Monday, December 23, 2019

The Year in Media Propaganda


I would like to say that 2019 was the year when the American mass media shed its last pretense of being objective. It was the year when the media became activist, when it presented its wishes and beliefs as facts, and when it joined the resistance to President Trump.

I would say so if it were not for the fact that the media did not do its job in 2017 or 2018. And yet, there’s always room for disimprovement and the American media was in there pitching. It has given up on the goal of reporting the news. Now it wants to make the news.

One feels obliged to note that, while making itself the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party, the same media is more than happy to condemn the Chinese state media. for running party propaganda. 

Anyway, over at the Federalist  Tristan Justice collects some twelve stories that the media got grievously wrong in 2019. (via Maggie’s Farm) And for which, I would add, it has never apologized. 

I will offer a few exemplary instances. The rest are of equal demerit. 

We begin with the story of Nick Sandmann, a Kentucky high school student who was accused of having made a racist smirk while being harassed by a Native American activist and by members of a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites. You will recall that two members of this radical anti-Semitic group recently murdered people in a kosher deli in Jersey City.

Justice reports:

The media ripped apart a 16-year-old student seen in a video smirking at a Native American activist on the National Mall during a school trip with Covington Catholic High School to Washington D.C. for the March for Life.

The release of added context however, reveals that Nick Sandmann, a junior at the school who is depicted in the viral image was being harassed along with his peers by members of the Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI).

Surely, the most extravagant media bust was the Robert Mueller Report. Actually, the public testimony of Mueller himself was even a bigger bust than the report. Yet, it has not deterred Democrats in the House of Representatives to gin up articles of impeachment. How better to save face after losing so much of it by betting on Robert Mueller:

In perhaps one of the media’s most magnificent mistakes this year, special counsel Robert Mueller unveiled his findings from a two-year unlimited resource investigation completely exonerating President Donald Trump of being a Russian agent after years of the media’s peddling of the Russia hoax.

Mueller found not one person from the Trump campaign, let alone Trump himself, colluded with the Russian government in 2016 to defeat Hillary Clinton. Mueller’s report also acquitted Trump of any obstruction of justice charges for firing one of the most corrupt directors of the FBI, James Comey.

And then there is the cover up of Joe Biden’s sexual fetish. What do you call an old man who walks up to a teenage girl, grabs her by the shoulders to fix her in place, and then sticks his nose in her hair? Would you call his action a simulated rape? Only the most sheltered souls does not understand that a woman’s hair is full of sexual attraction hormones, that is, of pheromones, and that hair sniffing is a notable fetish.

OK, if the man who performs this simulated rape, in public, no less, is a Democrat, the answer is that he is a faithful public servant… or should it be, pubic servant. If the man is a Republican, he has committed the worst crime in human history, and is worse than Hitler.

Justice explains:

Former Vice President Joe Biden sparked criticism this year for his interactions with young girls earning the Democratic frontrunner the nickname “Creepy Uncle Joe.”
While the media will eviscerate any man the progressive movement attempts to bring down with allegations of sexual harassment, most notably Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, the media went to bat to defend Biden who has been leading the Democratic primary field ever since.

And finally, there was the Horowitz report. At first, the report seemed to suggest that the clown posse running the FBI during the Obama administration had been exonerated of having political motives. They were just a bunch of chronically incomptetent bumblers. But then, people started reading the report itself, and most people could only conclude that the FBI had unlawfully spied on the Trump campaign during a presidential election.

The Democrats had hoped that Horowitz would save their souls. In truth, by being impartial and objective, even to the point of trying to lean in their direction, he enhanced his credibility and dug their graves:

Earlier this month, the Justice Department inspector general released a long-anticipated report on the FBI’s FISA abuses of four warrants used to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign.

One of the major revelations to emerge from the report was the confirmation that the sources from the discredited Steele Dossier were relied upon to re-issue the warrants from the FISA courts to continue its deep-state operations. FBI officials knew as early as January of 2017 that the sources were providing junk intelligence and did not include that information in their warrant applications.

The media however, spent years defending the credibility of the Steele Dossier in peddling the Russia hoax.

There’s more in Justice’s article. Consider these selections an amuse bouche. 

1 comment:

Sam L. said...

I could call the media "stupid", but "dishonest liars and prevaricators" is more accurate.