RUTHFULLY YOURS

When CNN brought in Jeff Zucker, it wasn’t for his journalistic acumen. Zucker was best known for his work on the Today Show. After billions in losses at NBC, his new Comcast bosses wanted him gone.

CNN and Zucker were perfect for each other. Both were sinking ships looking for an easy way out.

Zucker’s plan for CNN was simple. Get out of the news business.

Or as he put it, “news is how you define it.” Fake, real; it’s all a matter of definition. And Zucker was going to “broaden” the definition of what news is. And the definition was reality shows.

CNN was going to edge away from the news business under its new boss of fake reality television.

Zucker’s plan made sense at the time. MSNBC had the lefty demographic locked up and FOX News spoke to the right. CNN wasn’t going to compete with them. And it wasn’t going to do “vanilla” reporting. Instead it would jump into the reality dogpile. Food shows. Edgy documentaries. “More shows and less newscasts.” If there had to be news, Zucker wanted it to have an “an attitude and a take.”

Before President Trump called out CNN as fake news, its new boss had already turned it into fake news.

But that was a different world. Obama was in the White House. Hillary was going to succeed him. Nothing interesting was going to happen in the world of politics. CNN could just focus on infotainment.

And then Trump emerged and everything changed. Suddenly CNN was going to have to do news again and Zucker, the gimmick guy who had bet big on reality shows on NBC and then on CNN, was completely out of his depth. He understood entertainment, but he didn’t have the faintest clue about journalism.

In the summer of ’16, he had ridiculed BuzzFeed as not being a real news organization. That gave BuzzFeed a whole lot in common with CNN. By October, he had hired on Andrew Kaczynski and his BuzzFeed team of trolls. And it’s that team of trolls that is now at the center of CNN’s latest scandal.

CNN had already lost 3 reporters from its investigative unit over a fake news Trump-Russia hit piece. Instead of enmeshing President Trump in scandals, its investigative unit is deeply enmeshed in scandal.

Zucker was not a journalism guy, but he understood numbers. He lived and died by them. His philosophy at CNN was to stay on anything that its viewers were watching whether it was a missing Malaysian plane or Trump. CNN’s old strategy of “flooding the zone” with meaningless non-coverage of a breaking event was merged with Zucker’s own preference for reality television to create a constant coverage circus.

Hiring a ton of reporters from across the spectrum, from a New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner to the BuzzFeed trolls, would flood the zone with Trump scandals. CNN would have the most Trump scandals and the most viewers. It was a great strategy for manufacturing a whole bunch of fake news scandals.

“Wow. CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with three employees forced to resign. What about all the other phony stories they do?” (tweet from President Trump, June 27.)

Start with practically everything from CNN’s Havana Bureau for the past twenty years, Mr President. But don’t take it from me. Take it from the mass-murdering terror-sponsors who graciously bestowed CNN their platform to spread communist propaganda:

“Propaganda is vital—propaganda is the heart of our struggle.” (Fidel Castro.)

“Much more valuable than rural recruits for our Cuban guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda.” (Ernesto “Che” Guevara.)

“Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy!” Ted Turner gushed to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997. “You people would like him! Most people in Cuba like him.”

Within weeks CNN was granted its coveted Havana Bureau, the first ever granted by Castro to a foreign network. Though Tuner officially relinquished his vice chairmanship of (CNN parent) Time-Warner in 2003, the network’s role as subsidiary of the Castro regime’s propaganda ministry remains as shameless as ever—a “shining” legacy!

A genuine (but hopelessly naive) Spanish reporter who took his job title seriously and (very foolishly) attempted to practice his profession in the Castro-Family-Fiefdom, explains the issue very succinctly:

“The Castro regime assigns 20 security agents to follow and monitor every foreign journalist. You play the regime’s game and practice self–censorship or you’re gone.” (Vicente Botin, reporter for Madrid’s El Pais who was promptly booted from Cuba for refusing to play the same sniveling, cowardly game as CNN’s cuckholded –perhaps even black-mailed–“reporters” play every time they file a “story” from Cuba.)

Retired U.S counter-intelligence officer Chris Simmons also explains the issue: “The vetting procedure starts the minute the (Cuban) regime receives a visa application,” says the man long-regarded as America’s top Cuba spycatcher. “When those smiling Cuban “guides” greet you at the airport they know plenty about you, and from several angles.” (Chris Simmons, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s top Cuban spycatcher, now retired.)

In brief, you’re not getting and keeping a Cuban journalist visa (much less a Havana Bureau) unless you shamelessly (and genuinely) collude with Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored ministry of propaganda. This isn’t rocket science, amigos.

According to a recent story where CNN’s Havana-based reporter Patrick Oppmann (SURPRISE!) bemoans President Trump’s proposed Cuba policy, Uncle Sam has no better, more honorable or more trustworthy friend in the war on drugs than the Castro family, those noble purifiers of Cuban society–because according to CNN’s Oppmann:

“Cuban officials told CNN that, despite political differences with the United States, they have provided key intelligence to help capture smugglers,” among many other heart-warming modes of selfless cooperation.

Let’s have a look at some of the fruits of this co-operation, shall we. (please carefully note the dates.)

News reports claiming that 44 states have refused President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission’s request for voter data are “fake news,” the vice chairman of the commission declared on Wednesday.

In a statement released by the White House, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said only fourteen states have actually refused thus far.

“At present, 20 states have agreed to provide the publicly available information requested by the Commission and another 16 states are reviewing which information can be released under their state laws,” Kobach wrote. “In all, 36 states have either agreed or are considering participating with the Commission’s work to ensure the integrity of the American electoral system.” The vice chairman concluded:

While there are news reports that 44 states have “refused” to provide voter information to the Commission, these reports are patently false, more “fake news.” At present, only 14 states and the District of Columbia have refused the Commission’s request for publicly available voter information. Despite media distortions and obstruction by a handful of state politicians, this bipartisan commission on election integrity will continue its work to gather the facts through public records requests to ensure the integrity of each American’s vote because the public has a right to know.

News outlets that made the “44 states” false claim include CNN, NBC, The Week, Forbes, Vox, NY Daily News, Mic, CBS, and Yahoo.

On CNN’s “New Day” Wednesday morning, co-host Chris Cuomo said that Trump’s allegation of voter fraud is “B.S.”:

“Is there a second line to this story in terms of what this commission is about other than the obvious, which is trying to put meat on the bones of a B.S. allegation?”

CNN Political Commentator Errol Louis agreed, saying it is worse than that. The real objective of the administration’s voter fraud commission is voter suppression.

After the election Trump claimed that he would have won the popular vote if “the millions of people who voted illegally” were deducted.

Democrats really want that to be a “B.S. allegation.” But is it? From NewsBusters:

The Daily Signal has reported on the many cases of voter fraud and other studies have found that there are potentially large amounts of noncitizens registered to vote.

An Old Dominion University study found that noncitizen voting “is at times substantial enough to change important election outcomes including Electoral College votes and Senate races.” As Tom Fitton points out, using this study’s math, 1.41 million noncitizens would have voted in 2016.

The Pew Center’s 2012 election survey found that:

“Approximately 24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.”

“More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as active voters.”

“Approximately 2.75 million people have active registrations in more than one state.”

Additionally, as the Washington Times reports, investigations in Maryland and Virgina have found thousands of aliens registered to vote.

A couple of weeks ago in this space, I speculated that CNN, the Crackpot News Network, had reached the terminal stage of malevolent implausibility. “[I]t would be a good thing,” I wrote, “were CNN humiliated and sued out of existence. It performs no journalistic function, merely a destructively partisan one.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/05/trump-provokes-cnns-self-immolation-america-relieved/

As usual, I was too kind. CNN will not have to be sued out of existence, as Gawker Media, another disgusting purveyor of malicious gossip and fake news, was a year or so back. No, CNN seems to be performing a species of hara-kiri or seppuku in public.

Actually, CNN’s behavior is closer to the behaviour of the fanatic Naphta in his duel with the suave humanist Settembrini in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. The two antagonists confront each other, pistols in hand. Settembrini calmly delopes; Naphta screams “You coward!” and shoots himself in the head. Everyone is happier.

Several people have suggested to me that the whole travel ban drama, in which Trump’s legally formed and disseminated executive order was stomped upon by a couple of grandstanding district judges run amok, was actually a cunning plan™ devised by Democrats. The idea, the hope, was that Trump would be so enraged by the obvious affront to his constitutional authority that he would overreact, do something legally culpable, and thus give his enemies grounds to call for his impeachment.

It didn’t work. Trump did issue his ill-formed “so-called judge” tweet, but beyond that, he sat back, fumed, and let his lawyers loose on the preposterous temporary restraining orders. Last week, the Supreme Court vindicated Trump (more or less), allowing a modified version of the travel bans to proceed (which they did as of last Thursday).

But two can play at the provoke-your-enemy-into-doing-something-stupid strategy. The media keep telling us how thin-skinned and volatile Donald Trump is. Just about everybody wishes he would Tweet less and enjoy it more. But when it comes to the art of provocation, Trump is a Supreme Galactic Master and the media are weenie pikers.

The media wheeled out Kathy Griffin, whose infamous photo shoot featured her holding a bloody severed head in Trump’s likeness. They deployed foul-mouth pundits who, like grubby, ill-bred school boys, emitted various scatalogical epithets about the president of the United States. They published fantastical stories about alleged connections between Trump surrogates and “the Russians,” but then walk them back or, in the case of the latest libel, publically disown the story, scrub it from the Internet, and fire the three senior employees responsible for its writing and publication.

When the avid Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson goes on a hunting expedition against Republican congressmen, shooting several, the media blame Republicans for creating a “climate of hate.” (One Democratic official was recorded saying he hoped Rep. Steve Scalise [R-La.], the most seriously injured, would die.)

In April, media types were crowing that CNN had brought in Eric Lichtblau who had been, in the Washington Post’s words, at “the forefront of the New York Times’s reporting on the relationship between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.” It was “an investment in investigative reporting and the sprawling Russia story”. It didn’t take long for the investigative investment to sprawl badly.

Lichtblau has resigned from CNN in a growing scandal over a Fake News story about a Trump associate.

“Eric will guide our coverage and thinking,” Lex Haris, executive editor of CNN Investigates, had boasted. “And when he’s onto a investigation, he’ll still be reporting and writing too.”

Not for long. And Haris has joined Lichtblau on the unemployment line after the Fake News scandal.

CNN Investigates had been announced after President Trump’s inauguration. Its hit pieces had followed the same pattern as the Scaramucci attack that would be its undoing. Go after a personality tipped for a job with the new administration. CNN Investigates had previously targeted Monica Crowley and Sheriff Clarke with plagiarism accusations. But this time around, CNN’s anti-Trump unit had made a big mistake.

Unlike K-File’s petty harassment of Trump associates, the Scaramucci hit piece came from the heavier hitters poached by CNN from mainstream media papers who were supposed to bring down Trump.

The men behind the disaster were no lightweights. Thomas Frank had been nominated for a Pulitzer. Eric Lichtblau had shared a Pulitzer for bashing the Bush administration over, of all things, surveillance. Their names were all over CNN hit pieces tying to tie Trump to an impeachable Russian scandal.

That was what they had been hired for.

CNN claimed that Lichtblau had been “reporting on Comey for more than a decade.” And Frank was busy rolling out fresh grist for the Trump-Russia mill. One Frank article on CNN breathlessly claimed, “One week, three more Trump-Russia connections.” CNN was riding the impeachment train to Moscow.

And yet Lichtblau’s tenure at CNN quickly became troubled. An early June piece denied that Comey had told President Trump that he was not under investigation.

“Comey expected to refute Trump,” was the headline. The headline didn’t hold up. An awkward correction was appended conceding that its premise had been discredited by Comey’s testimony.

The sources were, as usual, anonymous. The Fake News story was full of “a source tells CNN” and “another source said” attributions. Seventeen of them.

The hodgepodge of anonymous sources read like a bizarre fairy tale or mystery novel.

Was “the source said” the first anonymous source? Was “a source adds” the second anonymous source? Or a third anonymous source? Was “a source” the same as “one source” who claimed to be “familiar” with Comey’s thinking?

“This source” seemed to be different than “one source.” But what about “another source”? And the “sources”?

It was many years ago, but the memory lingers of the first time I was embarrassed to be a journalist. It was a steamy summer afternoon and reporters and photographers were shoehorned into a small Manhattan apartment for a civic group’s announcement.

As we waited, a photographer wearing a “Press” card in his battered fedora picked up a bud vase from a table, pulled out the rose and drank the water in one gulp.

The hostess was horrified and shrieked, “What are you doing?” He looked at her as if she were nuts and said simply, “It’s hot in here and I’m thirsty.”

I laugh now at the outlandishness of the photographer’s behavior, but at the time I cringed and wondered: Do I really want to be a journalist and end up like that?

America should be so lucky now. Bad manners are the least of it.

In the sixth month of Donald Trump’s presidency, we are witnessing an unprecedented meltdown of much of the media. Standards have been tossed overboard in a frenzy to bring down the president.

Trump, like all presidents, deserves coverage that is skeptical and tough, but also fair. That’s not what he’s getting.

What started as bias against him has become a cancer that is consuming the best and brightest. In rough biblical justice, media attempts to destroy the president are boomeranging and leaving their reputations in tatters.

He accuses them of publishing fake news, and they respond with such blind hatred that they end up publishing fake news. That’ll show him.

CNN is suffering an especially bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, even trying to make a virtue of its hostility to the president. In doing so, executives conveniently confuse animus with professional skepticism, and cite growing audiences as proof of their good judgment.

The bottom line matters, and there is certainly an audience for hating Trump all the time. But facts and fairness separate major news organizations from any other business looking to make a buck, and a commitment to them creates credibility and public trust.

That’s how CNN sold itself for years — boring but trustworthy. Now it’s boring and untrustworthy.

For all its bravado, the network might be having doubts about its course. Its apology for and retraction of a story connecting a Trump associate to a Russia investment fund, and the resignation of three journalists involved, suggest the network fears it has lost control of its own agenda. It also issued a special edict barring all Russia coverage without approval from top bosses.
SEE ALSO
CNN faced $100M lawsuit over botched Russia story
CNN faced $100M lawsuit over botched Russia story

That’s hardly a solution to a problem that starts at the top. The secret recording of a CNN producer by James O’Keefe’s

CNN’s relentlessly biased coverage of the Left’s baseless Russian electoral collusion conspiracy theory against President Trump is “mostly bullshit,” a senior CNN producer was caught revealing on sensational hidden camera video footage.

President Trump promptly agreed with the producer on Twitter.

“So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC?” the president tweeted at 8:47 a.m. yesterday. “What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!”

CNN producer John Bonifield made the brazen admission of the network’s absence of journalistic bona fides to an undercover reporter from ACORN-slayer James O’Keefe’s investigative nonprofit, Project Veritas.

“He not only gave us a tour of CNN’s main newsroom, he gave us a window into the editorial bias and anti-Trump agenda of the organization,” O’Keefe says as he narrates the video. Project Veritas is touting the video as the first installment in a multi-part investigation the group calls “American Pravda.”

O’Keefe continues:

Our goal is to expose the real motivations behind the decision-making process at our dominant media corporations. Fake News. One story has monopolized President Trump’s time in office like no other, especially on CNN: Russia. In fact, since the Inauguration, CNN has mentioned Russia on their air nearly 16,000 times. So we sent our undercover reporters inside CNN to understand why and to determine if CNN even believes if the story is even real.

In the video published online, Bonifield acknowledges that the news network’s nonstop Russian scandal-mongering about Trump has little evidentiary basis.

“Could be bullshit,” said the supervising producer for CNN Health. “I mean, it’s mostly bullshit right now.”

Bonifield continued:

Like, we don’t have any giant proof. Then they say, well there’s still an investigation going on. And you’re like, yeah, I don’t know. If they were finding something we would know about it. The way these leaks happen, they would leak it. They’d leak. If it was something really good, it would leak…. The leaks keep leaking and there’s so many great leaks, and it’s amazing. I just refuse to believe that if they had something really good like that that wouldn’t leak because we’ve been getting all these other leaks. So, I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the president is probably right to say, like, look you are witch-hunting me. You have no smoking gun. You have no real proof.

“I haven’t seen any good evidence to show the president committed a crime,” Bonifield also says.

“Even if Russia was trying to swing an election, we try to swing their elections, our CIA is doing shit all the time, we’re out there trying to manipulate governments,” he explains.

But CNN is doggedly pursuing the fanciful Russia story because those at the top of the network are focused on “ratings,” he says.

“Our ratings are incredible right now,” Bonifield says.

He’s not lying.

“CNN had its most-watched first quarter in 14 years, both in the key demo and in total viewers,” Variety reports, adding that cable competitors Fox News and MSNBC also experienced “double-digit ratings growth across the board for the second quarter of 2017, according to Nielsen data.”

According to Bonifield, the Russia story regularly crowds out other newsworthy stories where he works. For example, CNN’s coverage of Trump’s disavowal of the Paris Climate Accord barely lasted two days, after which the network eagerly shifted coverage back to the Russia nonsense.