Posted on 06/13/2021 3:26:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
No profession loves themselves like journalists love themselves. After all, they “write the first draft of history.” However, as with any writing, history gets its say as well, and story after story in that “first draft of history” is proving to be untrue. It’s enough to make you wonder if any story from the Presidency of Donald Trump will stand up to even basic scrutiny in a year?
People get things wrong – we’re people, after all, and wildly imperfect. But journalists have gotten so much wrong over the last 4 years it makes you wonder if they got anything right. You name the “scandal” some left-wing outlet reported between 2016 and today about the former President and you will see a story that not only strains credulity, but one that doesn’t stand up to basic fact-checking.
Here are a few examples of “bombshell” stories that had “the walls closing in” on Donald Trump that have completely collapsed the second anyone bothered to be the most basic of journalism on them:
Trump called dead Allied soldiers “losers.”
Russia “hacked” the 2016 election.
Trump ordered Georgia officials to “find votes.”
Hydroxychloroquine has no value and is basically poison that will kill people with COVID.
Trump ignored Russia putting bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.
COVID was not from a lab in Wuhan.
Trump ordered the teargassing of “peaceful protesters” so he could have a photo-op.
Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people.”
Donald Trump Jr. got early access to Wikileaks emails.
Russian collusion, etc., etc.
You name the story and the odds that it held up to simple research and reporting is about zero. It makes you wonder why the most basic of reporting wasn’t done before they hit the “publish” button.
The idea that President Trump or one of his “cronies” ordered police to violently attack and gas protesters in Lafayette Square outside the White House so he could have his picture taken holding a bible in front of St. John’s Church was gospel fact with the media for a year. You name the liberal outlet and they had a story declaring it to be so. Now we know the truth.
The Inspector General of the Interior Department, after a thorough investigation, discovered that the United States Park Police ordered the clearing of the park to erect barricades in an attempt to prevent more violence from the mob, who’d spent the previous days attempting to rip down statues and had set fire to the church. The White House had nothing to do with that decision, taking advantage of it for the defiant picture only after it had learned the area was being secured.
Not one single reporter bothered to investigate the allegation, it just had to be true and so it was declared such. Not just on that day, but in the 365 days that followed. The narrative was fact until someone who isn’t a journalist bothered to investigate the facts, then the story fell apart.
It tells you something important about journalism that none of its practitioners felt the need to engage in it for a year on this story. The New York Times and Washington Post created “reconstructions” of the events in its aftermath, which gave the impression journalism had taken place, but it hadn’t. Narrative, established under the guise of “Orange Man Bad,” was simply repeated as truth because the people typing it up wanted it to be true.
That was the media business model of the Trump years – report first, do journalism later, if ever.
There was no journalism in the Lafayette Square story. The extent to which any questions were asked of officials was minimal and every denial, which turned out to be true, was dismissed out of hand.
Under normal circumstances, or any semblance of journalistic integrity and ethics, reporters who’d gotten the story so wrong would either be fired or suspended for failure to do their jobs. Trump Derangement Syndrome has so rotted that profession that original (and wrong) stories aren’t even issued corrections, not that it would do any good a year later.
Every anonymously sourced story, every “scandal,” deserves relentless scrutiny in general. But when so many, if not all of them related to the Trump Presidency, not only haven’t been confirmed by anyone on the record or by documentation, it makes you wonder if anything reported in the last 4 years was true. The Washington Post famously kept a running total of “Trump lies” on their website. As it turns out, their website, and the websites of their fellow “news” outlets were the biggest lies of them all.
But journalists have gotten so much wrong, it has nothing to do with wrong!
Three words: Julius Streicher Therapy.
Question os “Will Any Anti-Trump Story Hold Up?”
Why would it matter if it did....the game will still be played the Dems are playing regarding Trump....media and propaganda. They don’t care if he’s proven right or wrong they just want to create doubt and make him unstable in the fight.
Will Any Anti-Trump Story Hold Up?>>>>>>>>>>
My favorite response to this question, posed many times over the last 6 years:
” Trump Screwed my Irish Setter!”
CALL PETA TODAY!
As in what happens to any “first draft”, the “first draft of history” is ripped up and rewritten in the light of subsequent findings and authoritative debunking of wrong original conclusions. But as is stated elsewhere, first impressions are often the most remembered, and people end believing in so much that just is not so.
They lie by commission, such as the Lafayette Park story.
They lie even more by omission. Some of these include:
1. By 2019, the best economy in 30+ years.
2. By 2019, the best unemployment for minorities ever.
3. Israel peace accords with UAE and others.
4. Building the wall.
5. Exoneration from Russia probe.
I would say there was little if anything said on these and other stories.
Look at the lack of coverage of the Arizona audit.
Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine the 2020 election went completely in reverse. Joe Biden was well ahead on election night until certain key states, including Ca., shut down for the night. The next morning hundreds of thousands of votes were found, putting Trump over the top and in the WH.
Now a forensic audit is happening in Ca. Would the media ignore it/downplay it/belittle it like they are doing in Az. now? I think not.
The lies are meant to damage a person and win elections.
Truth is irrelevant.
They lied about Bush non-stop. If not for a bumbling moron John Kerry, they would have kept Bush to one term as well via their lies.
We are living under communism with a communist party calling the shots and Pravda following orders to disinform voters accordingly.
He forgot to list two more big ones:
The lie that President Trump engaged in an illegal quid pro quo with Ukraine to get them to investigate Biden and Hunter’s role in Burisima. Not only did he not do so, Biden in fact did. Openly. He bragged about it on camera. Yes, the very thing Trump was impeached for.
The lie that President Trump was “responsible” for an “insurrection” on January 6. Firstly Trump quite clearly said “peaceful protest”. Secondly, there was obviously no “insurrection”. The one person they tried to claim who died at the hands of protestors, officer Sicknik, died of natural causes (a stroke) a day or two later. The only person who was violently murdered was Trump supporter Ashli Babbit who was unarmed. In fact, police recovered a grand total of ZERO firearms from the protestors. ZERO.
The corporate media is nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Democrat party.
You don’t even have to be a Trump supporter to see that.
You only have to be intellectually honest.
The biggest lie of omission of all - The Biden crime family. Not only do they refuse to report on it, but the Big Tech/Corporate Media cabal actively censors it. Witness them simply refusing to report about Hunter’s laptop and the damning evidence of corruption on the part of Joe Biden that it contains.
What? That Irish Setter response just flew over my head. lol!
No, they got it right every time. Because they were and still are following their anti American agenda. They piss on our legs daily while proclaiming that’s it’s a gentle spring rain.
Like Mean Girls the Mean Media just makes up stuff about people they don’t like.
Really? What about actors? What about lawyers? It’s a tough call.
“The earlier a tumor is treated, the better the likelihood of a cure.”
You’re right about that.
It’s odd that here in America (birthplace of Pragmatism) no single test for truth based on fact or efficacy has been applied to these incessant Liberal allegations.
It’s like the US media and the Congress have a 5 mile wide blind-spot for anything that even smells like the truth!
At the same time, you have to practically jump through your own rectum to find any factual ‘reporting’ about Liberal crimes...and even then, you wont !!
Not ever again.
By shooting him, they made him an eternal martyr and hero.
democrat is a mental disorder
Doesn’t matter how many lies they told. In the end they got what they wanted - Trump gone. To them the means justified the end.
"Journalism" has performed like this for.....always. For example, anyone remember those 32 awful NYers that watched from their windows as Kitty Genovese was attacked and killed as was reported by the NYTimes? That "fact" lasted a lot longer than 365 days. Some people STILL believe that!
"You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war."...W. R. Hearst
There will always be a significant percentage of the population who will believe anything against Trump regardless of the evidence to the contrary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.