RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/cnn-analyst-fabricates-quotes-from-gop-senators-to-smear-trump-fox-news/

On Wednesday afternoon, a CNN analyst cooked up a “conversation” between two Republican senators in order to smear President Donald Trump, his party, and Fox News. He later admitted to having completely fabricated the quotes, but only after The Washington Post’s self-described conservative Jennifer Rubin retweeted his “report.”

“Overheard convo between two Republican Senators who only watch Fox News. ‘is this stuff real? I haven’t heard any of this before. I thought it was all about a server. If half the stuff Schiff is saying is true, we’re up s**t’s creek. Hope the White House has exculpatory evidence,'” Joe Lockhart, the CNN analyst and the former White House press secretary for Bill Clinton, tweeted. His message received 5,600 retweets and 20,600 “likes.”

Ten minutes later, he added this caveat: “Ok maybe I made up the convo, but you know that’s exactly what they’re thinking.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/martha-mcsally-hack-comment-journalists-see-some-great-sacrilege/

As I note in my New York Post piece today, I don’t believe that Martha McSally, who is serving her first term in the Senate after being appointed to take John McCain’s seat, is going to be helped much by accusing CNN’s Manu Raju of being a “hack.” Attacking the press might be an effective way to excite national conservatives, but it probably does little to entice independents and moderates in Arizona.

One group, however, was greatly affected by the interaction: journalists, who seem to believe that McSally has engaged in some great sacrilege. A distressed National Press Club statement calls her comment “ethically wrong.” The New York Times’ Michael Barbaro says it is “never” ok to attack a journalist. One wishes there would have been this level of outcry when Elizabeth Warren, also a senator, called Fox News a “hate-for-profit racket.” But so it goes.

The Washington Post’s media critic labeled the interaction “chilling.” Now, “chilling,” it seems to me, would more appropriately describe the government spying on reporters or throwing someone into prison in effort to appease foreign theocrats. I’m pretty sure, at this point, the largely inconsequential McSally-Raju kerfuffle has generated more outrage from mainstream journalists than either of those cases.

It should also be noted, rude or not, that McSally’s underlying grievance is legitimate. CNN, as Charles Cooke has written, is no longer a news network, and Republicans have no ethical responsibility to treat it as such, whether one of its reporters happens to be asking a legitimate questions or not. And no matter how many times his colleagues put the word “respected” in front of Raju’s name, it doesn’t change the fact that he has a long history of partisan bias, not only with his still-unexplained Don Jr. “collusion” piece, but on the issue of Brett Kavanaugh and many others. The fact that Raju does some good reporting, doesn’t mean he isn’t also a partisan. You can be both.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/when_it_comes_to_the_news_media_their_antitrump_narrative_is_relentless.html

The media is all a’flutter about a report saying that the Russian military has been attempting to hack Burisma. It’s unclear to me and to the media whether this is a newsworthy story or just the same old news we’ve seen since 1921, about Russia spying on and making trouble for the West and its allies. For the media, though, any story that can impugn Trump is headline stuff, and that fact is on perfect display in the media’s reporting about the suspected hacking.

Here are the facts: The Russian military has apparently tried to hack Burisma’s computers. That’s it. That’s everything the media knows, as can be seen from this New York Times article:

It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for.

On the basis of known facts, this is a story that ought not to have been published at all or, at the very least, should deserve a single paragraph on the last page of the main section.

But that’s not how the Times is spinning it. Instead, for the Times this is just more evidence that (a) Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election (never mind that Obama and Hillary had the slobbering love affair with Putin) and (b) that Trump coerced the Ukrainian president into investigating Burisma.

Regarding the first point, the one about Russia collusion, keep in mind as you read the following the fact that the Times knows absolutely nothing other than that there apparently was a hacking attempt. Nevertheless, it manages to spin out a whole saga:

But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/we-cant-trust-the-media-to-report-honestly-on-iran/

It’s hard enough watching journalists blaming the United States for the Islamic Republic’s perniciousness or exaggerating the importance of “revered leader” Qasem Soleimani while minimizing the actions of the courageous Iranians who oppose the mullahs. Even before a pro-Iranian regime bias infected much of the institutional media, conservatives were reading outlets like the New York Times through a prism of skepticism. In general, though, one could trust that the underlying facts and framing were basically correct. The past four years have made even that impossible.

Take the Soleimani killing, for example.

In the newest iteration of the story from NBC News, we learn that after Iran shot down a U.S. drone this summer, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, Trump’s then-national security adviser, tried to persuade Donald Trump to kill the Iranian terrorist leader. Trump, instinctively uneasy about escalating Middle East conflict, resisted the pressure. According to “current and former senior administration officials,” NBC News states, the president instead drew a red line: He would authorize the killing of Soleimani only “if Iran’s increased aggression resulted in the death of an American.”

Trump even tweeted, warning the mullahs that further violence would have repercussions.