There may come a day when we look back on the weekend of January 18-20, 2019 and say to ourselves: This is the moment that American finally woke up to the fact that we are, collectively, being played by the powers-that-be in the mainstream media.
Much of the country, of course, has already had that awakening. Much of the nation already knows that the media is more interested in driving clicks, selling subscriptions, and pumping up the ratings than getting the facts straight. Many voters are already aware that the media is filled with biased, obscenely-partisan “journalists” who now see themselves as left-wing activists moreso than objective reporters.
But if this reality is catching on slowly, a double-dose of disastrous stories this weekend may have put this awakening on a faster track than it was on previously.
First, there was the BuzzFeed News debacle. Eager to be the ones to “break open” the Trump/Russia scandal with the biggest scoop in modern history, the site’s reporters declined to do even a basic fact-check before running with the story. After informing the Mueller team that they were publishing a story that revealed that President Trump told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, the reporters got a “no comment” from the Special Counsel’s office and went to print. Immediately, the story was everywhere, and Democrats were chomping at the bit to tell the world that, oh yes, they were going to impeach the hell out of Donald J. Trump.
And then the sad trombone played, courtesy of Mueller. The Special Counsel’s office released a rare statement repudiating the story, saying it was almost “wholly inaccurate.” BuzzFeed’s bombshell was suddenly a big, fat dud, and the media had a whole omelet’s worth of egg on its collective face. It turns out that the BuzzFeed reporters didn’t bother to tell Mueller’s office the whole truth about their story. They didn’t just report that Michael Cohen was selling this narrative, they reported that Mueller had concrete proof – in the form of emails and other documents – that Trump told him to lie. Which was the only thing giving the story any credibility in the first place. Turns out, no such evidence exists. Or, at the very least, Mueller is denying that it does.
Either way, it was a bad day for truth in journalism.
But was it “shame, doxx, and ruin the life of a young Christian teenager” bad?
Apparently unconvinced that they’d fully informed the American people about just how sick, disgusting, and deceptive they were, the media jumped on the next story with full abandon. In it, they told us – without any regard for the facts – that a group of MAGA-hat wearing teens in Washington harassed and bullied elderly Native Americans for no reason other than racism and white supremacy. They ran a picture that appeared to tell the whole story. A smirking teen staring into the face of a humble Indian (who just happened to be a Vietnam veteran!) How awful. How monstrous. It’s Charlottesville 2.0.
And then the sad trombone played again, this time courtesy of additional video and witness testimony, all of which proved the early narrative incorrect. Turns out there were no “build the wall” chants. There was no harassment or bullying on the part of the Christian teenagers. These teens had one sin and one sin only: Supporting President Trump. For that sin, they were mocked by quasi-Black Power activists and confronted by a professional Native American activist by the name of Nathan Phillips. But, hey, since white Trump supporters can never, ever be the “victims” of People of Color, the media didn’t bother waiting for any of these facts to come out.
Trashing the President day in and day out is despicable enough, but at least Donald Trump is a grown man who put himself in a notoriously difficult spotlight. These teens in Washington did not deserve to become punching bags for the liberal press, especially when those punches were thrown blindly and without any regard for the truth.
Yes, these two abominable failures on the part of the media surely hastened the decline of the mainstream media. As one Republican congressman said, BuzzFeed “bruised the First Amendment” with their recklessness. We’d say the media did more than that with their attacks on the Covington Catholic boys. They may have driven the final nail into their own coffin.
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