RUTHFULLY YOURS

I might say that the New York Times ought to be ashamed, but the paper clearly doesn’t even understand the concept. After launching a defense of Jeremy Corbyn by attacking the UK’s Chief Rabbi who called the radical leftist out for anti-Semitism, the Times, which covered up the Holocaust while it was going on to provide cover for FDR’s inaction, accuses Trump of having adopted ‘fake news’ from Hitler.

Literally. No shame.

As the historian Timothy Snyder has written in The Times, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came up with the slogan “Lügenpresse” — translated as “lying press” — in order to discredit independent journalism. Now the tactic has been laundered through an American president, Donald Trump, who adopted the term “fake news” as a candidate and has used it hundreds of times in office.

Accusing the press of lying did not originate with Hitler. Trump was not studying Nazi slogans. (Though there are alt-righters who use “lugenpresse” because they’re Nazi fans.) Plenty of American politicians have accused the media of being deceptive and dishonest.

David Brock, the Clinton lapdog, made a specialty of it. He even accused the New York Times of being right-wing.

The New York Times knows it’s spouting obscene nonsense. And it doesn’t care.

This is followed by the same paper which routinely covers up Muslim anti-Semitism, comparing China’s anti-radicalization programs to the Holocaust and the mass murder of millions of Jews.

“The press needs to be scrutinized. Its mistakes should be called out, its biases analyzed and exposed. But Mr. Trump has licensed a far more dangerous approach. The rise of the epithet “fake news” as a weapon is occurring at an already perilous moment for the supply of information about the world as it truly is.”

As the New York Times surely knows, the epithet “fake news” was deployed by the media against Trump to accuse him of having illegitimately won the election.

Here are a few typical headlines.

“Opinion | Facebook and the Digital Virus Called Fake News – NY Times”

Inside a Fake News Sausage Factory: ‘This Is All About Income’ – NY Times

How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study – NY Times

and…

10 Times Trump Spread Fake News – NY Times

It’s absolutely terrible that Trump borrowed the media’s own epithet and turned it against the media. And in the same editorial that the Times uses to complain about the term ‘fake news’, it turns around and urges politicians to convince social media to censor conservatives.

It’s the same fake news campaign without using the term fake news.

Rather than making matters worse, politicians should be pursuing those answers, for example by pressing leading internet companies to accept responsibility for the roles they have already assumed as the world’s leading information publishers.

Literally, no shame.

Social media companies aren’t publishers, they’re platforms that are failing to be open despite their monopolistic status. The media wants them to be publish and to publish and prioritize only media content.

The press has to do its part as well, by committing itself to a forthright accounting of any mistakes, an unending struggle against bias in news and an uncompromising pursuit of truth.

The above is an example of the media’s uncompromising pursuit of truth.