RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/cnn-has-become-desperate-rewrite-biden-vaccine-brad-slager/

After President Biden gave his historic speech before (some of) Congress last Wednesday evening CNN hosted a panel of leftist sycophants to analyze the night. The blatantly slobbering affair was full with fulsome praise for the man, but then Gloria Borger took things to a new level. The expert analyst was being critical of some comments made by Donald Trump, where she was perturbed that the former President was not giving the current President proper credit on his pandemic response.

Borger made the astounding announcement that, “everybody understands that Operation Warp Speed happened under Joe Biden.” It is something to behold.

Over on CNN, Gloria Borger claims “everybody understands that Operation Warp Speed happened under Joe Biden.”

No one issues a correction. pic.twitter.com/cHBvTde32w

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) April 29, 2021

Note here not only her fractured view of the facts, but that nobody on the panel made anything close to a correction to her statement. Later, Gloria did circle back and made a correction on her statement — sort of. She tries to have it both ways, saying Trump gets credit for Operation Warp Speed, but it is Joe Biden who is responsible for people actually becoming vaccinated.

The term “gaslighting” has become slightly overused these days, but Borger’s attempted realignment of facts here fits the term and it is hardly something isolated with her performance on Wednesday. CNN as a network has been hard at work over the past 100 days to recast the vaccine narrative and give full credit to Joe Biden for the three vaccines brought to market by Donald Trump — the vaccines he was mocked over when he made his bold announcement of their rapid arrival.

Just one day earlier CNN gave a lengthy report on Biden’s supposedly heroic effort to get America vaccinated, calling it “a wartime effort” and echoing another entry the day prior, describing the administration as having instituted a concerted effort to fix the vaccine rollout. If this sounds suspiciously like ad copy penned by the DNC, and filtered through the White House Press Office you are correct in that feeling:

The effort, described to CNN during in-depth interviews with three of the administration’s top Covid advisers and two other White House officials, has allowed the US to go from having one of the worst Covid responses in the world to being a global leader in getting shots in arms.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/05/07/closing-your-social-media

I closed my Facebook account two years ago and I was never on Twitter, regarding it as COVID on steroids. I saw Twitter as a broad thoroughfare for the most vulgar and contemptible people we are ever likely to meet, a digital forum for the SJW mob, and of course, the offspring of a censoring autocrat with no sense of managerial decorum or moral decency. This is not to say that one does not—or did not—meet good and interesting folks on Twitter, but that the palaver is pervasively tainted by obscenities, scurrilous vilification, intellectual stagnation, scandal, and malice. It is a home for everything tawdry, boorish and sordid while whatever is noble or discreet or truthful is in danger of imminent deplatforming.

My wife abandoned Facebook at the same time as I did, but maintained her Twitter account for another year, given her large follower base with whom she wished to remain in contact. Finally, despite a rich correspondence, she could no longer justify helping to maintain a platform that, in its essence, represented everything she detested. It was a sacrifice, but one she felt that had to be made. For it was clear that every tweet by a responsible citizen or freedom-loving patriot only served to reinforce a despotic enterprise in the business of creating a cultural gulag for dissenters.

Writing in the NYT-Singapore, Ligaya Mishan points out that “Twitter, cancel culture’s main arena, is not the digital equivalent of the public square, however touted as such. We think of it as an open space because we pay no admission, forgetting that it’s a commercial enterprise, committed to herding us in. We are customers but also uncredited workers, doing the free labor of making the platform more valuable.” Why, then, help to keep it going? Why support an influential arbiter of cancel culture, a vast atrium where online mobs form to carry out vindictive and irrational vendettas, and where, as Mishan writes, “any of us can be cancelled at any time, living in our glass Instagrams, leaving a spoor of digitized gaffes behind us?” Why contribute to an anti-democratic organ intent on policing popular discussion and debate?

Generally speaking, whether we are thinking of Twitter, or any of its congeners—Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram—“social media” are really not “social” in the sense of civil, sociable, genuinely communal, but “political media” chiefly committed to shameless profiteering and the ideology of the nation-destroying Left cancelling anyone who opposes its agenda. Mishan argues, here mistakenly I think, that unlike the dictates of State regimes, “cancel culture is rudderless, a series of spontaneous disruptions with no sequential logic, lacking any official apparatus to enact or enforce a policy or creed.” Given the consolidation of public power in the hands of Big Tech, to the point where it can influence and subvert State authority and even cancel a president of the United States, her argument lacks credibility in this respect. Rather, we are witnessing not merely “the evolution of a digital form of carnival and misrule,” but the crushing hegemony of inquisitorial authority. As Edward Ring writes at American Greatness, “It is fire and brimstone and furious vengeance. It is religious zealotry of the worst kind, clothed in piety.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/media_are_in_love_with_jen_psakis_honesty_and_competence_porn.html

Two days ago, Jen Psaki told the mother of all lies when she claimed that Trump created the chaos at the border and that the Biden administration is just cleaning up the mess.  When I discussed that, I noted that no one in the mainstream media had called her on the lie.  Still, I held out the possibility that reporters might do so at some point after I put the post up.  One day later, that possibility is dead and rotting.  Instead, on Wednesday, we learned that reporters are swooning over Psaki’s supposed integrity and competence.

Regarding Psaki’s dishonesty, it was never more clearly on display than during a press conference on Wednesday.  That’s when she Psaki boldly stated that Trump had created “an immigration system rooted in destructive and chaotic policies.”  Help is on the way, though, she said.  “President Biden is taking the challenge head on and is building a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system.”

Psaki made these claims even though Trump had massively reduced illegal border crossings, gotten Latin American countries to work with him keeping illegal aliens in their countries while their claims were processed, and allowed ICE and INS to carry out their jobs as called for under the statutes authorizing those agencies’ existence.  Psaki also said this even though Biden completely violated America’s immigration laws.  He threw open the border, banned ICE and INS from doing their jobs, and is warehousing thousands of children who are being brought in by smugglers and traffickers as well as tens of thousands of other illegal aliens, many ill, flooding America.  Even as Biden hectors Americans about vaccinations and masks, his government is shipping immigrants infected with everything from COVID to tuberculosis to all points in America.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/corporate-news-outlets-again-confirm?token=eyJ

One of the primary plagues of corporate journalism, which I have documented more times than I can count, just reared its ugly head again to deceive millions of people with fake news. When one large news outlet publishes a false story based on whispers from anonymous security state agents with the CIA or FBI, other news outlets quickly purport that they have “independently confirmed” the false story, in order to bolster its credibility (oh, it must be true since other outlets have also confirmed it).

This is an obvious scam — they have not “independently confirmed” anything but rather merely acted as servants to the same lying security state agents who planted the original false story — but they do it over and over, creating the deceitful perception that a fake story has been “confirmed” by multiple outlets, thus bolstering its credibility in the public mind. It was the favored tactic for spreading debunked Russiagate frauds and is still used. One of the most vivid examples occurred in December, 2017, when CNN falsely reported what it hyped as “a major bombshell”: that Donald Trump, Jr. had advance access to the WikiLeaks archive. Within an hour, NBC News’ Ken Dilanian and CBS News both claimed they had “independently confirmed” this fairy tale. When it turned out that it was a complete lie, all based on a false date on an email to Trump Jr., these outlets embarrassingly corrected it hours later and then simply moved on as if it never happened, never explaining how multiple outlets could possibly have all “independently confirmed” the same blatant falsehood.

On Thursday night, The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources (of course), claimed that the FBI gave a “defensive briefing” to Rudy Giuliani in 2019, before he traveled to Ukraine, that he was being targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign to hurt Joe Biden’s candidacy, yet he ignored the FBI’s warnings and went anyway. The Post also claimed that the right-wing news outlet OANN was similarly briefed. The claim about Giuliani not only predictably ricocheted all over social media and cable news — where, as usual, it was uncritically treated as Truth — but it was shortly thereafter “independently confirmed” by both NBC News’ de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian along with The New York Times.

http://conferenceofjewishaffairs.org/

“Obviously the Jerusalem Post is unaware that Sean Hannity is literally one of America’s greatest supporters and advocates of Israel, more so than half of America’s Jews.  In addition, he has been a staunch friend of the Jewish community and Jewish individuals here in Long Island and other regions of the country.

“For the Jerusalem Post to imply that phraseology Mr. Hannity used to describe Bernie Sanders demonstrates anti-Semitism reveals that the Post is ignorant of Hannity’s record and the American political landscape.

“The Post suggests Hannity expressed anti-Semitism because he called Sanders ‘Bolshevik Bernie.’ Indeed, he should!  Sanders is a marxist, not simply some Swedish-style socialist. Most probably he is communist given his expressed admiration for the communist regimes of Venezuela, Cuba and the Soviet Union, and spent his honeymoon, of all places, in the communist Soviet Union’s Moscow. Listening to him over the years, the inevitable conclusion is that if possible he would institute a communist model.  

https://david-collier.com/wikipedia-antisemitic/

Today – tens of millions of people – including many children -will type something into Google’s search box. Because of Google’s algorithm, a Wikipedia entry will almost always feature as one of the top results:

It has probably held true for a number of years that more people have their opinion shaped by Wikipedia on a daily basis – than by any other information source. I do not believe that most people fully understand the damage that Wikipedia is doing, nor the fact that action must be taken to challenge it.

When I write about Wikipedia, I always face the same three arguments:

Firstly the idea that everyone can edit Wikipedia. It is simply not true. Everyone can go onto a mundane page and make an edit – but the more important pages on Wikipedia are protected – which means only certain editors can make a change. These protections do not just stop abuse – they prevent challenges to the bias of the editors.

Secondly, is the notion that because most people know Wikipedia is not a reliable source it mitigates the damage. This is a deflection. Even many of those that know Wiki is tainted, still recommend using it as a starting point – especially teachers and academics. Google, the world’s leading search engine, literally treat it as the best source in the world. All those seeking information by starting on Wikipedia are still guided by the additional links that are on Wiki’s pages – and are left blind to those facts and arguments that have been airbrushed out.

Finally, there is the suggestion that is possible to counter the bias by simply adding editors with a more balanced outlook. There are just 15 million Jews on the planet. Everyone bravely fighting antisemitism online is aware that the haters swarm and we are vastly outnumbered – even with friends and allies. In a numbers game – and Wiki is a numbers game – the Jews will always lose. We desperately need allies to take the time to enter Wiki’s world – but on its own, it is not a strategy that we should depend on.

It isn’t just about Jews or Israel and it is not enough to sit idly by. Wikipedia is *damaging* truth and promoting an anti-western, antisemitic, anti-Israel narrative. This cannot be stated often or hard enough; When it comes to spreading disinformation – Wikipedia is the biggest fake news distributor on the planet.

Rogue Wikipedia

https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/new-york-times-wapo-nbc-forced-to-retract-false-clai

The New York Times, Washington Post and NBC News all issued retractions Saturday for their coverage of Rudy Giuliani following a raid of his Manhattan apartment by the FBI.

The Times appended their correction to a story about the role Giuliani may have played in the 2019 recall of ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch and whether he received a warning from the FBI about Russian disinformation.

“An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing,” The Times wrote Saturday in a note attached to the piece.

The Washington Post’s correction, on a story about prominent Americans being targeted by Russian disinformation, was similar.

“An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation,” the paper said.

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.