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MEDIA

The Media’s Reliance on Skeevy Leaks and Crazy Conclusions By Russ McSwain

Our institutions are failing us. The skies are filled with bitter accusations thrown at our president. This is the outcome we should expect when we allow a man to rise to governmental heights beyond his experience and competence. The problems are aggravated when that man shows no respect for the normal boundaries and limits on his power; When that man is unable to simply do his job, but launches public outbursts that undercut the people with whom he works, he is unfit. If you’ve been following the ongoing soap opera in Washington, you know the man I’m describing is James Comey.
Comey’s antics are compounded by the utter disregard for the truth displayed by our national media. One need not be a fan of President Trump to appreciate how outrageous the media attacks on him are.

Here are three sets of attacks based on leaks that have turned out to be false, frivolous or both. The set involving Comey has many parts so we’ll save it for last.

1. The Washington Post reported that newly appointed Assistant Attorney General Rosenstein threatened to resign. The implication being he’d encountered inappropriate roadblocks erected by the Trump White House. Rosenstein denied this charge while testifying under oath before Congress. Denials don’t get more bulletproof. When confronted by Rosenstein’s denial, Philip Rucker, White House bureau chief for the Post, stood by his reporter and her source. “We don’t know how serious the threat was. We don’t know if it reached, you know, the level of the President or the Attorney General. But we do know that he threatened to resign…”

The only people above Rosenstein in the chain of command are, you know, the president and the attorney general. Few among us have not come into a new work situation and encounter something that causes us to grumble and gripe to our peers and staff. Most people familiar with English understand that is not a threat. Resignation can be a threat only when it is delivered to superiors. The bureau chief of a major newspaper gives us absolute assurance of the one thing he thinks he knows, and it turns out to be a trivial insignificant event. When the media people stretch an event into something it is not, it makes it very difficult to believe them and their anonymous sources.

2. The Washington Post reported that in a White House meeting President Trump revealed classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador. That can be a bad thing. It can also be perfectly benign. In this case it was benign The information was the city from which a foreign intellenge agency acquired information about ISIS current plans to blow up airplanes. If that information was made public it is possible that ISIS could identify the spy who provided it. Trump wasn’t speaking publicly. He was talking with the Russians, who are as plagued by ISIS terrorists as we are. They have already lost a commercial airliner full of tourists to ISIS. The chance that the Russians would publicize this information or share it with ISIS is zero.

But the word got out anyway. Someone leaked it, and the Washington Post published it. The Russians wouldn’t tell ISIS but the Post did. To add insult to real injury, the Post then blamed Trump. One could not make that up.

Fake News’ War on Trump – on The Glazov Gang. Daniel Greenfield unveils the Left’s psychotic rage and fantasy world.

This new special edition of The Glazov Gang featured Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center and editor ofThe Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed Fake News’ War on Trump, unveiling the Left’s psychotic rage and fantasy world.http://jamieglazov.com/2017/05/23/fake-news-war-on-trump-on-the-glazov-gang/

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch the special episode of The Glazov Gang that featured Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Peterson shared his views on Non-Traditional Gender Pronouns, unveiling the dire consequences of the control of language now reaching the legislative level in Canada:

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The British broadcaster brave enough to discuss Islamic violence Douglas Murray

Last night Channel 4 broadcast a deep and seriously important programme. ‘Isis: The Origins of Violence’ was written and presented by the historian Tom Holland and can be viewed (by British viewers) here.

Five years ago, to coincide with his book ‘In The Shadow of the Sword’ about the early years of Islam, Holland presented a documentary for Channel 4 titled ‘Islam: The Untold Story’. That was something of a landmark in UK television. For while there had previously been some heated and angry studio discussions about Islam and plenty of fawningly hagiographic programmes about the religion’s founder presented by his apologists, here was a grown-up and scholarly treatment which looked at the issue as though there weren’t blasphemy police around every corner.

Sadly, part of the reception of that programme, and numerous events in the years since have kept such displays of scholarly truthfulness nearly as much of a rarity since as they were before. Which is one reason why Tom Holland deserves even more praise for returning to the subject of his earlier documentary.
And not just returning to it, but – in ‘Isis: The Origins of Violence’ – returning to the hardest part of that subject. In a nutshell he posed the question ‘Why do Isis, and groups like Isis, do what they do?’ And he answers this with the only honest answer anybody interested in truth could possibly come back with – which is that although they may be inspired by many things, their most important inspiration is a version of Islam whose roots can be traced to the origins of the religion, its foundational texts and the behaviour of Mohammed.

Holland did not spare the viewer. Travelling from the scene of the devastating Isis attacks in Paris, to Iraqi towns decimated by the group, via Istanbul and an interview with a Salafi leader in Jordan, Holland showed the depth as well as complexity of the question and answer. The most moving sequence of all came in the Iraqi town of Sinjar which was levelled by Isis and whose mainly Yezidi population either fled, were sold as sex slaves or (as in the case of the town’s old women who could not be sold) massacred. In a profoundly moving sequence, picking his way up a demolished street, on the lookout for explosives amid the rubble, Holland speaks to camera. What he said needs thinking about:

‘There are things in the past that are like unexploded bombs that just lie in wait in the rubble, and then something happens to trigger them. And there are clearly verses in the Koran and stories that are told about Mohammed that are very like mines waiting to go off – Improvised Explosive Devices. And they can lie there maybe for centuries and then something happens to trigger them and you get this.’

The documentary will doubtless have many detractors from the many people – non-Muslim as well as Muslim – who want to cover over those IEDs. Holland’s documentary profoundly and carefully reveals why this is such a terrible mistake, and why from London and Paris to Istanbul and Mosul, the effects of failing to be honest in our assessment of the past has such serious repercussions for our present and future.

A Victory Over Fake News Alex Jones apologizes to Chobani and its employees for his slurs.

Defamation laws are often abused, but this week came a rare victory for the First Amendment and legal recourse against slander. On Wednesday Alex Jones, a right-wing gadfly who occupies one of the darker corners of the internet, settled a lawsuit filed by Chobani yogurt over odious falsehoods on Mr. Jones’s website Infowars.

“During the week of April 10, 2017,” Mr. Jones said in a video on his website, “certain statements were made on the Infowars Twitter feed and YouTube channel regarding Chobani, LLC that I now understand to be wrong. The tweets and video have now been retracted and will not be reposted. On behalf of Infowars, I regret that we mischaracterized Chobani, its employees and the people of Twin Falls, Idaho the way we did.”

As humiliating apologies go, this is one for the ages. The contrition is warranted: An April Infowars tweet and video carried the title “Idaho Yogurt Maker Caught Importing Migrant Rapists.” Chobani’s founder is a Turkish immigrant who has hired hundreds of refugees to work in his plants. Mr. Jones’s outfit suggested that Chobani workers in Idaho were connected to a gruesome sexual assault perpetrated by minors. For added class, Infowars said that maybe refugees had spread tuberculosis.

The allegations are false, though the video spread across the internet thanks to thousands of tweets and shares on social media. Drudge published the headline “REPORT: Syrian ‘Refugees’ Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho.” Chobani sued Mr. Jones for what the suit described as a “classic” case of defamation, which includes acting with malice.

Mr. Jones first insisted he would fight the Chobani suit, but his lawyers must have helped him realize that he was barreling toward an expensive defeat. Chobani has declined to disclose settlement details, but perhaps this encounter will dissuade Mr. Jones and his allies from peddling untruths this outrageous. Congratulations to Chobani for fighting back against a real example of fake news.

Harvard Study Reveals Huge Extent of Anti-Trump Media Bias

A major new study out of Harvard University has revealed the true extent of the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump.

Academics at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage from Trump’s first 100 days in office across 10 major TV and print outlets.

They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations:

The academics based their study on seven US outlets and three European ones.

In America they analyzed CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

They also took into account the BBC, the UK’s Financial Times and the German public broadcaster ARD.

Every outlet was negative more often than positive.

Only Fox News, which features some of Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters and is often given special access to the President, even came close to positivity.

Fox was ranked 52% negative and 48% positive.

The study also divided news items across topics. On immigration, healthcare, and Russia, more than 85% of reports were negative.

On the economy, the proportion was more balanced – 54% negative to 46% positive:

The study highlighted one exception: Trump got overwhelmingly positive coverage for launching a cruise missile attack on Syria.

Around 80% of all reports were positive about that.

The picture was very different for other recent administrations. The study found that President Obama’s first 100 days got a good write-up overall – with 59% of reports positive.

Bill Clinton and George W Bush got overall negative coverage, it found, but to a much lesser extent than Trump. Clinton’s first 100 days got 40% positivity, while Bush’s got 43%:

Trump has repeatedly claimed that his treatment by the media is unprecedented in its hostility.

This study suggests that, at least when it comes to recent history, he’s right.

With Fox News’s Ratings in Free Fall, the Future Looks Bleak By Peter Barry Chowka

The sudden death of Roger Ailes (R.I.P.) yesterday is a grim omen for the network he envisioned and built. In the wake of the recent upheavals at Fox News, the conservative cable television network’s ratings are experiencing a precipitous decline from cable news leadership for the first time in the history of the channel. As the rest of the mainstream media continue their efforts to undermine and “resist” the Trump Administration, this development bodes ill for the future — not only of the unique kind of fair and balanced if right of center reporting pioneered by the Fox News Channel (FNC), but of the prospects for conservatives continuing to have a major media platform, maintain power, and advance their agenda in the months and years ahead.

The Fox News Channel launched on October 6, 1996. MSNBC, originally a collaboration between NBC News and Microsoft, had started three months earlier. Prior to mid-1996, CNN, the other competitor, was the exclusive cable news outlet in the United States, synonymous with “cable news.” It enjoyed a long monopoly in the field during which it was able to build its brand at home and abroad.

Lacking the backing of a huge well oiled news organzation like NBC or the tailwind legacy of a sixteen year international presence like CNN, FNC initially had a bit of a shaky start. But under the guidance of media and political genius Roger Ailes (the FNC CEO and Chairman), the financial support of international media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and with a clear agenda (“fair and balanced” reporting with a consistent respect for conservative viewpoints), after gaining wide cable and satellite distribution, Fox pulled ahead of its two rivals. By 2002, FNC had done the unthinkable, establishing itself as the #1 cable news channel in the United States. Notwithstanding its being constantly derided by the rest of the mainstream media, Fox News’s prime time ratings dominance went largely unchallenged for the next fourteen years.

The Fox News Channel’s innovative and successful approach to presenting the news in the new millennium helped to change the TV news landscape from one dominated by breaking hard news read by mostly interchangeable news readers to a model that relied on opinionated marquee personalities and colorful left/right debate. Prime time personalities Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, for example, both of whom debuted on FNC the night that it started, continued to host programs in prime time, seemingly in perpetuity. CNN’s “breaking news is king” strategy, and its aging prime time host Larry King, were caught off guard.

For its part, the ill-conceived MSNBC floundered during its first decade. The channel’s original plan for some kind of interactive cable TV-online collaboration with Microsoft (one of MSNBC’s early prime time shows was the laughable nightly tech program The Site with Soledad O’Brien) was soon scuttled, and it experimented with both left and right wing hosts and anchors (Phil Donahue, Keith Olbermann, Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan, and even Michael Savage for a short time) before settling on a hard left approach that corresponded with the rise of Barack Obama in 2008.

The seventeen month campaign trek of Donald Trump from his announcement on June 16, 2015 to his election victory appeared to institutionalize Fox’s hegemony. FNC, it was widely assumed, now had its man in the White House and it had helped to put him there. Ironically, what happened during the first Republican candidates’ debate on August 6, 2015, carried exclusively on FNC, presaged the channel’s eventual decline.

The debate was co-hosted by Fox News’s newest star, prime time anchor and special events coverage co-anchor Megyn Kelly. Her first question, directed to Trump, was provocative and incendiary:

Kelly: “Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides, in particular, when it comes to women. You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’”

Trump: “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

Kelly: “No, it wasn’t. Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who was likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?”

In a flash, Fox News’s popular celebrity anchor had thrown down a gauntlet, unfairly in the opinion of many, right in the face of a candidate who was quickly gaining attention and momentum with conservatives – the core of the FNC audience – and in the very first Republican debate of the 2016 election season seen by a record 24 million viewers!

The ensuing undercurrent of bad feeling between Trump and Kelly – often breaking out into the open on social media – dragged on for months. It soured many viewers on Kelly and diminished her appeal as the attractive and smart face of Fox News.

Kelly supposedly made up with Trump for a much-hyped, hour long prime time Fox broadcast network special. The forced détente, however, seemed fake. Later in 2016, Kelly wrote negatively about Trump in her memoir Settle for More, for which she was paid around $11 million according to deadline.com. In interviews to promote the book, Kelly said that she felt such fear during 2016 that she and her husband hired or were provided with armed bodyguards to protect her and her family from perceived dangers arising from her to-do with Trump.

The Women of Fox News

“The on-air dynamic of an older, not necessarily attractive, male authority figure and his lovely female guest (look, she’s beautiful and smart too!) is such a trademark of Fox News” opined LA Times television critic Lorraine Ali in an April 6, 2017 Times feature story “Scandal, sexism and the role of women at Fox News.”

Indeed, anyone with eyes and sensibility had to take note that very early on the Fox News channel was appealing to male viewers with a lineup of very attractive young women correspondents, anchors, and guests who, as Ali noted, were “smart too!”

As Chelsea Schilling writes at WND (May 2, 2017), “It’s no secret that Fox News has some of the most attractive female hosts in the business, and many fans have become accustomed to seeing beautiful, leggy women deliver the daily news. In fact, Google searches of almost every woman on Fox News reveal scores of images of the lady-hosts boldly baring their long legs.” Writing at Breitbart on April 27, 2017, Daniel Flynn refers to Fox News as a “hot-women-only cable news culture.”

The Anonymous Sources of Washington Post and CNN Fake News How fake news gets made. Daniel Greenfield

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.

Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a story based on “the private accounts of more than 30 officials at the White House.” The fake news story falsely claimed that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein threatened to resign.

Rod had a simple answer when asked about that piece of fake news. “No.”

So much for 30 anonymous sources and for the Washington Post’s credibility. But the media keeps shoveling out pieces based on anonymous sources and confirmed by anonymous sources while ignoring the disavowals by those public officials who are willing to go on the record.

The Comey memo story is based on, according to the New York Times, “two people who read the memo.” And then “one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.”

And his dog.

The supposed memo contradicts Comey’s own testimony to Congress under oath.

The Times hasn’t seen the memo. No one has seen the memo except the anonymous sources that may or may not exist. The media’s fake news infrastructure relies heavily on anonymous sources. And anonymous sources are the media’s way of saying, “Just trust us.”

The question is why would anyone trust the media?

Comey fake news is popular on the left because it is convinced that he is the key to reversing their election defeat. Recently CNN got its fake news fingers burned with a story claiming that the former FBI Director had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation before he was fired.

Where did CNN get its story from? Anonymous sources. Or, as the story put it, “two sources familiar with the discussion.”

Sources “familiar with the discussion” is up there with “a former senior U.S. official who is close to current administration officials.” And their neighbor’s dog who barks exclusively to CNN.

Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe both shot down CNN’s fake news. CNN’s headline was, “New Acting FBI Director Contradicts White House on Comey.” Its fake news was referenced only as, “Amid reports that Comey had asked for more resources for the Russia investigation, McCabe testified that he believed the bureau had adequate resources to complete the job.”

Trump Throws Out the Media’s Rule-Book The media savants still haven’t figured out that their rule-book is obsolete. May 17, 2017 Bruce Thornton

President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey was like a speedball for the media addicted to Trump-hatred. The Dems came out with the usual hallucinatory hyperbole––“Watergate,” “Saturday night massacre,” “obstruction of justice,” “Constitutional crisis,” “coup,” “impeachable offense,” “treason,” “terrifying attack,” “despot,” and various other verbal convulsions. The NeverTrumpers joined the shooting-gallery, high on their seething resentment of the man who kicked to the curb these self-appointed arbitri elegantiae of conservative political discourse.

Nearly two years since Trump announced his candidacy, the media savants still haven’t figured out that the rule-book they wrote to suit themselves is obsolete.

Once television and mass advertising came to dominate the coverage of politicians, the media determined the protocols and practices that governed their interactions with pols. Because they manufactured and monopolized the images and analyses that the voters used to create their politics, the opinion writers and television anchors wielded enormous power. And the politicians knew it. So both political parties accepted the media’s rituals and made obeisance to the the media’s power.

A prime example of this baleful dynamic came in 1968, in the early days of the North Vietnamese’s failed Tet Offensive. In his evening news show, CBS’s Walter Cronkite pronounced, “But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out [of Vietnam] then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.” After hearing the supposed communicator of facts make a geopolitical political judgment based not on facts but on erroneous perceptions, President Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” In the end, nearly 60 thousand Americans and over a million South Vietnamese died for nothing.

The Watergate scandal, and the celebrity and wealth showered on reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, illustrated again that the media did not just report events, but interpreted them in a way that could bring down a president over electoral hijinks common in our history. Their egos inflated with self-importance, during the following decades the media’s biases, political prejudices, naked activism, and rank careerism dominated the news. It shaped the media’s coverage of political enemies like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as the policies like supply-side economics that offended the received wisdom of the left. The apex of media hubris was the groveling, worshipful coverage of Barack Obama, and the continuing apologia and encomia for his disastrous presidency.

Fake News, Real Consequences Those who lie or exaggerate to weaken Trump may harm national security in the process. By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Donald Trump’s presidency feels like it is in crisis. Reading the Washington Post is almost comical now. At least once a week we are treated to at least 18 — now 24, now 31! — sources within the White House reporting that Donald Trump had another very Trumpish day. He’s berating advisers. He’s cursing Barack Obama and the Deep State. He’s making decisions based on fake news. He’s bungling even routine jobs, such as an introductory phone call with the Australian prime minister. Everyone who works for him hates him. The press has the whiff of blood in their nares. They might just be able to take this guy down.

But it’s not Trump’s attempts at self-enrichment, the rank amateurism of his staff, or even his mismanaged relationships with his own party that are dragging him down. From the media’s perspective, it’s the Russia stuff that’s working. It flummoxes Trump, unmans him, and people love to share the latest conspiracy.

Granted, Donald Trump hasn’t helped himself. Russia and Trump seem to collect the same shady and deluded co-conspirators, and real second-raters at that. His former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and his national-security adviser, General Michael Flynn, were pushed out over their dealings with Russian politicos. Trump’s habit of talking about foreign leaders in overly familiar ways — he has “great chemistry” with some — leads him to say too many admiring things about Vladimir Putin. And Trump Tower was notorious for leasing apartments to shady Russian characters associated with organized crime. Every time Trump tries to cauterize the wound, for example by firing the FBI director for not clearing his name, he makes things worse.

But now almost all of the justifiable anxiety about Trump’s character and behavior is transmuted into the Russian story. And frankly, we should be worried about how that plays out. For all the talk about how Russia is an unpleasant Eurasian gas station with a stunted economy, it’s still a nuclear power that feels itself humiliated. Our last two presidents both tried to improve relations with Moscow. And there are geopolitical situations where a president of the United States, Trump or someone else, would desperately need Russian help and cooperation. If the “get Trump” hysteria impedes that, it could do more harm than good.

And it is a matter of hysteria right now. Amateur conspiracy theories proliferate across Twitter and in the media. A viral story at the Washington Post alleged Russia had been involved in a sophisticated campaign to spread fake news. The evidence amounted to little more than what the Kremlin-funded RT network had tweeted over a few months. Another viral story alleged a secret back-door computer communication between the Trump campaign and its Russian masters; it was most likely a server sending spam and hotel promotions. There was the entertaining and prurient “dossier” on Trump, a document in which it seems intelligence agents shared rumors and fantasies about Donald Trump’s bizarre private forms of revenge on Barack Obama.

Keith Olbermann Pleads with Spy Agencies Around the World to Help Him Take Down Trump “I appeal to the intelligence agencies and the governments of what is left of the free world…” By Debra Heine

Good God, but Bathtub Boy* is bonkers.

On Twitter, GQ’s Keith Olbermann posted his “passionate appeal” to foreign spies to help him overthrow our duly elected president.

“I appeal to the intelligence agencies and the governments of what is left of the free world,” Olby began dramatically.

To them as entities, entireties as bureaucracies making official decisions, and to the individuals who make decisions of conscience. To GCHQ and MI6 in the UK, to the BND in Germany, the DGSE in France, the ASIS in Australia, and even of the GRU in Russia, where they must already be profoundly aware that they have not merely helped put an amoral cynic in power here, but an uncontrollable one, whose madness is genuine and whose usefulness—even to them—is at an end.

To all of them, and to the world’s journalists, I make this plea: We the citizens of the United States of America are the victims of a coup. We need your leaks, your information, your intelligence, your recordings, your videos, your conscience. The civilian government and the military of the United States are no longer in the hands of the people, nor in the control of any responsible individuals on whom you can rely….

It goes on and on, but you get the picture. He’s nuts.