...the 1st amendment declares the right of WE THE PEOPLE to contradict your master's ERRORS, and the 2nd protects that right.
Your job is to provide ALL the facts - not to decide which facts WE should learn and what WE should do in response. Clear?
Posted on 12/04/2017 11:14:47 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
If you tried to keep abreast of the news this weekend by reading the New York Times, watching ABC News, or following well-regarded veteran reporters on Twitter, you would have been led astray as badly as if you had followed a couple of guys working out of a coffee shop in Moldova.
Relying on the supposedly respectable news media would have left you believing that the FBI found President Trump urging national security adviser Michael Flynn to contact Russia during the campaign (it didn’t), that Trump national security aide K.T. McFarland wrote that Russia threw the election to Trump (she didn’t), and that Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, blasted sick, poor children as slackers (he didn’t).
These false or misleading stories, all of which, not coincidentally, disparaged Republicans, were parroted and retweeted and broadcast by countless reporters before being completely debunked. Countless readers and viewers still don't realize that the stories produced by this sloppy reporting are false. Or "fake," to borrow a phrase.
The costlier result is that no adult who cares for accuracy and honesty can take reports from these august outlets at face value without serous fact-checking.
Media sloppiness last weekend, which was extraordinary for both its low quality and its high volume, buttresses even Trump’s most outlandish claims. The public is concerned that Trump is convincing many people, particularly among his base voters, that news media are staffed with liars. That isn't true, but far too many media outlets have sacrificed their arduously won integrity in the delusional belief that today's circumstances has produced a uniquely appalling situation in which their primary role must be to hound the elected government.
Three stories showed this weekend that it is impossible to trust the many news media when they report damning things about Republicans.
Brian Ross of ABC News reported on Friday that Flynn was prepared to testify that Trump instructed him to contact Russians during the campaign. This story, which brought a look of feral joy to the face of the left-wing resistance, would, if true, prove many of Trump's pronouncements to have been false, and would have been a much-needed injection of credibility to the case of collusion against Team Trump. But, once the lie had spread around the world, the truth got its boots on and ABC had to retract the story as utterly false. Trump had told Flynn to contact the Russians during the transition, after he was elected, and it would have been a dereliction of his duty as incoming president if he had not done so. ABC suspended Ross for four weeks without pay. But, given the scale of TV money, this is no more than an unpaid vacation.
But this news catastrophe didn't make others extra cautious. The media smash-up continued.
On Saturday, the New York Times quoted a leaked email written by McFarland, a Trump adviser and former deputy national security director. The Times writers doctored the end of the email, mentioning Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to” Trump. The reporters expressed agnosticism on whether McFarland was admitting Russia swung the election or whether she was merely characterizing an opinion held by former President Barack Obama.
It was obvious to any fair-minded reader that it was the latter. But nearly every reporter who tweeted out this passage excluded even the Times’ weak agnosticism as to the words' meaning. The effect was totally to misrepresent the words of a Trump adviser in a way that condemned Trump and confirmed the #resistance's fever dreams.
Only hours later was the entire email made public, allowing the reading public to appreciate the depth of media mendacity.
And even this did not chasten major news outlets, several of whom on Sunday misled their customers about the meaning of comments from Sen. Hatch. Hatch condemned federal waste that makes it harder for Washington to afford worthy programs, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Reporters claimed Hatch was calling sick, poor kids lazy and entitled.
Professional skepticism was absent. News media misreported stories in one direction, much as when all the mistakes in a cheat's tax return, oddly, tend to reduce what he owes. In other words, every major "mistake" in the weekend's reporting tended to confirm what biased, left-liberal reporters already believe or affect to believe: Trump and Russia colluded to cheat voters out of getting the president they wanted, McFarland is incompetent, and Republican senators hate the poor.
These biases and the inability of reporters to suppress them long enough to do a good job, prompts proper public doubt about everything the national news media say. This is bad. It's very bad.
The press is in the First Amendment because it — we — are needed to hold the powerful to account. We can’t do that if the people don’t trust us. After this weekend, asking the people to trust the press is a lot harder.
The public is concerned that Trump is convincing many people, particularly among his base voters, that news media are staffed with liars. That isn't true...Actually, it IS true.
Why is it so hard to admit?
...the 1st amendment declares the right of WE THE PEOPLE to contradict your master's ERRORS, and the 2nd protects that right.
Your job is to provide ALL the facts - not to decide which facts WE should learn and what WE should do in response. Clear?
Democracy died the day Hillary and crew decided to not accept the results of the election. Just as the republic died the day the South decided not to accept the results of the election(We’ve been a democratic empire since then).
When this is all said and done we won’t have the existing system running things. We’ll either have crazed Bolsheviks running the US government and murdering the population or we’ll have a Ceasar or a Sulla running the government while slaughtering the Bolsheviks. Trump’s more of a Cincinnatus type figure, a good man desperately trying to save the republic.
History does not repeat itself. The outcome is not set but I think Trump’s odds of saving the republic are not great.
The First Amendment gives the People the right to a free press. It is laudable to use that right to hold the powerful to account, but that also applies to a "press" that has become too powerful to control.
Therefore, other "press" like FreeRepublic must hold the MSM to account, too.
-PJ
Great minds think alike.
I was going to copy the same quote, and ask the writer to PROVE they were not all liars.
Actually, no. The intention of the framers was to bar CONGRESS from making any law ... respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Our general government employs no masters as you called our elected officials. The constitution authorizes a form of government that employs servants to carry out its duties and responsibilities on behalf of its masters, the states and the people, respectively.
The second amendment exists to keep the states and the people as the ultimate check against a servant government from becoming a tyrannical one. The people are the ultimate guardians of their security, freedom and natural rights.
The people have the responsibility to keep government honest and accountable through the election, petition and litigation processes... and the duty to always question governments authority... and to NEVER trust its intensions.
And then they behave as if they haven’t a clue why people think they are fakenews. Its because the have reporting standards lower than the national enquirer and bordering on what used to only make it to the weekly world news.
The MSM is the Country’s greatest threat. Parent companies: Disney, Comcast, and now AT&T.
The key fact about the MSM is not that it is stuffed with liars, it is owned (and therefore managed) by propagandists whose goal is to influence, and if possible, control public opinion and policy by any means necessary.
That is much more serious than simple lying.
That is raw evil.
I disagree - the new media IS obviously staffed with liars.
The fact that the media was totally lacking any skepticism through the eight years of Obama really did a lot to damage their credibility in my mind. Contrast that with the 24/7 nail biting over Trump. The bias has become pretty obvious to more and more people.
Rush is right.
These people wake up in the morning looking for the story they can uncover that will bring this President down.
They get glassy eyed at the prospects .
Ok , slant the truth a little if it will result in that Pulitzer Prize.
The key liberal leftists (Democrats, advocates, etc.) in this country can NOT be allowed to die of old age before they to prison for the rest of their lives. It must happen.
>>that news media are staffed with liars. That isn’t true,
But it is true. Every single person who identifies as Progressive is a liar, because Progressive is a euphemism for Communism-by-gradual-change, or as they call it, the “nudge”. Everything they write and say is a lie designed to move the ball forward an inch or two. That means every story has to have a spin that advances the agenda. If mere spin is not enough, and it usually is not, then you make up a narrative that uses some of the facts. So they lie and if you lie, then you are a liar.
The only Progressives who are not liars are the Useful Idiots who truly do not know what they believe in. Of course, they exist because of the liars in the media and academia who lied to them.
The public is concerned that Trump is convincing many people, particularly among his base voters, that news media are staffed with liars. That isn’t true,...”
Dude, read your own article...
These reporters are on their way to delivering Trump. People who favored Hillary but aren’t otherwise very ideological are beginning to notice the CRAZY in the press and Dem party, based on comments Ive been hearing lately.
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