Posted on 01/25/2019 6:32:43 AM PST by Kaslin
Is it true that Donald Trump's bad habits are contagious? Is it true that his Democratic opponents and, even more, his critics in the press are increasingly given to terminological inexactitudes, if not downright lies?
Sure looks like it. Last week, large parts of the press -- we're looking at you, CNN and MSNBC -- were gleefully reporting and commenting on the BuzzFeed story about President Trump having allegedly ordered his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to members of special prosecutor Robert Mueller's staff.
There were lots of smiles and (if we can use the word to describe liberals) smirks on their faces as they contemplated the ramifications. Some did note perfunctorily that the story was only noteworthy "if true." Others pointed out, accurately, that several conservative commentators opined that the charge would justify Trump's impeachment and removal from office.
The fun stopped suddenly last Friday night when a spokesman for Mueller's office said in a statement, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate."
Time to reprise all those 40-year-old Emily Litella riffs from "Saturday Night Live." In this case, the "never mind" moment came from CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. "The larger message that a lot of people are going to take from this story," he said to four glum panel members, "is that the news media are a bunch of leftist liars who are dying to get the president, and they're willing to lie to do it."
"I don't think that's true," he added, "but ... I just think this is a bad day for us. ... It reinforces every bad stereotype about the news media." Yup.
So does the media reaction the next day to a snippet of video, taken near the Lincoln Memorial after the March for Life, that shows Kentucky school students from Covington Catholic High School wearing red MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats and facing Omaha Indian elder Nathan Phillips. Multiple members of the media, including some notable conservatives, accused the students of behaving in a bigoted, disrespectful and threatening manner. There were calls for them to be expelled from school and doxxing attacks launched against their families. Student Nick Sandmann was mocked for the nervous smile ("smirk") he gave as Phillips banged his drum just short of his face.
More extensive video footage, covering nearly two hours at the memorial, told a different and opposite story. (The best accounts to date are two articles by Robby Soave in Reason magazine.) They made it clear that the Covington Catholic students were pummeled for an hour by vicious and racist comments ("crackers," "faggots," "pedophiles") from four or five black men calling themselves the Black Hebrew Israelites.
And they made it clear that amid the hubbub of the students singing school chants, it was Phillips who, rather than being surrounded by the students, approached them, banging loudly on a drum while making chants of his own. No one listening to the tape has publicly supported Phillips' claim that the students chanted, "Build the wall!"
Apologies came in from many, including conservatives but also some liberals who had contributed to the tweetstorm castigating the students. Many deleted their negative tweets. Others continued to insist that the students are bigoted oppressors.
The media responded, too, whether out of a desire to report accurately or to avoid a libel action. "Fuller Picture Emerges of Viral Video of Native American Man and Catholic Students," read the headline on a Sunday New York Times story.
American libel law requires actual malice, or reckless disregard of facts, by the media before a public figure can collect. But the students were not public figures as they gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to meet their bus, and the ready availability of exonerating videotape suggests that the first accusatory stories were rushed into print with reckless disregard of available facts. I sure wouldn't want to defend them before a Kentucky jury.
Anyone reading through the tweetstorms, especially of those who continue to vilify the Covington Catholic students, cannot help but be struck by the visceral and seething hatred of so many in the press for adolescents whose behavior was, at worst, a bit discourteous, but who are guilty of the offenses of being white, male, Catholic, pro-life and supportive of the current president.
Is this the behavior of a press that deserves to be respected and believed?
Riiight .. now pull the other one, Mike
not only no... but fk no!! js...
Agree 100%
Of course, the media never lied prior to the election of Donald Trump.
No.
They’re the little boy who cried wolf.
“Does the Media Deserve to Be Respected and Believed?”
The answer to the title question is an unequivocal YES!
I’ve run into two nitwits in my life that believe if it is printed it is the truth. Josef Goebbels and others in his profession have known this since the first first Gutenberg press.
Add to this the totally ignorant and the useful idiots and we now have people like obama getting second terms and Hitlery coming close to being elected.
My point is, nearly half of America believe the media deserves to be respected and believed.
Is this the behavior of a press that deserves to be respected and believed?
_________________________________________
Nope. It’s behavior that needs to be destroyed.
That ship has already sailed... many years ago. We all have experiences with the MSM and it has been clear to me for 30 years that the MSM has little desire to be objective. At each turn, I kept hoping that the MSM would right itself and it never happened. So, the answer is NO!
Well, if the lawyer for those Covington kids is serious, the media and celebrities are going to get a lesson that yes, there are consequences, hopefully bankrupting consequences, for behavior that has been going on for far too long.
If the media announced that today the sun rose in the east and the sky was clear and blue, I would not believe them without independent verification. That is how much I believe the media.
The easy answer is this, say you have 6 friends that you are supposed to trust to tell you the truth, and they lie to you all the time, about everything. Do you still trust a damn thing they say, and do you still keep them as friends?
No. Never has.
No.
I’ve always been of the opinion that the media and politicians are just people.
No better or worse than anyone else and subject to the same bias - often the term bias is just the way they hide blatant promotion and propaganda of their own views.
They deserve no more credence than any other person and in fact should be held to a higher standard since they are supposed to be holding to some type of journalistic code.
NO!!
Keep digging, media in particular and liberals in general. Sooner or later the hole will cave in on y’all.
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