Mass media lies: From outright fake news, to declaring 'fairness is overrated' to 'doggy doo' reporting, the MSM racing each other to find rock bottom
By victort1 // 2021-04-06
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I almost miss the days when the media was obsessing over everything Donald Trump did, said, or even how many scoops of ice cream he liked to eat with his pie, and lying about it all blatantly, because watching their death spiral just months after losing their "golden goose," overwhelmingly shows they still haven't quite hit rock bottom yet, but they're trying really hard to find it. (Article by Susan Duclos republished from AllNewsPipeline.com) And...they are in a race as to who can find it first! It is actually painful to watch. The good news is the American people are also watching and the trust in the media and confidence levels are continuing to fall to new lows. The MSM powers that be obviously thought that without Donald Trump in the White House they would have free reign to push all the fake news they wanted in order to help Sleepy Joe, because face it, Joe isn't exactly doing very well on his own. Stuttering, bumbling, falling on camera, and listening to his puppet masters has not worked so well for him, so the MSM has taken on the role of "Protect Joe Biden at all costs," which is proving to be much more a challenge than "Attack Donald Trump at all costs." Below we will go over the less-than-stellar content decisions from the MSM.
MSM TALKING HEAD LESTER HOLT: 'FAIRNESS IS OVERRATED' Let us take a look at some of the media antics this past week, which includes one well-known TV pundit claiming that "fairness is overrated" and that "the idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in."
I am pretty sure that is so not part of the description from the Society Of Professional Journalists. Here are a few of the rules that apply from the SPJ: •  Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant. •  Never deliberately distort facts or context, including visual information. Clearly label illustrations and re-enactments. Balance and fairness are also the cornerstone of "professional" journalism, especially those paid a small fortune to represent a major news outlet....or it was. I put the word professional in quotes because mainstream media outs have billions of dollars behind them, and they claim to be fair and balanced, versus liberal or conservative websites not affiliated with a major news organization, that make their bias and angle clear. Such as: All News PipeLine provides news from a conservative angle. We have no problem stating that clearly because we see so much mainstream liberal news reporting, we offer an overall balance by refusing to follow the "preferred narrative" of Democrats/Media. Via ONA Ethics:
Balance and fairness are classic buzzwords of journalism ethics: In objective journalism, stories must be balanced in the sense of attempting to present all sides of a story. Fairness means that a journalist should strive for accuracy and truth in reporting, and not slant a story so a reader draws the reporter’s desired conclusion. 
Despite being a conservative website, we still allow all opinions, even those we disagree with vehemently in our comment sections, because sites that only allow one opinion, or that dumped their comment sections so that other opinions cannot be seen on their websites, are acting no better than the MSM that refuses to address both sides of an argument, especially a political argument. It is called free speech and many, even some on the right side of the political aisle, needs to re-learn the concept, in my opinion. Ok, rant over, moving along now.
JOURNOS ATTACK, THEN PLAY THE VICTIM CARD Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been doing an exemplary job in holding the media accountable, recently wrote "Powerful media figures now invoke sexist and racist tropes to cast themselves as so fragile and marginalized that critiques of their work constitute bullying and assault."
On Sunday, the paper published and heavily promoted a repellent article complaining that “defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network of fundraising platforms, despite a crackdown by tech companies.” It provided a road map for snitching on how these private citizens — who are charged with serious felonies by the U.S. Justice Department but as of yet convicted of nothing — are engaged in “a game of cat-and-mouse as they spring from one fundraising tool to another” in order to avoid bans on their ability to raise desperately needed funds to pay their criminal lawyers to mount a vigorous defense. In other words, the only purpose of the article — headlined: “Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online” — was to pressure and shame tech companies to do more to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online.
Greenwald then provides more examples showing how the media is literally going after private citizens. The more interesting part of this article is how Greenwald highlights that when the media pundit is called out for their "enemy of the people" reporting, they start wailing that are the victim and are being attacked. Cue the tears. Here is how it happened:
Sunday’s USA Today article which tried to destroy the ability of these criminal defendants to raise donations for their legal fees contained the names of three journalists in its byline. The lead reporter — the one who the paper’s editors put first, Brenna Smith — took to Twitter to boast of this monumental journalistic exposé. After I saw several commenters criticizing the story, I added my own critiques of this story:
Greenwald tweeted in response to her sharing a story that she has the main byline, her name being listed first: "Congratulations on using your new journalistic platform to try to pressure tech companies to terminate the ability of impoverished criminal defendants to raise money for their legal defense from online donations. You're well on your way upward in this industry for sure."
From the reactions on social media, once would have thought Greenwald tried to kill the woman.
So they insist that by simply criticizing her and her co-writer who is a male ( I don't really care what he 'identifies" as), that he is leading people to "threaten her life." You just can't make this stuff up.
My criticism of Carless, a white straight male listed last on the byline, attracted no criticism for some reason. But my criticism of Smith, the lead reporter, caused such an explosion of indignation and rage from the corporate media class that it caused my name to trend on Twitter (yet again) as a dastardly online villain: that’s how grave my moral transgression was. What was my moral offense here? According to these media mavens and the self-serving, manipulative framework they are trying to implant, I did not voice criticisms of a piece of journalism in one of the most influential newspapers in the country. Instead — in their hands — they converted it, just as they did with criticisms of Lorenz, into a narrative in which I bullied a poor, fragile, young lady who is too weak and too vulnerable to handle public critique. They emphasized that she is just an intern: in their eyes the equivalent of a high school junior — even though she has a long history of writing deranged articles for the U.S.-Government-funded Bellingcat and was, at least in the view of her editors, competent and professional enough to be the lead reporter on what they treated as a major news story designed to harm the lives of numerous private citizens. If she is “merely an intern,” then why is she listed as the lead reporter on a major news story? And if her editors determine that she is capable of fulfilling that role, then you can’t simultaneously demand she be treated like a young debutante off-limits from critique.
The lengthy piece is well worth the read, but Glenn's conclusion gets straight to the bottom line:
This lowly tactic will succeed only if people are cowed and intimidated by it. It will fail, as it should, if people ignore it and treat them like any other power centers by freely expressing the criticisms you think their journalism merits regardless of what names they call you as a result.
In today's world it appears that the media seems to think they can attack private citizens, harass them, lie, push fake news, be activists for one political party, but if one dares criticize them for it, it is "endangering" and "targeting" them, rather than just calling them out for their own actions. I don't always agree with Greenwald on his liberal social views and politics, but he has been a leading voice in trying to hold the media accountable, to the point where a site he co-founded censored his writing of a Hunter Biden piece before the election, so he walked away. Related: Glenn Greenwald quits The Intercept over ‘censorship’ of Hunter Biden article Lesson for Greenwald here: Never give anyone the power to censor you on your own website...because they will.
DOES ANYONE CARE THAT BIDEN'S DOG POOPED IN THE HALLWAY? My answer would have been a resounding no to this question, just last week, but apparently writers are the Associated Press (AP) thought it newsworthy that one of Joe Biden's dogs pooped in the hallway at the White House. They titled their piece: "Ruh roh! Biden pooch drops doggie doo in White House hallway."
Reporters accompanying Jill Biden on a trip to California spotted the brown stuff on the red-carpeted hallway as they waited just inside the mansion to be escorted to the first lady's motorcade.
To the AP this was worthy of an article. I don't even know what to say to this fluff "reporting." When Trump was in office, no one cared for fluff piece, even the ice cream idiocy was to criticize how Trump got two scoops while others got one scoop, so they were using it to attack. Between softball questions, and protecting Biden from reality, the media has taken to defending him on a daily basis. CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE While this next example personifies everything wrong with the mainstream media in this day and age, it also shows that some media writers try to fix their mistakes, even if the original mistake was part of the "fake news" parroted throughout the industry. The Georgia election laws just passed has Democrats and the media (same thing, I know!) rushed to convince Americans that it would "suppress" votes, and limit opportunities for voters. Everyone is mimicking the preferred narrative, including Joe Biden, but someone at the Atlanta Journal Constitution must have run across the truth and decided to offer a correction to their story:
Granted, corrections and/or edits to stories never get the same play as the original inaccurate news because not many would think to check back on a story they already read and believed,  to even see the correction, but at least they did correct it, while other media outlets are still spewing nonsense about the law. Of course had they read the bill before writing about it, this wouldn't have been an issue to begin with. Related: This Is How You Do It: Fox Corrects Liberal Media's Lies on Georgia Voting Law BOTTOM LINE For over five years we believed the media could not go any lower than their disastrous reporting during the Trump administration, but unfortunately we have to admit we were wrong. Not only could they get worse, they have. It appears that they are in a race to see who can hit rock bottom the fastest.
Read more at: AllNewsPipeline.com and MediaFactWatch.com.
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