A ‘news’ report that encapsulates what’s wrong with today’s media By Andrea Widburg
Over at SFGATE, the online San Francisco news outlet realted to the San Francisco Chronicle, the headline and subtitle are damning, in that they accuse Rep. Dan Crenshaw of being both a dangerous scofflaw and a disgraceful hypocrite. However, if you dive into the article, you discover that he’s making a principled stand against a ludicrous rule and that there’s no hypocrisy on his part, only on Nancy Pelosi’s.
As noted, the headline and subtitle are damning:
Houston Rep. Dan Crenshaw fined $5,000 for dodging Capitol metal detectors
The Republican leader failed to comply with security measures installed after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, despite hammering Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi for the same infraction in April.
Although the “journalist” behind the story, Ariana Garcia, may not be personally responsible for the headline and subtitle, she’s certainly responsible for the article’s contents.
The article opens by saying that Crenshaw, along with “six other lawmakers” is guilty of “dodging the metal detectors inside the U.S. Capitol” this week, exposing each of them to a possible $5,000 fine. The article refers to the police report and the House Committee on Ethics statement about Crenshaw’s wrongdoing. It then explains how the extra security was necessary “following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 during which five people were killed.”
Wait! What? Insurrection? Five people killed?
Well, not quite, Ms. Biased “Journalist.” All the evidence, including admissions from the FBI, is that there was no planned insurrection, that the FBI was involved well in advance and may have been encouraging events, that the Capitol police invited people into the building, and that those who entered treated the People’s place of law with respect.
And as for those “five people killed,” implying that the insurrectionists were murderers, only one person was killed when a Capitol police officer cold-bloodedly shot a woman who was manifestly neither a threat to him nor anyone else. No other Capitol police officers even drew their weapons (some insurrection!). The other people died either of natural causes (including a police officer) or, in the cases of one person, from an apparent drug overdose.
We now know that Garcia, the “journalist,” is both biased and dishonest, in my opinion.
Garcia goes on to explain that Republicans object to the metal detectors and the fines and have been engaging in civil disobedience, something that Democrats and leftists like only when they do it. And then the reporter goes from mendacious to genuinely stupid in my opinion, (or maybe I underestimate her and what I see as a lack of logic is still mendacity):
Crenshaw has previously called the new machines a virtue signal for liberals, despite being among lawmakers who called out U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for bypassing the metal detector in February without paying a fine, according to Fox News’ Jon Brown. (Emphasis added.)
It’s true that Crenshaw has called the machines a form of virtue signaling. The problem is that phrase “despite being….” When you see that phrase, you’re meant to understand that Crenshaw is the hypocrite for simultaneously opposing the machines and then complaining that Pelosi ignored them. But that’s not how hypocrisy works.
Crenshaw opposes the metal detectors and, at financial risk to himself, refuses to follow the rules regarding those machines. That’s called being principled. The hypocrisy problem lies with Pelosi, for she always makes it clear that laws are for the little people. She’s the hypocrite who instituted the metal detector rule but refuses to abide by her own rule or pay the price for violating it.
I know I’m picking on Ariana Garcia but it’s important to understand that this young woman (who graduated in 2017 from the University of Texas at Austin with a Journalism degree) has been trained, not in journalism, but in advocacy. Presented with facts showing a congressman taking a principled stand against a rule with which he disagrees and his showing that the rule’s author flagrantly violates her own rule without any consequences, this leftist activist abandons logic to attack the congressman as a hypocrite. Moreover, to justify the rule at issue, she lies about the facts.
People like Garcia are toxic because too many people accept this fact-free, logic-free, dishonest narrative as actual news. Therefore, they drive the divisions in society, along with aggressively policing any deviations from their narrative. They’re perfectly happy to destroy people along the way, so I think it’s only right and proper to call her out.
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