  Last week, the AP Stylebook was amended to discourage the use of the word "riot" to describe violent protests.  Because, you know, they were "mostly peaceful protests."  Or something.  And now, this:  Although at least this time, they were forced to retract their biased shenanigans.

AP called out for adopting Democrat language on court-packing.  The Associated Press was forced to add an editor's note to a recent story about the Supreme Court on Saturday, in which the outlet made it seem as if the Democratic strategy to pack the high court would "depoliticize" the bench.  The article, written by Iris Samuels, centered on a debate between Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Gov. Steve Bullock, his Democratic opponent in the upcoming election.  The AP's original post reportedly read, "Bullock said that if Coney Barrett was confirmed, he would be open to measures to depoliticize the court, including adding judges to the bench, a practice critics have dubbed packing the courts."  The report referred to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Associated Press goes full Orwell, calling 'packing' of SCOTUS 'court reform'.  It is obvious from Joe Biden telling voters that they don't deserve to know if he plans to pack the Supreme Court that he and his handlers are terrified of a negative voter reaction to the plan.  Biden's remarkably stupid comment came in response to a reporter's question at an interview where no teleprompter guidance was feasible. [...]

'Americans aren't idiots!' The AP's use of 'Democrats' language' to explain 'packing the court' doesn't go well.  Since the Associated Press considers itself "an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting," it would be problematic for an AP article to contain commentary packaged as news and facts.  Real Clear Politics co-founder and president Tom Bevan captured the following excerpt from an AP story.  ["]With lightning speed, the Associated Press adopts Democrats' language on SCOTUS: adding members is now 'depoliticizing' the court, only 'critics' refer to it as 'packing.'["] [...] To call increasing the number of Supreme Court justices "depoliticizing" would be an egregious political overstatement if made by a Democrat politician, much less a news organization.

Not Making Headlines:  Alleged "Right-wing" Militia Member Arrested for Plot Against Gov. Whitmer Was Black Lives Matter Protester and Sympathizer.  On Thursday [10/8/2020] the FBI announced during a press conference that it thwarted a plot by a so-called "right-wing militia" to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the state government.  Early Thursday morning, federal agencies raided a house in Hartland, Michigan and arrested six men:  Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, and Brandon Caserta.  Whitmer immediately blamed the plot on President Trump telling the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."  "Hate groups heard the president's words as a rallying cry, as a call to action," Whitmer said blaming white supremacists.  It turns out Brandon Caserta, one of anarchists who was arrested for plotting to kidnap Whitmer, actually hates President Trump and is on video calling Trump a "tyrant."

Turns Out the Folks Behind the Whitmer Plot Aren't Who Dems and Media Are Painting Them As.  The FBI did a good job taking down the group and it sounded like a serious danger to Whitmer if they did what they are alleged to have done, so it's good they got them.  But when Whitmer sounded off about the plot, she immediately tried to falsely link the president and the Proud Boys to the event, neither of which had anything to do with it.  According to Whitmer, Trump had sent a "rallying cry" to "action."  Of course there were several problems with her assertions.  The Proud Boys are a different group, Trump has nothing to do with them and they aren't "white supremacists."  Further, turns out in checking out the folks behind the alleged plot, one of the alleged members, Brandon Caserta, would appear to be an anarchist.  Not only that, he's anti-Trump.

Gregg Jarrett lambastes the media as 'willing accessories to the Russia hoax'.  Fox News legal analyst Greg Jarrett believes that there will be troves of proof demonstrating government officials' egregious misconduct during the Russia collusion probe once all of the materials get declassified.  Jarrett told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast [...] that he thinks "when all of it is declassified there will be a mountain of damning, incriminating evidence about just how devious and corrupt these government officials were in the Russia hoax."

NBC Caught Again Manipulating Joe Biden Town Hall With Planted Audience and Advance Script.  The Washington Free Beacon has done a great job exposing the intentional and manipulative intents of NBC and Lester Holt during a recent town-hall event with presidential candidate Joe Biden.  At this point American media have become Pravda in their efforts to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 election.

Defending Trump from a Tornado of Liberal Lies.  The media's whitewashing of the riots is mind-boggling.  The words we use are important in accurately conveying a message; using words to sugarcoat reality is wrong.  The left is using the phrase "peaceful protests" to describe burning down cities and bludgeoning business-owners who guard their stores from the looters.  Commentators are earnestly lamenting the deprivations of poverty that supposedly are driving the poor to steal in order to be able to eat; actually, the visuals show footage of those stealing luxury items — everything from elite athletes' signature sneakers to big screen TVs — and partiers who are just grabbing whatever — frequently alcohol — for the bragging rights.  Then there are the serious analysts who are using the riots as a pretext to attack Trump.  And for what?  Blaming him for the failures of Democrat mayors and governors to maintain order because... Trump's hate-filled racist rhetoric caused the riots.  The rioters are obviously left-wingers, out-of-work students intoxicated by Marxist rhetoric and bored inner-city kids being manipulated in anarchy by Antifa.  All the talk about "white supremacy" groups is a smokescreen and an insult to the viewers who can see what is actually happening despite all of the gaslighting about "mostly peaceful protests."

Don't Believe Anything 'Sources' Say.  As every sentient person knows by now, our mainstream media and Big Tech platforms are limitlessly corrupt.  Almost nothing they say, report or interpret can be trusted.  They have become mouthpieces for the political Left, resonating bullhorns for the Democratic Party, the "social justice" insurgency, the feminist movement, domestic terrorists like Antifa and BLM, and the concerted effort to vilify and destroy the sitting American president.  A dead giveaway of their malignant agenda is the customary reliance on the "expert," the "insider," a someone-in-the-know code-named as "a source" or, more explicitly, "an unnamed source." The phenomenon is so ubiquitous that it scarcely needs even a jot of documentation.  Just pick up The New York Times or The Washington Post et al., scan any number of Internet sites, or watch CNN, MSNBC and the rest of that morbid crew, and you will meet the unnamed source at every turn.

America's Chris Wallace Problem.  [Chris] Wallace's dismal performance as moderator in Tuesday's [9/29/2020] presidential debate reminded many viewers of such previous instances in which the Fox News Sunday host has shown his prejudice against Trump.  And this matters, not only because of how that ugly televised carnival might affect the election, but because of what it tells us about the sad state of journalism in America. [...] Consider this question he aimed at President Trump:  "You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups, but are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland?"  Where is the evidence that "white supremacists and militia groups" were to blame for violence in Kenosha or Portland, Oregon?  Wallace's question was not only tendentious, but counterfactual.

Associated Press stylebook revisions sugarcoat rioting and looting.  The stylebook published by the Associated Press was virtually the bible for journalistic writing until the past several years, an authoritative guide as to which terms to use and which to avoid in order to present the news fairly, without biasing readers one way or another.  But that memory is fading fast now that the capture of journalism by the left is a fait accompli.  Instead of eliminating bias, the AP Stylebook is being revised along the lines George Orwell laid out in 1984 — as a tool for indoctrination.

AP Issues New Guidance for Reporters to Cover Up Leftist Violence.  Mobs of violent left-wing kooks have been roaming the streets of American cities for months terrorizing residents, murdering Trump supporters, beating people to a pulp, shooting police officers, and assaulting people in their vehicles.  But you wouldn't know any of this if you consumed news exclusively from the mainstream media because the mainstream media doesn't want you to know about it.  The Associated Press (AP) issues guidelines, closely adhered to by many journalists, dictating what words are politically correct at the time and what words to avoid.  The AP issued new guidance on Wednesday telling journalists to avoid using the word "riot" when covering leftwing events and refrain from reporting on property destruction because, according to the AP, such reporting has been used in the past as a way to stigmatize protests against lynching and racial injustice.  To the AP, it's not the job of journalists to report the news.  It's the job of journalists to advance a left-wing narrative.

Dear Chris Wallace:  We Were In Kenosha, And No, White Supremacists And Militias Didn't Cause Violence.  Ignoring for a moment that Trump's criticism of Joe Biden was absolutely warranted and that Wallace asked Trump to condemn white supremacists but did not ask Biden to condemn Black Lives Matter arsonists and looters, the question itself was specious.  The violence in Kenosha was spurred by left-wing extremist groups, not white supremacists.  We know — because we were there.  Kenosha was up in flames, reduced to the same lawlessness that swept Minneapolis, Portland, Atlanta, and now this small Midwest town.  Monday night in Kenosha, a day after law enforcement shot Jacob Blake, men and women stood with baseball bats and guns in front of their businesses and homes, trying to defend themselves against the extremist violence of the Black Lives Matter left.  Since there weren't enough police to control the situation, officers focused on defending public buildings, such as the courthouse, while leaving citizens to fend for themselves.

Chris Wallace Falsely Implies Trump Never Condemned White Supremacists.  CLAIM:  Debate moderator Chris Wallace implied that President Donald Trump never condemned white supremacists.  VERDICT:  FALSE.  President Trump has done so repeatedly, despite what Wallace — and Joe Biden — have suggested.  During the first presidential debate, Wallace challenged President Trump to condemn white supremacists.  It was an astonishingly ill-informed — and inflammatory — challenge, and repeated a lie that Biden has told frequently in the campaign.  Trump has condemned white supremacists repeatedly.

NYT Admits Trump Actually Paid Nearly $6 Million in Taxes in 2016 and 2017.  Trump PAID, as in transferred to the US Treasury, $1 million in 2016 and $4.2 million in 2017.  Note also that most of the overpayment was rolled forward, not refunded.  The $750 figure is an ADDITIONAL $750.  Thus every single story saying he paid $750 is a lie.

NBC Warns 'Committed Conservative' Barrett 'Instantly Controversial'.  On Saturday evening [9/26/2020], shortly after President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, NBC Nightly News let the ideological labels fly as the nominee was repeatedly identified as a "conservative" who was popular with the "religious right" and "instantly controversial."  By contrast, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was never given any left-wing political label in the report. [...] In the report that followed, correspondent Hallie Jackson emphasized:  "From President Trump, a move to cement a more conservative Supreme Court for a generation."

The Editor says...
Where is the verb in that last sentence?  That's not English, it's Headline-ese.

Jill campaigns for husband Joe before an itty bitty crowd.  Sleepy Joe has taken a lot of days off this month.  The AP disingenuously calls it a "low-key campaign style" but admits it concerns some Democrats.  Biden made 12 visits outside of Delaware since August 12 and President Trump made 24 visits to 17 states.  The NY Times dishonestly claims that Slow Joe's inability to put sentences together is a "stutter."  Neither Joe nor Kamala Harris are answering many reporters' questions and when they do, the questions are softball.

Trump haters [are] gaslighting Trump supporters.  Everywhere you turn, Trump haters are venting their wrath against Trump supporters, as if supporting President Trump is an unforgivable sin.  They're projecting and gaslighting — blaming Trump and his supporters for everything they're doing.  It's madness, but at long last, they might have awakened the sleeping giant they're trying to hunt down and destroy.  MSNBC's Joy Reid tweeted, "Genuine question:  what will be the relationship between the majority of Americans, and Trumpists after this long, national nightmare ends — and it will eventually end — do people anticipate simply letting bygones (be) bygones with people who joined the Trump personality cult?"  What bygones?  Who's doing what to whom?  What are we Trump supporters doing to you Trump haters, Joy?  We are trying to mind our own business and stay safe.

Revolution 2020.  [Scroll down]  Suffice it to note that not a day in four years has gone by without the news media hyperventilating or ruminating on some allegation of Trump's wrongdoing or wrongbeing.  For what?  Again, the list of subjects is so exhaustive that it is easier to note that there is hardly any mortal transgression of which he has not been accused. [...] Nor has the media forgone any occasion to protect, foster, and embellish narratives in support of each and every member of the "intersectional" coalition and to shut out or denigrate alternatives thereto.  It labels as false and/or as "hate speech" facts and arguments that counteract its narratives.  Since the ruling class can be certain of the media's unquestioning support, it need not worry about truth.  For example, do physicians in America and around the world use hydroxychloroquine successfully against the COVID-19 virus?  Yes, correct — but banished as if it were false because it is politically incorrect.  Riots, arson, and looting are leading so many to relocate from America's major cities as to cause urban vacancies and a house-building boom in the country?  Fact.  But politically incorrect fact, indeed, racist.  Repeat: "mostly peaceful protests, mostly peaceful protests."

Media assault on Amy Coney Barrett begins as Trump weighs decision.  A media campaign has erupted against Amy Coney Barrett, even though President Trump hasn't actually nominated her to the Supreme Court.  Barrett is clearly the front-runner, having spent a second straight day at the White House as the president moves toward his Saturday [9/26/2020] announcement.  And of course there should be substantial scrutiny of her record if she's picked, given that replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a lifetime appointment.  But there are early signs this is going to be ugly, and that her religion will be front and center.  That subject came up in 2017 when the Senate approved her as a federal appeals court judge in Chicago.  Newsweek jumped on the judge with a smear that turned out to be factually wrong.

Harris — not Biden — is the real candidate.  It has been obvious for some time that Biden's cognitive state is on a level with the spider monkey.  He can't remember where he is or what he is running for.  He can't put together a coherent sentence.  His condition has become a running joke.  At his age, he would at best be a one-term president.  So why would a major party pin its hopes on such a man? [...] Enter Kamala Harris.  The media are pushing the argument that Harris is on the ticket because of pressure to choose a woman of color as Biden's running mate.  Note this report from NBC News:  "Add in Biden's age (77), and Harris could find herself in a unique position as vice president.  Instead of having to wait eight years for her shot, she could get it in the next election in 2024."  This is what the Democrats want us to believe.  As usual, it is a lie.  If they win, she won't have to wait at all.

The Attacks on Judge Barrett Have Already Started.  Some left-wingers aren't waiting for Judge Amy Barrett to be nominated to the Supreme Court to start attacking her.  The attacks over the last few days have been steeped in anti-Catholicism, other types of bigotry, and lazy error.  A headline at the left-wing website Refinery29 called her "the Potential RBG Replacement Who Hates Your Uterus."  (I'm guessing she didn't come to have seven children by hating anyone's uterus.)  Newsweek ran a story claiming that she is part of a Catholic group that inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Handmaid's Tale.  It then appended a correction at the bottom of the page noting that Atwood had referred to a different Catholic group.  Oops.  Then Refinery29 picked up the smear and ran with it.

Newsweek [is] Forced To Issue Major Retraction After It Smears Amy Coney Barrett, Claims.  Newsweek magazine has issued a major correction to an article smearing potential Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, accusing the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge of belonging to a Catholic sect that "inspired" the novel "The Handmaid's Tale."  Initially, Newsweek claimed that "People of Praise," a charismatic Catholic group to which Barrett reportedly belongs, "served as inspiration for Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale," adding that female members are forced to report to spiritual superiors known as "handmaids," and that the group stresses that "men have authority over their wives."

Amy Coney Barrett Is Living The Handmaid's Tale?  [Scroll down]  One former member described the group as an:  ["]abusive cult in which women are completely obedient to men and independent thinkers are humiliated, interrogated, shamed and shunned.["]  Indeed.  After all, Barrett's knuckle-dragging misogynistic religious fanatic husband has only let the poor woman out of the house twice.  Once, to serve a 15-year stint as a law professor at a highly prestigious university.  And again to slave away as a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

ABC Town Hall Masquerades Anti-Trump Activists as 'Uncommitted' Voters.  Multiple voters characterized by ABC News as undecided — and selected to pepper President Donald Trump with questions during a network town hall — are longtime Trump critics.  While the network claimed its Tuesday [9/15/2020] town hall "provided uncommitted voters the opportunity to ask the president questions about issues affecting Americans," a Washington Free Beacon review of social media posts found that two of the questioners have long denounced Trump.  Kutztown University professor Ellesia Blaque — whom ABC repeatedly identified as "uncommitted" in its coverage of the town hall — praised vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris during the Democratic primary, saying she would "be there, volunteering" for the California senator in Pennsylvania.  The English professor was not shy about her partisanship, calling Trump a [series of derogatory names] in a slew of 2019 tweets.  She is a self-described "liberal Democrat," according to her Facebook profile, [...]

To Rescue Biden, Media Conflate All Teleprompter Use.  At his Wisconsin rally last night, President Donald Trump continued to tease former Vice President Joe Biden for relying on a teleprompter when he answers queries from the media.  While teleprompter use is very common for politicians and others giving formal speeches, Biden is the first candidate to regularly use one outside of formal speeches, such as during press conferences.  During Biden's nearly 50 years in politics, his off-the-cuff remarks have gotten him in more than a bit of trouble, but the obvious teleprompter use is posing problems of its own.

Mostly Peaceful:  The Birth of an Excuse.  In late August, when riots erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin, CNN featured a reporter standing in front of a burning car lot above a chyron that read:  "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting."  The use of the chyron was striking in its peculiar earnestness, considering that the words "mostly peaceful protest" had long since become a bitter in-joke for right-leaning social media.  Indeed, from the moment the first protests began in late May, mainstream media outlets have downplayed or ignored instances of violence or destructive looting.  On May 29, MSNBC's Ali Velshi was reporting from Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd when he insisted he was seeing "mostly a protest" that "is not, generally speaking, unruly" despite the fact that he was literally standing in front of a burning building at the time.  Yet Velshi was hesitant to ascribe blame to the arsonists and looters.

Antifa and BLM, the Democrat party's stormtroopers.  Not surprisingly, taxpayer-funded NPR has supported the not "peaceful protests" for months.  They have been touting that ludicrous book that defends looting and the destruction of private property.  They regularly use Trump's words out of context.  NPR lost its way long before Trump was elected, but it has been enthusiastically dragged into the anti-Trump fray.  Why taxpayers are forced to subsidize this particular branch of the Democrat party is not a mystery; taxpayers are stooges.  Throughout these past months of violent looting, arson, death, and destruction, NPR, like the rest of the leftist media, has misled their viewers and insisted these riots were "mostly peaceful." They absolutely were not.  They have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, mostly to small businesses, many of them minority-owned.

The Trump Scandal Absorption Level Has Been Reached.  [Scroll down]  We're being lied to on a daily basis.  We're being manipulated by a minority that, without the media, would be invisible.  This minority is literally so small that if the media were not sponsoring them, we wouldn't see them.  Now, as you know, psychologically, this sufficient works.  A lot of people on our side think that we are outnumbered — and the truth is, not only are we not outnumbered, they're not even close to outnumbering us.  Despite how you feel, despite how it might look.  And I'm talking specifically about the Marxist radical leftist.  Not the usual liberal Democrats that we know are out there.  I'm talking about the Antifas and the Black Lives Matters.  They are nowhere near a majority of in this country.  They are a tiny minority, and we're being told by CNN and the New York Times every day that the country has now made the move to Marxism.

AG Barr Rips National Media as a 'Collection of Liars' Over Riot Coverage.  Wrapping up a three-day tour in Chicago, Phoenix and Cleveland Friday, Attorney General Bill Barr took on the media during an exclusive interview with Townhall.  "They're basically a collection of liars.  Most of the mainstream media.  They're a collection of liars and they know exactly what they're doing.  A perfect example of that were the riots.  Right on the street it was clear as day what was going on, anyone observing it, reporters observing it, it could not have escaped their attention that this was orchestrated violence by a hardened group of street fighting radicals and they kept on excluding from their coverage all the video of this and reporting otherwise and they were doing that for partisan reasons, and they were lying to the American people.  It wasn't until they were caught red-handed after essentially weeks of this lie that they even started feeling less timid," Barr said on the flight back to Washington Friday afternoon.

Riots?  What Riots?  In my three decades as a media critic, this summer's huge effort by the press to cover up the endless rioting by George Floyd's mourners has been its most shameless and shameful episode yet.  Until very recently, a remarkable number of naive Americans had fallen for the mainstream media's repetitions that the Peaceful Protesters were not — repeat, not — looting and burning.  The MSM has been in such flat-out denial mode that it hasn't even bothered to concoct exculpatory euphemisms for the riots, such as Retail Mourning, Do-It-Yourself Reparations, or Arson for Equity.  Even last week a new report from a leftist think tank, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, admitting to the immense number of violent demonstrations during this Summer of George was spun by the media as proving that all those boarded-up shops near you don't exist.

WHEC Reporter Chased By Knife-Wielding BLM Mob — Station Ignores Attack And Describes 'Protests' As 'Peaceful'.  WHEC reporter Charles Molineaux was attacked and chased by a knife-wielding Black Lives Matter mob during "protests" on Sunday night in Rochester and yet his own news station ignored the incident and described the night's "protests" as "peaceful" on their front page.  Video shows Molineaux and his security guard getting attacked and called "Nazis" after apparently getting accused of being undercover cops.  An African-American man with a knife is seen running at them and threatening to stab them repeatedly, only backing down when Molineaux's security guard turns around to defend him with an expandable baton.  UPDATE:  The video was just deleted!

The Media Are Lying About The Election Again.  Election 2020 is shaping up to be déjà vu all over again for the news media.  In an effort to help push Joe Biden over the finish line, the Washington establishment is going all-in on the easily refuted idea that there has been no change in the presidential race over the last three weeks. [...] After having botched the entire news coverage of the 2016 election, where all the "experts" repeatedly told the American public that Donald Trump had little to no chance of being the Republican nominee and even less a chance of being elected president, corporate media are back at it again, insisting all is well with the Biden campaign and the Democrats are safely on cruise control to take the White House and the Senate.  Here's the truth they are not telling you.  Biden has little enthusiasm for his candidacy.  He is taking on an incumbent president with significant first-term accomplishments who has extremely energized supporters, to put it mildly.

Desperately Derailing Donald.  One always expects the media surprise leak of a purported hidden scandal as a presidential campaign winds down.  Remember the last-minute "discovery" of George W. Bush's undisclosed 24-year-old DUI arrest in 2000?  Or the October 7, 2016 effort of the Washington Post to publish the hoarded 11-year-old "Access Hollywood" tape, just two days before Donald Trump's second debate with Hillary Clinton?  We should expect lots of these "bombshells" and "walls are closing in" pseudo derailments.  Except Trump has been the most widely investigated, probed, attacked, and smeared president in history.  And so the scandal-field has pretty well been picked over, as those fired like Omarosa Manigault Newman, Anthony Scaramucci, John Bolton, and others have long ago more or less lectured us that Trump is nuts, crazy, dangerous, stupid, ignorant, and so forth.

New York Times' sleazy narrative on Trump is nothing but a joke:  Goodwin.  A former colleague at The New York Times once explained why he kept reading the paper even though he no longer trusted it:  "I want to see what they're up to."  What they're up to now is staggering.  Not content with four years of biased coverage of President Trump, the Times is plunging head first into new depths of partisanship and deceit. [...] We are long removed from any possible claim that Baquet's Times is fair and impartial.  He has single-handedly abolished more than a century of standards in pursuit of his white whale: defeating Donald Trump.  Baquet launched his quest in 2016 but his slant then seems almost restrained compared to his scheming now.  This time, the top editor has institutionalized a ruthless commitment to partisanship that I believe will someday be seen as rivaling the Times' historic scandals.  In the 1930s, the paper cozied up to Josef Stalin and ignored the famine in Ukraine, then downplayed the Holocaust and later supported the rise of Fidel Castro while hiding his commitment to communism.  Using distortions and duplicity to influence a presidential election deserves to be included in that roster of infamy.

Fox News Decides to Go Full CNN.  Over the last several days, a report from The Atlantic has been making the rounds.  In it are accusations that the President doesn't like John McCain (shocker), but more importantly, that he didn't want to visit a cemetery in France because he thinks dead soldiers are "losers."  As I laid out in my original debunking of this story, we already have documentary evidence from multiple sources, including some who hate Trump, that the reason for not going to the cemetery was purely about the weather.  No one has gone on record saying Trump said any of the things alleged, though some have gone on record to say it didn't happen.  Gen. Kelly, who is named as having heard the comments, has remained quiet despite having no reason to do so.  All of this points to the story being nonsense, or at the very least, extremely misleading (i.e. perhaps some ancillary part is true, like bagging on McCain).  Unfortunately, Fox News has decided to lower its journalistic standards to those of CNN and help push this garbage.

ABC News downplays good news in latest jobs report.  The latest unemployment report issued by the government was unexpectedly positive, but readers wouldn't know it from the tweet ABC News issued Friday morning [9/4/2020].  [Tweet]  While the tweet correctly noted the number of jobs added last month, it also said that the unemployment rate fell "slightly" to 8.4% from July.  Slightly?  In July ,the government reported that the unemployment rate was 10.2%.  Expectations by economists predicted that the August rate would be in the neighborhood of 9.8% which would qualify as a slight improvement.

Here Are 31 Times The Media Pushed Narratives Downplaying Riots And Looting After George Floyd's Death.  Dozens of news outlets published content that either justified or explained away rioting and looting in the initial weeks of unrest following the police custody death of George Floyd in late May, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found.  While President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have both condemned rioting and looting, major news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC have appeared to downplay the unrest that has gripped American cities in the months following Floyd's death, in one instance describing a scene as "mostly peaceful" as fires raged in the background.  But as the violence broke out in American cities in late May and June, dozens of news outlets provided a platform for commentators, professors and activists who not only acknowledged that rioting and looting were taking place, but sought to either justify the violence as a valid protesting technique or as a form of righteous rebellion against an unjust system.

ABC: Joe Biden Isn't Senile, You Guys, That's Just What The Russians Want You To Think.  Has anyone noticed a slowdown with Joe?  He isn't drooling, he isn't muttering to himself any more than plenty of other people do, but something seems different.  Or maybe rather than different, something seems deeply familiar.  No, it isn't the sort of cognitive decline we've all seen with loved ones.  Rather, according to ABC's latest nuke, the encroaching senility that has our former vice president hiding in his basement is simply... Russian propaganda.  Don't laugh!  This is serious stuff.  National security!  It took four reporters, with help from a fifth to write this story.  It runs nearly 1,600 words.

Participant at Biden Event in Kenosha Admits She Was Given a "Paper" Telling Her What to Say.  We know that the Biden events are all staged and we now have more evidence.  Today in Kenosha, Wisconsin at a Biden event a woman admitted on camera that she was given a piece of paper telling her what to say: [...] The Biden team has managed their events by ensuring all comments and questions the former Obama VP is asked are pre-approved, and set up so that Biden can read the respective answers on the teleprompter.  Yesterday we saw this as well and every day for that matter.  The media and the Biden team work together as they manufacture events and try to make them look unscripted.

Gaslighting America:  Democrats And Media Have Turned It Up To 11.  The Democratic Party and its communications office have been telling the country for some time now that night is day and up is down.  But, with the election two months away, the psychological manipulation of the American voter has accelerated.  As we've written the past two days, Joe Biden has condemned the riots that have been wrecking cities and killing people since the May 25 death of George Floyd.  We're glad he finally got around to it.  Yet he and his party are acting as if they've opposed the violence all along and it's President Donald Trump who has failed to come out against it.  But Trump, of course, has been denouncing the riots since they began.  Even when the media were determined to convince us they were "mostly peaceful."

Evidence Shows the Media Doesn't Really Care About Evidence.  Read an article from any mainstream media outlet regarding an even remotely controversial subject broached by President Trump, and it is likely to include the statement, "President Trump claimed, without evidence..."  Use of the phrase is so frequent, it is likely that writers at the New York Times and elsewhere have it pop up in the auto-fill functionality on their laptops.  Type in "President Trump," and the words "claimed without evidence" automatically appear to the side in opaque font, and all they have to do is hit their arrow key to auto-fill the phrase.  The practice has become so prevalent in the media's wonderland that they no longer wait to include the phrase in the body of an article, they now put it right in their headlines.

As Biden falls in the polls, the media's lies get bigger.  The more desperate the media becomes to elect the corrupt, incompetent Joe Biden, the bigger and more numerous the lies.  We have been treated to Democrat campaign workers, posing as journalists, and other Democrats throwing [stuff] against the wall for five years to elect one corrupt Democrat after another.  No matter how obvious the lies become, the more they repeat them.  One of the biggest loads of excrement I have seen came out of the mouths of the Washington Post editorial board on Friday [8/28/2020] when they had the garbage headline "Global Freedom would suffer grievous harm in a second Trump Term."  They claim that this will happen because he embraces dictators and he is rejecting U.S. democracy.  They know they are lying because the facts show that it was Obama/Biden who catered throughout their eight years to dictators, and they know that Trump's policies and actions have been much harsher toward the dictators and tyrants.

The media and those who want to curry favor with the media have a dual agenda.  All of what has made the media even less trusted by the public than Congress and used car salesmen was on display last week with the reporting from Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Over the past few days due to the shooting of Jacob Blake, the media converged on the city using the same playbook that worked for them in Minneapolis earlier this summer.  First, spread misinformation and half-baked reporting, then help light the fuse for violent riots and social chaos, then staggeringly pretend that the protests are "fiery but mostly peaceful."  In the case of Blake, the initial reporting indicated that the man was simply walking away from police for no apparent reason before being shot seven times.  That reporting alone, with no context or additional information touched off a level of violence, looting, property damage, and physical harm more common to the nightly rioting in Chicago than a suburban community in Wisconsin.  A day later, the important facts that a responsible media might have sought out before reporting told a somewhat different story.  Blake's girlfriend had called police fearing for her and her children's safety.  Police attempted to calm the situation, but when Blake continued to be perceived as a threat, police attempted to use a taser.  Blake ran to his car and police believe he was reaching for a knife when he was shot.  No doubt, the police use of force must be part of this investigation.  But none of the above facts that would have added important context were part of any initial reporting on the scene, creating a very different narrative that played into the hands of Black Lives Matter terrorists and Antifa scum headed to Kenosha on Monday.

What does 'without evidence' mean?  President Trump spoke mildly in defense of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse on Tuesday, saying that the 17-year-old seemed to be defending himself when he shot three people, killing two of them.  NPR, fresh off of interviewing In Defense of Looting author Vicky Osterweil, had something stern to say about that, tweeting 'President Trump declined to condemn the actions of the suspected 17-year-old shooter of three protesters against police brutality in Kenosha — claiming, without evidence, that it appeared the gunman was acting in self-defense.'  Without evidence!  Cockburn tries to live an upright life these days, but he had to pause for a moment to be sure he had not mistakenly consumed peyote or some other mind-altering substance.  Without evidence?  The entire Rittenhouse episode was caught on tape.  You can watch both shootings on YouTube, along with lengthy dissections of what they show.  You can watch him get interviewed immediately before the shooting.  Without evidence?  Kyle Rittenhouse's night in Kenosha is one of the single best-documented shootings of all time.

Larry Schweikart:  How the 24-Hour News Cycle is Leading the Loss of the English Language.  Plenty of commentators have dealt with the lunacy that affects the English language today, from banning certain words as "racist," "sexist," or "something-ist."  Certainly that's obvious to all.  But there is another, more subtle change going on, even among the "friendly" or "reliable news pages.  It began when the 24-hour news cycle started to run out of, well, news.  It took more than a decade for this development to settle in.  At first, the networks filled the void with simply more talking heads, guests, and "analysts" telling you what the news was.  More recently however — I started really noticing it during the Mueller investigation — a host of non-news words began to creep into news stories.  We began to see mush phrases such as "Mueller mulling demand that Trump testify," or "Mueller considering charging Don, Jr."  These kinds of hourly non-news stories utterly took over, for reporters weren't supposed to know what was happening in the first place (the investigation after all — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — was to be secret.  Since the Mueller team was leaking like the Titanic however, so-called journalists could not produce actual documents to prove anything.  As it turned out, in fact, they had nothing to prove anything with.  Instead, reporters reverted to the post-1980 favorite journalistic trick, the "unnamed source."  Realize it was not all that long ago that no reputable newspaper would ever run a piece with a single "anonymous source."  Indeed, according to a Chicago Tribune reporter I interviewed during a foreword I wrote for Professor Jim Kuypers' book, Partisan Journalism (2013), every major fact in a story was to be doubly sourced with public sources.  In case you didn't notice, "mulling," "considering," "poised to," "about to," "prepared to," "intends," and other such mush words are utterly unprovable.

Black Assimilation Is The Great Threat To Democrats.  If there was one moment during the Republican convention that caused my official Daily Wire Leftist Tears Tumbler to magically overflow, it was in a speech by former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley.  "In much of the Democratic Party, it's now fashionable to say that America is racist," Haley said.  "That is a lie.  America is not a racist country."  Democrats and the media — but I repeat myself — reacted swiftly.  "I'm just hung up a little bit about Nikki Haley," said hung up ABC Anchor Linsey Davis.  "A comment that she made, 'America is not a racist country.'  I think that that's a statement that a lot of black people, black and brown people, would take umbrage with."  Chicago Tribune columnist Dahleen Glanton was blunter, saying the statement made Haley "appear to be either disgracefully ignorant or a blatant liar."  But, of course, what Haley really was, was completely correct.  There is a history of institutional racism in America, no doubt, but today our country is wholly free of it.  The U.S. is easily the least racist nation on the planet.

The Editor says...
This country is NOT "wholly free" of institutional racism.  What do you call this?  And this?  And this? Is Kwanzaa an American institution?  Is Black History Month an American institution?

If you want to see media malice in a single article....  The second night of the Republican convention has come and gone (and very successfully too) but what should live forever is the article the New York Times wrote about the line-up of speakers for the evening.  It is a triumph of misdirection and fraud by omission.  It may well be the most perfect example ever of how the media functions, not to inform, but to mislead.  The article, entitled "How to Watch the Republican National Convention," gives practical advice about how to find the convention on the internet and television.  Interestingly, it does not mention C-SPAN, which is proving to be a preferred venue for many conservative viewers.  What's really fascinating, though, is what the Times says and does not say about some of the speakers.

The Dangerous Half-Truths Behind 'The Joe Show'.  If you watched last week's Democratic National Convention you couldn't help but notice an overwhelming theme that ran throughout "the Joe Show".  The well-produced and heartwarming images of the former Vice-President were front and center, evoking sympathy and admiration for a man who has endured multiple tragedies throughout his half-century career in politics.  But those images were also on display to underscore the belief amongst the overwhelming number of Democrats, who, united only in their disdain for President Trump, believe him to be, at best, morally inept, and at worst, actively evil.  By shining a light on "Saint Joe," they cast a shadow on the man who currently occupies the Oval Office, a man who is apparently both all-powerful and simultaneously incompetent.  A man who CNN would have you believe single-handedly spread the coronavirus from coast to coast, all but ensuring that countless Americans would find themselves unemployed in the economic downturn that followed.

New York Times Manipulates FBI Lawyer's Guilty Plea To Hide Real Spygate News.  A New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his role perpetrating the Russia collusion hoax was tasked with framing the news that a former top FBI lawyer was to plead guilty to deliberately fabricating evidence against a Donald Trump campaign affiliate targeted in the Russia probe.  The resulting article is a case study in how to write propaganda.  Adam Goldman broke, and cushioned, the news that former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was to plead guilty to fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page.  His job was to present the news as something other than an indictment of the FBI's handling of the Russia collusion hoax, to signal to other media that they should move on from the story as quickly as possible, and to hide his own newspaper's multi-year participation in the Russia collusion hoax.  One intelligence source described it as an "insult" to his intelligence and "beyond Pravda," a reference to the official newspaper of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.  Here's how Goldman did it. [...]

ABC/NBC Stoke Conspiracy:  Trump Creating 'Mail-In Voting Scandal,' a 'Crisis'.  Setting the stage for their excuse if President Trump won reelection, ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Sunday Today [8/16/2020] spent the morning accusing the President of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election.  ABC called it the "mail-in voting scandal" while NBC dubbed it the "Postal Service crisis;" accusing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy of allegedly doing Trump's dirty work, even though they admit they don't have any hard evidence of wrongdoing.  Near the top of ABC's coverage of the purported scandal, White House correspondent Rachel Scott leaned on serial liars Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to make the baseless accusations:

Democrats Go Postal with Busted Mailbox Conspiracy Theory.  Democrats have spent several days flogging the false "mailbox conspiracy" theory that President Donald Trump is deliberately crippling the U.S. Postal Service so that it cannot handle votes by mail in November — even forcing it to remove mailboxes.  The truth is that the mailboxes were removed because mailboxes are always being removed.  At least 14,000 were removed during the Obama-Biden administration.  Democrats are creating a new hysteria to cast Trump as a tyrant and motivate their conspiracy-theory-addled voters.

Don't Let the Fake Fact Checkers Fool You — Joe and Kamala Support Gun Confiscation.  Just like Joe Biden, vice presidential hopeful Kamala Harris supports outright, mandatory gun confiscation.  She just disguises it under a couple of flowery words: "mandatory" and "buyback."  This of course is when all of the fake media's fake fact checkers pour out of the woodwork to lie with the false claim Kamala Harris Never Said She Wanted to Confiscate Guns.  We know the fake fact checkers are going to publish their fake fact checks with their fake claims because that's what the fake fact checkers did to protect their precious Barry Obama, who also said he wanted to confiscate your guns.  Further, the fake fact checkers published lies to protect Hillary Clinton, who also said she wanted to confiscate your guns.  Oh, and Joe Biden said he wanted to confiscate your gun, and he also used flowery words about "buybacks," and as you will see below, he has not taken that sentiment back, even after the fake media tried to help him cover up that fact.

Yamiche Alcindor Cements Her Place as Most Dishonest 'Journalist' After Cutting Trump Quote.  There are a lot of dishonest journalists out there, and I mean a lot of them.  To narrow it down is a bit like trying to split an atom.  Sure, it's possible, but man is it difficult.  Yet, PBS' Yamiche Alcindor continues to stand above the rest, both because of her penchant to outright lie, and her tendency to use her race as a shield.  Who can forget this classic on the recent rioting, of which Alcindor assured us there was no evidence they are anarchists.  Hilariously, she was then bombarded with pictures of people present wearing anarchist symbols.  [Tweet]  And here she is trying to cancel the black Surgeon General over an innocuous plea to not do drugs and alcohol.  Her shtick is to provide "context" while never defining who exactly she's talking about.  It's a cheap game some journalists play when they want to editorialize but want to pretend it's not editorializing.  [Another tweet]  Alcindor is attempting to up her game, though.  Yesterday, she purposely cut the context out of a Trump quote so she could proclaim it a "moment to behold."  [Yet another tweet]

Touting Kamala Harris as a moderate is a liberal dose of deception.  The New York Times was quick out of the blocks with the Democratic pitch that Kamala Harris is a "pragmatic moderate."  It's pulling your leg.  Joe Biden's running mate had the most liberal voting record in the Senate last year — surpassing even Bernie Sanders — according to government watchdog GovTrack.  Harris advocates late-term abortion, thinks Catholics are not fit to serve on the Supreme Court, has tried to criminalize climate-change denial and the manufacture of guns, wants to give taxpayer-funded health care to illegal immigrants and, as California's attorney general, wielded power like a callous autocrat.  But, if by pragmatic, the Times means this Barack Obama protegé will be whatever you want her to be, it's correct.  Her record shows her to be a gifted shapeshifter.

AG Barr On Far-Left Extremism:  Media Is Censoring What's Happening, Americans Are Being 'Told A Lie'.  Attorney General William Barr told Fox News host Mark Levin during an interview Sunday that the mainstream media are lying about the far-left violence that has been playing out in the streets across America over recent weeks.  "We have the citizen reporters, who have these videos of these events, which are quite different than what we get a lot of times from the media, which seems to be censoring the violence," Levin said to Barr.  "No?"  "Absolutely.  Their narrative — they are projecting a narrative," Barr said.  "When the word narrative came into currency, I knew we were in trouble, because the word narrative really suggests that there's no objective truth.  There's no real story of what happened, it's just everyone has their own narrative."  "And you get to then — the press can justify presenting a story that doesn't really correspond to objective truth, but it's our narrative.  We have a narrative, you have a narrative," Barr continued.  "I've been appalled at — on this violence, because it's happening right out in the streets, anyone with eyes can see what's happening.  They see the violence."

'Defund the Police' is a media fantasy.  If you've paid any attention to the news, particularly cable news, over the last couple of months since George Floyd's killing by police in Minneapolis, you might think "defunding" or "abolishing" the police is a widely held and even somewhat mainstream desire.  Gallup suggests this is untrue.  The vast majority of Americans of all races and ethnicities don't want the police to leave their communities.

7-year-old boy in Georgia died 'from COVID-19'? Media leaving out key details.  [Scroll down]  So it seems that the boy died not "from COVID-19," but rather as the result of a seizure and a fall in the shower.  It seems that, prior to his death, the child had zero Wuhan virus symptoms, and that after he was pronounced dead, "a rapid test showed evidence of COVID-19 positivity."  I don't know about you, but I've followed the news and the science on this virus as closely as most anyone, and I have yet to hear any reports of the Wuhan virus causing seizures.  If this were the case — especially where children are concerned — it is a virtual guarantee that the media would have daily told us so.  It would seem that fair and accurate reporting of this incident would include all of the circumstances surrounding this terrible tragedy and that this is almost certainly another example of someone dying with the Wuhan virus and not from it.  All the media have done here is give us another reason not to trust them in this grave matter.

America's Most Gullible Journalist:  "Visit Portland!".  Whom to believe?  Videos of the riots?  Or smug journalists telling us that they saw nothing untoward?  Luckily, there's the Newspaper of Record to give us the truth.  Unluckily, The New York Times sent ... Nicholas Kristof, aka the most easily fooled journalist in America.  Kristof assured Times readers that the Portland crowds are "entirely peaceful," until around 11 p.m., when "some protesters begin to shoot fireworks or set small trash fires."  Small trash fires.  Also: the federal courthouse, the Justice Center offices, statues, the Portland police union hall, and a decapitated pig's head, among other arsons.  But Kristof also dismissively remarked:  "No, they're not trying to burn down the federal courthouse."  Do not trust the dozens of videos showing protesters trying to burn down the federal courthouse.  He further reports that — just as MSNBC has said! — "the most violent behavior overwhelmingly comes from the federal agents."  So there you have it.  You can believe the man who said, "Mao's legacy is not all bad," or you can believe your lying eyes.

Floyd Bodycam Leak Highlights Press Collusion With Government.  The British Daily Mail on Monday scooped American news media with the leaked police body cam footage.  To be clear, the footage does not exonerate the police officers although it provides considerable context not previously available.  Floyd refused several police orders including not making his hands visible during the initial traffic stop to resisting entering a patrol car.  In the video, Floyd complains about difficulty breathing before the infamous knee-on-the-neck pose.  His shortness of breath may have been a symptom of an advancing drug overdose that ultimately may have contributed to his death.  The autopsy indicated a quantity of 11 ng/mL of fentanyl in Floyd's blood.  One study of 143 postmortem analyses of fentanyl overdoses found a median level of 9.8ng/mL in the blood of people believed to have died from overdosing on the drug.  Setting that aside, the way in which the new information came to light is further indication that American news media cannot be trusted to cover and report facts.

The Perils of Pretending a War is Something Else.  [Scroll down]  Here's an equally scary current charade:  the straight-faced claim by Democrat leaders and their media enablers that there are only "peaceful protests" in the streets of our 400 torched cities — no riots, looting and arsons, no rioters, looters and arsonists associated with Black Lives Matter and Antifa communists.  Instead, the denial that the mayhem which has injured thousands and cost more than a dozen lives are only possible because of the support of lawless Democrat mayors and city councils who are preoccupied with disarming the police. [...] The fact that there have been no serious attempts by "peaceful protesters" to denounce the violence and the organizations that perpetrated it — speaks volumes to the effect that they consider themselves allies of the rioters and share their agendas.  Defunding the police, leaving the most vulnerable in society without protection against criminals is the goal of rioters, arsonists, looters, and so-called "peaceful protesters."  The charade protects the criminals and their crimes.

ABC Ignores Leaked Video of George Floyd Arrest; CBS & NBC Caught Editing Out "Stop Resisting".  Body cam footage from the arrest of George Floyd has been leaked.  But instead of leaking through a U.S. media outlet, the footage was given to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, which posted the footage online.  Why would someone give the body cam footage to a foreign media entity?  Well... we can't know for certain, but we have a pretty good guess:  whoever leaked this footage KNEW that the American fake news media would IGNORE this story.  And for the most part, they have.  ABC News spiked the story completely.  And CBS and NBC were both caught editing out parts of the body cam footage that go against the national BLM narrative.

America is engaged in a religious war.  [Scroll down]  Marxism also has its saints and martyrs.  In classic Marxism, they would have been poor people exploited by evil capitalists.  In America, however, with its extraordinary economic and social mobility, that's not going to fly.  Instead, the saints and martyrs are racial figures.  Trayvon Martin is transformed from a violent, drugged-out, small-time thug into a childish, smiling figure who could have been the son of America's black president.  Michael Brown is not a hulking figure who engaged in strong-arm robbery and tried to steal a police officer's weapon.  He's a "gentle giant."  And lastly, George Floyd is not a violent felon and petty criminal who held a gun against a pregnant woman's stomach, and who was so hopped up on fentanyl and a variety of other intoxicants that it's unlikely he would have survived the night (and his inability to breath[e] probably arose from acute fentanyl intoxication).  Instead, he's a beloved family man whose image blooms on urban walls across America.

Sorry, Wearing Masks Is Anything but Harmless.  Here are 5 Reasons Why.  [#3] The establishment media makes it a point to run headlines containing meaningless scary-sounding factoids and manipulative stories about those who've allegedly succumbed to the virus.  When its supposed death tally was climbing, we couldn't escape hearing about it.  As it started to fall, they started ignoring the number of deaths and shifted over to reporting about rising cases, also neglecting to mention that rising cases and falling deaths is a good thing.  The media has done nothing to make the public aware that a local CBS affiliate looked into 589 alleged Palm Beach fatalities and discovered that far less than a third (169) had actually died of the virus.  Nor have they reported that the COVID-19 death tally they terrorized the nation with for months includes motor-cycle fatalities and gunshot victims.  Most people who did hear about these stories were shocked.  But, if the press had been doing its job, they wouldn't have been.  Another crucial fact of which they've failed to inform the public is that counting vast numbers who didn't die from COVID-19 among its fatalities is a feature, not a bug.  Everyone who dies with the virus is being counted as dying from it.

How It's Done:  Colorado Reporter Puts on a Clinic in How to Accurately Report on Violent Rioters.  As we've previously documented, the gaslighting from the MSM on the violent left-wing riots that have taken place in Democrat-run parts of the country over the last two months has been absolutely out of control.  There is literally not a day that goes by where there is not some glaring instance of a media outlet like the New York Times or Reuters painting protests as "mostly peaceful" or otherwise "dying down" until federal law enforcement officers have the nerve to step in to stop the anarchy.  Violent agitators in these reports are almost always referred to as "protesters."  Along with that, excuses are often made for their violent actions, as though just the mere presence of state and/or federal law enforcement officers on the scene to protect innocent citizens and federal property is excuse enough for the agitators to try and blind them with laser beams and hurt them with the nail-studded projectiles they hurl.  One Colorado reporter, however, went against the MSM "peaceful protester" grain in a recent report he filed on the Aurora, CO protests and riots that happened over the weekend.

No, New York did not get coronavirus 'under control'.  Someone is going to have to explain how exactly the media are defining "under control" as it pertains to the coronavirus because it's a phrase that appears to mean nothing.  Reuters over the weekend continued the campaign to rehabilitate Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's image by asserting, as other news outlets have laughably done before, that New York is in tip-top shape, especially compared to that Republican-led state Florida.  (Ew!)  "The surge in Florida has continued as the state's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly said he will not make mask-wearing mandatory and that schools must reopen in August," Reuters reported on Sunday [7/26/2020].  "On the contrary, New York state has managed to get the virus under control, with stores and restaurants shuttered and the wearing of masks mandatory."

Trusting the Election to the Mr. and Ms. Potato Heads of the Left-Media.  Florida and Texas combined have more than 55 electoral votes. [...] It seems very likely that in 2020 Florida could go either way — either [D]emocrat or [R]epublican.  Texas seems to present an even greater threat to [D]emocrats. [...] We don't see left-leaning, liberal media outlets publishing articles with headlines reading, "Texas — Lower Concentration of COVID-19 Infections than 19 other States" or "Seven States/Territories with higher COVID-19 Death Rates than Florida."  Headlines like these might indicate that Trump is handling the COVID-19 Crisis adequately.  CNN and their "Mr./Ms. Potato Head" Common-tators (pun intended), reporters, editors, and writers are not working to educate the U.S. population with neutral, unbiased information about Florida and Texas, the two key states in the 2020 presidential election.  However, they are working to campaign for the left, for the Democrats.  They are working to push a non-Trump, non-Republican, pro-panic agenda, and they are doing it to sabotage President Trump and the Republican Party.

Now the riots are intensely peaceful.
ABC News mocked for claiming 'peaceful demonstration intensified,' with courthouse set ablaze, police officers targeted.  ABC News was mocked on Sunday for describing an California protest that featured demonstrators setting fire to a courthouse, vandalizing a police station and shooting fireworks at police officers, as "peaceful."  "Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified," ABC News' verified Twitter account wrote to promote an article headlined, "Oakland protesters set fire to courthouse and vandalize."  Much of the mainstream media and the left have sought to paint sometimes violent protests across the nation as "mostly peaceful" demonstrations in recent weeks.

Are Fake News Polls Hiding a Potential Trump Landslide?  Listen to network or cable news and you will hear that the November election is over.  Joe Biden has a growing double-digit lead over President Trump, despite the election being over three months away and the issues that may decide the election largely unknown at present.  What do the polls say?  Biden's campaign manager, also known as CNN, has their "poll of polls" described as, "the five most recent national telephone polls measuring the view of registered voters."  Considering that only 58 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in 2016, CNN's "poll of polls" may not be particularly representative of the electorate.  CNN's headline screams déjà vu, "Biden maintains a double-digit lead over Trump nationally."  That's it then, the election is over.  Trump supporters may as well pack it up and stay home.  At least that is what they want you to believe.

Florida Is A Case Study In Media-Induced COVID-19 Panic.  What do all these news accounts have in common?  "Florida Sets Yet Another Coronavirus Record: 173 Deaths In A Day."  "A record 173 Floridians died from the virus Thursday, an average of more than one every eight minutes."  "The 134 new confirmed deaths is the second-largest increase on record, coming five days after the largest one-day jump of 156 last week."  "COVID-19 has ravaged Florida, with more than 237,000 people testing positive and 2,013 dying from the virus in July alone."  So what characteristic do all of the reports share?  They are all false.  It is not true that 173 people died from COVID-19 "in a day" in Florida.  Nor did 134, or 156 on previous days.  It is also untrue than 2,013 had died in July when that story was published.  All of these scary headlines are based on the number of deaths reported by the state on any given day.  This is not the same as the number of deaths that occurred on those days.

After 59 Days of Riots in Portland, ABC Claims 'Weeks' Since Protests Were Violence.  As NewsBusters has extensively documented, the broadcast newscasts have done everything they could to downplay and cover-up the extreme leftist violence at protests happening in cities across the country.  But during ABC's Good Morning America on Sunday [7/26/2020], the network, via correspondent Janai Norman, attempted some revisionist history, claiming it had been "weeks" since protests had turned violent.  Norman's lie came just as she was wrapping up her report, falsely telling viewers:  "And no one seriously injured in that shooting at that protest in Colorado.  But it's been weeks we have seen protests like these turn violent in multiple cities around the country, as we have this weekend."  Not only has it not been "weeks" since protests turned violent, but it also hasn't been "weeks" since there has been protest-linked violence in multiple cities at the same time.  While there has been violence in Portland for 59 days, last week saw riots in Seattle targeting local businesses, which the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) blacked out and hid from viewers.

Florida: Death Related to a Gun Shot Wound and Deaths from Weeks Ago Are Suddenly Counted as Covid Deaths in Official Mortality Reporting.  The miscounting and fraudulent numbers related to the China coronavirus just keep coming.  Unrelated deaths are being counted as COVID-19 related and deaths from days and weeks ago are suddenly being attributed to today's COVID-19 mortality counts.

A Put-Up Job.  [Scroll down]  The news matters for three reasons.  First, almost all the public investigation and damaging narrative about "Trump-Russia collusion" came after investigators knew how little supporting evidence there was.  Second, the more we learn about the ensuing investigations, the more they look like concerted abuses of government authority.  We give law-enforcement and intelligence agencies tremendous power so they can protect us; when they abuse that power, they need to be held accountable and reined in.  That seldom happens to anyone in Washington's sprawling bureaucracies, which protect their own within the gurgling ecosystem of power, profit, regulation, and rent-seeking.  Just ask Lois Lerner.  Third, when the FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies act in biased, partisan, and illicit ways, they cut to the very heart of our constitutional democracy, damage our institutions, and undermine trust in them.  That is exactly what happened in 2016 and afterward.  Public trust was undermined by these prolonged investigations and the narrative about them.  It will be undermined further as we learn how the investigators themselves likely pursued partisan goals, ignored crucial evidence, and broke laws to do it.

The Constitution, Donald Trump, and 2020.  [The news media] would have us ignore the multiple scenes of violence and misplaced anger displayed through more objective and independent sources.  The protests were "mostly peaceful" chirped CNN, even as a crowd broke the glass of its Atlanta headquarters and ransacked it.  The real troublemakers were not the legitimate protestors, MSNBC reassured its remaining viewers, but actually white supremacists who had deftly infiltrated Black Lives Matter protests in a dozen plus cities to spread violence and wreak havoc.  Pay no attention to the extensive video footage showing protestors of all stripes and colors performing stupefying acts of vandalism.  Although most of the major media outlets long ago ceased dispensing accurate information to the American citizenry, they nevertheless have retained just enough viewers to help fan the flames of this 21st-century Bonfire of the Vanities.  They also continue to press and fold weak-minded politicians like threadbare laundry.

The Big Surge In Coronavirus Deaths Is A Media-Fed Myth.  Almost daily now we've been reading about how daily deaths from COVID-19 have reached record highs.  It's a scary prospect.  But the truth is the mainstream press is grossly misleading the public by misreporting the death counts. [...] According to PBS in Arizona, the state "on Saturday (July 18) set a record for coronavirus-related deaths reported in one day, with 147, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services."  The last story is particularly illuminating because the website the PBS article links to includes a chart of daily deaths in the state.  It lists only six deaths on July 19.  What's more, the chart shows that there have only been two days where deaths exceeded 65.  So where did that scary 147 number come from?  The same place all the other "surging" numbers come from.  Each day Arizona and other states file reports on how many people died from COVID-19.  It's not a measure of how many died that day.  In most cases, the people died days or even weeks earlier.  In fact, in Arizona's case, 106 of the reported deaths on Saturday resulted from a periodic review of death certificates.  None of those caveats made it into the PBS story.

Trans man sues hospital after hysterectomy is canceled.  A transgender man is suing the University of Maryland Medical System in federal court, claiming his rights were violated when his gender-affirming surgery was canceled by one of the hospital system's subsidiaries.

The Editor says...
A "transgender man" is a woman who pretends to be a man.  The term "gender-affirming surgery" is an inversion of the truth.  Those are two lies in the first sentence alone.

How to Spank the Establishment Media.  If one disapproves of the lying and distortions put out by the mainstream media, there's a way to fight it: don't pay for it.  But how, you might ask, can I do that?  Well, "Meet the Press" is pumped out by NBC News.  So, if you object to the lies on NBC News or to the lies on its vile sister, MSNBC, then you might consider financially spanking the company that ultimately owns them... Comcast.  If Comcast cannot bring itself to do anything about its news operations, then it would be up to viewers to send the corporation a message.  There are several ways to do this.  The most obvious way is to drop Xfinity, Comcast's cable service.  And here's what's nice about that: if one switches to a different cable company, one is likely to get a special price for the first year or more.  There are a few folks who "game the system" by periodically changing their cable provider just to take advantage of introductory deals.  Changing providers might be a hassle, but at least one won't be enriching NBC's parent company.

Lower than dirt?  Jon Turley clears up who is worse, NBC News' Chuck Todd or CNN's Jim Acosta.  Legal scholar Jonathan Turley slammed NBC News' Chuck Todd for airing a "false narrative" in the misleading quote of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.  The George Washington University law professor called out the "Meet the Press" host who "knowingly played a false gotcha clip" in a move that he deemed worse than the one by CNN's Jim Acosta, who came under heavy fire for tweeting an out-of-context quote from McEnany.

Media told America FBI had proof of collusion as bureau was realizing it had nothing.  Despite what The New York Times and Washington Post were loudly reporting in early 2017, the FBI had failed to find any evidence of Trump-Russia "collusion" — and indeed had found that the central source of those claims was a joke.  This is a key takeaway from the Justice Department's latest release of documents from the FBI's investigation.  One shocker is the summary of the long FBI interview that January with the "Primary Subsource" for the infamous Steele dossier — indeed, about the only source.

Fake News Becomes a Way of Life.  In December 2016, Ben Smith, then BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief, wrote a memo to his staff that was meant to be a kind of charter for the dawning of the Trump Era.  In truth it spoke to and aimed to speak for the entire mainstream media.  Smith would eventually move on to the New York Times, which elevated him to a role as the supervisory voice of conscience for the whole media.  But that December, he warned his staff of the danger of fake news, and the need of the media to be accurate and factual.

Chris Wallace Is Wrong, Joe Biden Does Want to Defund the Police.  Social media is abuzz over the release of a clip of President Trump's interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace, where the Fox News host "fact-checked" Trump's claim that Joe Biden wants to defund the police.  "It's gotten totally out of control and it's really because they want to defund the police, and Biden wants to defund the police," Trump said in the clip.  "Sir, he does not," Wallace shot back.  You can watch the exchange below. [...]

Kayleigh McEnany is so effective that the MSM now lying by deceptively editing her comments.  Yesterday [7/16/2020] saw a new low in irresponsible media reporting on a briefing by a presidential press secretary.  Many media outlets outright lied about what Kayleigh McEnany said by cutting her off mid-sentence in a comment on schools reopening, thereby creating an impression that was opposite of the truth. [...] Kayleigh McEnany has been devastatingly effective as President Trump's press secretary, holding the media accountable for their lies and letting viewers of her press briefings know what questions the pressies are not asking but should.  This campaign of lies is evidence that the MSM knows she is a threat to their ability to fulfill their political function as propagandists and have decided to unite in lies about her.

The New York Times Has Been Ridiculous for a Long Time.  The much discussed resignation letter from New York Times op-ed editor Bari Weiss was written in the metaphorical equivalent of Braille.  It allowed even the blind to see what the rest of us have known for years:  the Times is a joke.  Writes Weiss of the Times newsroom, "Truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else."  Indeed, the only difference between the Times and the old Soviet Pravda is that Pravda readers knew they were being lied to.

America's Reporters and Editors Are Liars.  It is impossible to overstate how low "journalism" has fallen in the United States. [...] A sound adage holds that you should never assume malice when stupidity is a sufficient explanation.  Here, the only explanation is malice.  No one is as stupid as America's reporters and editors pretend to be.  The sooner their companies go out of business, the better.

MSNBC Thinks the Russia Hoax Will Still Work on You in 2020.  As the 2020 presidential election fast approaches, so do media attempts to incite voter hysteria about the chances of it being stolen.  On Tuesday's Morning Joe, dutiful MSNBC co-host Willie Geist brought on left-wing author David Shimer and former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to try to rebuild the Russian election interference narrative.  [Video clip]

Fake news!
Did the [New York] Times Print an Urban Legend?  This week, the Times brings us a story from Methodist Hospital in San Antonio.  The headline is:  "Texas Hospital Says Man, 30, Died After Attending a 'Covid Party,'" and what we get is a story with one source. [...] It's a morality tale, really.  Don't believe it's a hoax!  Or that you aren't at risk because you are young!  Maybe don't live in a bad red state where they aren't taking COVID seriously, or go to these parties.  The only thing missing was a MAGA hat and a rueful dying admission, "I shouldn't have trusted Trump or my Republican governor!"  But, as I read the story originally earlier this week, I realized the details didn't quite add up.  If you believe COVID is a hoax, why would you attend a "Covid Party?"  And, in a pandemic for an airborne disease, aren't all parties potentially COVID parties?  Chicken pox parties were aimed at spreading a local infection purposely to younger children who have milder cases.  People don't hold them because they are skeptics.  Something doesn't make sense.

It's just nuts to praise New York's 'success' against coronavirus.  If only the rest of the country could handle COVID as well as New York:  That's the lament of progressive commentators as COVID cases spike in the Sun Belt and the South.  Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin hailed New York City the other day after it reported no deaths for the first time during the pandemic.  This is what competent government can accomplish, she gushed.  Former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett tweeted, "Short term sacrifice saves lives!!!" [...] This is all perverse given that New York is only now emerging from one of the worst COVID debacles on the planet.

David French Reveals The Depth Of Intellectual Dishonesty Needed For The NeverTrumpers' Vituperation of Roger Stone.  David French has written a deeply dishonest story today about the prosecution of Roger Stone, and how the commutation of his sentence by Pres.  Trump doesn't change the "facts" of the case.  Well, if you're looking for "facts", David French's "story" isn't the place to start.

Trump Was Right All Along:  The Fake News Media Really Is The Enemy Of The People.  Firework smoke still lingered in the sky over Mount Rushmore as journalists began their daily routine of story-spinning, as if their very lives depended on headlines reflecting the exact opposite of true events.  President Donald Trump's pro-America speech, dripping with unity and patriotism, was decried in legacy media as diabolical.  Just moments after the star-spangled spectacle, The New York Times blasted out a news alert, calling the president's remarks "dark and divisive" and condemning his Independence Day speech as insufficiently focused on the Wuhan virus.  ABC News claimed "Trump pushe[d] racial division" and defied pandemic rules, while the Washington Post opted for "dark" descriptors and blamed Trump for "exploit[ing] social divisions."  One honest look at Trump's speech spikes these media fictions into orbit.

Behind the Media's Breathtakingly Dishonest Coverage.  "I don't think I've ever seen such dishonest and biased coverage of any event."  That was Brit Hume, who has been covering events for more than 50 years for Fox News, ABC News and investigative reporter Jack Anderson.  The event, as you may have guessed, was President Donald Trump's Independence (without the scare-quotes) Day speech at Mount Rushmore.  The speech was, according to The New York Times, a "dark and divisive speech" designed to deliver a "divisive culture war message."  The Washington Post called it a "dystopian speech" and a "push to amplify racism."  Absent from their stories were quotations supporting racism.  Nor did Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth supply any quotations to support her claim that Trump "spent all his time talking about dead traitors."  Trump mentioned no Confederates but did quote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The most dishonest, biased news coverage of our lifetimes — and it's about to get worse.  What really seems to have raised the press' hackles was Trump's dissent from their reverent attitudes toward Black Lives Matter and apparent indifference to those tearing down statues of Lincoln, Douglass, Grant, abolitionists and women's-rights advocates.  "Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities," Trump said, accurately.  That's not the message most in the media want voters receiving in the months running up to November.

The Media and 2020: Deja vu All Over Again.  Over the past few months, the New York Times and the Washington Post scorned those who wanted to reopen their businesses after investing their entire livelihood into them, because they realized that destroying the Trump economy would hurt him at the polls in November. [...] The media that has been so dishonest in covering the health pandemic and the riots is now claiming that Trump's reelection prospects are falling apart due to his slumping poll numbers.  In reality, they are struggling to find positive things to write about Joe Biden, so they need to continue to deflect any coverage of him by attributing failures to Trump. [...] Before the coronavirus came over from China, the Trump economy was booming, so naturally they chose to ignore it.  They never cared to mention the more than 7 million new jobs that were created since his election, or a rising income for median households that grew by $1,834 in the first ten months of 2019, or the 1.4 million Americans who were lifted out of poverty.

This Is How the Media Lies to the American People:  The Carsyn Leigh Davis Coronavirus Story.  We really are at a point in America that you can no longer trust the mainstream media on even the most basic reporting.  They will always put their personal spin on a story to sway your thinking.  Florida teenager Carsyn Leigh Davis died on June 23rd in Fort Myers, Florida from "complications from coronavirus." [...] This is the latest example of the panic porn promoted by the liberal mainstream media.  What the media is hiding from the public in their headline is that Carsyn battled cancer and suffered from an auto-immune disease.  Her parents gave Carsyn hydroxychloroquine but the 17-year-old succumbed to the disease anyway.  It's not until you read into the reporting that you find out about Carsyn's battle with disease.  The headlines were specifically written to make you feel that teens are at great risk.  They're not.

The media says hospitals are out of beds, but here is the real story.  [Scroll down]  In a recent report by Miami-Dade, it shows that they have a capacity of 434 ICU beds typically.  The other interesting number is that they can convert 532 additional beds to ICU beds if needed.  So the media would have you to believe that they are entirely out of ICU beds, but that's simply not the case.  Yes, this is a strain on the healthcare system.  Yes, the virus has spread much more than previous, but we need to be honest, we knew it would.  In every instance of guidance that was given by the CDC, the information was clear.  Extreme measures would only slow the spread of the virus.  Every safety precaution that is taken only attempts to slow the spread; it does not stop the spread.  Many states and the media are pushing the initiative that wearing masks and handwashing will stop the spread of coronavirus.  The truth is, it cannot stop the virus.  There is not a magic fabric or chemical in hand sanitizer that prevents it.  We can only try to contain it.  This is where the mainstream media and many state health leaders have continued to mislead the American people.

COVID Deaths Plummet, But the So-Called News Remains Negative.  Now, let's get into some COVID-19 news and, folks, are you asking yourself what of any of this is true and what isn't?  It's almost like the tale of two viruses.  We have an entire group of stories that are about how much worse the virus is. "[...] It's worse than we thought.  We haven't even gotten to the second wave.  Dr. Fauci says, Dr. Fauci says, Dr. Fauci says."  Whatever Dr. Fauci says, it gets amplified.  We are told how so many more people are getting it.  The number of cases is skyrocketing, but then deaths are down.  We demonstrated this yesterday.  The number of deaths associated with COVID-19 are way down.  It's why they're not being reported.  The game here is to scare you into siding up with a new lockdown.  They want you to hear all these brand-new numbers of cases as deaths.  But deaths are down.  The curve was flattened.

The Media Outright Lied About Hydroxychloroquine Just to Destroy Trump.  The media has spent the last four months outright lying about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine just to destroy President Donald Trump.  Washington D.C. journalist Drew Holden recently took the time to compile a large number of stories built entirely on lies pushed by the left-wing media.  Holden jumped to his Twitter account with an amazing thread that has to be seen to see the lies spread by our sold-out, anti-American media.

America Must Hold the Corrupt News Media Accountable in Order to Survive.  We must find a way to hold the corrupt corporate news media accountable before they destroy our country.  That's been a consistent theme here at Today's Campaign Update for four years now (today is the 4th anniversary of the very first Campaign Update posted on my Facebook page during the heat of the 2016 campaign), and it has become more urgent than ever.  Because, as I noted yesterday, the media literally has the deaths of an untold number of Americans on its hands due to its focused disinformation campaign related to Hydroxychloroquine.

How the Left Creates Fake Studies to Fabricate Right-Wing Terrorism.  After weeks of violence, Democrats have some public relations needs to redirect attention away from the awfulness of leftism.  Insert the latest report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which concludes that the greatest domestic threat comes not from leftists or Muslims, but from right-wing terrorists!  The CSIS study's findings are not new.  The New America Foundation (NAF) and the Center of Investigative Reporting (CIR) have published similar studies with the same conclusions.  Each study is fake, but the most recent CSIS study is the most pathetic of them all — partly because the CSIS doesn't provide a list of incidents to fact-check.  Just trust them.  There's an art to creating this type of propaganda, which provides the Democrat narrative a halo of credibility.  A tremendous volume of subtle manipulation is concocted within studies on right-wing terrorism, and each demonstrates variations of the same basic formula.

Univision Must Retract Story On June 2020 Jobs Report.  If ever there were doubts that Univision is an activist organization passing itself off as a journalistic entity, then look no further than its reporting on the jobs report for June 2020.  Watch below as the network hides one big piece of news with relevance to the Hispanic community, then completely and blatantly misrepresent another:  [Video clip]

CNN's Cuomo Accuses Mark McCloskey of Being the 'Face of White Resistance' to Black Lives Matter.  Tuesday [6/30/2020], on his CNN program, host Chris Cuomo challenged St. Louis homeowner Mark McCloskey on the merits of his use of self-defense of life and property by brandishing a firearm in front of his home as a mob of protesters threatened him and his wife.  According to Cuomo, by doing so, McCloskey and his wife had become the "face of white resistance" to the Black Lives Matter protest movement.

Media Are Playing Games Yet Again With Anonymous Russia Leaks.  Much of the case for the Iraq War was based on the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.  When the United States declared an end to the war late in 2011, more than 4,400 American military members had been killed and nearly 32,000 wounded.  No weapons of mass destruction had been found.  It's one of the most significant and catastrophic intelligence errors in U.S. history.  A bipartisan commission found that U.S. intelligence "seriously misjudged" Iraq's weapons program because of their "heavy reliance on a human source — codenamed 'Curveball' — whose information later proved to be unreliable."  The commission wrote, "Even more misleading was the river of intelligence that flowed from the CIA to top policymakers over long periods of time — in the President's Daily Brief (PDB)" and other reports that were "more alarmist" and "less nuanced."

The Media Is Lying About The 'Second Wave'.  For months, the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media kept a morbid Covid-19 "death count" on their front pages and at the top of their news broadcasts.  The coronavirus outbreak was all about the number of dead.  The narrative was intended to boost governors like Cuomo in New York and Whitmer in Michigan, who turned their states authoritarian under the false notion that destroying people's jobs, freedom, and lives would somehow keep a virus from doing what viruses always do:  spread through a population until eventually losing strength and dying out.  The "death count" was always the headline.  But then all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about "cases" and has always been all about "cases."  Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant.  Why?  Because from the peak in April, deaths had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash.  That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.

Surprise:  Latest Deep State Leak Pushed by Leftwing Media Is Another Huge Lie.  There was never anything about Russians paying the Taliban bounties on American soldiers to report.  This was low-level gossip (at best) that was never corroborated even in a small way.

Self-righteous vandals.  Violent left-wing activists have taken to styling themselves as antifa, short for 'anti-fascists', though their street-fighting tactics resemble nothing so much as the Brownshirt thuggery practiced by fascists themselves.  This did not stop NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson from likening these hooligans to the heroes of World War Two.  On the anniversary of D-Day, June 6, while America's cities still smoldered after days of riots and looting, Liasson took to Twitter to call the Normandy invasion the 'biggest antifa rally in history'. Dumb jokes are nothing new on Twitter.  For many liberals today, however, it's no laughing matter.  They really do think that America is fascist, at least whenever a Republican is in the White House, and so petty vandalism is actually a heroic act of resistance.  Knock the head off a statue of Columbus, smash the glass of every storefront on the street, and you're defeating Adolf Hitler all over again.  Such is the state of historical literacy and what passes for the moral imagination among many with comfortable perches in the national media.  You would think that if they had a problem with the establishment, they should throw the first rock at a mirror.  Spare the innocent shopkeepers who pay the price for antifa antics.  Plenty of them are black or immigrants themselves, if that's what matters to the worthies of NPR.

Massive Trump Crowds Inside and Outside Tulsa BOK Center — 6.7 Million Online Viewers!  The liberal mainstream media can't get their talking points straight.  They want to condemn President Trump for holding such a large rally during the coronavirus pandemic.  They also want to lie to Americans that it was a failure and no one showed up.  It must be very difficult being the fake news media these days.

The Media Are Lying To You About Everything, Including The Riots.  In recent days we've heard a steady drumbeat of lies, distortions, and disingenuousness from the mainstream media about almost every aspect of the unrest now gripping American cities.  The deceit is almost too pervasive and amorphous to describe, but I'm going to try anyway.  Over the weekend we were told, for example, that the looting and violence was being instigated not by left-wing anarchists and antifa groups but by the media's favorite villains:  white supremacists.  CNN, whose Atlanta offices were vandalized Friday, went on and on — without a shred of evidence to back it up — about how white supremacists might be infiltrating the protests and stirring up trouble.  The New York Times, in a report that even quoted a senior police official in New York City saying outside anarchist groups were coordinating mayhem before the protests began, nevertheless veered into a long aside about how far-right "accelerationists" were hoping the unrest would bring about a long-sought second civil war.  By Monday [6/15/2020], no one was talking about the white supremacist agitators anymore.  The media had moved on to better, more plausible lies.

10 Fake News Moments.  It is far worse than most realize.  [Video clip]

BLM protesters violently attack police cruisers in broad daylight in cities around the US.  When it comes to Black Lives Matter protests, the liberal media continues to sell the American people on the lofty ideas of racial equality while vilifying police officers on the front lines of the cultural rot seen in urban America.  Officers put their lives on the line to ensure law and order every time they put on the uniform, but that risk has gone up exponentially after the violent BLM riots over the past two weeks.  Cops have been attacked, shot and stabbed, and the attacks continue to this day — even as the media pushes a "peaceful protesters" narrative.

Frank Luntz tweet.  Tonight [6/11/2020], @ChrisCuomo criticized Trump's economy while using data that stops in 2016.  This is complete incompetence.  Journalistically and editorially.

History Channel Tags Slave-Holding Confederates as Red States.  The History Channel in late May produced a mostly laudable documentary series on Ulysses S. Grant, rightly hailing the legacy of the victorious Union general and the president who fought for civil rights.  However, the series contained what's become a recurring problem in some historical reflections on the Civil War.  Throughout the three part series, the production repeatedly showed the slave-holding Confederates as red states and the Union north as blue states.  In reality, it's the reverse.  As anyone familiar with history knows, the Confederates were Democrats.  It was Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party that fought the war to preserve the union and ultimately to end slavery.  As Marine and retired U.S. Army War College professor Daniel Douds astutely explained Grant's strategy to defeat the Confederates, the on-screen graphic showcased the (incorrect) blue state/red state dynamic.

Fox News runs digitally altered images in coverage of Seattle's protests, Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.  This story has been updated to include an apology Fox News posted on its website on Saturday [6/13/2020].  Fox News published digitally altered and misleading photos on stories about Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in what photojournalism experts called a clear violation of ethical standards for news organizations.  As part of a package of stories Friday about the zone, where demonstrators have taken over several city blocks on Capitol Hill after Seattle police abandoned the East Precinct, Fox's website for much of the day featured a photo of a man standing with a military-style rifle in front of what appeared to be a smashed retail storefront.  The image was actually a mashup of photos from different days, taken by different photographers — it was done by splicing a Getty Images photo of an armed man, who had been at the protest zone June 10, with other images from May 30 of smashed windows in downtown Seattle.

The Media Urge to Explain away 'Defund the Police'.  The hot protest slogan and hashtag of the moment is "Defund the Police."  At times, it's also framed as a call to abolish or disband the police.  Ordinary speakers of the English language would naturally assume, listening to people chant "defund the police" in the streets, carry "defund the police" signs, and literally paint "defund the police" on the streets of D.C., that such people mean "defund the police."  But not our media!  There's been an immediate rush to write pieces explaining that, of course, "defund the police" does not actually mean "defund the police."

It's Your Fault They Turn to Violence!  According to the media narrative, whatever unpleasant behavior a person or group is engaging in — from criminal and gang activity to sheer terrorism — if you're white and the other party is not, that proves that the behavior is entirely your fault.  Your insufferable racism and xenophobia have pushed these people over the edge; their criminal behavior is a reflection of their many grievances against you.  This would certainly require ameliorating if it were true.  It's not. [...] A black man was tragically killed by a police officer.  Although he has been arrested and charged with murder, that's not enough.  If you're white, the current turmoil — the looting, burning, and killing — is, once again, ultimately your fault:  "grievances" coming to roost.

A.G. Barr:  "They're Not Peaceful Protesters, That's A Big Lie Promoted By The Media".  The attorney general says what we are thinking — when the media insists that the protesters are peaceful, it is a lie.  Many of them have been violent, enough to wreak havoc and destruction on cities across the country.  Tell the small business owners without insurance who had their storefront windows broken and their merchandise looted that it was just peaceful protesters upset about the death of George Floyd.  What about all the injuries and hospitalizations and even some deaths that have been the result of protests?

Michael Baden Did Not Perform Autopsy But You Are Being Told He Did.  If Joe Biden was a forensic pathologist his name would be Dr. Michael Baden.  The 85 year old freelance medical examiner has quite a past and a present.  In recent days, he has fanned the flames of "cover-up" by reporting that Mr. George Floyd was indeed choked to death despite the county medical examiner's finding that Floyd did not die from asphyxiation and he did not die from strangulation.  In fact, the autopsy showed that Floyd had no trauma on his body whatsoever.  His ingestion of fentanyl and methamphetamine combined with a pre-existing heart and hypertension history contributed to his death.  And murder charges were brought against Officer Derek Chauvin because the medical examiner added that the "restraint" also contributed to the death of Floyd.  But Baden made the rounds on national television yesterday [6/2/2020] after he was hired by the family to do a second autopsy.

After Falsely Claiming Tear Gas Use, Media Now Trying To Pretend Tear Gas And Pepper Spray Are Identical.  After the media reported that Park Police deployed tear gas, an aerosolized version of the synthetic compound 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile also referred to as "CS gas," to disperse protesters in front of the White House, Park Police explicitly denied the charge: [...] So it was smoke canisters, not tear gas.  And pepper balls explained the irritating effect that some protesters reported.  This directly contradicted thousands of tweets, print articles, and broadcast stories.  President Donald Trump lambasted the media, highlighting a story this writer published yesterday.  That article has some of the headlines from prominent media that falsely claimed "tear gas" was used against "peaceful" protesters.

Media Falsely Claimed Violent Riots Were Peaceful And That Tear Gas Was Used Against Rioters.  Following days of violent riots and looting in cities across the country, Washington, D.C., announced a 7 p.m. curfew on Monday night.  About the same time, President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Rose Garden.  Afterward, he walked through Lafayette Park to St. John's Episcopal Church, which rioters had set on fire the night before.  Standing before the church sign, which reads "All are welcome," President Trump, who previously said he'd be paying his respects to a very special place, held up a Bible.  The speech announcing the country would return to rule of law and protection of civil liberties, the walk through a park that the night before had been given over to rioters, and the visit to the vandalized historic church where every president has worshiped since James Madison, were reassuring to many in the country.  For the media, however, these actions were further proof that Orange Man Bad is literally the worst, restoring rule of law is criminal, and standing in front of a church holding a Bible is an assault on the American conscience.

The Media Are Lying To You About Everything, Including The Riots.  It seems no great event or upheaval in our national life can pass now without the media lying to our faces about it.  They lied about the Trump campaign colluding with Russia in 2016.  They lied about the Mueller probe and Brett Kavanaugh and former national security adviser Mike Flynn.  They lied about Trump's phone call with the Ukrainian president and the impeachment farce that ensued.  They lied about the coronavirus and the lockdowns and the White House response.  And now they're lying about the riots. [...] Over the weekend we were told, for example, that the looting and violence was being instigated not by left-wing anarchists and antifa groups but by the media's favorite villains: white supremacists.  CNN, whose Atlanta offices were vandalized Friday, went on and on — without a shred of evidence to back it up — about how white supremacists might be infiltrating the protests and stirring up trouble.

The lying about Donald Trump is now completely out of control.  Anti-trump liberals (i.e., Democrats and the media) just have to find something — anything — wrong with the president, even if it means making it up.  The perpetually not-President Hillary Clinton on Monday shared a side-by-side photo of the White House, one lit up in a rainbow spectrum from 2015, when Barack Obama was in office, and the other appearing almost in pitch black with no lighting.  "Elections matter," tweeted Clinton. [...] Yet it turns out the photo passed off as a metaphor for Trump's apathy toward police brutality and racism was actually, like the rainbow White House, from the Obama years.  So pervasive was that meme on social media that the Associated Press was moved to fact check and let liberals know that, sorry, the slam dunk on Trump was actually an embarrassing rebound.

Teen Vogue:  Antifa 'Aspires Toward Creating a Better World'.  Leftist outlet Teen Vogue told its readers that the terrorist organization Antifa "aspires to create a better world" in the wake of riots that have broken out across the country, which have involved looting, vandalism, businesses being destroyed, beatings, and death.  "'Antifa grows out of a larger revolutionary politics that aspires toward creating a better world, but the primary motivation is to stop racists from organizing,'" tweeted Teen Vogue on Monday [6/1/2020].

Logic, Rhetoric, and Race.  Most of the blame for this situation belongs to the media, especially cable-news networks, which provide the audience for performative protests that are as ritualistic as kabuki theater.  The opening act is an "incident" involving the death of a black man at the hands of the police.  This is followed by demands for justice, with activists denouncing the incident as proof of systemic racial oppression.  A hashtag campaign emerges on social media platforms, and Hollywood celebrities lend their voices to the outcry.  Cable networks convene panel discussions, and the story is updated hourly in the days leading up to the protest rally.  The participants in this demonstration are "mostly peaceful," we are told, while we watch the protest turn into a devastating riot in front of our eyes.  We have seen this drama performed many times over the years, especially during the heyday of the #BlackLivesMatter movement that emerged in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, and continued through the Charlotte, North Carolina, riot of September 2016.

Who Had 'Race Riots' on Their Pandemic Bingo Cards?  [Scroll down]  I've been saying for a while that we were probably going to find out within the next six months that all of the social-distance and lockdown stuff was [nonsense], but that all got taken care of this past weekend.  Of course, the execrable Enemy of the People media types have been lying to our faces again, running with a narrative of "cops bad and mostly peaceful protesters" even with so much evidence to the contrary.  There certainly are a lot burning buildings for "mostly peaceful" protests.  The most priceless moment came Friday night [5/29/2020] when MSNBC's Ali Velshi was reassuring everyone that the protests were mostly peaceful while standing in front of a burning building:

Blaming White Supremacists For The Riots Is Nonsensical Gaslighting.  On Saturday morning [5/30/2020] Minnesota officials came out with an audacious and absurd explanation for the looting and arson that struck Minneapolis this week.  Apparently it was white supremacists from out of state who pretended to be actual protestors in an attempt to discredit the protest.  The evidence?  A vague claim and a lie.  It turns out that most of those arrested were actually Minnesota residents.  The hypocritical mental gymnastics from the liberal media in the past 72 hours were amazing enough to earn a perfect 10 from the stingiest East German judge.  First, we watched tens of thousands of people hold mass gatherings across the country, which just last week we were told would kill everyone, and the media suddenly didn't care.  It's like the Chinese virus just went away by magic.

Media Completely Misrepresents Trump Tweets About Minneapolis Rioting.  In their flailing efforts to blame President Donald Trump for the actions of a lone police officer in Minneapolis, the mainstream media is once again twisting the president's words to make it appear as if he made a racist statement, when in fact, the opposite is true.  Late Thursday night [5/28/2020], the president tweeted a message to those who would burn buildings and loot defenseless stores in the wake of the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.  The tweet was obviously meant as a warning to people who would destroy a major American city, but the anti-Trump mainstream media and Twitter itself saw it as another opportunity to portray the president as a racist, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The Media's Top Lies and Spins About COVID-19.  In such uncertain times, Americans can only hope that the media would follow suit and put aside partisan politics in the face of a global pandemic.  Sadly, some journalists and fake news outlets can't help themselves.  The media distorts and misleads, takes statements out of context, treats assumptions as facts, and in general, seems to want to sow as much rancor and fear as possible.  This is irresponsible journalism in a time when the nation needs just the opposite.

Just How Exaggerated Is The COVID-19 Death Count?  As the "official" tally of COVID-19 deaths tops 100,000 in the U.S., we keep hearing how that number is likely a low-ball estimate.  But there's far more evidence that the death count has been knowingly exaggerated — possibly by a very wide margin.  A recent Seattle Times article pretty much lays out the charade going on.  The headline reads:  "Washington state's actual coronavirus death toll may be higher than current tallies, health officials say."  But the story itself leads one to the exact opposite conclusion. [...] The story goes on to say that the state's dashboard "reflects anyone who died, that tested positive for COVID, irrespective of cause of death."  (Emphasis added.)  Basically, the state has been matching up the names of those who died this year with a database containing names of people who tested positive for COVID-19.

CNN, MSNBC are peddling panic, moral judgment, not science and data, in coronavirus coverage.  We hope you had a happy Memorial Day weekend.  It's possible you have spent, along with millions of others, months trapped indoors per government order because of the coronavirus.  So, getting outside makes all the difference — grilling a hamburger in the fresh air, hitting the park, walking on the beach for a couple of hours.  It's essential.  All of us needed it.  Nature is medicine.  Happy, balanced people understand that intuitively.  You can't just sit on a couch all day barking at other people on social media.  Your soul will rot if you do that.  And unfortunately, it's too late for a lot of people at CNN, and they haven't even been trapped inside for months.  For reasons that no one in authority has ever really explained, cable news yappers have been classified as essential workers from the very first day of lockdown.

Of Course COVID-19 Deaths Aren't a 'Trump Death Toll'.  Does anyone seriously think that if Donald Trump were not president, the coronavirus pandemic would have never hit America?  The super PAC Democratic Coalition — which supports presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden — apparently does, because it has launched a series of ads describing deaths from the coronavirus as the "Trump Death Toll."

Trump is right about the huge potential for ballot fraud in Michigan's election.  To hear the mainstream media tell it, President Trump is somehow paranoid at Michigan's latest gambit to mail absentee voting applications to all registered voters in the state.  Here's the selectively distorted reporting from the Detroit News: [...] They ran it with a photograph of Trump with a photoshopped color manipulation that exaggerated the color of his skin as well as his blue tie to colors not consistent with the lighting in the room. [...]

Don't Buy the Misleading Figures.  Here's the Real Story About How the U.S. Matches Up on Coronavirus Deaths.  The sheer ease with which the American left has politicized the deaths of thousands of Americans has shocked even me.  The United States is approaching 100,000 deaths and the left seems determined to make sure the public blames President Donald Trump for those deaths.  As PJM's Tyler O'Neil noted, the Democratic Coalition is trying to make "Trump Death Toll" a thing.  While Tyler effectively demonstrated the absurdity of blaming these deaths on Trump, I'm going to show that despite the headlines that suggest things in the United States are the worst in the world, that is emphatically not the case.

The Doctrine of Media Untruth.  As a general rule, when the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Service, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, and CNN begin to parrot a narrative, the truth often is found in simply believing just the opposite.  Put another way, the media's "truth" is a good guide to what is abjectly false.  Perhaps we can call the lesson of this valuable service, the media's inadvertent ability to convey truth by disguising it with transparent bias and falsehood, the "Doctrine of Media Untruth."

Long-lens dishonesty again:
That picture of Ocean City doesn't show what the scolds say it shows.  One particular picture from Ocean City, Maryland, this weekend seems to show a totally packed boardwalk.  This has led to all sorts of scolding.  Here's a Reuters congressional reporter cursing the walkers for lacking the self-control to stay inside and on Twitter, like responsible folks should do. [Tweet ...] See that sign in the distance that says, "PLAYLAND"?  That is south of Worcester Street.  It's 1,100 feet down the boardwalk from the body piercing sign.  Tiger Woods's average drive is 285 yards.  If he teed off from where that photographer is standing, Woods would be 80 yards short of Playland.

GQ Political Reporter Misidentifies George Wallace As Republican To Smear GOP. Wallace Was A Democrat.  Laura Bassett, who also writes as freelance political reporter, wrote a Wednesday op-ed titled "The Anti-Abortion Movement Was Always Built on Lies," attempting to chronicle evangelical efforts in building up the pro-life movement.  The crux of Bassett's piece rests on the foundation that the pro-life movement was "bought and paid for the Christian right," to morph the Republican Party into the pro-life party.  While explaining the party's historical support for legal abortion, Bassett used the example of Wallace as a Republican governor whose promotion of abortion was motivated by Republicans' intent to stop "breeding children as a cash crop," to collect more in government handouts.  Only one problem:  Wallace was one of the biggest 20th century stars of the Democratic Party, and by no means a Republican.

If you want to see a microcosm of our vile American media, this is it.  I was looking for articles showing that those who predicted deadly failure due to Governor Brian Kemp's decision to open Georgia were wrong.  I found such an article at Business Insider, a widely read online news outlet.  Diving into the article, though, revealed that it wasn't reporting the news at all.  Instead, it provided a perfect example of how the media shape and distort the news in service to a Democrat narrative.  When Governor Kemp announced three weeks ago that he would start opening up Georgia, the media had a field day.  After all, this was the governor who "stole" the election from Stacey Abrams, a woman distinguished only by being the worst loser in American gubernatorial history. (Hillary Clinton still holds the record for being the worst loser ever.) [...] If Michelle Mark, the reporter wanted to be factual, her article would have consisted of one sentence:  "Georgia's Department of Public Health has published data showing what appears to be a significant decline in new cases and deaths."  Instead, the entire, very long article is a series of hypotheticals about how maybe, possibly, even probably, people will still get sick in Georgia.

Obama's De Facto Russian Collusion Co-Conspirators.  [Scroll down]  In a little over three years, the Washington Post published nearly 24,000 stories about Trump, Russia and collusion.  The New York Times published over 18,000 stories.  CNN on its website published 11,500 stories.  The wire service Associated Press, which supplies over 1300 local newspapers and broadcasters with news articles, published nearly 12,500 stories.  All told there were probably more than 100,000 stories published in the media, over 90% of which were anti-Trump with virtually no criticism or disclosure of the Obama Administration and their machinations.  Among CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, PBS and NBC, it is estimated that over 20,000 broadcast hours were spent on the Russian collusion narrative again virtually all anti-Trump as many of the Obama collaborators were retained as contributors on these networks.  Barack Obama's faith in the cooperation of the mainstream media was also well placed.

The American Media Has Betrayed America.  There aren't enough disparaging epithets in the English language to adequately describe "journalists" such as ABC Nightly News anchorman David Muir, the dashing 40-something actor who pretends to share important national news with America.  Five days a week, Muir recites agenda-driven propaganda as if it were truth, while his allies who run the social media monopolies throttle down, demonetize, shadowban, or flat out censor reports that conflict with his narrative.  One of Muir's biggest crimes is his façade of objectivity.  Unlike the hosts of the cable news networks, such as CNN's rabid Don Lemon, or MSNBC's smirking Rachel Maddow, Muir isn't obvious.  He spreads his phony lies and distortions with a straight face, never breaking character.  If you aren't exposed to the other side of his stories, it works.

"Mask Police Reporter," Kaitlin Collins Rips Off Mask Immediately After She Thinks Cameras Are Off, Rushes to Speak Maskless to Other Reporters.  Another black eye for the Karenwaffe.  This wouldn't be a story except Karen Collins here is one of the Firefighters bravely mask-shaming her targets.  Governor/Murderer Andrew Cuomo gets no mask-shaming for not wearing a mask at press conferences, but of course Trump does.  Karen Collins wears a mask at press conferences.  Until the moment the camera is off her.  Then it comes off faster than a t-shirt at Mardi Gras.

WaPo's new mantra is Just Don't Report.  As the walls close in on Obama's use of the FBI to spy on political opponents, the Washington Post has a simple solution for a press that aided and abetted him:  If something looks bad "just don't report that it does."  The full quote by columnist Greg Sargent is, "There is a legitimately difficult editorial challenge in figuring out how to scrutinize a mostly conventional politician who is running against a bottomlessly corrupt and dishonest opponent like Trump, as Brian Beutler has noted, without placing a similarly sized question mark over both of them.  "There's just no doubt that this happened in 2016, as has been widely documented.  "This is plainly on its way to happening again.  But it doesn't have to.  One way to avoid this:  If something doesn't actually 'boost' or 'lend fodder' to a big claim that Trump is making, just don't report that it does.  "It's simple, but it's a start."  Just don't report.

When Did the Media Stop Running Corrections?  Last week, Vanity Fair had nice little scoop, or so it thought.  Gabriel Sherman, whose title is special correspondent, authored an article premised on a major bit of news — investors aligned with Donald Trump Jr. had purchased a stake in the pro-Trump, conservative news outlet One America News Network (OANN).  This was news to Charles P. Herring, president of OANN's parent company, who fired off a letter to Vanity Fair owner Conde Nast demanding a retraction and an apology.  "The facts are undisputable and in direct conflict with your false and defamatory statements," he wrote.  "Herring Networks, Inc. has not sold ANY stake in One America News Network or its company to anyone or any entity, period."  Vanity Fair quickly recast Sherman's story without acknowledging its error:  "This post has been updated to include a denial from Blackstone, and to reflect comments received after publication by Charles P. Herring, president of Herring Networks, OANN's parent company."  In sum, Sherman based his piece on a premise that was wrong, and Vanity Fair merely acted as if all the story needed was a minor update.

How the 1619 Project Destroys the True Moral Meaning of America.  Honest patriots of our great republic are upset at the recent bestowal of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary on Nikole Hannah-Jones and her 1619 Project.  As most readers might already know, the 1619 project was inaugurated with a special issue in the The New York Times Magazine in August of 2019.  Its goal was and remains one of challenging us all to reframe U.S history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia as our nation's foundational date.  The project promulgates the idea that everything that has made America exceptional literally grew out of slavery.  It, therefore, establishes 1619 and not 1776 as our nation's true founding date.  The egregious historical inaccuracies of the project and Hannah-Jones' claims have been well documented.  The most egregious among them which the Times has had to minimally correct, included claiming that the American Revolution was literally fought to preserve the institution of slavery, and that Abraham Lincoln opposed the equality of blacks.

Where is Christine Blasey Ford and why hasn't she said anything about Tara Reade?  [Scroll down]  Christine Blasey Ford wasn't whisked away from earth in 2018. She's still out there somewhere reading the news.  She knows about Tara Reade and, so far, she hasn't offered a word of public support about her allegation.  That's true even though Tara Reade made a point of saying she believed Christine Blasey Ford in her interview with Megyn Kelly.  Isn't it pretty remarkable that Ford has remained silent?  Has anyone in the media even tried to ask Blasey Ford if she believes Reade?  Did reporters at every news outlet suddenly lose her number after the confirmation?  Given the media comparisons between the two women over the past several weeks, it really does seem like an obvious avenue to pursue.  So why hasn't the media pursued it?

Gowdy ready to expose reporters who 'aided and abetted' Adam Schiff during Russia investigation.  Former federal prosecutor Trey Gowdy says voting out Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff is not enough punishment for the damage he has done to President Trump and the intelligence community.  During a Friday night [5/8/2020] appearance on Hannity, Gowdy told the Fox News host he also wants reporters who advanced the fake Russian collusion story to be named publicly and that he's willing to do it.  "The media, not only did they not provide scrutiny over Adam Schiff, they aided and abetted him," Gowdy said. "Politico, the Hill, Washington Post, New York Times, I'll come on and even give you the reporters' names sometimes.  The reporters who sat there and helped Adam Schiff perpetrate this fraud, next time I'm with you I'll give you the names of the reporters."

Video Allegedly Shows That Once The Cameras Are Off Reporters Remove Their Masks And Don't Follow Social Distancing Rules.  Americans are skeptical of the news media.  A recent Gallup Poll shows that 55% of Americans disapprove of the way the media have handled the coronavirus coverage — that's a higher disapproval rating than Congress, which is saying a lot.  And the public's response to the coronavirus pandemic reveals its distrust.  And we can now tell why Americans don't trust the mainstream media.

The Eight Worst 'Fake News' Stories of the Trump Years.  Journalists bristle when President Trump criticizes them as "fake news," and they complain that such criticism erodes the public's faith in the news media as an independent watchdog on the powerful.  But Trump's critiques wouldn't have nearly as much impact if news organizations actually acted like careful, professional, independent purveyors of fact.  Instead, they too often behave as sloppy partisans, carelessly jumping on one false story after another if they think it will prove their larger narrative that the President is unfit for office.  Sometimes, the "fake news" is about a small detail that suggests a broader pattern: the Time magazine pool reporter who wrongly claimed on Twitter that Trump had removed a bust of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Oval Office, perhaps hinting at a racial animus.  In fact, the bust was right there, obscured from view by a Secret Service agent and a door.

Controversial Photo of 'Crowds' on CA Beach Was Shot with a Telephoto Lens.  A photo showing crowds packing a beach in California during the state's COVID-19 lockdown sparked controversy this past week and led to the area's beaches getting shut down.  Now that photo itself is at the center of a heated debate:  many are saying that it's misleading because it was shot with a telephoto lens.

C-SPAN posting inaccurate transcripts of Trump briefings.  C-SPAN is publishing inaccurate transcripts of President Donald Trump's remarks during the vitally important national coronavirus task force daily briefings.  Yes, really.  So Trump is being falsely attacked for what Trump never said (again).  The worst of it, lately, is Trump asking questions to scientists.  Those questions have been transformed into statements that Trump never made.  But as I endeavored to clear up the fog, I was shocked to discover that C-SPAN's textual transcript are the source of the confusion.  The quotes that Trump haters are throwing around happen to be accurate reports of the inaccurate C-SPAN transcript.

The Hypocrisy on Tara Reade Is a National Disgrace.  We do not know whether the accusations that Tara Reade has leveled against Joe Biden are true or false.  That is a question of evidence and of inquiry that might be answered as time rolls on.  We do know, by contrast, that the double standard that has been exhibited by Biden's campaign and by the political press in tandem is a national disgrace.  Both culturally and legally, due process must be habitually applied to nobody or to everyone.  If, upon the most frivolous and protean of pretexts, it is routinely accorded to one faction while being denied to another, it is effectively lost.

Jake Tapper and Chuck Todd Deliberately Lie to Viewers While Questioning Dr. Deborah Birx.  David Mamet had a famous saying that is often cited.  Essentially he said:  'in order for left-wing partisans and ideologues to continue advancing their agenda, they must pretend not to know things.'  CTH calls this "The Mamet Principle."  No where is that quote more clearly showcased than with two media interviews of Dr. Deborah Birx today [4/27/2020].  CNN's Jake Tapper and NBC's Chuck Todd both pretend not to know the guidelines and gateways for a phase-one reopening of the U.S. economy.  Both pundits fabricate information purposefully and with specific intent.

Reporter Compared Coronavirus Deaths To Vietnam To Rip Trump.  But During Vietnam, Another Virus Killed More Americans Than The War.  On Monday, a reporter from New York Magazine asked President Trump whether he deserved to be reelected, since more Americans had died from the coronavirus than died in the war in Vietnam.  She may have been unaware that at the height of the Vietnam war, there was something that killed more Americans than the war did, and it was a similar virus — and no one questioned whether a president should be elected or not because of the virus, known as the Hong Kong Flu.  In 1968-69, the Hong Kong flu ravaged the world; it wound up killing more than one million people worldwide, over 100,000 of them in the United States.  No lockdowns were imposed and people still went to work, albeit lessening bus travel and implementing social distancing and more washing of their hands.

Disinfecting the Left-Wing Media.  As well as President Trump has done in those daily press briefings discussing the federal government's fight against the Wuhan ChiCom virus, it might be time to put those to bed.  The reason?  He's beaten the Democrat activists in the White House press corps to a pulp, he's destroyed their credibility, and he's captured as much of the confidence of the American people as he can in those press conferences.  And at this point the Dem activists are simply going to report what they want to report, the facts and reality [notwithstanding].  Trump has noticed that, skipping the briefing on Saturday and expressing frustration with the media's refusal to offer anything like responsible journalism on the virus.

Virus Strikes Media Dumb.  There's a lot of important news this week which is getting insufficient coverage. [...] Instead, we are back to story number one:  How to refashion news on the Wuhan virus to attack the President.  As been the case from the beginning, the press is using every foul means to demean him and make this the Trump Virus, ignoring his measured approach and successes.  This week they glommed onto his remarks in a presser that revealed the contagion curve is flattening and diminishing to suggest that Trump had called for something as possible remediation — bleach injection — that he had not.  In some cases, they flat-out lied about what he said.  In others they edited the presser video to achieve the same distortion.  Regular readers of this site know a great deal about press information manipulation and lies.  I write this in the hope that you will share it with those others who still don't get it.

Politico Drops a Supposed Presidency-Crushing Bombshell On Trump, Then the Facts Came Out.  Isn't it amazing how these "mistakes" always go one way?  Politico put a piece out yesterday in which they made quite the stunning charge against Donald Trump.  According to their sources, the President is hopelessly stuck under the thumb of China because he owes their state bank tens of millions of dollars.  Sounds bad, right?  Here's some guy from The Washington Post pushing the story in a thread.  [Tweet]  I won't bore you with the rest of his preening, as it's what you'd expect, i.e. lots of false conclusions being drawn from incomplete evidence.  The point of Politico's story was to take heat off Joe Biden, as the above thread and the article itself draw comparisons to Hunter Biden.

How the N.Y. Times Swung at Fox News, and Missed.  Not content to accuse Donald Trump of killing Americans with his incompetence during the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats and their allies in the media have turned their fire on the president's supporters as well.  Those with "blood on their hands," to use the smear du jour, range from Republican governors reluctant to issue quarantine orders to Michigan autoworkers protesting being locked out their jobs.

Fake News:  Trump Didn't Tell People to Inject Bleach or Lysol Into Their Veins to Fight Coronavirus.  On Thursday, liberals thought they finally had the smoking gun, the excuse to oust President Donald Trump as mentally unfit for office.  Some called him "President bleach," claiming he had suggested people should inject bleach or Lysol into their veins to fight the coronavirus. [...] Then the commentary.  "Trump unquestionably is unfit to serve as president.  He endangers every American.  Most directly, he endangers his supporters, many of whom either believe the virus is a hoax (prompting them to engage in dangerous behavior) or now that injecting/ingesting disinfectants is in order," tweeted MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner. [...] Trump wasn't telling people to drink or inject bleach — he was asking whether or not it would be possible to clean inside the body with a similar disinfectant.  He also insisted, "you're going to have to use medical doctors with" any such practice.  In other words, "don't try this at home, kids."

Remember the government shutdowns?  Funny how we don't see those same sob stories about lost paychecks now.  Whenever the threat of a government shutdown looms, Democrats and their media allies give us daily doses of how devastating such a thing will be on 'non-essential' government workers.  Then they go into overdrive when a shutdown actually occurs:  Wall-to-wall sob stories giving examples of government workers supposedly harmed even though, everyone knows, those employees will soon be paid.  They essentially have a paid vacation.  Now, after weeks of the intentional destruction of the private sector with tens of millions of jobs lost, with businesses and families being devasted and having no idea how they will feed their families and themselves, there are few of those same sob stories, despite real hardship, and here is what we get instead:  If a Republican governor wants to open a state's businesses, we get attack pieces saying he wants people to die.

Journalists are a gullible bunch on COVID-19.  We are told that a large number of people have the virus of whom we don't know, including people without symptoms, and that a large number of people who never were diagnosed with the disease and never had symptoms now might be immune to the disease.  We are told that in order to reopen the economy safely, we need to test everyone to see if he has it, even people without symptoms, and also to test people to see if they are immune so the government can release those to work.  Then we are told that if we find someone who currently has the disease, we need to find everyone he has been within six feet of for fifteen minutes in the past two weeks and then put all of those people under house arrest for two weeks.  Then we are told that until we get a vaccine, which may be a year or never, we must practice social distancing, wear masks, and never gather in groups of more than ten, or else huge numbers of people will die.  Now, this sounds to me as though they would rather see the economy destroyed and the U.S. collapse than allow people the freedom to work, save their businesses, and feed their families.

The Cult That Rewrites History:  Part 1.  On Monday April 13th, at the daily presidential briefing held by the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, took a most interesting turn.  During the first half hour of that briefing, Trump and his CCP Virus emergency response team took more than a month and a half of carefully constructed lies that Democrats and the DNC Media Complex have been using to relentlessly attack him, turned the tables, and utterly destroyed them.  The President did this by simply playing a video for the reporters present, and the entire country watching on television.  What this brief video clip did, is establish the correct timeline showing who was doing and saying what and when they were doing and saying those things.  Trump's masterful use of that video during the daily national emergency briefing absolutely destroyed the Democrats and Fake News Media's talking point that he ignored/didn't do anything in the early days of the pandemic.

1984 Comes to Life:  The Cult That Rewrites History — Part Two.  It's probable that every single reporter that reacted emotionally to the video President Trump played at the briefing came out of that Cultural Marxist academic system.  They have likely spent decades of their lives training their minds to enthusiastically love whatever Big Brother is giving to them to say today, and memory-holing the past.  That's why you notice them reacting so emotionally to the video presentation.  They can't hide it, and they are certainly not faking it.  It hit them right where they live.  Right in the center of their own self-image.  He took their power away from them.  Let me tell you something:  you wind these people on a very deep and personal level when you will not let them have their precious memory hole.  You injure them when you do not let them rewrite the history they are so desperate to rewrite.  And especially so, when it is imperative for their politics that the public either not know, or quickly forget something.  You are taking away their power and they know this.

Don't Get Fooled by Fake Photos of Coronavirus Lockdown Protests.  As a series of demonstrations against COVID-19 lockdown orders sweep the U.S., protesters have shown wildly varying degrees of responsibility and realism.  Some have been staying 6 feet from others or even protesting from within cars, while simply asking for some shutdown leeway for local businesses and entrepreneurs who are willing to take extra steps to keep pandemic-times customers safe.  Alas, others have been crowding up against each other in large numbers — without masks or any other precautions — while suggesting that the entire coronavirus outbreak might be a hoax.  Some folks online have started spreading rumors that protesters are paid "crisis actors" — alleging their signs too well-made or similar and that their websites have fishy origins. [...] On the flip side, people's revulsion at the more reckless or bratty elements of these protests is setting up social media for a round of fake protest news.

Now It's Obvious:  The Political Class and the Media Are Spinning Tales.  At the outset of the coronavirus lockdowns my colleague Pete Earle penned a prescient article about the propensity of political actors to rewrite the history of the unfolding crisis in real time. [...] Sadly but not unexpectedly, this real-time revisionism has only accelerated in the last month.  We've now reached a point where reporters, public officeholders, and federal bureaucrats are now revising their own words and actions from only a few weeks prior — all while hoping that nobody will notice.  The latest example involves the unfolding controversy over President Donald Trump's assertion of authority to set a national timeline for the repeal of the ongoing economic lockdown, presumably superseding state governors and local officials who refuse. [...] While the press today fumes in outrage at Trump's newly claimed power, only 10 days ago many of these same news outlets were clamoring for the very same national lockdown that Trump demurred.  Just two weeks ago reporters peppered Trump with questions about his failure to impose a national shelter in place order.

Why Has the Voice of America Become a Voice of Confusion?  President Trump startled Washington last week by launching an attack on Voice of America, which for 80 years has been charged with presenting and explaining American values and policy abroad.  Trump called it a "disgrace" that the current VOA leadership was allowing its service to repeat Chinese talking points on the COVID-19 virus.  A White House statement also took issue with the news agency that called Chinese efforts in Wuhan to contain the virus a "model" for other nations.  The statement also noted that VOA relied on unverified (and subsequently proven false) Chinese-government statistics in some reporting.

Our Garbage Media.  The mendacity and mediocrity of our major news media have seldom been on display more clearly than during the COVID-19 crisis.  While the media pretend to be "objective" and are now clearly on the side of the Democrats' narrative that Trump was negligent and slow in responding to the virus, there is plenty of evidence of the media downplaying the threat of the virus and criticizing Trump's early moves, especially his China travel ban, which the media decried as "xenophobic."  And then there is the media's lack of interest in the Tara Reade allegation about Joe Biden, which is so blatant that even Alexandria Ocasio Cortez gets it.

A free nation cannot long survive if its press takes sides.  On March 16, the New York Times' Mara Gay posted a stunningly dishonest tweet about President Trump's conversation with state governors concerning medical equipment needed to treat coronavirus patients:  [Tweet]  Gay lied in saying Trump told governors they are on their own, thus misleading readers to think he refused to provide the governors with federal funds for critical medical equipment.  Below is what Trump actually said — the part in boldface is what Gay selectively quoted, everything else is what she maliciously omitted:  "We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves.  Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself." [...] What Gay did was journalistic malpractice at its most evil, a fake news political hatchet job against a president she hates in hopes of torpedoing his re-election.  Mara Gay is no rookie reporter who made an innocent mistake.  She's a member of the New York Times Editorial Board.  Her dissembling brand of destroy-Trump journalism has been practiced non-stop for nearly four years by virtually the entire mainstream media.

Photo of same boy faked to claim "youngest UK coronavirus death".  His photo has been widely shared on social media claiming he is a 13-year old who died of coronavirus in Great Britain.  A post on Facebook claimed he was a "schoolboy... with no health conditions" who became "UK's youngest coronavirus victim."  The post went on to read:  "Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, from Brixton, sadly died without any family members close by due to the highly infectious nature of Covid-19."  But it isn't true.  The same photograph of the same boy has circulated in news stories about deaths as far back as 2017.

Trump Exposes Phony Journalists with Video Montage.  [Scroll down]  But he had to do that yesterday, folks.  And it was great because it was nothing but their words.  It was nothing but video clips of the media themselves lying and getting things wrong and purposely distorting things.  He just zapped 'em.  I mean, just exposed them to the world.  This is the kind of thing that needs to happen constantly.  The American people who aren't aware need to be made aware what the media is. [...] And while their job title category might be journalists, this is not what they are practicing.  What they are practicing is opposition.  Whatever Trump is for, they guaranteed to be against it.  Whatever Trump is against, they are guaranteed to be for it.  Why are they for or against anything?  They are media.  Their pretense is that they are objective and fair and all of that.  It isn't the case.

Brutal Trump-de-Force at the Coronavirus Hearing Leaves Media Screaming 'Pull the Plug!'  Donald Trump absolutely lit up his own Coronavirus Task Force press briefing with a more than six-minute, tour-de-force media takedown that had CNN and MSNBC sputtering and reaching for the plug.  Trump said hello and turned the media briefing over to the NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci to clarify his words uttered on CNN on shutting down the country earlier to prevent more deaths.  Then, Trump took over and it was ON.  He listed the timeline of his response to the coronavirus and presented a video of incorrect statements by the press on COVID-19.

Facebook's Fact-Checkers Have Failed To Fact-Check HuffPo's Anti-Trump Coronavirus Disinformation.  It will come as no surprise to Breitbart News readers that Facebook's vaunted fact-checking system does not stop, or even appropriately label, fake, misleading claims from the left-wing media about President Donald Trump.  A story from Verizon-owned HuffPost claims that the president has a stake in a drug company that produces hydroxycholoroquine, the drug being promoted by himself and many in the administration as a potential treatment for the Chinese virus.  The article is currently on Facebook without any labels alerting users that the information is false or even just misleading.

Fake News:  In the coronavirus crisis, the press covers itself in glory.  Media outlets have dished up nothing but one-sided criticism of President Trump and have now ended up serving us just fake news.  For example:  In mid-January, the experts at the WHO repeated Chinese propaganda that the virus wouldn't spread from human to human, and the press repeated that as if it were fact.  That was a lie.  Instead of excoriating China for its duplicity, all they say is that President Trump should have known.  Here's another:  On Jan. 31, Trump implemented a travel ban from China.  The mainstream press and its Democrat allies called that xenophobic, racist, and an overreaction.  Now the critics say he reacted too slowly.  Sometimes, the press goes full fake news, based on its urge to snipe at Trump.  ABC loudly ran a false story on Wednesday [4/8/2020], with no evidence, claiming that Trump was warned in November about the virus.  On Thursday, the network started to bury it quietly.

New York's Mass Graves Are Complete Propaganda: The Video Is From Potter's Field Where 25 People Are Buried In A Week In Normal Times.  New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter's field on Hart Island.  Images have emerged of coffins being buried in a "mass grave" in New York City.  This has caused for TrumpBurialPits to be the number one topic that's trending on the internet.  However, Trump Burial Pits is complete propaganda.  These images shown are of Potter's Field where 24 people are buried a day in normal times.  Do you really think we're burying thousands in some ditch on an Island in New York?  People don't want there loved ones to have a proper burial?  The city has also shortened the amount of time it will hold unclaimed remains before they are buried in the city's public cemetery.  Under the new policy, the numbers of daily burials should increase even in normal times, the medical examiner's office will keep bodies in storage for just 14 days before they're buried in the city's potter's field on Hart Island.  Workers in hazmat outfits were seen stacking wooden coffins in deep trenches in Hart Island.

Racial warrior offended when the Surgeon General tells minorities that behavior affects virus risks.  PBS's Yamiche Alcindor has distinguished herself as one of the media figures most engaged in the "gotcha" game at COVID-19 press conferences, especially when she can work race into the issue.  On Friday, after the Surgeon General made a direct plea to minorities about behaviors that can protect them, she went on the attack.  U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams spent five minutes during Friday's press conference talking about the fact that COVID-19 is hitting minority communities especially hard.  His densely packed presentation began with his addressing minorities' predisposition to diseases that increase the risk from COVID-19, such as asthma, heart disease, and diabetes. [...] PBS's Yamiche Alcindor was among the assembled reporters.  Having heard the entire presentation, she didn't ask a question that would help anyone understand substantive issues.  Instead, she went for the "gotcha" questions: [...]

Pentagon issues rare public rebuke against ABC for claim White House was warned of pandemic in November.  The Pentagon issued a rare public rebuke of a report claiming it warned the White House of the coronavirus pandemic back in November.  A branch of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency debunked a claim made in a report by ABC News which alleged that "concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report."  The National Center for Medical Intelligence refuted the claim in a statement Wednesday [4/8/2020], asserting that the report does not even exist.

The AP begins revising history to attack Trump.  The media are not only rude and confrontational at press briefings, but they're also re-writing history about how and when information on the virus came to light.  Facts don't matter.  There is only one goal:  Get Trump.  Toward that end, manipulating timelines has become quite popular as evidenced most recently in this AP report: [...] China lied, caused a global pandemic, and created circumstances in country after country that would make it more difficult to control due to lack of medical supplies.  WHO lied.  And our own experts seem to have been blindsided.  Along the way, time was squandered by the CDC, not the president.

American media keep repeating China's coronavirus talking points.  It should not be this easy for Chinese Communist Party propaganda to make its way into major American newsrooms.  Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, which Chinese lies ensured would become a pandemic, American news media have promoted a number of Beijing-approved talking points, including the one that alleges it is racist to refer to the virus by its country and city of origin.  American news media have also accepted at face value a series of dubious claims pushed by Chinese Communist apparatchiks, including the absurd boast that China's new case numbers have remained essentially flat since late February.  "U.S. has more known cases of coronavirus than any other country," CNN reported on March 26, its declaration coming in unison with nearly every major news outlet in the United States. [...] That is, the U.S. is "No. 1" only if you believe the numbers reported by China, which you should not.  Pandemic trackers work with the data provided, and the data provided by Beijing is unbelievable.

The Corporate Media's Coronavirus Propaganda For China Is Finally Catching Up With Them.  Beijing has lied about the coronavirus from the start, while here in the West our corporate media has actively and enthusiastically spread its lies to households across the free world.  But now that news of China's lies is beginning to seep out, will it make a difference?  Will there even be corrections?  Don't count on it.  Even before reports on incinerators "working around the clock," massive orders for urns, government bribes to keep mourners quiet, and total government censorship, China's lies were obvious.  Even before China concealed the outbreak, blamed the U.S. military, and expelled foreign reporters, their lies were obvious.  Their lies were so obvious because China is an authoritarian regime that history plainly documents killing and starving millions while lying about it to this day.  The press should know this, and they do know this, yet still corporate news outlets unquestioningly repeat Beijing's line.

Dr. Birx Finally Goes Right at the U.S. Media and China for Lying.  This has been a long time coming.  I understand the notion that figures like Dr. Deborah Birx should remain apolitical, and they should, but it's not "political" to tell the truth about China lying and the U.S. media choosing to play useful idiots in response.  During yesterday's [3/31/2020] presser, Dr. Birx finally took the gloves off and said what we've all been thinking.  These ridiculous graphs relying on Chinese data that media members are sharing are garbage and dangerous.

Who's Funding the Coronavirus Political Trolls?  [Scroll down]  Pacronym's Facebook digital disinformation campaign targets Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona, the same five states targeted by McGowan's Courier plot to create fake local news sites.  Coronavirus cases have sharply risen in Michigan and Pennsylvania, but McGowan is sticking to her plan to help elect Joe Biden by spreading uncertainty during a time when people need reassurance.  Americans need to know that they can trust the health advisories coming from the White House.  It's not a time to sow doubt and division.  But Democrat political operatives have decided that it's their moment.

Media Peddle Bogus Wuhan Virus Stats To Bash America.  When Donald Trump tweeted this week that the United States had performed more coronavirus tests than any other country, the media were upset.  Trump being Trump, he'd also said the United States had done more tests in eight days than South Korea had done in eight weeks.  PolitiFact calculated the United States had done 17,582 fewer tests than South Korea during that time period.  LiveScience said the United States had done 43,790 fewer tests than South Korea during that time period.  Their own disparity notwithstanding, other media outlets pointed out merely that South Korea is a much smaller country than the United States.  That meant they had done more tests per capita than the United States had.

What the Media Isn't Telling You About the United States' Coronavirus Case Numbers.  On Thursday [3/26/2020], the New York Times made a big fuss over the fact that more than 81,321 Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, which is "more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen."  According to their report, the United States, following "a series of missteps," is now "the epicenter of the pandemic."  But, is it really?  China's confirmed cases topped out at around 80,000, but, as PJM's Victoria Taft noted, China reportedly stopped conducting tests in order to show the world they've contained the spread of the virus.  So, comparing any country to China at this point is useless.

The New York Times Tries to Spread Panic About Ventilators, Gets Fact-Checked.  The New York Times has been one of the worst news outlets during the Wuhan virus pandemic.  They've consistently taken partisan positions and purposely mislead the public.  For example, after Nancy Pelosi tried to blowup the latest relief package, the Times decided to say it was the fault of Republicans — who had previously negotiated the bill in a bipartisan manner — because of course they did.  Today [3/26/2020], the paper of record went back to the old steadfast during this crisis, which is to try to create panic in order to score political points.

'Economist' Runs Chinese Coronavirus Propaganda Disguised as News.  The Economist is running Chinese propaganda from an outlet that is violating U.S. law to spread the message that Chinese president Xi Jinping has done a masterful job handling the coronavirus pandemic.  The propaganda advertorials, which are ads designed to look like news stories, come from the Beijing Review, an entity backed by the Chinese Communist Party.  The outlet has never registered with the Department of Justice as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and does not include a legally required disclaimer that the ad is being pushed by a foreign nation.

How the Mainstream Media Sweep Their Mistakes Under the Rug.  The online news outlet Axios on Wednesday [3/18/2020] published a bombshell news story:  Bernie Sanders, reporter Alexi McCammond wrote, was suspending his presidential campaign.  "It's an end to the campaign of the leading progressive in the race — and the candidate who seemed to be the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination less than a month ago," the report stated.  The only problem:  It wasn't true.  And this wasn't a run-of-the mill error, but a miscue on arguably the most anticipated (and inevitable) political story in the country.  What followed from Axios was not an explanation to its readers of how it got the story wrong, but an excuse for how it was mistakenly published (Axios editor in chief Nicholas Johnston blamed process breakdown in a "fully remote" newsroom).  Axios's response was an exercise in obfuscation and blame shifting.

The Liberal Media's Credibility Crashes.  Working hand-in-hand with their Democrat allies, the first cry of "Wolf!" was the Trump-Russia collusion fairy tale.  It was a ridiculous story on the face of it.  His media antagonists might hate the guy, but to believe he was stupid enough to try and steal the presidency with help from Vladimir Putin was bizarre beyond belief.  Finally the long-awaited (by the LSM) Mueller report was issued, followed by Mueller's appalling performance at a congressional hearing, in which he appeared to not know what was in his own report.  There was no collusion to be found.  Shocking — not.  The result for the Trump-Russia collusion media?  Here was this report from right here at the Daily Caller, Maddow's ratings were down 17%.

When Wuhan Virus Departs, World Will Be Changed.  [Scroll down]  Hardest hit of all, however, is the media, whose anti-Trump mania, reliance on manipulative if not imaginary "anonymous sources," eagerness to be seduced by former members of the intelligence community, general ignorance of almost every specialized field they encounter, political naiveté, and absolute fidelity to the party line ("Wuhan" is now racist) has rendered a once-proud profession little more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic National Committee and a constant reproach to truth, justice, and the American way.  At a time of dying newspapers and laid-off reporters, the media has chosen to go down with its "principles," rather than adhering to its former standards of objectivity and professionalism.  They wanted "change" and now they've got it[.]

The American press's entire energy is bent towards destroying Trump.  The mainstream American media have abandoned journalism's formerly-prized ethos of "who, what, where, why, when."  There is no pretense anymore that they serve a purpose other than maligning Donald Trump in the hope of destroying his presidency. [...] The media are currently outraged that Republicans are less panicked by the coronavirus than Democrats are.  Part of that may be because Democrats are ruled more by emotion than by reason.  A lot of it, though, is because Republicans have no reason to trust the media.  If members of the media believe that saying something will hurt Trump, they'll say it — and that's true whether what they're saying is honest or not.  If the media hysterically use coronavirus to attack Trump, Republicans instinctively assume (a) that coronavirus isn't that bad and (b) that Trump's doing an excellent job of handling it.

Steve Wynn Vindicated.  [Scroll down]  This isn't the first time, of course, that the Associated Press and the New York Times have peddled "totally fanciful" stories that served their agendas, and it won't be the last.  Wynn sued the AP as well as Kuta, but the judge found in AP's favor because its story relied on a police report.

The Media Succumb to Raging Case of Katrina Virus in Hopes of Infecting Trump.  Democrats in the news media say that President George W. Bush botched the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. To the extent that Bush could convince the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana to declare an emergency and order mandatory evacuations, then, sure, it was all his fault.  Sigh.  Bush was mocked for using the FEMA trailers for emergency housing after the storm, even though they're often used for that purpose all over the country.  He was blamed for failing to put all of the first responders in the direct path of the storm, instead of where they were stationed, just outside of the area to keep them safe until the storm passed but close enough to swarm the area.  He was blamed for the levee failures.  He was blamed for people staying in the 9th Ward when the storm surge flooded them out.  Brian Williams pretended to see "bodies floating" in the French Quarter (a lie).  Wolf Blitzer incited a racist narrative, calling the victims "so poor, so black."  Kanye West declared that "George Bush doesn't care about black people."  Babies were being "raped" in the Superdome.  On and on it went.

How a Soros Trojan Horse Took Down Chris Matthews and Is Poised to Bully Others into Submission.  With hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaire financier George Soros and dozens of his comrades-in-arms at the "Democracy Alliance," the progressive network of labor unions, activist investment firms, social justice organizations, and ideological media outlets is the tip of the spear in "cancel" culture. [...] These groups and outlets, working in concert, orchestrated the downfall of Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, targeted Breitbart, and attempted to knock Laura Ingraham off the air through advertiser boycotts.  Ultraviolet, in particular, led the anti-Kavanaugh protests — projecting "Kavanaugh is a sexual predator" onto the D.C. Court of Appeals where he sat before joining the highest court, running TV ads, and having their paid staff confront then-Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) in a Senate elevator to convince him to oppose Kavanaugh.  Armed with unending funds from the Democracy Alliance donors, Ultraviolet's press releases are often re-packaged and published as "news" by Huffington Post writers, including Bassett.  Bassett also received awards from the neo-Malthusian and Democracy Alliance-funded Population Institute and Planned Parenthood for her pro-abortion reporting.

Stone Sentencing Ends Russia Collusion, Part I.  The Roger Stone sentencing farce is as fitting an end to the Russia Collusion saga as one could conjure up ... though it might be more fitting to call it the end of Russia Collusion, Part I.  No sooner did the first flick conclusively bomb than the media-Democrat complex was issuing the casting call for Russia Collusion, Part II.  In the sequel, you're asked to believe that Putin is manipulating the chesspieces to steal a second term for President Trump — somehow preferring an incumbent who beefs up the U.S. armed forces, pressures NATO allies to beef up theirs, imposes painful sanctions on Moscow, provides lethal aid to Ukraine, ramps up U.S. energy production, and seeks to thwart the Kremlin's coveted natural-gas partnership with Germany, over an unabashed socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and whose policies would wreck the American economy, end the resurgence of American energy production, and hollow out the American armed forces.  It's a lunatic plot.

The Washington Post (CIA) is Very Worried About The Big Russia Lie Being Exposed.  The media PR firm for the FBI and DOJ objectives is the New York Times.  The media PR firm for the State Department is CNN.  The media PR firm for the CIA is The Washington Post.  This pattern has existed for several years.  The Washington Post is very concerned about a growing possibility the investigation into the origin of intelligence community work may expose the fraudulent nature of the entire 'Russian Election Interference Collusion-Conspiracy' narrative.  Very concerned.  The WaPo/CIA express concern by stating that President Trump is attempting to "rewrite history"; disingenuously skipping the part where Trump isn't attempting anything.  For more than three years President Trump has simply pointed out the obvious.  It is is the media and the intelligence apparatus that set up a fictitious narrative for political needs.

Trump Slams Media Over 'Fake News' Border Wall Report.  Ahead of making his crowd-thrilling appearance at the Daytona 500 Sunday, President Trump added one more media-slamming post to a series of tweets he'd issued over the weekend hammering one of the central promises of his 2016 election: that he would "build the wall."  "Last week the Fake News said that a section of our powerful, under construction, Southern Border Wall 'fell over', trying to make it sound terrible, except the reason was that the concrete foundation was just poured [and] soaking wet when big winds kicked in.  Quickly fixed 'forever'," the president wrote Sunday [2/16/2020].

It was Obama, not Trump, who weaponized government against political opponents.  The media frequently buries stories that might hurt political candidates or policies they support and will continually run false stories against political candidates and policies they oppose.  How else can it explain the years of fake stories on Russian collusion, seeking to destroy white Christian boys for wearing MAGA hats, trying to destroy Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh with no evidence, the false "Hands up, don't shoot" narrative?  How else do you explain the burying of stories about all the mental and sexual abuse of women by the Clintons and the burying of stories or the lack of investigation into the clear corruption and kickbacks of the Clintons and Bidens if not pure bias?  How many people are the media willing to destroy in order to get power back for the Democrats?

Four major journalistic errors in just 10 hours.  The New York Times's Maggie Haberman, for example, tweeted the following falsehood at around 5:30 p.m. Monday evening:  "Republican voter registration in NH is down roughly 20k voters from 2016 to now.  It's a reminder that Trump's increased GOP popularity is in part because in some places, the GOP registration rolls have shrunk."  This is not only false, but it has been debunked several times.  At some point, repeating the lie becomes a choice.  Earlier than that, MSNBC's Katy Tur, who hosts a politics news show, sought to throw cold water on the strong economic numbers touted by the Trump White House, arguing that the economy is not working for the individual who spends up to 360 months paying off his car loan. [...] Car loans can take anywhere between 12 and 84 months to pay off.  Who are these people agreeing to 30-year car loans?

Fake news:
Pentagon racks up $35 trillion in accounting changes in a year.  The Pentagon made $35 trillion in accounting adjustments last year alone — a total that's larger than the entire U.S. economy and underscores the Defense Department's continuing difficulty in balancing its books.

Rebuttal / clarification:
What Do You Mean You Need to Move 35 Trillion (with a "T") Dollars at the Pentagon?  In an article from MSM, Tony Capaccio at Bloomberg (note — this is Bloomberg reporting in an election year where Michael Bloomberg is prepared to spend billions to defeat our President), wrote a story about the "stark increase in accounting changes at the Pentagon", changes of 35 Trillion in 2019, 30.7 trillion in 2018, and 29 Trillion in 2017.  Note the phrase "accounting changes".  Tony Capaccio, to make this a bigger story and imply wrongdoing, using all the MSM approved salacious adjectives, interviews the GAO about the "problem" of the increase in accounting changes.  Note, we're supposed to be concerned about an increase in accounting entries but NO ONE said any money is missing.  Plus, remember, GAO is an arm of CONGRESS (read as Pelosi), and the Pentagon in the Executive Branch (read as Trump).

Fact-Checkers Have Become the Janissaries of the Obama Legacy.  For me, at least, the most grating aspect of contemporary "fact-checking" isn't the dubious journalistic nature of the project, or the endlessly nitpicking of every Republican utterance, whether it's particularly misleading or not.  It's the increasingly popular effort to try to credit Barack Obama for everything good that's happened during Donald Trump's presidency.

The Editor says...
I hope you remember that Barack H. Obama, with the eager support of the news media, blamed George W. Bush for every bad thing that happened in Obama's entire eight-year presidency.

Media Continues Dishonesty On Dershowitz's Argument Against Impeachment.  Last week when it was announced that Alan Dershowitz was joining President Trump's legal team, I warned in these pages that his complex argument in the alternative, in which he claims that even if proven what Democrats allege regarding Ukraine does not rise to the level of impeachment, was ripe for mischaracterization.  The news media has not disappointed on that score.  The first misunderstanding came just hours after the announcement of his role.  Many in the news media erroneously claimed that Dershowitz, and by extension Trump's legal team, were conceding wrongdoing, and that Republicans were moving the goalposts away from a "perfect call."  This was never true, but was too attractive a narrative for many to pass up.  Yesterday [1/29/2020] the deceptive coverage of Dershowitz got even worse.

Media ignore Adam Schiff's record of lying, fawn over him as hero of impeachment proceedings.  Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California showed himself to be a liar during the special counsel's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, repeatedly claiming to have knowledge of "direct" and "ample" evidence proving President Trump's campaign colluded with the Kremlin.  Yet despite outing himself as an untrustworthy partisan operative, many of the same members of the press who uncritically parroted Schiff and members the intelligence community during the collusion and FBI spying episodes are promoting the congressman now as a heroic and awe-inspiring manager of the impeachment proceedings; because we have learned nothing from the last three years.

This is why nobody cares about the impeachment trial.  Does there exist a more unabashed partisan than Adam Schiff? [...] Over and over again Schiff repeats things about the president that are, to the objective observer, not criminal, not impeachable, and driven by contempt.  You don't have to be a die-hard Trump homer to see that Democrats do not have the impeachment goods they said they had, and they knew from the get-go that this was going nowhere in the Senate, so they set out to stage a production, a spectacle to tarnish the president and the GOP while signaling their own virtue.  This is clear, even to ordinary Americans like myself.  Yet the liberal media, with its high level of self-importance and low level of self-awareness, acts like each boring, fanciful, inconsequential monologue is the newest iteration of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Fake News:  No, a Christian School Didn't Expel a Girl Over a Rainbow Cake.  Last week, liberal media outlets latched onto the latest horrific example of bigoted Christians forcing their morality on everyone else:  a Christian school expelling a girl for posting a picture of herself wearing a rainbow sweatshirt and eating a rainbow cake on Facebook.  According to the girl's mother, the Christian school rushed to judgment and expelled her daughter, who isn't even gay, over a birthday cake!  This narrative, which plays into the biases of many liberal journalists and LGBT activists, is just as wrong as the narrative of Covington Catholic teen Nick Sandmann disrespecting a Native American man.  As it turns out, the school had good reason to expel the girl — and it involved a great deal more than one innocent birthday cake.

On the other hand...
China's coronavirus outbreak looks worse than the Chicoms are admitting.  Communist regimes are famous for concealing inconvenient information and that appears to be the case in China with the spread of the coronavirus, a SARS-linked pneumonia-like flu that reportedly has killed 26, infected nearly a thousand, and spread to to more than a half a dozen countries beyond China, including the U.S. The Chinese have got 20 million people on lockdown in Wuhan and several cities near it, just as the Chinese New Year begins, which is the entire region's biggest holiday.  It's pretty obvious the epidemic is spreading anyway.  Officials, culpably or not, closed the barn door after the horse got out.

GOP senators: don't overthink impeachment scam.  "Journalists" on TV and radio lie routinely, without a conscience.  They vote Democrat.  They love their party.  They have to pay.  The news media have exacerbated the impeachment scam.  And apparent #NeverTrump GOP senators have believed the news media lies.

ABC Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Seems Sad That Iranians Protest Against Regime.  On Monday, ABC's chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz issued a report on the current protests against the Iranian despotic regime on Monday, and while doing so, colored her language to indicate that after the U.S. killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the country was united, but now that protesters against the government have expressed their outrage, the country's "unity" has been "shattered."

Media, Using Anonymous Sources, Have Presented 4 Separate Narratives Surrounding Trump And Soleimani.  When and how did President Donald Trump come up with the decision to have Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani killed?  That's the question the media seems to have been asking for the past week — and so far, they've come up with wildly different answers.  Using the oh-so-tired "anonymous sources" trick, media outlets have reported everything from Trump wanted Soleimani dead back in 2017 to suggesting it was actually Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who pushed for the killing.  Here are the four completely contradictory narratives the media have "reported," all based on anonymous officials: [...]

Photographer Mark Peterson Shows Patriots Can't Trust The Lying Press.  I must admit I was surprised that the Main Stream Media responded to the emergent internet's ability to debunk its propaganda (Duke Lacrosse, UVA Rape Hoax, Covington Catholic) by becoming even more flagrantly partisan (besides, of course, calling for internet censorship). Aren't markets supposed to clear?  But the result is that the myth of journalism as an impartial profession, which was receiving pious lip-service as recently as fifteen years ago, is now believed by no-one under 35.  A practical consequence for me:  I've stopped accepting interviews with the MSM except by email — which is why I have on record Andrew Lawler's malice and mendacity in The Secret Token, his book on Virginia Dare.  But Jared Taylor's experience, cross-posted here, suggests you can't even let the swine take photographs.

The disastrous fires in Australia are man-caused, but they're not climate change.  ABC made a laughingstock out of itself with a map superimposing Australia across the United States, implying that an area equal to 25% of America was on fire, even as ABC acknowledged that the fire was, in fact, only as big as Maryland.  Unsurprisingly, Hollywood and the media are wrong.  Nothing unusual is happening with Australia's climate.  The only unusual thing is that environmentalists have prevented remediation and arsonists have had fun.

Media Beclowns Itself Spreading Fake News and Anti-Trump Propaganda During Iranian Missile Attack.  As Iranian missiles rained down on U.S. military targets in Iraq Tuesday night [1/7/2020], two cable news outlets, MSNBC and CNN, spread fake news that suggested that the damage was worse than it was.  The Pentagon confirmed that Tehran fired more than 12 ballistic missiles targeting two military bases used by US and coalition forces in Iraq.  During a broadcast of Hardball on MSNBC, NBC News Tehran bureau chief Ali Arouzi parroted Iranian state media propaganda claiming erroneously that Iranian rockets had killed 30 American soldiers.

Newsweek Hits a New Low.  If decent people working in mainstream American media want to know why many Americans do not trust them and are willing to use the term "fake news" to describe the mainstream media, I offer one of the most glaring examples of a lie in my lifetime.  Last week, Newsweek headlined the following:  "Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank: 'I Don't Get My Wisdom From Teenagers.'"  Now, imagine how that must have struck any reader not familiar with the "conservative radio host" or with what he actually said.  "Ridicule Anne Frank" — what kind of terrible human being would do that?  Well, it turns out the "conservative radio host" was me.  Yes, me — a religious Jew who has devoted much of his life to the welfare of the Jewish people, served on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, made the most widely viewed pro-Israel video in the world, written a book on anti-Semitism that is in its third printing, and founded a synagogue and a Jewish day school.

Media Falsely Claims Vice President Pence is Wrong About Suleimani and 9/11 Attackers.  On January 3, 2020, Vice President Mike Pence tweeted this about General Suleimani:  [Tweets]  The New York Times responded that the public record does not back him up.  The Los Angeles Times claims Pence falsely links Iranian general to 9/11 attacks.  Both newspapers and the others echoing them are lying or just wrong.  The public record actually does back up the Vice President completely.  All one need do is look at the 9/11 Commission report on page 241.

Deutsche Bank Fake News Story Debunked.  [Scroll down]  In another chapter of the Great Trump Conspiracy, A Deutsch Bank whistle blower had revealed that a State Run Russian Bank had funded all of the institution's loans to Donald Trump for many years.  Thousands of Tweets with that tag.  I counted more than 40 good size pages who picked up the story.  Yet not one major source.  This is what fake news smells like!  And the digging began. [...] So the moral of the story is this, my friends.  Don't be stupid.  90% of what you see on the web is garbage, and fake news is now big business.  Stop clicking links spouting sensationalist garbage that you know full well most likely isn't true just on the off chance that it might be true.  It isn't.

Media victim-blames Jews for anti-Semitic attacks.  Anti-Semitic attacks are increasing at an alarming rate in the New York area, and NBC New York seems to think Hasidic and Orthodox Jews have somehow created this problem by... living there.  In a now-deleted tweet, the media outlet shared a story and claimed "the expansion of Orthodox communities outside NYC" has resulted in "civic sparring," and "some fear the recent violence may be an outgrowth of that conflict."  NBC New York deleted the tweet shortly after, but the story, originally reported and written by the Associated Press, itself isn't much better.  In fact, it might be worse.

The Media Is Lying About The Attacks On The Embassy In Baghdad.  You can tell that the Obama administration's legacy in the Middle East is in danger because the media, as the self-appointed janitors of that legacy, have gone into overdrive obfuscating the timing, context, and significance of this week's attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad.  Although President Donald Trump has gone a long way to dismantling Obama's legacy in the region, much more remains to be done, including a halt to American taxpayer money that has been flowing into Iranian-controlled governments in Iraq and Lebanon.  Earlier this week Iran-backed militias stormed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, chanting "Down, down USA!" and hurling water bottles and smashing security cameras.  The attackers breached parts of the embassy and were only disbursed the next day, after Trump deployed Marines to ensure the safety of our embassy personnel and property.

New Year Ahead:  Nothing Will Help Them.  The mainstream media has little to look forward to as their fanciful reportage comes undone.  Newsrooms are shedding staff and the papers facing lawsuits by the Covington kids are getting thinner and thinner.  The movie Richard Jewell exposes the media incompetence and partisanship at the cost of truth.  The Washington Post is now so slim my free neighborhood flyer has more copy than it does.

Making Journalism Great Again.  [Scroll down]  You would think that the reporters writing the stories were, like meteorologists, predicting tomorrow's news, rather than recording for posterity known facts and affairs.  It is said that gross inaccuracy should be tolerated in the news business because reporters, even when very wrong, manage to reveal important unknown events when allowed to "chase a story" like a detective unearthing a clue.  When you flip through a year's worth of pages now bleeding scarlet red dye, though, it is not courage but shame that comes to mind.  How many red-encircled headlines should be endured before reaching the conclusion that this is not "news" but speculative fiction or straight-up propaganda?  Is there a certain percentage of inaccuracy that we could all agree is impermissible?  Would coastal newspapers still feel haughty if they had to print disclaimers below the fold stating that forty percent or more of what you are about to read might later be proven to be false?

A Decade of Fake News.  The idea of a "decade in review" article at the end of 2019 is a bit of "fake news."  Technically, the current decade does not end until December 31, 2020.  In that spirit, it is worth looking back at the past ten years through the "fake news" lens.  These were years in which the mainstream media used false allegations and biased reporting to suppress conservative voices; they were also the first years in which, thanks to Andrew Breitbart, we began to resist them.

Media Standing Up For Antifa.  Antifa, a left-wing movement to counter the fascist "alt-right" by conducting acts of domestic terrorism has been defended by the media as principled individuals united in their common valor to resist the anti-Trump forces threatening to destroy the country.  Exactly how Antifa is pursuing their mission?  By destroying the country.  Throughout the year the left-wing militant group has interrupted events and viciously attacked journalists covering their hate resulting in one reporter suffering a brain injury.  "It says it right in the name.  'Antifa,' which means 'anti-fascism,' which is what they were there fighting.  Listen, no organization is perfect, there is some violence," CNN's Don Lemon said.  "They have taken a principled stand to stand against white supremacists and white nationalists wherever they may show up," said a guest on MSNBC.

The Media's Worst Moments of 2019.  Our friends at Grabien prepared this montage of some of the media's worst moments of 2019.  Given the media malpractice of the last year, the video could be the length of Ben-Hur, but they've whittled it down to a mere eight minutes.  And it is a fun walk down memory lane, as pretty much all of the media's worst moments have, by now, blown up in their faces.  [Video clip]

Unfit To Print Episode 34: IG Report Debunks Media's Biggest Lies.  The IG report on FISA abuse finally dropped this week, and the media is still reeling from all of the lies it uncovered.  [Audio clip]

Schiff and Complicit Media Are Due For a Reckoning After IG Report Exposed Their Lies.  Now that the inspector general report on FISA abuse has vindicated the work of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and thoroughly debunked the fraudulent conspiracy theories and smears of the current chairman Adam Schiff, many conservatives are crying out for retribution.  At the very least, Schiff should face an ethics complaint for lying in his memo, American Commitment President Phil Kerpen says.

Our Outrage Over the Dems' Impeachment Farce.  The most infuriating thing about Democrats and fake news medias' fake outrage over Trump's alleged crimes is everyone knows Trump has done nothing wrong.  He has functioned totally within his presidential authority.  Democrats and media are attempting to criminalize Trump defending himself while exposing their corruption.  The only thing Trump is guilty of is keeping his promise to do everything within his power to make America great again.  Folks, it feels like we are in an episode of "The Twilight Zone" in which Democrats' and medias' reality is the polar opposite of the truth.  With straight faces, they authoritatively lie about every issue.  Our economy is booming.  And yet, Democrats and media say people are suffering horribly in Trump's economy.  Blacks are enjoying a historic low unemployment rate.  Dems and media tell blacks Trump is a white supremacist seeking to harm them.

OAN Investigative Report:  Ukraine, Biden, and Far-Left Media Malpractice.  This is Deep State chicanery exposed for all the world to see — IF they are willing to pay attention.  When the far-left media claims there is "no evidence" of wrongdoing by Joe Biden, Ukraine, Obama administration officials, etc., they are pushing an outright lie.  The evidence is clear, it's available, and it's incredibly damning to the wrongdoers involved as is so clearly outlined in the following OAN news report:  [Video clip]

CrowdStrike: a Conspiracy Wrapped in a Conspiracy Inside a Conspiracy.  Long story short, the Democrat-media complex has successfully convinced one half of the world that Trump is a Russian agent.  Now they're acting as if they'd spent the last three years in a coma, unaware of any bombshell stories about collusion.  And bombshell stories without any continuation are a telltale sign of fake narratives.  The only consequence of these bombshells is mass amnesia among the foot soldiers.  The Trump-Russian outrage is dead, long live the Trump-Ukraine outrage.  And when that outrage is dead, the next outrage that will be just outrageous.  The current impeachment narrative alleges that Trump used military aid as leverage in asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden (which implies the Democrats know Biden is dirty, otherwise why bother?). What's not in this picture is CrowdStrike.  Even though Trump mentioned it in the phone call, it has nothing to do with the Bidens nor the Javelin missiles.  CrowdStrike has nothing to do with impeachment.  We're told it's just a silly conspiracy theory in Trump's head, that it's a nonissue.

Media's Latest Anti-Nunes Smear Is Michael-Cohen-In-Prague All Over Again.  Devin Nunes' opponents in the Resistance seem to be spiraling.  Their latest effort against the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is to accuse him, without evidence, of secretly meeting in Vienna with a former Ukrainian official "to get dirt on Biden."  The official is former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who former Vice President Joe Biden famously bragged about getting fired in exchange for $1 billion in loan guarantees from American taxpayers.  Incidentally, if there is one thing we have learned from the media in the last couple of months, "get dirt" is their code for Republicans doing investigations.  "Investigate" is their code for Democrats trying to get dirt on political opponents.  It appears the same term could be used regardless of the political views of those doing the investigations.

Media Hypes Fusion GPS Founders as Victims.  It's a little like the proverbial child killing its parents and throwing itself on the mercy of the court because he's now an orphan, but, with the wheels of Barr-Durham-Horowitz justice inexorably turning on them, there are Fusion GPS founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, on a media book tour claiming they are the victims of right-wing vengeance for their role in orchestrating a criminal fraud upon the FISA court and a coup against a sitting president of the United States.

60 Minutes gives us a migrant sob story except that all signs suggest the migrant is pretty rich.  The news show began with a sad story of Tania Avalos, who, along with her purported husband and daughter, attempted to cross the rain-swollen Rio Grande river illegally, resulting in two deaths.  60vMinutes matched the event to a widely reported news photo of the two dead bodies in the river.  The man who died was Óscar Alberto Mart'nez Ram'rez, and toddler was named Valeria.  The news show never got around to asking why the last names of the parents did not match, and tellingly, never gave the last name of the father which is kind of an indicator of something they don't want us to know.  After all, 'who, what, where...' — the old news industry standard.  Were they really a family or were they cobbling together a fake family to take advantage of asylum laws as large numbers of migrants do?  They certainly knew enough about it to understand that they were to surrender to the Border Patrol, so they weren't utter naifs as they had been portrayed in terms of their odds.

Reuters Deletes Story Meant to Make Trump Look Bad After Realizing it Made Obama Look Bad.  Reuters completely deleted a wire story concerning the number of children in migrant detention centers after discovering that the author's figures were from 2015 and do not reflect the current number of children in such centers.  Adding an editor's note or something of the like was tossed for a complete revocation, which is always last and worst case scenario in the news world.

AP Retracts False Claim Trump Contradicted Ambassador's Testimony.  The Associated Press retracted a false claim that President Donald Trump "contradicted" the testimony of Ambassador Gordon Sondland in congressional testimony yesterday [11/20/2019] when he said he wanted "nothing" from Ukraine.  In a now-deleted tweet, the Associated Press' false claim blatantly ignores what Sondland actually testified that Trump said.

Nets Cheer Sondland 'Directly Implicating' Trump, Then Admit He Didn't.  During an 11:00 a.m. ET hour break in Wednesday's [11/20/2019] impeachment hearing, all three broadcast networks eagerly proclaimed the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, was "directly implicating" President Trump in a "quid pro quo" with Ukraine.  However, just minutes later, those same networks admitted that Sondland never heard any such thing directly from the President.  "Well, Gordon Sondland, clearly the man of the hour there, as we are halfway through the questioning," Nightly News anchor Lester Holt declared during NBC's special coverage.  He further claimed that Sondland "dropped a lot of bombshells" and "Is now implicating the President directly."  He emphasized that Sondland "had direct communications with the President." [...] The only problem with those pronouncements?  They weren't true.

Nixon's Lessons for the Would-Be Impeachers.  One of the nauseating permutations of public recollection that has arisen out of the attempts to destroy Trump is that Richard Nixon was treated fairly.This fraud is buttressed by the frequent appearances on our screens of the chief trigger-men in that bloodless assassination: the unspeakable turncoat White House lawyer John Dean and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, still padding around on the imperishable fuel of the Watergate putsch, festooned with the awards the media give themselves.

Impeachment surprise:  How Adam Schiff validated my reporting on Ukraine.  For weeks, media have claimed my Biden column was a debunked "conspiracy theory" and no one saw anything wrong.  Now we know the very people working on Ukraine policy below Joe Biden in the State Department saw the appearance of a conflict, long before I reported it.  And they were so concerned about Burisma's corruption reputation that they took official actions to distance the U.S. from the firm that hired Hunter Biden.

New York Times Admits No One Believes the Liberal News Media Anymore.  Here's an excerpt from the Trump-hating New York Times.  ["]But just when information is needed most, to many Americans it feels most elusive.  The rise of social media; the proliferation of information online, including news designed to deceive; and a flood of partisan news are leading to a general exhaustion with news itself.["]

Here's How Impeachment Helps Democrats Even If They Fail.  Today's Democrat Party is a joke that would cease to exist if not for the unwavering support of the massively powerful corporate media.  Long before this revelation, it always amused me when people like Resistance Jake Tapper or others in the media would claim:  "We don't choose the stories.  The stories choose us.  All we're doing is reporting what's going on in the world.  That's our job."  It amused me because they literally write the headlines.  They choose exactly what stories to cover.  As has become painfully obvious to anyone with a pulse, they also choose the narratives attached to those stories and how every twist and turn is characterized throughout the 24/7 news cycle.  If you couple those realities — that the media are nothing more than Democrats' marketing arm, and that they're responsible for deciding what we talk about and how it's characterized — it becomes really hard to take "the news" seriously.

The View's Joy Behar:  Buttigieg Has a 'Very Traditional Marriage'.  Joy Behar, co-host of "The View," expressed her support of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Monday, saying that the mayor of South Bend, Ind., is "in a very traditional marriage."  Traditional marriage is defined as the union between one man and one woman.

When Did Ukraine Become a 'Critical Ally'?  On hearing the State Department's George Kent and William Taylor describe President Donald Trump's withholding of military aid to Ukraine, The New York Times summarized and solemnly endorsed their testimony:  "What clearly concerned both witnesses wasn't simply the abuse of power by the President, but the harm it inflicted on Ukraine, a critical ally, under constant assault by Russian forces." [...] "One would think, listening to this," writes Barbara Boland, the American Conservative columnist, "that the U.S. had always provided arms to Ukraine, and that Ukraine has relied on this aid for years.  But this is untrue and the Washington blob knows this."  Indeed, Ukraine has never been a NATO ally or a "critical ally."

President Trump. vs. the Media.  Since Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election, leftists in the mainstream media, which is to say virtually all of the mainstream media have abandoned nearly every pretense about who they are, what they represent, and what are their goals.  It is safe to say that many of the problems we face in America today are directly attributable to the fact that, because of their warped worldview, the vast majority of the American media simply won't tell the truth.  This is especially troubling when one considers that the American media has lied and continues to lie on almost every moral issue debated in America.

Trump Derangement Syndrome on Steroids.  The American Prospect's Paul Waldman gives us an earful about President Trump and how Trump is destroying everything that's good and decent in America. [...] What strikes me is Waldman's unchecked assertion that Trump's accountability "has been in short supply."  He wholly ignores that Democrats have been feverishly pursuing Trump since he announced his candidacy.  For two years, they've prosecuted a bogus case on Trump "colluding" with Russia, guaranteeing they had unimpeachable evidence.  They were lying, and their would-be savior, special counsel Robert Mueller, produced no evidence of collusion.  Accountability?  Why haven't the Democrats had to answer for their wasting taxpayers' time and money over this lie?  Neither they nor their legacy media co-conspirators have uttered one syllable of apology to the American people, let alone President Trump, for dragging us through this nightmare.

Killing America in anonymity.  The media tells us there is a "heroic" whistle blower who claims President Donald John Trump broke a law — never specified — in a phone call to the newly elected president of Ukraine.  President Trump released the transcript of the call, which shows nothing of the sort.  Nevertheless, the media is pushing for an impeachment to boost cable news ratings, and to divert attention from the best economy in 50 years, Disney's ABC covering up Clinton's involvement with pedophile Jeff Epstein, and peace breaking out in Syria after 8 years of war.  But the media is deliberately refusing to name Eric Ciaramella as the Obamanaut who spied on the Trump administration from within, just as Obama ordered the FBI to wiretap the Trump campaign.

Where were the whistleblowers on foreign policy during Obama's terms?  [Scroll down]  Instead of the media being unbiased observers and reporters, they have been active participants in the indoctrination of the public that Trump is a lawbreaker, ignores the Constitution and is a racist, homophobe, xenophobe, dictator and fascists among other names as they say Trump is divisive.  The meddling by the media to destroy Trump and elect Democrats is much more dangerous to the integrity of our elections than anything Russia or any other foreign country has or is doing.  When the media is intentionally peddling false stories about Russian collusion, lies about what Trump said about Charlottesville, blocking opposing views on climate change, attacking Kavanaugh with no evidence or burying the Jeffrey Epstein story they are campaigners, not reporters.  They are anything but fact checkers.

Attenborough Tacitly Admits Netflix on 'Walrusgate' Tragedy Porn.  It was one of the most heart-rending animal tragedy episodes ever shown on TV:  hundreds of walruses shown plunging over a cliff to their deaths out of "desperation" caused by climate change.  Or so the story originally went when Sir David Attenborough first told it last year on his Netflix documentary Our Planet, causing much upset to impressionable viewers.

The Washington Post's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.  A top National Security Council official, Tim Morrison, who listened to President Donald Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky, testified in front of Congress on Thursday.  But that morning, ahead of the testimony, senior political reporter Aaron Blake reported that Morrison would confirm acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor's account that Trump appeared to seek a quid pro quo.  In fact, the opposite happened.  Morrison noted the multiple false assertions made by Taylor, and testified that he never thought anything illegal was discussed on the phone call.

Media-Democrat Tantrum [is] a Fear Response.  Media bias comes in many forms, but one of the most effective forms is in their ability to frame stories.  There is an entire cottage industry in "Republicans pounce" stories to frame even terrible Democrat news as somehow harmful to Republicans.  But to frame this story the way the media want to frame it, they needed help.  This is why we now have dueling investigations, one a complete façade and the other deadly serious.  There is no secret in how these will be covered by the media.  The fraud impeachment circus will be treated with full gravity and seriousness, while what might be the most important investigation in U.S. history will be treated as political payback.

Counting the Ways the Washington Post Loves Them Some al-Baghdadi.  I knew the usual suspects at our failing, far-left, fake news outlets such as CNN, NBC News, the New York Times, and Washington Post, would attempt to spin one of America's great days as the exact opposite.  We would be told audacious lies about how taking out al-Baghdadi would only make things worse, only proves Trump's Syria policy is a disaster, how this successful mission happened in spite of Trump, and that Trump's perfectly-calibrated statement and willingness to answer the media's questions at length would be twisted into a crass victory lap.  But even I, your humble writer, was floored when the Washington Post lamented the loss of that dear, sweet man al-Baghdadi — a vile terrorist responsible for thousands of innocent deaths, a monster who engaged in serial rape, and a sub-human, barbaric sociopath whose entire legacy is one of torture, murder, rape, tyranny and terror — including of his own people.

Unfortunately Fox News Continues Deliberate Misinformation.  Moments ago Fox News host Shannon Bream promoted a segment on her news program outlining the pending House 'Impeachment Inquiry' resolution scheduled for tomorrow [10/31/2019].  During the broadcast segment Bream stated, falsely, that President Trump would be granted the following participatory measures as an outcome of the resolution:  [Screen-grab]  This is deliberately false information.  The resolution does not convey any of the outlined measures to the Executive Branch.

White House Knocks Washington Post 'Religious Scholar' Terrorist Obituary.  The White House on Monday [10/28/2019] knocked the Washington Post obituary for founder of the Islamic State terrorist organization Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after he was killed during a United States raid on Saturday.  "Despite what the Washington Post wants you to think, this was not some religious leader, a religious scholar, this was a terrorist, a disgusting man with a record of death and viciousness and destruction," White House Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley said in a Fox News interview on Monday.

Social media parodies the Washington Post's tone-deaf obituary headline that called ISIS leader al-Baghdadi an 'austere religious scholar'.  A Washington Post obituary referring to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an 'austere religious scholar' after the ISIS mastermind was killed in a US military strike has sparked a deluge of death tribute parodies on Twitter.  The newspaper came under fire on Sunday after it changed the headline on al-Baghdadi's obituary two times — first calling him 'terrorist-in-chief', followed by 'austere religious leader at the helm of ISIS' and finally 'extremist leader'.  Twitter users seized on the second iteration, accusing The Post of painting al-Baghdadi in an inappropriately positive light given the brutality he championed while leading the terrorist organization.

Washington Post headline:  "Austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State dies at 48.".  Look at this, on the front-page at The Washington Post:  [Illustration]  It's as though the paper is honoring him.  I wonder how long that will stay on the front page in that form.  It's the teaser for [an] obituary, and there is another article — to the left — about the military raid, "Trump says Islamic State leader Baghdadi blew himself up as U.S. troops closed in."  Note how that forefronts Baghdadi's agency.  He "blew himself up."  If you click through to the obituary, the headline is different — "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State's 'terrorist-in-chief,' dies at 48."  So that makes the form of the headline on the front page even more startling — "Austere religious scholar..."

Washington Post Columnist, CNN Analyst Suggests Al-Baghdadi Did Not Die Like a 'Coward'.  Washington Post columnist Max Boot on Monday [10/28/2019] suggested ISIS founder and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi did not die like a "coward" as President Trump described on Sunday, arguing that the president's assertion is "contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up."  Boot, who is both a Post columnist and CNN analyst, wrote in a column on Monday that Trump turned al-Baghdadi's death into another "risible spectacle."

NY Times:  Trump Gets No Credit for Baghdadi Raid.  The Washington Post says al-Baghdadi was just an "austere religious scholar," but if you don't buy that line the New York Times has another hot take: the successful raid on Baghdadi's hideout occurred despite, not because of, President Trump: [...] These are no doubt the same "military, intelligence and counterterrorism officials" who have been behind 5,000 or so previous anti-Trump stories in the Times.  As William Jacobson points out, there is nothing to the Times story.  Intelligence sources located Baghdadi, the military asked for permission to go after him, Trump granted permission, and the raid was carried out successfully.  The Times has nothing.

Washington Post columnist issues correction after claiming Baghdadi [was] not a coward.  The Washington Post was forced to issue a correction after columnist Max Boot said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was not a coward because he evaded capture by committing suicide.  Boot initially stated in his Monday [10/28/2019] column that, "The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was, in any case, contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up."  After backlash from people accusing Boot of praising Baghdadi in an attempt to make a dig at President Trump, the Washington Post deleted the line and issued a correction.

Washington Post Mourns Passing of "Austere Religious Scholar" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  Reactions vary to the U.S. killing of ISIS terrorist chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.  However, perhaps the most alarming headline was the sympathetic obituary from The Washington Post: [...] The Washington Post was not alone in their sympathy over the killing of the brutal terrorist.  Bloomberg News also followed quickly with deep sympathies for the death of a leader who "transformed himself" into a "teacher of Koranic recitation": [...] In an era where the ideology of U.S. media has become increasingly disconnected from the majority of Americans, it is becoming less surprising to see radical leftist positions in mainstream organizations.  However, that said, for any U.S. media to position themselves as sympathetic to one of the most brutal terrorists in the last half-century, is a level of disconnect far beyond comprehension.

Trump economy surges and Biden and Obama hog the credit.  This is the continuing history rewrite of the left to explain the booming economy in the third year of Mr. Trump's presidency.  Today we are at or below record levels of unemployment, inflation and interest rates in half-a-century.  Wages and salaries are rising at their fastest clip in at least two decades.  There are an all-time high 7 million unfilled jobs in the United States.  The Washington Post is freaking out about the continued good news on the economy — and especially the latest data — that I reported on these pages two weeks ago that median household income is up by $5,003 since Mr. Trump became president.  This was based on Census data, but The Post ranted last week that Donald Trump continues to "inflate his own numbers."  Nearly every assertion in the article was wrong or twisted — and Mr. Trump was right.

The Russia hoax:  The Left's willful ignorance and denial.  As we see and hear leftists spew their anti-Trump vitriol all day long on CNN and MSNBC and the others, anchors and guests — Jake Tapper, Chuck Todd, Chris Wallace, and their favored guests, for example — one has to wonder, has not one of them ventured to read any of the books or the vast number of columns written by real journalists that have laid out in detail how the Russia hoax was orchestrated?  Who instigated it?  Who paid for it?  Even Friday [10/25/2019], after hearing that the Barr and Durham probes into the origins of the hoax are now criminal investigations, they all dismiss this bit of news as, get this, a political witch hunt!  Whereas they were actually conducting a secret search for a crime in deep, dark crevices where none existed, they now have the gall to call Barr's and Durham's investigations "political."

GOP Has A Choice:  Fight Anti-Trump Coup Effort Or Surrender Government To Democrats.  Corporate media is trying to spin the Ukraine story as if it is something other than what it is.  As if it were legitimate and quickly moving.  Mike Allen of Axios opined of impeachment that "It's remarkable how fast it has gotten off the ground.  You can see how quickly the Ukraine phone call came out of nowhere to become the all-consuming impeachment topic — way faster than the impeachment inquiries into Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton."  Yes, this is a really good talking point if you ignore literally everything that has happened since November 8, 2016. [...] Just as in 2000, the media screeching over Rep. Matt Gaetz and his colleagues fighting the secret efforts — which are literally being led by a man who lied to the public for years, falsely claiming he held evidence of Trump's treasonous collusion with Russia to steal the 2016 election — is not an objection to what Gaetz and his colleagues did but anger that some Republicans have the audacity to fight back against what Democrats and the corporate media are doing.

NY Times Wrote an Entire Fake Article About Ukraine 'Scandal'.  The New York Times alleged in a false news article that "Ukraine Knew of Aid Freeze by August, Undermining Trump Defense."  The Trump-Zelensky phone call was made the end of July.  There goes another NYT lie.  The August info didn't undermine anything.  It backed up the President.  The NYT wrote, "In fact, word of the aid freeze had gotten to high-level Ukrainian officials by the first week in August, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times."  That is irrelevant since the call took place on July 29.

Seeing Some Trees in the Forest of Babble.  The hypnotic babble of the media beguiles otherwise intelligent people into believing that Russia colluded with President Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton, that Trump forced Ukraine into investigating Hunter Biden and did something, we can't say what, to be impeached, and that thousands of poor Kurds are being displaced because we pulled some hundreds of our troops from the Syrian-Turkish border.  Rational, fact-based analysis shows all this to be untrue, but breaking through this hazy thinking is not an easy task.  Maybe because that's the true aim: eradicating reason totally.

The Anatomy of a Terrible Liberal Media Lie.  I have to tell you a remarkable personal story, a story that proves the liberal media are, in fact, out to frame and ruin President Donald Trump and his supporters with lies, distortions and misrepresentation; a story that proves the liberal media are vicious, untrustworthy and sometimes just plain evil.  I was in Miami last weekend to speak in front of 1,200 conservatives at a fabulous three-day conference called AmpFest19.  Speakers also included Donald Trump Jr., Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Dinesh D'Souza.  The event was organized professionally.  The speakers were inspiring.  The crowd was enthusiastic.  And the energy was sky high.  But it turned out the liberal media sent spies into the audience to try to ruin, denigrate and demonize the event, and kill all the joy.

Here's why the media is lying to you about Mick Mulvaney's Ukraine comments.  Thursday night [10/17/2019] on the radio, LevinTV host Mark Levin discussed a press conference held by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney held earlier that day and how the mainstream media covered it.  During the press briefing at the White House, Mulvaney explained that foreign aid to the Ukraine was held up over the summer in order to see if the country would commit to cooperate with an ongoing Department of Justice investigation regarding potential corruption in the 2016 election.  Several in the media said that the acting chief admitted to a "quid pro quo" with Ukrainian officials, which is central to Democrats' and the media's Trump impeachment narrative.  Mulvaney explained that conditioning aid money happens "all the time with foreign policy," adding that funding was being withheld from Central American countries at the same time in order to force their cooperation on immigration policy.

Journalists Have Become Hoaxers.  Big media played its part in the Trayvon hoax as in NBC doctoring George Zimmerman's 911 call to make Zimmerman appear a racist, providing a racial angle for his self-defense shooting of Trayvon Martin.  CNN referred to Zimmerman as a "white Hispanic" to keep the race angle front and center.  Did they ever refer to Barack Obama as "half black" given the white skin color of his mother?  Are these hoaxes accidental or deliberate?  Is this sloppy reporting or an attempt to shape a narrative rather than simply report the news?

ABC News posts 'blatantly incorrect' transcript of portion of Hunter Biden interview.  ABC News landed that big exclusive interview with Hunter Biden, in which Biden admitted that he had in fact spoken with his father about the job on the Burisma board and also acknowledged that yeah, he's probably benefited quite a bit from being Joe Biden's son.  Thing is, it's not entirely clear that ABC was paying attention to the interview.  As the Washington Free Beacon's Brent Scher notes, their transcript doesn't line up with the video:  [Video clip]

ABC: False Footage And Fake News.  In a stunning new low for a dominant media that has forfeited all credibility with the American people, ABC News has been caught in the act trying to pass off video from a show at a Kentucky gun range as gripping footage of a Turkish attack on Kurdish forces in northern Syria. [...] The video was meant to support an ongoing ABC News narrative that President Trump has "betrayed" staunch US allies, handing them over to certain slaughter, by deciding to pull American troops out of another potentially endless war in Syria. [...] As many news outlets have reported, the video is obviously cropped to edit out any identifiable signs that it came from the gun show.

Trump Smacks Down ABC News for 'Fake News' Footage of Syria.  President Donald Trump rebuked ABC News' Jonathan Karl publicly during a press conference Wednesday [10/16/2019] for the network's claim that footage from a Kentucky gun range was in fact footage of Turkey bombing Kurds in Syria. [...] Trump was referring to a story that ABC News ran on Sunday and Monday in which it claimed that t had obtained video footage showing the war in Syria.

Trump: ABC News Airing Fake Syria Bombing Video is a 'Real Disgrace'.  President Donald Trump on Monday evening hammered ABC News for airing a video that purportedly showed a recent Turkish military operation against Kurdish civilians in northern Syria, which actually appears to have been filmed at a Kentucky gun range in 2017.

ABC News 'slaughter in Syria' footage appears to come from a Kentucky gun range.  Are you distrustful of the coverage of what is happening now in northern Syria between the Kurds and the Turkish army?  You have good reason to be.  ABC aired supposedly shocking footage Monday [10/14/2019] and Sunday purporting to be from the frontline battle between the Syrian Kurds and the invading Turks.  The only problem is, the footage appears to come from a nighttime machine gun demonstration at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky.  After seeing a comment from Twitter user Wojciech Pawelczyk, I began making some calls.  As of this writing, it appears ABC indeed aired footage recorded in the Bluegrass State and claimed it was from Syria.  The network has since pulled the video.

Good Riddance to Shepard Smith.  Shepard Smith was the worst thing on Fox News not because he was an anti-Trump leftist, but because he lied and lied and lied, claiming he was not.  There are plenty of anti-Trump leftists on Fox News, and that's a good thing.  It is also to the eternal credit of Fox that, unlike its competition on the far left — CNN and MSNBC — Fox actually airs a legitimate diversity of opinions on the issues of the day, most especially President Trump.  That was not Shepard Smith.  No, rather than come out of the partisan closet, rather than put on the uniform, rather than step into the arena, like way too many in our perversely corrupt news media, he chose to hide like a coward behind a shield of objective truth, a shield of capital "J" journalism, which made him a dishonorable and thoroughly despicable liar — which is why his ratings were so awful.

The Curious Case of the Incurious Press.  Instead of expressing curiosity about why the Bidens had been the subject of a criminal investigation in Ukraine, reporters fell into lockstep with the Democrats' impeachment narrative.  Everywhere you turned for the last two weeks, whenever a reporter was talking about Biden at all, it was to talk about how he was being maligned by Trump, that he had been cleared of any wrongdoing, that the claim that he had gotten a prosecutor fired to protect his son was a "debunked conspiracy theory."  When you asked who cleared Biden, you got no answer except the news media themselves.

Bloomberg Retracts Hit Job Article Falsely Claiming Antisemitism From Trump Labor Aide.  One month after Bloomberg Law published a story with false allegations of antisemitism from a Trump appointee at the Department of Labor, the outlet has officially retracted the article.  "In reporting on a series of social media posts from Department of Labor official Leif Olson, we failed to meet our editorial standards for fairness and accuracy," Bloomberg said in a statement announcing its decision where the article would otherwise be posted.  "We regret that lapse and apologize to our readers and to Mr. Olson."

Media Pretend China Isn't Communist.  China is communist.  They have a Central Committee, Politburo, and a General Secretary.  China is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  The word "Communist" is right there in the name.  And yet, the mainstream media isn't so sure.  They regularly downplay the ideological nature of the CCP.  They have even taken to advancing the idea that China isn't communist at all, but in fact, capitalist.

News Station Tries To Claim Chick-Fil-A Has The Slowest Drive-Thru Line And Immediately Gets Demolished By The Internet.  Chick-fil-A is so good at serving people quickly and efficiently that it's become a meme in and of itself.  People are willing to get into what could be considered overly long lines for their drive-thru that spill out into intersections — I've seen it with my own eyes — not just because the food is good, but because they know that no matter the length of the line, they'll be in and out fairly quickly.  However, WWBT-TV in Richmond, Virginia, posted the results of a study that measured drive-thru wait times, and their conclusion was that Chick-fil-A was the slowest of them all. [...] The study is pretty misleading with its claim.  While it may take longer to get your food from a Chick-fil-A, the line is moving the absolute fastest.  The only difference is that more people are at Chick-fil-A.

More about Chick-Fil-A.

Our World In Fake Data.  It took me about thirty seconds to research the accuracy of the graph.  The Red Cross described 1927 as the worst year in history, reporting 111 disasters — including 29 tornadoes, 24 floods, 9 hurricanes and 23 fires.  The worst floods in US history occurred that year. [...] Obviously the person who generated the graph didn't do any research, and is simply making numbers up.  Another graph from the same website shows death rates from natural disasters down 95% since the 1920s.

One Climate Chart to Rule Them All.  You would think that 50 years of failed climate predictions might have eroded their haughtiness somewhat.  But you'd be wrong.

Media Corruption On Perfect Display In One Washington Post Paragraph.  Every single assertion of this paragraph isn't just wrong, but the opposite of right.  In each sentence, Trump is being blamed for things his political opponents have done.

Yup, Looks Like That Big Anti-Trump, Whistleblower Story Was All Smoke And Mirrors.  The media has spent the past few days speculating all the ways in which the Trump presidency could end after a whistleblower lodged a complaint regarding President Donald Trump's communications with an unknown foreign leader.  It turns out the complaint is nothing more than a rumor reported by someone in the intelligence community.  Buried in a lengthy CNN article about the complaint is the following paragraph:  ["]The whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications, an official briefed on the matter told CNN. Instead, the whistleblower's concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration's determination that the complaint didn't fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said.["]

Brett Kavanaugh Breaks the Democrats.  Rarely does a story implode as spectacularly as the New York Times' latest effort to resurrect the claim that Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a teenage sexual predator.  By now, you know the facts:  The Times published an excerpt from a forthcoming book alleging that another woman suffered the same form of abuse and objectification from Kavanaugh that was alleged by another accuser, Deborah Ramirez.  No sooner had the universe of liberal political observers and politicians worked themselves up into a frenzy than the story fell apart.  The woman whose uncorroborated experience supposedly substantiated Ramirez's uncorroborated assertions wasn't even the one making these accusations.  Rather, they came from a Washington D.C. attorney with conflicts of interest who did not contact the Senate Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh's confirmation proceedings.  What's more, she doesn't even remember the experience that was supposedly so traumatizing — a revelation that was inexplicably omitted from the Times' original draft.

Air Force plan to refuel near Trump's Scottish resort approved under Obama, reports show.  Last week some in the American mainstream media ran reports suggesting that the U.S. Air Force's decision to refuel some of its planes at an airport located near the Trump Turnberry, a Scottish luxury resort that's owned by President Donald Trump, was rooted in corruption.  These same media outlets also took aim at a U.S. Air Force squadron that stayed overnight at the resort itself during a stopover in Scotland last March.  The reports were based on a dubious investigation by House Democrats.

The media has officially lost its mind.  [Scroll down]  Meanwhile, Politico was sticking with a bonkers attempt to make a scandal out of Air Force members paying a cheap $130 a night to stay at a Trump resort in Scotland called Turnberry while they were refueling their planes at a nearby airport Trump does not own or profit from.  Politico solemnly reported that "up to 6 percent" of Air Force members had stayed at the Trump property while refueling at the airport.  So the resort is affordable, service members have been staying there since the Obama years and at least 94 percent of those staying in the area stay at some other hotel.  Politico tried to frame this as a violation of the Emoluments Clause that forbids presidents from cashing in on their position while in office.  That doesn't pass the laugh test.

The Trayvon Martin Hoax Comes Crashing Down.  With a mediocre economy, growing questions about the efficacy of Obamacare, and a lethargic base waking up from a hope hangover to find that the president had left them hanging on the change part, the media knew that President Obama couldn't win on his record.  The media would need a controversy to galvanize the base and shame moderates into reelecting President Obama.  And so, when an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a man claiming self-defense, the media pounced.  They routinely used a years-old photo of Martin as a smiling young child.  Zimmerman was depicted with a mugshot.  The message was clear:  Martin was just a young child wearing a hoodie and eating Skittles while Zimmerman was a deranged menace.

The Intelligence Community Works for the President.  It's simply hard to know where to begin to respond to the staggering chutzpah of Jennifer Rubin's recent Washington Post opinion column accusing the president of undermining our intelligence community.  Rubin used the recent leak regarding the exfiltration (a fancy word for "removal") of an undercover "asset" in Russia as a hook to make the case that the president is somehow responsible for outing this source and therefore harming U.S. interests.  Her column is an example of the backward view elite leftists have towards democracy and the Constitution.  These elites, in desperate need of a remedial civics class, have convinced themselves that our elected president must learn to take orders from the intelligence community.

U.S. poverty falls to lowest level since 2007 and media's response is downright comical.  Did you hear that the poverty level fell below where it was prior to the economic collapse twelve years ago?  Probably not, because legacy media doesn't want you to hear about that.  They don't want you to realize the economy is in better shape than it's been in decades. [...] They don't want you to know this because if you realize you're doing better, you're more likely to acknowledge much of this is due to President Trump's first term in the White House.

An even mixture of sensationalism, dishonesty, and incompetence:
CNN's big 'mistakes' all run in one direction: anti-Trump.  CNN blared an "exclusive" headline Monday [9/9/2019] with a story purporting that US intelligence made the decision to "extract" a spy that it had working within the Russian government because officials believed his cover may have been compromised by President Trump having "repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence."  That dispatch from Jim Sciutto, CNN's "chief national security correspondent," would have certainly been a smash if it weren't for vehement denials by the administration and subsequent reporting that contradicted the crux of the story — that it had been Trump who screwed up the intelligence operation.  During a White House press briefing on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called CNN's reporting "materially inaccurate."

The Sketchy Russian Spy Exfiltration Story.  First, the tenuous reporting from CNN, where they attempt to paint Donald Trump into the spy narrative, is transparently political opportunism by narrative engineer Jim Sciutto and the anti-Trump brigade.  You know Sciutto's efforts are bad when even the Washington Post and New York Times undercut the CNN script.  The exfiltration had nothing to do with President-elect Trump, or President Trump.  The part where the story becomes interesting is:  (A) the timing; and (B) that DC journalists know who the "spy" is.  Indeed the claimed "spy" and his family have been living under his real name in Washington DC.  This fact doesn't fit the outline of a retracted spy living in an era of imminent danger.

It's Official: The Democrats Just Want You Dead.  Americans are normalizing violence in their politics, but not in the way the media and the "experts" would have you believe.  No, "white supremacists" are not the greatest threat to your safety, despite what Don Lemon and his cohorts in the Fake News Industrial Complex say.  In fact, of 250 shootings in America wherein four or more people were shot (which is the official definition of a "mass" shooting), not one of the perpetrators was a conservative, let alone a "white nationalist."  But that hasn't stopped the Democrats.

Hurricane Dorian Can't Save CNN, MSNBC from Losing over Fifth of [their] Audience.  CNN lost 21 percent of its already minuscule audience last week, MSNBC lost 24 percent, while Fox News grew its already enormous viewership by six percent, as TVNewser highlights.  Yep, even the massively over-hyped news about a mass shooting and a regional weather story — Hurricane Dorian — could not stop the bleeding at both of these far-left, Russia Collusion Hoax channels.

Labor Official Who Resigned Over Bloomberg Reporter's Smear is Reinstated.  A senior policy adviser at the Department of Labor who was forced to resign last week after a Bloomberg Law reporter smeared him, was reinstated Wednesday night, the Daily Caller's Luke Rosiak reported in an exclusive.  According to a senior Labor Department official, Acting Secretary Patrick Pizzella "personally made this decision after carefully reviewing all the facts and circumstances." The official added, "he concluded that a correction is much better than an injustice."

Department Of Labor Reinstates Leif Olson After Bloomberg's Libelous Attack On Him Blows Up In Their Faces.  Yesterday [9/3/2019], a vicious and dishonest reporter working for Bloomberg named Ben Penn ran a vicious and dishonest story smearing labor attorney Leif Olson, a recent hire by the Trump Department of Labor, as an anti-Semite based on some Facebook commentary on Paul Ryan's electoral curb-stomping of what appeared to be an actual anti-Semite (though, in fairness, not sufficiently so as to stand out at a meeting of the House Democrat caucus), Paul Nehlen.  Any sane reading of the commentary would have identified it a facetious and making Nehlen the butt of a joke.  But Penn and his editors pushed out the story branding Olson as an anti-Semite.  Instead of doing the right thing, a gutless Department of Labor asked for Olson's resignation.

Bloomberg News Yet Again Screws Up Major Story and Doubles Down on Stupid.  President Trump often characterizes the media as the enemy of the people.  It is really hard to say he is wrong in the case of Bloomberg.  It has gotten multiple major stories demonstrably, harmed the reputations of American companies, cost a man his job, and stands by its demonstrably wrong reporting.  Bloomberg is harming other news outlets with its behavior.

The myth of ecocide.  It is hard to think of any other global event this year that has been as awash with misinformation as the rainforest fires.  We've been told these fires are a calamity, an act of 'ecocide'; they're proof of humanity's contempt for the environment; they will blacken and possibly even destroy 'the lungs of the world', as the rainforests are referred to, given they produce 20 percent of the world's oxygen.  It's all untrue.

Drudge tries to spook Trump voters again.  Another Friday and another hamfisted attempt by the Drudge Report to undermine support for President Donald John Trump.  A week ago, Matt Drudge was sure that the trade war with Red China was going to do The Donald in because the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down.  A week before that Drudge had us in a recession not caused by Red China.  Drudge has linked and bannered stories about wars with Iran, North Korea and Syria, which never materialized.

It becomes clearer every day that most journalists would rather have Democrats in power than a good economy.  Like everything else, whether it is fictitious Russian collusion, claiming Trump is mentally incompetent, claiming everyone hates us overseas, and playing the race card, the media is essentially campaigning for Democrats instead of doing their job of reporting the truth.  The strategy appears to be working somewhat because, despite record job openings, wages rising faster than any time while Obama was in office, and record low unemployment, especially for minorities and the less-educated, tax cuts that benefitted almost everyone, stock markets near record highs, many people have been indoctrinated to believe the economy is collapsing.

In the last 2 weeks alone.  CNN had one host threaten to throw a guy down the stairs, the other was accused of sexual assault, & a third's bodyguard assaulted a reporter.  Another host had a shrink claim (unchallenged) that Trump murdered millions more than Hitler, Stalin & Mao.  Meanwhile CNN hired one of the key architects of the coup against Trump just as we learned, as if by some weird coincidence, that there is a completely separate IG report into the misdeeds of the CNN new hires ex-boss. [...] MSNBC joined in the collective braying at the blood moon of Trump-Russia collusion by having their designated hammering hallucinator claim he also heard there were Russians in Trump's bank account.

The media refuses to face the fact that Joe Biden isn't close to collapsing.  Dear Fellow Members of the Media:  We need to talk about the way you're covering the Democratic race for president.  Consider this an intervention.  You all went crazy on Monday [8/26/2019] when a single poll showed a national tie between Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  It was like a ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes; articles suggesting a historic shakeup in the Democratic race rained down upon America like ticker tape.  Huzzah!  We have a whole new race!

Throwing Punches for the Children — If This is Your Mantra, Zip It About Trump.  Trump is just a callous and unfiltered version of the "sophisticated" slander the left has been lobbing against the right for years through a corrupt and complicit mainstream media.  For proof of that, we could start scrolling through the endless accusations of the last few decades:  centrist John McCain was called a racist, the affable George W. Bush was tagged a bigoted war criminal, mild-mannered Mitt Romney was labeled a tax cheat, felon and murderer.  And this wasn't done by fringe activists — these were libelous claims published by mainstream media organizations coordinating with their ideological allies in the Democrat Party.

The What They Actually Said Rule.  The Associated Press today engaged in a clickbait that predates the Internet.  In it, the reporter makes a statement in the form of a question, then attributes the statement to the interviewed person.

ABC Reports About Biden's "Overflow Crowd" of About 30 People at New Hampshire Event.  About 30 supporters of Joe Biden gathered at the Portland Pie Co.  Stuffed in a small room with six tables, munching on several types of pizza, campaign members discussed Biden's qualities with interested voters.  Still the mainstream media refuse to concede that Liberals can get people on their rally.  It seems that Biden's rally in New Hampshire itself was a huge disaster.  Still ABC news wanted to report about some sort of "Overflow Crowd".  ABC posted video of the "overflow crowd" at the event — there were a few dozen people in the room and most were probably media.

Recession?  Headlines in Search of a Story.  On August 19, the Washington Post's first sentence summed up their one-dimensional angle on the National Association for Business Economics' August survey:  "Most economists believe the United States will tip into recession by 2021, a new survey shows, despite White House insistence the economy is sound."  So it went, with most establishment news outlets bent on finding the gray cloud around today's current sterling economy.  Negative news sells.  Perhaps it has always been thus, though it certainly seems most prevalent when it is adverse to this administration.

The Democrat Party Is A Joke That Would Cease To Exist Without The Media's Support.  On literally every issue, the Democrats are social psychopaths whose goals are so far out-of-touch with reality that they have to lie in order to pitch them.  There isn't a single thing the Democrats want and/or fight for that they're honest about.  Every single issue gets packaged in a hilarious euphemism that's designed to help make their goals more palatable, because their ultimate objectives are so totally insane that nobody would ever in a million years be okay with them.  And that's where the media comes in.  The media's job is to be a marketing arm for the Democrats.

Stunning Day of Economic Gaslighting — Despite All Positive Data, Corporate Media Cheering For Recession.  The long-term borrowing rate for return on investment dropped momentarily lower than the short-term borrowing rate of return on investment because massive numbers of foreign investors were rushing to buy long-term U.S. bonds.  Wait... what?  Yes, a 'negative yield curve' is what happens when everyone wants to buy bonds in your long-term economy.

Jeffrey Epstein Fallout Shows How Little Trust Americans Have in Media and Government.  [Scroll down]  From assuring us the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the outcome of the 2016 election to reporting every unproven allegation of rape against Brett Kavanaugh, Politico and its brethren have fueled this crisis of confidence.  Pro-life high schoolers wearing Make America Great Again hats were "mocking" and "laughing at" a Native American elder, the media told us.  Hillary Clinton will win the presidency.  The stock market will tank after Trump is elected.  Donald Trump won't serve a full term.  White supremacy is on the rise and poses a greater threat to national security that Islamic extremism because Trump and Republicans are using special "code words" to fan the flames of racism.  There is no national emergency at the southern border.  The Trump Administration is the first to lock migrant children "in cages."  That is only a partial list of falsehoods, flat-out lies and legitimate conspiracies that the untrustworthy folks who populate our once respected institutions have told us in the past three years.

Delingpole: Every Story You Read About the Environment Is #FakeNews.  [Scroll down]  In the face of such overwhelming 'evidence', what possible reason could any casual reader have not to believe that world is indeed in the midst of an unprecedented environmental crisis wherein critically endangered species are being wiped out by callous, out-of-control, unregulated hunters, where extreme weather is endangering homes and lives, where not even the formal gardens in Britain's world-renowned stately homes are safe?  This, my friends, is why we are in such trouble.  Every one of those stories is a lie.  Almost every word of every one of those stories is a lie.  But how many of the people who read those stories would be aware of this?

If Deplatforming Hoaxsters Is OK, the News Media Should Be in Big Trouble.  MSNBC's Katy Tur reported on May 2 that, "Facebook has banned a number of conspiracy theorists" then wondered aloud why it had taken the tech company so long to do it. [...] Now, that kind of chutzpah requires a heavy dose of magical thinking laced with a stunning lack of self-awareness and doused with a toxic level of hypocrisy.  And it would be amusing if it wasn't so enraging.  Because these reporters hail from the very same news organizations that have intentionally misled the American public about three destructive hoaxes in the past year alone:  The Trump-Russian election collusion ruse; the Brett Kavanaugh rape allegations; and the Covington Catholic High School "smirking" myth.  CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and NBC News used every ounce of their considerable influence and reach, including social media, to promote each fraud for one collective purpose:  To destroy the presidency of Donald Trump and defame anyone associated with the president including pro-life teenagers.

White supremacy paranoia is a massive HOAX perpetrated by the toxic media that pushes hatred, bigotry and lawlessness.  Though the Left has been seething with animosity over what it perceives as America's 'white-dominated' society for years, in the lead-up to the 2020 election they have come out and made hating white people an official platform of the Democratic Party.  And shame on the party's officials and leaders for allowing it to happen.  In particular, the hatred is manifested in the establishment media-created and driven lie that a) "white supremacy" and "white nationalism" are one in the same; b) both are a major problem; and c) white supremacists are everywhere (especially at rallies held by POTUS Donald Trump).  It's all a fabrication, mind you.  The fact is we probably couldn't fill a college football stadium with the number of actual, avowed "white supremacists" in America, and in a nation of nearly 330 million people that's saying something.

Blame the media for racist violence, not Trump.  The leftist playbook is simple:  the mainstream media create false Trump narratives, and they repeat them far and wide until the false narrative becomes an accepted "truth."  The current narrative is that Trump is a racist.  The significance of the racism charge is not lost on these connivers, because racism is second in its universal disrepute only to pedophilia.  Now they are capitalizing on it when real racists commit heinous acts of violence as they pin them on Trump as if he is responsible.  Here is the problem, though:  we have yet to see any evidence, even flimsy evidence, that this president really is a racist.

Tucker Carlson: 'Conspiracy Theory' of White Supremacist Threat is the New 'Russia Hoax'.  As conservatives to line up and capitulate by supporting gun control, tech censorship, and other unconstitutional policies in the wake of this past weekend's mass shootings, Fox News host Tucker Carlson is one of the few commentators with the courage to say the truth.  With media-fueled hysteria over white supremacists reaching a fever pitch in recent days, Carlson addressed the growing concern on his show, calling it a "conspiracy theory" on par with the "Russia hoax."

It's not just Trump being blamed, competing networks use shootings to suggest silencing Fox News.  As much as the left ignores that the Dayton, Ohio, shooter was a self-described "leftist" who favored Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for president, they work even harder to call attention to the El Paso, Texas, shooter's anti-immigration manifesto in an effort to pin that shooting on President Donald Trump.  While Warren gets a pass in the media for the Dayton shooting, there are reports the El Paso gunman was also an environmental extremist who embraced Eco-Fascism.  Having commandeered language in America, the liberal media deems words used to describe the flood of humanity overwhelming our border, words like "invasion," to be racist.

FBI Says The Media Wrongly Labeled Gilroy Shooter A "White Supremacist".  As we've learned in the past week, the political ideologies of mass shooters are deeply important unless they are on the far left.  Then it's irrelevant and it's journalistic malpractice to even report on it.  That's the contrast that's been drawn between the shooting in El Paso and the one that took place in Dayton, OH early the next morning.  I've been assured on social media that the difference is that the El Paso shooter left a manifesto (which has still not been technically confirmed) and that the Dayton shooter didn't.  Therefore, I'm told, it's completely out of bounds to draw any speculation from the latter's calls to violence against "fascists," his repeating of Antifa rhetoric, or his support for socialism.

If Anyone Is Spreading White Supremacy, It's The Media, Not Trump.  I knew the moment that I heard about the El Paso shooter's manifesto on Saturday that this shooting would become about President Donald Trump's supposed racism.  In fact, at the time of this writing, #WhiteSupremacistInChief is trending on Twitter.  But despite continuous claims and talking points circling around Trump's hatred of minorities, no one can ever point to something that Trump said that was actually racist.  When they do mention something that he said, they can never quote him verbatim, just one or two words.  "He called immigrants animals," they tell me along with other famous claims like calling immigrants "rapists" and "criminals."  Did Trump say those things?  Yes, but the context is so out of sync with the stories that are pushed about him.

MSNBC and CNN Claim Trump Was Never at Ground Zero after 9/11 Attacks; Videos Prove Otherwise.  On Monday [7/29/2019], when President Trump signed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund extension, he told a story of being at Ground Zero after the 9/11 terror attacks, that immediately got unhinged liberals coming out of the woodwork to claim he was lying.  Kyle Griffin, a producer at MSNBC, actually claimed there was no evidence Trump was ever at Ground Zero after 9/11: [...] CNN's Chris Cillizza also strongly implied Trump was lying: [...] Others in the media quickly piled on, challenging Trump's claim.

Fact-Check: NYC 9/11 Top Cop Confirms Trump Was 'Constantly' at Ground Zero.  After the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Donald Trump was "constantly" at Ground Zero "motivating" and "inspiring" first responders during their rescue efforts, confirmed Bernie Kerik — who served as New York City's police commissioner at the time — in a Tuesday [7/30/2019] interview [...] News media outlets such as CNN and Vox characterized Trump as mendacious following Trump's recollection of 9/11 and its aftermath during public remarks on Monday [7/29/2019] regarding his signing into law an extension of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.

Donald Trump Didn't Lie About Where He Was after the 9/11 Attacks, But Hillary Clinton Did.  The liberal media has egg on their faces for claiming that Trump lied about being down at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks.  Despite video evidence that has been floating around on the internet for years, they just couldn't help themselves.  It's curious, however, that the candidate that they all wanted to win in 2016, Hillary Clinton, actually did lie about where she was on 9/11 in order to insert herself into it.

FNC's Wallace:  Trump Is Calling People of Color 'Vermin' — 'It Sounds Subhuman'.  On this weekend's broadcast of "Fox News Sunday," anchor Chris Wallace questioned White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on President Donald Trump's attacks on Rep Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and the city of Baltimore.  Wallace said, "This goes back to what happens with the four members of 'The Squad.' Nobody objects to the president defending his border policy, but this seems to be the worst kind of racial stereotyping."

The Degrees of Fake News.  [Scroll down]  What an eye-opener that press conference was!  Sitting among the Washington press corps before the Contras arrived, I felt like I was witnessing a gang of thugs plot an ambush.  There was no pretense of impartiality.  Many of the reporters there were openly enamored of Nicaragua's Marxist ruler Daniel Ortega — he of the cool mustache and designer eyeglasses — whose major "achievement" had been to redistribute wealth from friends of Somoza to friends of Ortega, even as Nicaragua's economy languished.  Ortega's media allies didn't even bother paying attention to what the Contra leaders said during the press conference.  The reporters were too busy chomping at the bit, waiting to trash the Contras and to bash President Ronald Reagan for supporting the Contras' anti-communist insurgency.  The reporters had an agenda.  Objectivity and truth-telling were no part of it.  They were rude and blatantly scornful toward the Contras.  They couldn't wait to file their stories painting Nicaragua's anti-communist resistance in the most unflattering light.  It was sickening.  It wasn't just unprofessional; it was journalistic malpractice.

Democrats woke and broke.  Fox News reported, "The Republican National Committee raised more than twice as much as the Democratic National Committee in June — $20.7 million compared to the DNC's $8.5 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings, Politico reported."  The story also said, "The RNC currently has $43.5 million, more than double the cash on hand as the DNC's $9.3 million."  More than double?  It is nearly five times as much cash on hand.

New York Times Fudged Book Sales Data To Torpedo 'Justice on Trial' Best-Seller Ranking.  The New York Times fudged book sales data in order to deny top-five billing to the best-selling "Justice on Trial," the definitive and deeply reported account of the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, which was written by Carrie Severino and Mollie Hemingway, a Senior Editor for The Federalist.  Industry sales figures show that the New York Times ignored actual data on nationwide sales in order to depress the rankings not just for the Hemingway/Severino book, but also Mark Levin's latest book on the corruption of modern journalism.  According to Publisher's Weekly, the only public source of point-of-sale data on book sales, "Justice on Trial," was the top-selling non-fiction book published over the last week.

Immigration:  The Path To Power.  MIT says our illegal immigrant population is about 22 million.  Yale says it is between 16 and 30 million.  The 11 million figure so popular in the media is ridiculous and a total lie.

With The Media's Trickery, You Have To Watch The Other Hand.  An explanation for this week's media furor:  Distraction, diversion, and misdirection.

Lack of Bigotry in America Forces Media to Invent 'The Hoaxtroversy'.  If racism in America was anywhere as serious as the fake news media claims, would they have had to fabricate all these massive lies over the past few years?  The media told us the Hispanic George Zimmerman was white.  They hoaxed us with the KKKids from KKKovington High School, "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," and Duke lacrosse.  Each one of those phony hysterias blew up in the media's lying face, so now they have changed tactics.  Rather than invent massive national hoaxes to smear America and Americans as small-minded bigots, they have turned to the "Hoaxtroversy," they have begun to fabricate meme-like controversies, and still they are forced to lie.

GOP Candidate Gets Ridiculed For Deciding His Reputation And Livelihood Are More Important Than Building Some SJW's Self Esteem.  Mike Pence made quite a splash shortly after assuming office when it was revealed, via a Washington Post profile of Karen Pence, that he had a policy of not being alone or socializing outside of work with female staff.  In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won't attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.  This, as mamy recognized, is simply good common sense that had been called the "Billy Graham Rule," having its genesis in the "Modesto Manifesto" that governed the actions of pastors affiliated with Graham's evangelical movement.

Mississippi politician tells female reporter she can't interview him unless she's with a man.  A Republican candidate for Mississippi governor told a female reporter that he couldn't be interviewed by her unless she was accompanied by a male colleague — later claiming that he was following "the Billy Graham Rule."  "We just wanted to keep things professional," said GOP hopeful Robert Foster in a radio interview on Tuesday [7/8/2019].  The female reporter, Larrison Campbell of Mississippi Today, had been asking to go on a "ride along" with Foster when his campaign director reportedly refused on his behalf.

WATCH CNN Try To Shame Underdog Republican Candidate Who Wouldn't Grant Access To Female Reporter.  CNN's New Day John Berman tried to shame an underdog Republican candidate, Robert Foster because he wouldn't grant a Mississippi reporter access to him for an interview when they were alone.  Foster explained very eloquently why he felt the need to ask Mississippi Today reporter Larrison Campbell to bring someone along with her for the interview if they were going to have one.  Larrison made a massive deal about it, and the story wound up on CNN.  Larrison also embellished the story that she had been barred from Foster's campaign because she is a woman.  It turns out that Foster was smart in decision making if Campbell felt she had to grow this request into a scandal for the Republican candidate.

Media Magic — How a Democrat Pedophile Became a 'Trump Scandal'.  [Scroll down]  As stories go, a child sex case involving a Palm Beach billionaire was pretty big.  It was covered in the British press, in Florida media, at The New York Post, and at Fox News.  Bill O'Reilly led with the story on his Fox News show.  But CNN and MSNBC did not breathe a word about a Democratic prosecutor refusing to hold a Democratic child rapist accountable.

Corporate Media Push Trump-Jeffrey Epstein Conspiracy Theories Without Evidence.  The establishment media is attempting to link President Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein without any evidence connecting him to the underage sex trafficking case against the billionaire hedge fund manager.  Immediately following a Daily Beast report revealing Epstein's Saturday day arrest, a handful of news figures and outlets posted social media posts and stories painting a picture that the wealthy investor's arrest was bad news for President Trump — with one editor even going as far to suggest he could be directly implicated in the case.

Did someone mention Jeffrey Epstein?

Who Really Believes Biden Can Beat Trump?  According to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, however, if the 2020 election were held today, Biden would beat President Trump by 10 points.  If this inspires skepticism, it won't be ameliorated by the finding in the same survey that Trump's approval rating is at the highest point of his presidency.  The new poll found that 47 percent of registered voters say they approve of Trump compared to 42 percent in April.  Meanwhile, Biden's lead among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination is dwindling.

Media Predictions of "Tiny Crowd" For Trump July 4 Speech Proven Spectacularly Wrong.  The media ran headlines right up to the day of President Trump's July 4 speech predicting only a "tiny crowd" would show up.  How spectacularly wrong they were. [...] In reality, photos from the event show crowds stretching the full length of the national mall.

8 Times The Media Said There Was No Crisis At The Southern Border.  Now that media-savvy congressional Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have brought attention to the humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border caused by Congress's refusal to fix our exploited immigration laws, political pundits are having to eat their own words from just a few months ago claiming that the border crisis was manufactured by President Trump as a political stunt.  Last week, before President Trump departed for the G20 Summit in Japan, he told reporters on the White House lawn that his critics are now seeing he was right all along.

Tragic Photo Undermines Media Credibility on 'Manufactured Crisis' at Border.  Townhall put together a montage insisting not only that Trump had made up a "manufactured crisis" but outright lied that there was a crisis at the border in the first place.  The clip begins with CNN's Don Lemon asking:"This last ditch effort to persuade Americans that there is a crisis at the border - did it work?["] [...] In April, The Media Research Center's Bill D'Agostino put together a montage of media figures finally admitting that it was a crisis.  Over at Fox, Tucker Carlson put together his own montage of mainstream liberal media acolytes insisting as follows: [...] Doubtless there's more of this kind of utter wrong-headed frothing denial out there in the media.

Biden's Mythical Mass of Support.  Something very strange is going on with our news media, as it covers the state of the 2020 campaign.  Donald Trump, according to the big news outlets (CNN, the New York Times, ABC, the Washington Post, and their brethren), is on the ropes.  The polls from these same news outlets show him losing by catastrophic margins to virtually every Democratic candidate.  Even Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who is polling at 2 percent among Democrats, would defeat Trump in every key state.  Joe Biden — according to the polls and the pundits — would crush Trump even in the reddest of the red states.  Forget the Midwest — Biden is so wildly popular, even Texas is now out of reach for the GOP.  Quinnipiac says Biden will squash Trump like a bug in Florida — 50 percent to 41 percent.  In fact, another Quinnipiac poll reports a tsunami of Bidenophilia is sweeping the nation from coast to coast.  "Joe Biden is ahead by landslide proportions," says Quinnipiac.

The Editor says...
The news media thrive on neck-and-neck horse races, where the lead changes every hour, depending on who's speaking.  An impending landslide doesn't compel you to tune in every day to learn the latest details.  Sensationalism sells advertising.

Trump: Smarter Than The Experts.  Remember the bold predictions made by the New York Times' economist and resident expert, Paul Krugman?  The Nobel Prize winning economist said that the economic fallout of a Donald Trump presidency would be severe and widespread, predicting that it could "plunge the world into recession."  He penned his view in an opinion piece published the day after the election.  Calling Trump both "ignorant and irresponsible," he said that his election would be the "mother of all adverse effects."  He warned that the new administration could quickly undo the progress that markets had made in the eight years since the financial crisis.  He was wrong.  The Trump economy continues setting records.  Employment, real wages, consumer confidence, all moving ever higher.  We wait in vain for a correction or apology from Krugman or the Times.  They rarely find room to share the good economic news with their shrinking readership.  The truth does indeed die in darkness.

New York Times Reporter Falsely Labels Segregationist Senators Republicans.  Appearing Thursday [6/20/2019] on CNN Newsroom, New York Times national political reporter Astead Herndon falsely labeled segregationist Democrat senators whom former Vice President Joe Biden praised for their "civility" Republicans.  The day prior, MSNBC host Kasie Hunt made the same error by misidentifying Sens. James Eastland (D-MS) and Herman Talmadge (D-GA). She has since issued a correction, while Herndon has yet to follow suit.

How Dangerous is Fake News?  Did you know that last week two hundred illegal immigrants originating from the Congo, that were picked up by border patrol agents, have tested positive for the deadly and highly contagious Ebola virus or that a company whistleblower announced that YouTube has been placing millions of subliminal anti-Trump messages in a variety of videos?  You most certainly did not.  But nearly every American has heard of President Donald Trump colluding with Russia and calling all Mexicans rapists or of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulting women even though these events never took place and were concocted out of thin air.

Turns Out The Reported Racist Delay Of Harriet Tubman's $20 Note Was Fake News.  A few weeks ago, it was announced that a new $20 bill graced by Harriet Tubman wouldn't be shown in 2020.  This set off a wave of condemnation and claims of racism backed by absolutely no evidence.  We are supposed to believe that Trump dislikes non-whites so much that he personally intervened in the situation and delayed the project. [...] Now, more details are coming out and as per usual, there's a lot more to the story and none of it involves Donald Trump at all.

Irish bar debunks fake news that Don Jr. and Eric Trump skipped out on bill.  Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the eldest sons of the president, were targeted by fake news after a recent bar crawl where they picked up the tabs of their fellow patrons.  A Saturday [6/8/2019] story from The Daily Beast was published with the headline "Eric and Donald Trump Jr.  Still Have Not Paid Irish Bar Tab."  While leftists made the story go viral and immediately used the headline to trash the Trump family some more, the whole thing was complete and utter nonsense.  Reporter Arthur Schwartz almost immediately jumped at The Daily Beast and the authenticity of their story.

EPA Admin Rips Journalist For Misleading Tweet: 'Most Reporters Are Lazy'.  Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler ripped into a Yahoo News reporter in a Friday interview over a tweet he believed took remarks he made out of context.  Yahoo national correspondent Alexander Nazaryan tweeted Monday [6/3/2019] that Wheeler had said during a National Press Club event that "'The media does a disservice to the American public' by reporting on global warming." [...] But in the full quote in the article, Wheeler didn't actually say the press did a disservice by "reporting on global warming," full stop, but for not also reporting on the strides the country had made.  "The media does a disservice to the American public, and sound policymaking, by not informing the public of the progress this nation has made," he said.

NPR says babies aren't babies until they're born.  [Scroll down]  Doctors and nurses describe "how your baby grows and develops" during the first — and each subsequent — trimester for parents who are expecting.  They do not typically refer to "your fetus."  During ultrasounds nurses don't point to the screen and say, "Look at that thing there, your fetus is a boy!"  (Nor do they say, "I'm arbitrarily assigning the gender 'boy' to your fetus").

Pew: Fake News Tops Terrorism, Violent Crime, Climate Change as 'Very Big Problem in Country Today'.  "Made-up news/info" is considered a major problem by more adults in the U.S. than concerns like terrorism, violent crime, and climate change, results of a nationwide Pew Research Center study released Wednesday [6/5/2019] show.  Half (50%) of U.S. adults polled called fake news and information "a very big problem in the country today," compared to only 34% who cited terrorism:
  •   Made-up News/Info: 50%
  •   Violent Crime: 49%,
  •   Climate Change: 46%
  •   Racism: 40%
  •   Illegal Immigration: 38%
  •   Terrorism: 34%
  •   Sexism: 26%
About two-thirds of adults said that fake news and information has "a big impact" on Americans' confidence in government (68%) and creates "a great deal of confusion" about the basic facts of current events and issues.

Poll: Majority says mainstream media publishes fake news.  Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the mainstream press is full of fake news, a sentiment that is held by a majority of voters across the ideological spectrum.  According to data from the latest Harvard-Harris poll, which was provided exclusively to The Hill, 65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media.  That number includes 80 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats.  Eighty-four percent of voters said it is hard to know what news to believe online.

Politico Wrongly Tried to Claim a Pastor Apologized for Praying for President Trump.  I won't blame Krystal Campos, the reporter, because I don't know if she gets to assign her own titles.  But it is pretty shocking that anyone could read David Platt's letter to his congregation and take it as an apology.  All he did was explain to the congregation how it came to be that the President showed up unexpectedly.

Anti-Trump Traitors Rip Blindfold Off Lady Justice.  [President] Trump brought back jobs that Obama decreed were gone forever.  Black, Hispanic, and female unemployment are at historic lows.  Trump pulled us out of bad deals with foreign governments.  Thanks to Trump eliminating absurd regulations and oppressive taxes, businesses are coming home to America building factories.  The average American wage is $27 per hour.  Americans are enjoying an economic boom.  All this incredible good news is for the most part being hidden from Americans.  Instead, Democrats, fake news media, Hollywood, and social media flood the airwaves with their lie that Trump is horrible for America.

Trump-McCain Tarpgate: Yet Another Outrage That Wasn't.  By the time I learn enough about the latest current-events kerfuffle to realize I don't care, it turns out to be [nonsense] anyway.  And so it is with the outrage du jour:  Tarpgate. [...] Now, it's not exactly a secret that John McCain hated Trump's guts, and the feud has continued even after McCain's death.  Trump still badmouths a corpse, much to the delight of Trump's biggest fans.  So this story sounds plausible.  It sounds like something Trump would do, and something Trumpkins would defend.  But does that mean it actually happened?  Sure, it confirms my prejudices, but does that mean it's true?  It's starting to sound like maybe it isn't.

'Mainstream' media has a new fact-checking standard: 'Kinda plausible'.  [E]ven if you instill in your kids your conservative, pro-America, constitutional values, they are going be inundated with Left-wing pabulum, propaganda, and disinformation virtually every moment of their higher education experience.  Case in point:  One professor, Ian Bremmer, a geopolitical analyst, journalist, and cable news regular, actually attributed a 'quote' about North Korea to POTUS Donald Trump that was 100 percent made up, but posted on Twitter as though it was real — and then he actually defended his actions and his lie.

He Finally Admits He's Not a Reporter:  In New Book, Jim Acosta Insists 'Neutrality' Doesn't Work in the Age of Trump.  Jim Acosta is the worst "reporter" in the history of network news.  I say that not as a conservative, but as someone who believes in "news."  The title of Jim's upcoming book says it all:  Enemy of the People:  A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.  That reveals he has no understanding of what a reporter is.

Impeach or get off the pot, Democrats.  The same people who never met a constitutional amendment they didn't want to weaken or destroy will now act as if a middling procedural showdown is the next Watergate.  Mainstream media stories about Nadler's fishing expeditions have already framed Democrats as stewards of law and order, forced into impeachment by inflexible Republicans.

No Room for Honesty.  Listen to various abortion activists and Hollywood-faded stars and you might be under the impression that Georgia, Alabama and other states have just passed laws that could give women the death penalty for having abortions.  In fact, some news outlets have run stories that these states would arrest women for having abortions.  Sadly, at a time when the news media and progressive activists lament the President's dubious relationship with the truth, these are not just misstatements but outright lies.  Last week, Alabama passed a law that would prohibit abortion except for situations where the mother's own life is at risk.  News outlets faithfully reported that under this law, women could be jailed for having an abortion.

Dear Media:&nb