RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/wow_ben_domenech_humiliates_chris_wallace_on_air_for_his_biden_speech_puffery.html

I confess that like most Americans, I had no interest in watching Joe Biden’s non–State of the Union address to a mostly empty House chamber hosting a joint session of Congress.  That’s why I missed a golden moment during the commentary afterward on Fox News Channel, one that surely stands as what the progressives like to call a “Profile in Courage.”

You may have noticed that in recent weeks, FNC has been trying out various personalities from its stable of commentators as hosts of Fox News Primetime that airs in the 7 P.M. Eastern timeslot, the lead-in to Tucker Carlson’s program, its (and cable news’s) ratings leader.  I presume that the personality who does what the executives deem the best job, or maybe gets the highest ratings, or the highest Q Score, will be rewarded with hosting duties on a regular basis.  This would be a Very Big Deal for the person snagging the honor.  Last week, the host of the program was Ben Domenech, co-founder of The Federalist.

With a potential plum like that a possibility, Domenech deserves a lot of credit for responding to Chris Wallace’s praise for Biden’s speech the way he did.  I don’t know why FNC regards Wallace so highly, but he does host Fox News Sunday and virtually always serves as a commentator after major political events.  Somebody up there (on the executive floors of FNC) likes him.

Watch the 2-minute video embedded below while you can.  It is quite obviously an unauthorized recording of the segment, shot by a camera recording a TV screen, and therefore subject to being pulled down for copyright reasons.

I found the clip via Ace, who found it at a site that is new to me: Love Breeds Accountability, which called it a “Master Class In Speaking Truth To Power As Ben Domenech Exposes Chris Wallace’s Journalism Grift.”

ttps://amgreatness.com/2021/04/27/burying-the-lede-to-help-your-friends/

The duplicity and spin of American media continue apace. Last week, it was NBC “Nightly News’” decision to delete essential information about a deadly police shooting. NBC’s flagship news program edited a 911 call to remove the victims’ cry for help. The caller and people in the background said plainly attackers were trying to stab them. Not that you would know that if your news came from NBC. It deleted any mention of “stabbing” from the call.

But, wait, as the infomercials say, there’s more. NBC News then edited police bodycam footage to remove the picture of the knife, which was about to strike the victim. Those edits were a deliberate, malicious distortion. Gone was the lethal threat that police were rushing to stop.

NBC’s distortion may have appeased the anti-police mob and its complaisant, politically correct viewers, but the report was neither accurate nor honest. Getting it right should be the first duty of any news organization. NBC failed in that basic responsibility.

This week’s installment of dreadful reporting is more subtle. It comes from the New York Times, and it concerns a leaked tape recording of Iranian leaders. As the Times sees it, the real news in that recording is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps actually control policymaking. That is important, but it is a dog-bites-man story.

The IRGC’s dominant role has been known for years. Still, that’s the Times’ headline: “Iran’s Foreign Minister, in Leaked Tape, Says Revolutionary Guard Set Policies.” That’s also the focus of their long news report. The Times itself acknowledges the obvious. According to the “newspaper of record,” the tape “confirms what many have long suspected: [the foreign minister’s] role as the representative of the Islamic Republic on the world stage is severely constricted.”

The Times’ emphasis would be fine if that were all the news in the leaked tape. It’s not. The tape contains something much more important and much more damaging, which the Times chose to bury in the 22nd paragraph. It’s hard to bury it any deeper without striking oil.

The buried news is that former Secretary of State John Kerry divulged highly classified information about a U.S. ally to its deadliest enemy. Kerry, meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, “informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said.” That’s the Times’ description.

https://townhall.com/columnists/bradslager/2021/04/27/as-the-press-butchers-the-columbus-shooting-npr-issues-outlandish-disclaimer-that-summarizes-contemporary-journalism-n2588559

The shooting by police of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus Ohio as she was engaged in the act of attempted murder has brought out all of the worst in our media complex. False claims, narrative-pushing reports, misinformation, and emotional activism have all been prevalent. The miscarriage of journalistic ethics has been stark then, as it appeared the press had reached its nadir last week, in stepped National Public Radio to dig themselves in even deeper.

Bodycam footage shows Ma’Khia inches from sending a long-bladed knife into a potential victim just as she was shot, after refusing police orders. The mainstream media has been all over the map in their coverage of the shooting, with very few ever accurate. The Daily Beast did little in the way of investigating, relying solely on a family member of Bryant for details. MSNBC guest Ben Crump claimed that Bryant was unarmed when she was shot. Huffington Post gave a video synopsis that seems to indicate a knife mystically materializing near the fallen Bryant. 

Worse yet was The Washington Post, with its coverage of the event — posted after the police video had been released the night prior. Police said at a late news conference on Tuesday that the girl had threatened two others with a knife before the shooting. Uh, no WaPo  — police showed that she threatened the others. The knife is clear, in her hand, as she is lunging at another girl. Despite these obvious visuals the gaslighting continued, as the outlet also told the magical knife tale. Playing segments of body camera video that showed the victim lunging toward someone in a driveway before an officer fired four shots. A knife is visible in the driveway next to the girl as police perform CPR on her.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/cnns-new-reporter-natasha-bertrand?token=e

In the U.S. corporate media, the surest way to advance is to loyally spread lies and deceit from the U.S. security state. Bertrand is just the latest example.

The most important axiom for understanding how the U.S. corporate media functions is that there is never accountability for those who serve as propagandists for the U.S. security state. The opposite is true: the more aggressively and recklessly you spread CIA narratives or pro-war manipulation, the more rewarded you will be in that world.

The classic case is Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote one of the most deceitful and destructive articles of his generation: a lengthy New Yorker article in May, 2002 — right as the propagandistic groundwork for the invasion of Iraq was being laid — that claimed Saddam Hussein had formed an alliance with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In February, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, NPR host Robert Siegel devoted a long segment to this claim. When he asked Goldberg “a man named Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” Goldberg replied: “He is one of several men who might personify a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.”

Needless to say, nothing could generate hatred for someone among the American population — just nine months away from the 9/11 attack — more than associating them with bin Laden. Five months after Goldberg’s New Yorker article, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of military force to impose regime change on Iraq; ten months later, the U.S. invaded Iraq; and by September, 2003, close to 70% of Americans believed the lie that Saddam had personally participated in the 9/11 attack.

https://spectator.us/topic/anti-police-media-lebron-james-mob-bryant/

NBC’s flagship news program completely garbled one of the week’s top stories: a deadly fight among teenage girls in Columbus, Ohio, which ended with a policeman shooting and killing a knife-wielding attacker, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant. The network’s coverage was an abomination.

NBC omitted vital information and distorted what actually happened. The Biden White House immediately piled on, insisting that the Columbus shooting was the product of racism. They did so at an incredibly sensitive moment — minutes after a Minneapolis jury convicted policeman Derek Chauvin of murdering George Floyd.

Since ‘NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt’  and other media programs did not report the Columbus story fairly or accurately, let’s do so here.

What happened on the ground

The fatal incident began with a desperate phone call from the girls being attacked. The victims specifically gave 911 their address and mentioned that the attackers are ‘trying to fight us, trying to stab us,’ crying out for the police to come immediately. NBC misreported that. They played the tape but clipped the tiny part about ‘trying to stab us.’

The police responded immediately and arrived while the attack was in progress, according to video footage from the two officers’s body cameras. Police ordered everyone to drop to the ground. They didn’t. The frenzied fight among the young women continued. Ma’Khia Bryant was about to stab a victim, it seemed; her knife was raised above the victim’s head, and she had already refused the order to stop and drop to the ground. To prevent the stabbing in progress, one policeman made a split-second decision to shoot. He appears to have fired four times at Ms. Bryant. She fell, dropping the knife. Police tried to resuscitate her, but she died there. Columbus police have identified the officer as Nicholas Reardon. He has been taken off street duty while a full investigation is conducted, as is normal practice.

How it was reported and tweeted

How did NBC report the incident? First, NBC Nightly News edited the 911 call to omit the phrase that the attacker was ‘trying to stab us.’ Second, when they showed the police video, they omitted the shot of the knife in the attacker’s hand. Taken together, those two omissions completely erased the lethal threat to the victim, which had been mentioned in the emergency call and was apparent on the video.

These omissions are not sloppy editing by a summer intern. They seem to be a deliberate misrepresentation of the day’s lead story. Worse, this malicious distortion comes amid a dangerous national controversy over racism and excessive use of police force.

Has NBC apologized or corrected their story? Of course not.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/21/some-real-truths-about-fake-news/

The folks who came up with the term “fake news” – no one has ever claimed credit for it – probably rue the day they did. Originally the term was going to be used to discredit anything that appeared in an outlet that wasn’t part of the media elite which contradicted the dominant liberal narrative or painted progressives and their policies in an unfavorable light.

Oh, for the schemes of mice and men, as Robert Burns put it.

Before those behind this grand experiment in thought control could get all the fact-checkers, news outlets, and academics ready to make it work, Donald Trump appeared on the scene and expropriated the term. In the blink of an eye, what was supposed to be an ad hominem attack on Fox News and other conservative outlets came to be synonymous with liberal media distortions of the day’s news. 

Now, say published reports, it appears “fake news” is a real thing and, just as the liberals alleged, there are a couple of Murdochs behind it all. Only it’s not Rupert. It’s his younger son from his first marriage James who, along with his wife Kathryn reportedly made significant contributions to a political action committee linked to a genuinely fake news operation allied with the Democrats.

The younger Murdoch, who at one time occupied senior management positions in companies owned by his father as well as a member of the News Corp. board of directors, severed his ties with the family business several years ago, allegedly over concerns of information bias. How odd it is then that he and his wife are now linked to a $500,000 contribution to Pacronym, a super PAC that, according to its website is “affiliated with ACRONYM” – a group that Federal Elections Commission records indicate funded a pseudo-news outlet called “Courier Newsroom,” which circulated Democratic Party and anti-Trump propaganda disguised as legitimate reporting.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer?token=

It was crucial for liberal sectors of the media to invent and disseminate a harrowing lie about how Officer Brian Sicknick died. That is because he is the only one they could claim was killed by pro-Trump protesters at the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

So The New York Times on January 8 published an emotionally gut-wrenching but complete fiction that never had any evidence — that Officer Sicknick’s skull was savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by a pro-Trump mob until he died — and, just like the now-discredited Russian bounty story also unveiled by that same paper, cable outlets and other media platforms repeated this lie over and over in the most emotionally manipulative way possible. Just watch a part of what they did and how:

As I detailed over and over when examining this story, there were so many reasons to doubt this storyline from the start. Nobody on the record claimed it happened. The autopsy found no blunt trauma to the head. Sicknick’s own family kept urging the press to stop spreading this story because he called them the night of January 6 and told them he was fine — obviously inconsistent with the media’s claim that he died by having his skull bashed in — and his own mother kept saying that she believed he died of a stroke.

But the gruesome story of Sicknick’s “murder” was too valuable to allow any questioning. It was weaponized over and over to depict the pro-Trump mob not as just violent but barbaric and murderous, because if Sicknick weren’t murdered by them, then nobody was (without Sicknick, the only ones killed were four pro-Trump supporters: two who died of a heart attack, one from an amphetamine overdose, and the other, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot point blank in the neck by Capitol Police despite being unarmed). So crucial was this fairy tale about Sicknick that it made its way into the official record of President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, and they had Joe Biden himself recite from the script, even as clear facts mounted proving it was untrue.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/19/corrupt-media-who-accused-trump-of-inciting

Legacy outlets covered Trump’s speech with the pre-determined premise of incitement. They have either ignored or dismissed Water’s call to ‘get more confrontational.’

On Saturday, California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters went to Minnesota and demanded militant demonstrators “get more confrontational” this week in the absence of a guilty verdict in the George Floyd murder trial of former Minneapolis Police Office Derek Chauvin.

“We are looking for a guilty verdict,” Waters said. Anything less, would be an insult to warrant insurrection. “Not manslaughter. No no no, this is guilty. For murder.”

If the jury, which has not been sequestered despite the ongoing unrest in the Twin Cities, refuses to hand down the demanded verdict, Waters said, it’s up to progressive revolutionaries, who, just this month held a police station under siege and smashed windows to loot businesses to “get more confrontational.”

“We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,” Waters said.

Hours later, two Minnesota National Guard members were injured in a drive-by shooting. The largest corporate outlets drew no connection between Waters’ rhetoric and the ensuing violence.

Waters’ weekend incitement, where she traveled to an anti-police protest after requesting police protection, provoked rebuke by congressional Republicans. House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seek retribution for the dangerous rhetoric, pledging if she doesn’t, “I will.”

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/16/liz-cheney-was-a-primary-culprit-of-spreading-fake-news-on-russian-bounties-to-undermine-trump/

U.S. intelligence agencies debunked on Thursday what was treated as blockbuster election-year reporting last summer of an anonymously sourced story in The New York Times claiming the Kremlin placed bounties on American troops in Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump, went the tale, deliberately downplayed the aggression to appease Russia and accelerate the timeline to withdraw U.S. forces. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, currently number three in House leadership, was a primary purveyor of the fake news.

“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks on U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said, according to the readout of a call with reporters in the Daily Beast.

Officials said their conclusion of “low to moderate confidence” in the story, which effectively means it’s at best unproven and potentially false, came “in part because it relies on detainee reporting,” an often unreliable source of intelligence on which to base such explosive claims.

As the story picked up traction in the corporate press, however, Cheney appeared to sense a prime opportunity to capitalize on what was treated as a scandal, to not only undermine Trump, but also justify a prolonged military presence in the region while the administration took steps to pull out. Neither to Cheney, nor legacy media, appeared to hesitate due to the claims’ poor sourcing.