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MEDIA

New York Times Manipulates Data To Indict President Trump On Coronavirus By Tristan Justice

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/01/new-york-times-manipulates-data-to-indict-president-trump-on-coronavirus/

If you read the New York Times, you’d think the U.S. has fallen by the wayside in its fight against the novel Wuhan coronavirus and Trump is to blame.

If you read the New York Times Tuesday morning, you’d think the United States has fallen by the wayside in its fight against the novel Wuhan coronavirus, faring no better in the global pandemic against the invisible enemy than allied nations in the developed world.

In his Tuesday morning briefing, Times writer David Leonhardt kicked off September with a comparative analysis of the United States’ pandemic standing relative to other developed nation’s outlining what he deems “America’s Death Gap.”

“Here’s a jarring thought experiment,” Leonhardt explains. “If the United States had done merely an average job of fighting the coronavirus – if the U.S. accounted for the same share of virus deaths as it did global population – how many fewer Americans would have died? The answer: about 145,000.”

Vernon Jones accuses ‘liberal media’ of supporting ‘violent mob’ that attacked him and other Trump supporters by Carly Ortiz-Lytle,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/vernon-jones-accuses-liberal-media-of-supporting-violent-mob-who-attacked-him-and-other-trump-supporters

Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones accused the “liberal media” of ignoring the attacks on him and other guests while leaving President Trump’s Republican National Convention nomination acceptance speech.

“Where is the liberal media? Why haven’t they reached out to me and the others and allowed us to share our experiences of the threats that we experienced so the American people can see first hand what happened? But they won’t because they support, with the Democrats and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, destruction of our cities.” Jones said in a video posted to social media.

Sitting in front of a backdrop that read “Democrats Failed Blacks,” Jones said that he was met by a “violent mob” of Democrats, Black Lives Matter and antifa, and supporters of Biden and Harris.

“They want to see it demolished so they can blame it on Donald Trump. If this had been the other way around, and Biden supporters were attacked by Trump supporters, it would have been all over the network.”

Clinesmith, the Russia Lie, and the Deep State By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/clinesmith-the-russia-lie-and-the-deep-state/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

A scandal barely exists if the leading news outlets unite to draw a veil over it.

Picture a lawyer you know. Fairly persnickety with details, no? Covers all bases. Doesn’t mess up the easy stuff. Rarely messes up the hard stuff. This is a person who knows the rulebook. Now picture that same person working for the FBI. Doubly careful, in this gig. It’s the big time. Now picture that same person working for the FBI on a major political issue — no, the major political issue. The one the whole world is talking about. Belt and suspenders, right? Make that six belts and four pairs of suspenders. This person is not going to get caught with his pants down, ever. Every t will be crossed, crossed again, then crossed again in the presence of a notary public.

So when you cast your eye over what former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith did to earn himself a criminal record as a felon during the Trump–Russia fiasco, your mind should reel. Clinesmith, like others in the FBI, knew that former Trump adviser Carter Page had done some work for the CIA that involved contacts with Russian intelligence. But Clinesmith wanted permission from the FISA judge to continue to conduct clandestine surveillance of Carter Page. Clinesmith knew Page was spying on the Russians, not spying for the Russians, but he needed to keep this under wraps so the court might think Page was talking to Russians as part of a nefarious collusion effort between Russia and the Trump campaign. So when Clinesmith’s superior at the FBI asked whether Page was a CIA contact in 2017, because he or she needed to be able to swear under oath that Page was not, Clinesmith forwarded an email from the CIA — but altered the email to reverse its meaning. The email said Page had been in touch with the CIA, but Clinesmith added the words “and not a source.” The lie that Page wasn’t briefing the CIA was critical to winning court approval for trying to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign via spying on Page.

New York Times Manipulates FBI Lawyer’s Guilty Plea To Hide Real Spygate News By Mollie Hemingway

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/17/new-york-times-manipulates-fbi-lawyers-guilty-plea-to-hide-real-spygate-news/

A New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his role perpetrating the Russia collusion hoax was tasked with framing the news that a former top FBI lawyer was to plead guilty to deliberately fabricating evidence against a Donald Trump campaign affiliate targeted in the Russia probe. The resulting article is a case study in how to write propaganda.

Adam Goldman broke, and cushioned, the news that former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was to plead guilty to fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application to spy on Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page.

His job was to present the news as something other than an indictment of the FBI’s handling of the Russia collusion hoax, to signal to other media that they should move on from the story as quickly as possible, and to hide his own newspaper’s multi-year participation in the Russia collusion hoax. One intelligence source described it as an “insult” to his intelligence and “beyond Pravda,” a reference to the official newspaper of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Here’s how Goldman did it.

Mild Headline With Ludicrous Spin

The New York Times used to put every Russia collusion story it had on the front page. Then, when the narrative fell apart, the Times moved on to a new narrative of redefining America as irredeemably racist.

Untangling the Media Myths of Covid-19 They’re countless. States that reporters shamed have done the best, and the U.S. is average among its peers. By Gerard Baker*****

https://www.wsj.com/articles/untangling-the-media-myths-of-covid-19-11597099357?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Has there been in recent history a more tendentious, hysterical, data-denying and frankly disreputable exercise in misdirection than the way in which much of America’s media has covered the Covid-19 epidemic?

Perhaps we can forgive them the endless repetition of pandemic porn; the selectively culled stories of tragedy about otherwise completely healthy young people succumbing to the virus. While we know that the chances of someone under 30 being killed by Covid are very slim, we know too that news judgments have always favored the exceptional and horrific over the routine and unremarkable.

Perhaps we can even forgive them the rapidly shifting headlines—each one shouting with absolute certitude—about the basic facts of the virus and its context: its lethality and transmissibility, the merits of mask-wearing, or the effectiveness of this or that therapy. The science is evolving, and so too is the reporting.

But there are larger representations of this massive and complex story that we should mark as simply unforgivable.

Teen Vogue calls for the abolishment of private property, capitalism By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/teen_vogue_calls_for_the_abolishment_of_private_property_capitalism.html

Teen Vogue recently published an op-ed by columnist Kandist Mallett in which she declared that no one should have the right to own property. She called for the elimination of landlords while averring that “an eviction crisis is coming” due to the coronavirus pandemic’s heavy toll on the United States, which, she says, is evidence of “the failures of capitalism.”

Mallett noted that “The pandemic didn’t create this housing crisis, but it did further expose the cruelty of payment-based housing.” No, but she herself may have just exposed the futility of payment-based higher education.

She rambled on: “Instead of seeing housing as a right and something that should not be commodified, the state enlists its own armed forces—sheriffs and police—to remove occupants from residences if they cannot pay rent. The lack of protections for non-landowners should be to no surprise from a country founded on the genocide and colonization of indigenous peoples.”

Poll Shows ‘Sobering’ Decline In Americans’ Trust In News Media…Before COVID & Floyd Death

https://thegreggjarrett.com/poll-shows-sobering-decline-in-americans-trust-in-news-media-before-covid-floyd-death/

President Trump has been chastised for calling out the credibility of mainstream media, but he’s not alone. In a study released today, results show “nearly half of all Americans describe the news media as ‘very biased.” The study, conducted by Knight Foundation and Gallup was described as “sobering.”

Part of the ‘sobering’ aspect is that data was compiled before the coronavirus lockdown and nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd. The overwhelming likelihood is those events would further the percentage divides. Using a random sample of 20,046 American adults between November 8, 2019, and February 16, 2020, the study claims a margin of error of plus or minus 1%.

In the findings, 73% of Americans believe bias in news reports is a major problem, up from 65% two years ago. “Those surveyed also didn’t believe much in honest mistakes. When there were inaccuracies in articles, 54% of Americans said they believed reporters misrepresented facts, while 28% said reporters were making things up in their entirety” the Associated Press reported.

It was determined that 71% of Republicans have a “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable opinion of the news media, while Democrats were at only 22%. On the flip side, 54% of Democrats have a very favorable view of the media, and only 13% of Republicans feel the same way.

Mainstream Media Polls: Yet More Gaslighting? Jane Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-8-4-mainstream-media-polls-yet-m

“Donald Trump’s Chances of Winning are Approaching Zero” (Washington Post)

“Donald Trump is approaching his last chance to turn a catastrophic campaign into an ordinarily unsuccessful campaign” (The Atlantic)

“Now Trump is trailing in an average of post-convention poll results for every swing state from the past two cycles…” (Vox)

“Two much-discussed polls by The Times and Siena College that were published last week suggested that in key swing states, as well as nationally, [Trump’s] the limping dead” (New York Times)

“Trump is going to lose – decisively – this fall.” (San Diego Tribune)

“Trump Is Losing Big to [Opponent] in Voter Polls. Here’s How That Will Likely Play Out on Election Day” (MarketWatch) 

“Donald Trump’s Terrible Campaign is Finally Catching Up to Him” (Vanity Fair)

“Trump’s Losing, So When Are Republican Candidates Going to Abandon Him?” (New Yorker)

Some of these quotes are from 2016 and some are from 2020, but it’s almost impossible to tell which are which (Go ahead and guess in the comments, but it’s cheating if you click on the links). 

If you read the mainstream media, you would find it hard to believe that Trump has any chance of winning re-election in November. But then again, they had me utterly persuaded the same was true in 2016.

An Effective COVID Treatment the Media Continues to Besmirch By Steven Hatfill

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/04/an_effective_covid_treatment_the_media_continues_to_besmirch_143875.html

On Friday, July 31, in a column ostensibly dealing with health care “misinformation,” Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan opened by lambasting “fringe doctors spouting dangerous falsehoods about hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 wonder cure.”

Actually, it was Sullivan who was spouting dangerous falsehoods about this drug, something the Washington Post and much of the rest of the media have been doing for months. On May 15, the Post offered a stark warning to any Americans who may have taken hope in a possible therapy for COVID-19. In the newspaper’s telling, there was nothing unambiguous about the science — or the politics — of hydroxychloroquine: “Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus game-changer increasingly linked to deaths,” blared the headline. Written by three Post staff writers, the story asserted that the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 is scant and that the drug is inherently unsafe. This claim is nonsense.

Biased against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 — and the Washington Post is hardly alone — the paper described an April 21, 2020, drug study on U.S. Veterans Affairs patients hospitalized with the illness. It found a high death rate in patients taking the drug hydroxychloroquine. But this was a flawed study with a small sample, the main flaw being that the drug was given to the sickest patients who were already dying because of their age and severe pre-existing conditions. This study was quickly debunked. It had been posted on a non-peer-reviewed medical archive that specifically warns that studies posted on its website should not be reported in the media as established information.

Sharyl Attkisson :Investigative Issues: The Troubling Fact Is That Media Fact-Checkers Tend to Lean ← Left

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/0/04/investigative_issues_the_troubling_fact_that_media_fact-checkers_lean_left_124663.html

A growing response to today’s chaotic information landscape sounds inviting and elegantly simple: appoint experts to “fact-check” news stories, blogs, speeches, studies, opinions, and political ads. Information they deem to be false is corrected or even removed from public view, in the name of the public good.

Since Donald Trump’s election these “fact-checkers” have gained increased prominence. Pressure has mounted for news outfits and big tech companies – including Google, Facebook, and Twitter – to police political discourse. At the same time, many people, notably conservatives, are demanding that the tech giants back off such perceived censorship. Tensions on both sides were on display last week as a House Judiciary subcommittee grilled top Silicon Valley executives. 

That discord is likely to persist because in large part the fact-checking solution is illusory. Many such efforts fail because they amount to a circular feedback loop of verification. The fact-checkers are like-minded journalists or often liberal Silicon Valley gatekeepers, who frequently rely on partisan news sources and political activists to control narratives on a wide variety of issues and controversies. This small group of players exerts an oversized influence, using fact checks to shape and censor information.

Twitter recently sparked controversy by taking the unprecedented step of adding a disapproving “fact-checking label” to some of President Trump’s tweets. The social media site publicly explained that Trump’s May 26 posts contained what its fact-checkers deemed to be “potentially misleading information about voting processes.”

Trump had said widespread mail-in ballots in the 2020 election would be “substantially fraudulent.” While the definition of “substantially” is in the eye of the beholder, the United States, in fact, has a long and ongoing history of ballot fraud.