Fake News

Silverfiddle Rant!

From Gallup...

* 9% in U.S. trust mass media "a great deal" and 31% "a fair amount"

* 27% have "not very much" trust and 33% "none at all"

* The percentage with no trust at all is a record high, up five points since 2019

Complaints of "the lying news media" are common, but the purveyors of propaganda are much more subtle that that.  Most of the press does not outright lie, they instead rely upon artistic use of tone, tenor and shading to sculpt key sentences in a story for maximum propaganda value.  

Here is an excellent example:  One sentence from a CNN article designed not to convey the news that Tennessee has passed an anti-CRT bill, but rather to ridicule the conservatives who passed the bill: 

Section 51, part 6 of the Tennessee law makes lesson plans illegal if students "feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish."

That Tennessee law sounds idiotic and legally unsound, doesn't it?  

Here is the actual text from the law:

(a) An LEA or public charter school shall not include or promote the following concepts as part of a course of instruction or in a curriculum or instructional program, or allow teachers or other employees of the LEA or public charter school to use supplemental instructional materials that include or promote the following concepts:

(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual's race or sex;

So, rightly stated, the law says...

Tennessee public schools are banned from teaching that "An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex."

See the difference?

If dragged into a court of law, CNN could defend every word of their deliberate misstatement, because it has all been vetted by their lawyers.  So, CNN is broadcasting fact-checked, legally parsed propaganda designed to inflame, outrage and ridicule.  

CNN--and most of the rest of our Infotainment Media Complex--is only a hair's breadth better than sensationalist tabloids full of Elvis sightings, Gordon Ramsey's sex dwarf, 500 pound house cats and Dick Cheny is a Robot headlines.

But is that really what we want?  We deserve better than barely-legal propaganda disguised as news.

Why Smart People Don't Trust the Press

Silverfiddle Rant!

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- At a time when Americans are relying heavily on the media for information about the coronavirus pandemic, the presidential election and other momentous events, the public remains largely distrustful of the mass media. Four in 10 U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" (9%) or "a fair amount" (31%) of trust and confidence in the media to report the news "fully, accurately, and fairly," while six in 10 have "not very much" trust (27%) or "none at all" (33%). (Gallup)

Kylee Zempel at The Federalist provides reasons for that well-founded mistrust:

is it because the media constantly race-bait them with false narratives? Ma’Khia Bryant? “Hands up, don’t shoot”?

In this case, the alternative is the same media that smeared Brett Kavanaugh as a gang rapist.

It’s the media that fell for the Jussie Smollett hoax and the Russia hoax

... and that cut video footage to paint a Catholic teenager as a smug racist.

It’s the media that saw the Hunter Biden laptop story and said “nothing to see here,”

...that stood in front of burning buildings and called it “peaceful protests,”

...that wrongly claimed Trump tear-gassed “peaceful protesters” in Lafayette Park for a photo op.

...wrongly insisted MAGA insurrectionists bludgeoned a Capitol Police officer to death with a fire extinguisher.

They concocted a false narrative out of thin air about Gov. Ron DeSantis and Publix pharmacies when they needed to make a successful Republican leader look bad.

They opted for comedy hour with Gov. Andrew Cuomo instead of asking him and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer real questions about their lethal nursing home policies.

They lied about Russian bounties and downplayed Fauci’s emails.

What say you?

Trade-Offs

Silverfiddle Rant!

I didn't want to go there, but an article written by snarky lefty John Harris in Politico has pushed me over the edge:

Admit it.  You are willing to let people die to end the shutdown


We are dealing in trade-offs:  How much economic destruction to save how many lives?  And even that is not accurate.  We are not saving lives--we are deferring deaths.

As Democrats continue to take a hammer and sickle to our economy* we are in an age of Cheap Tricks, Cheap Attacks, and Cheap Racist Rants. Please bear with me, its all related.

Cheap Tricks

Harris resorts to cheap tricks. After reminding us how conservatives rail against moral relativism, he unleashes this:

It’s worth noting the shift in worldviews. During the pandemic, conservatives are much more likely to be relativists—everyone dies of something eventually so let’s keep this disease in perspective—while liberals generally are quicker to assume the absolutist stance—let’s stay shut down for as long as health experts tell us we need to save lives.

Did you catch the trick:  He dropped 'moral relativist' and replaced it with simply 'relativist.'  Two different things.  That is the heap of pot metal trinkets and shiny glass beads Democrat argumentation has been reduced to.

Cheap Attacks

Harris attacks my governor, Gerald Polis (a Democrat) who I believe had done a pretty fair job balancing public health and our God-given rights. Jake Crapper asked Polis a gotcha question about the looseness of his Coronavirus policies (a typical Maoist attack, since Polis is not toeing the Democrat line and looks suspiciously closer to Trump than to Pelosi on this), and Polis gave a standard politician's answer, which touched off Harris' attack:

The murkiness of Polis’ reply requires translation. To my ear, he was saying something like this:

Yes, some people are going to die of Covid-19 who wouldn’t if I keep a full lockdown in place. I hope not too many or too fast. But keeping the risk of death as low as possible imposes other costs that are too high, and my job is to balance competing goals.

Life is full of tradeoffs and nothing is pristine.  Clean drinking water is allowed to have a certain amount of fecal coliform and harmful chemicals below a mandated threshold.  The world is full of non-malicious human activity that indirectly leads to the death of others.

Let's take Harris's statement and play "fill in the blank."  Please share your answers in the comments:

Yes, some people are going to die of [fill in the blank] who wouldn’t if we had a full ban on [fill in the blank]. 

Example Answers:  car accidents – automobiles

Cheap Racist Rants

Related to this is one more example of how the Age of Corona is empowering the partisan loonies, angry racists and raging propagandists.  This is a real headline on Vox, the leftwing 'splainer website posing as responsible journalism:

The whiteness of anti-lockdown protests
How ignorance, privilege, and anti-black racism is driving white protesters to risk their lives.

Extraordinary events cause ordure like this to bob to the surface, and such rants are always revealing. I doubt this article speaks for “people of color.” Based on my limited experience, I don't think most “people of color” look at the world through such hate-distorted lenses, but it speaks loud and clear for the revenge raging neo-Maoists who are exploiting racial differences to stoke tribalism and heap mob scorn on white people.

What say you?

* - Originally stated by a commenter at William M. Briggs - Statistician to the Stars

See also:  Covid-19: Three Futures

2019 In Review

From 12 Stories The Media Got Horribly Wrong In 2019: As the year comes to a close, here are a dozen of the top stories the media majorly messed up (The Federalist)....

January: Covington Catholic

February: Jussie Smollett

March: The Mueller Report

April: White House Correspondents Dinner

May: Media Defends Joe Biden’s Manhandling Of Young Girls

June: Media Standing Up For Antifa

July: 50th Anniversary Of Moon Landing Celebrates Inequality

August: Chris Cuomo Goes Berserk After Being Called ‘Fredo’

September: Media Makes A Puppet Of Greta Thunberg

October: Washington Post Pens Glowing Obituary For ISIS Leader

November: ABC Buried The Jeffrey Epstein Story

December: DOJ IG Blows Up Steele Dossier Upheld By The Media

More details and video HERE.

And the beat goes on — no doubt becoming worse as we enter Election Year 2020.

Of course, there are other stories fitting the category of "Stories the Media Got Horribly Wrong." Do you wish to add to the list? Please do so in the comments section for this blog post.

Recommended Reading

See Fake News Drowned Father and Daughter by my friend Beakerkin of the blog The Beak Speaks, in reference to this recent photo.

Brief excerpt below the fold.

Recommended Reading

See The History of Fake News in the United States from The Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

...[I]ntentionally misleading news has been around since before the invention of the printing press. In fact, our Founding Fathers grappled with this very issue when they created our system of government. They saw that while it was tempting to censor fake stories, ultimately, the truth was more likely to be abused by an all-powerful government arbiter than the filter of unimpeded popular debate. Attempts to weed out factually incorrect news reports can quickly morph into fact-checking and manipulating differences in opinion....

Read the rest HERE.

Does the Digital Age (or anything else) upend the precedents cited in the linked essay?

The Trump Effect On The Enemedia

The Enemedia being held to account is a wonderful thing!

First:

Leaked Tape from ABC News Shows Trump Has Media on the Ropes.

Then:

.@DaveWeigel @WashingtonPost put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo! pic.twitter.com/XAblFGh1ob

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017

Additional reading for both Trumpers and NeverTrumpers to peruse: President Donald Trump's Accomplishment List.

R.I.P. CNN

They did it to themselves. For example (click directly on the graphic to enlarge it):

CNN has gone from the most trusted name in news to fake news. Therefore:

[hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance for the first graphic in this blog post]

Why Trump Tweets

And should continue to Tweet (HERE and HERE, two different Twitter accounts).

The Democrats, the establishment GOP, and the media want President Trump to stop Tweeting because his Tweets are interfering with and eroding the narrative.

As Donald J. Trump Tweeted @ 8:23 this morning:

The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media - over 100 million people! I can go around them

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2017

Political Humor

Lunch with the Pope
President-elect Trump invited the Pope for lunch on his mega yacht.

The Pope accepted and during lunch, a puff of wind blew the Pontiff's hat off, right into the water.

It floated off about 50 feet, then the wind died down and it just floated in place.

The crew and the secret service were scrambling to launch a boat to go get it, when Trump waved them off, saying, "Never mind, boys, I'll get it."

The Donald climbed over the side of the yacht, walked on the water to the hat, picked it up, walked back on the water, climbed into the yacht, and handed the Pope his hat.

The crew was speechless. The security team and the Pope's entourage were speechless.

No one knew what to say, not even the Pope.

But that afternoon, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN reported:

"TRUMP CAN'T SWIM!"
Related: #TrumpCantSwim: How (Hilariously Fake) Rumors Spread.

Thought For Today (With Addendum)

Those who are not American citizens do not have a right to come to the United States.

Do those individuals with valid visas or valid green cards have a right to come here?

Related reading: Why the ROBARTS HALT was wrong on Trump's travel restrictions, and why the Senate MUST MOVE IMMEDIATELY on Gorsuch.

Addendum: That Budweiser Super Bowl Ad Everyone Is Talking About? Turns Out It’s All a LIE.

Please discuss the above topics.

Recommended Reading (With Addedum Related To The Firing Of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates)

See Obama’s administration made the “Muslim ban” possible and the media won’t tell you at Terra Incognita (hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance):

I was outraged by the ban on refugees from war-torn countries in the Middle East. I’ve covered refugees fleeing war in Iraq and Syria over the last two years, meeting families on the road in Greece, Serbia and Macedonia, speaking to poor people in Turkey and Jordan and discussing the hopes and fears of people displaced in Iraq. If you want to ban “terrorists,” these are the last people to hit with a refugee ban. Instead the government should be using the best intelligence possible to find people being radicalized, some of whom have lived in the US their whole lives or who come from countries not affected by the ban, such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

So I was outraged, and then I read the executive order....

[...]

But, wait a sec. According to the reports “The order bars all people hailing from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.” Critics had attacked Trump for selecting these seven countries and not selecting other states “linked to his sprawling business empire.” Bloomberg and Forbes bought into this.

But, wait a sec. I read the order and Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen are not mentioned in it.

Go back and read it again. Do a “ctrl-f” to find “Iraq”. Where is “Iraq” in the order. It’s not there. Only Syria is there. So where are the seven nations? Where is the “Muslim ban”? It turns out this was a form of fake news, or alternative facts. Trump didn’t select seven “Muslim-majority” countries. US President Barack Obama’s administration selected these seven Muslim-majority countries.

The Department of Homeland Security targeted these seven countries over the last years as countries of concern....

[...]

So for more than a year it has been US policy to discriminate against, target and even begin to ban people from the seven countries that Trump is accused of banning immigrants and visitors from....

[...]

...[W]hy didn’t CNN note that the seven countries were not named and that in fact they are only on the list because of Obama’s policy?...

Read it all HERE, including the numerous embedded links.

Read the text of Trump's executive order for yourself. Many news sites having published the EO, including the UK's Independent. See THIS.

Additional reading: Most claims about Trump’s visa Executive Order are false or misleading.

We cannot trust the mainstream media. They are the Enemedia and agenda driven.

ADDENDUM

From "Quick Thoughts On Sally Yates’ Unpersuasive Statement" by Jack Goldsmith of Lawfare:

...[I]n the context of deciding whether to defend a presidential EO, the question for Yates is reasonable legality, not what is just and right. If Yates thought the EO, independent of its legality, had crossed a red line of justice and rightness—whatever those terms mean—she should have counseled the President on that point and resigned if he disagreed....

Read the entire essay HERE.

Speaking Of Fake News...

Gutfeld is right!  Our media often take fiction as fact because fiction fits their assumptions (cognitive bias):



This morning's big story on the news: Trump Said to Be Told of Unverified Russian Intelligence. Apparently, the 35-page document, which is unverified, has been floating around for months, and Trump Organization official Executive Vice President Michael Cohen has never been to Prague.

[hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance for the video in this blog post]