News media guilty as charged!
In the most thorough accounting yet, the Columbia Journalism Review, that liberal-leaning arbiter of news reportage, indicts the mainstream news media for malpractice in taking Hillary Clinton’s bait and running with the Russian Collusion Hoax despite more red flags than a May Day parade.
Result: The US news media has the lowest credibility — 26 percent — among forty-six nations, according to a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. The CJR piece is especially hard on an unrepentant New York Times. That publication was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its mishandling of the story. The Prize is administered by Columbia University.
Ironically, CJR is an imprint of the Columbia journalism school. Its exposé suggests that the media’s news fakery fed Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Denialism and led to the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021. It quotes Gerard Baker, editor-at-large at the Wall Street Journal, saying he found the performance by the media in the Trump-Russia saga:
“To be among the most disturbing, dishonest, and tendentious I’ve ever seen.”
We present excerpts from the 24,000-word report; it deserves your full reading.
Clinton and her campaign would secretly sponsor and publicly promote an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that there was a secret alliance between Trump and Russia. … By late October, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee had obtained banking records showing Fusion’s client for the dossier was Marc Elias, the lawyer for the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
As Trump prepared to take office, the possibility of another Watergate was on the mind of some reporters, several journalists told me, intensifying the competition. “There was a feeding frenzy to try and be first with the story.”
“We are unaware,” Peter Strzok wrote, “of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.”
Devin Nunes, then the Republican chairman of the House intelligence panel, repeatedly reached out to reporters to try and knock it down, noting his investigation, which included access to FBI and other intelligence material, had seen no such evidence as cited by the NY Times. But reporters were skeptical.
On March 20, James Comey appeared before the House Intelligence Committee and gave official blessing to the collusion narrative running rampant in the media.
Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat, read an opening statement in which he quoted from the dossier’s unsubstantiated allegation about Carter Page … The California Democrat would go on MSNBC two days later to state that there was “more than circumstantial evidence now” of collusion. He offered no substantiation. Schiff declined to comment [to the CJR].
A few days later, a prize-winning journalist writing for the New Yorker, Jane Mayer, … went on Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC to note how the dossier “was looking better and better every day, more and more credible.”
Congressional Democrats saw Mueller’s report, specifically the second volume on possible obstruction of justice, as a template to impeach the president. … They decided to push a reluctant Mueller to come testify himself, hoping he might help make their case. … [but] “Mueller declines to back them up.”
The following morning, less than eighteen hours after Mueller left the congressional hearing, a more confident Trump had his phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in which he asked him for help in digging up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden. … that turned out to be the impeachment vehicle Democrats so desperately wanted after Mueller’s far-from-perfect performance. A new media frenzy was about to begin.
Reporters who ferreted out the details of the FBI inquiry into Trump’s campaign couldn’t, or wouldn’t, confirm the Justice Department investigation into the future president’s son. … James Clapper, Obama’s former head of national intelligence, told CNN, where he is a national-security analyst, that the laptop saga “is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work.” … Adam Schiff went on CNN to claim “the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin.” a group of more than fifty former intelligence and national-security officials were preparing a statement linking the laptop story to Russia, saying it “has all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information operation.”
After the election, Trump refused to acknowledge the results, seeing them as the latest chapter in the “hoax,” or “witch hunt,” that began with Russia.
→ For further study: “The NY Times deceitful Russiagate coverage.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Columbia Journalism Review‘s own Pulitzer-worthy accounting makes the case that mainstream journalism and its incestuous relationship with the Democrat(ic) party helped create Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, and January 6.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
If there is ever to be a real insurrection it should be directed at the “hallowed halls” of all the main stream media organizations and all the talking heads who complicitly went along with whatever the Democrats wanted. They still do.
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is fox included in your rant?
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Just glad the Trump spy balloon was finally shot down.
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In reality it was from NK and full of love letters from Un.
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Let not your heart be burdened; DementiaJoKe’s ON IT!
The Gotch
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To Democrats I would say, presenting you with facts will only make it true to you if those facts agree with what you already believe.
To the media I offer–
There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. — Buddha (6th century BCE “Mr Obvious”)
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“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.”
The Gotch’ll see that, and raise you:
“A Person Often Meets His Destiny On The Road He Took To Avoid It.” ― Jean de La Fontaine.
The Gotch
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Amazing how these revelations from the Left come out only long after the damage has been done (i.e., goals achieved).
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For the life of me, I cannot understand why the New York Times and the Washington Post are not forced — in the name of any concept of honor they may have left — to forfeit the Pulitzer for the “Russia hoax” coverage.
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Not that anyone with synaptic connectivity needs any OTHER REASONS to despise the detestably despicable, supremely arrogant NYT, give a read to a 11/10/2016 post-apocalypse EPIC BEATDOWN by former editor Michael Cieply:
Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some “SOUL SEARCHING”
Money Quote: “(Cieply’s) bigger shock came on being told, AT LEAST TWICE, by Times editors who were describing the paper’s daily Page One meeting: “WE SET THE AGENDA FOR THE COUNTRY IN THAT ROOM.” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
Hypocrisy; thy name is Lefty!
The Gotch
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Isn’t it funny that all the press and government tell us turns out to be false. Back in my younger days during the Vietnam era we had a saying that I think should come back today. “QUESTION AUTHORITY”
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Far as I can tell, there’s been no coverage of the CJR study by either the NYT or NBC evening news (I don’t generally watch other broadcast, or cable, news). I suspect that that portion of the country that relies on those outlets for news will simply not know that the whole fricking thing was a hoax orchestrated by the Clintons. Or that they’ve been played for fools by those outlets.
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David,
What a great piece. Thank you for the great read and the great link. In reading this, I found another link that you and others may be interested in.
Here it is: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691134802/liberty-and-the-news
Thanks again.
Bill
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How the New York Times is still considered a paper of record is baffling to me. They’ve shown countless times that they’re willing to create their own truth whenever it suits them, facts be damned. Consider the following instances:
– The Russia collusion hoax, as detailed in this post by our host
– Supporting, funding, and publishing the stinking pile of BS that is the 1619 Project, despite real experts on its material saying that its central tenets are preposterous
– Covertly changing some of the language in the 1619 Project so that it doesn’t look as bad in the face of scrutiny while hoping the readers don’t notice or care
– Running the Althea Bernstein story when it broke and then removing all traces of it when it turned out it was a hoax
– Portraying Amy Cooper (aka Central Park Karen) as a white-privileged racist so she could be subjected to mob justice and forced to flee the country and go into hiding, despite real investigative journalism showing that she was indeed threatened by a black man who had prior history of it
– Retracting an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton when he suggested using the military to restore order in cities ravaged by race riots if local law enforcement couldn’t or wouldn’t, under the guise that it encouraged violence against “protesters”
– Running round-the-clock coverage on Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegations against then Judge (and now Justice) Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing in an attempt to convict him in the court of public opinion, despite there being zero evidence of anything she accused him of
I occasionally have political debates with left-leaning friends and family, and when they say “Well, my information comes from the New York Times!”, I have to choke back laughter. Fortunately, there is a trend of moderates and conservatives abandoning the NYT and their ilk in favor of more even-handed independent journalists, causing a slow death of large leftist legacy print media, and I am loving every minute of it. If the notion that leftist activism being more important than truth or objectivity is a hill on which they’re willing to die, let them.
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Anyone who cites the NYT suffers from a Learning Disorder: Congenital STOOPIDITY!
The September 2019 NYT treatment of the cautionary tale of VA 6th grade Amari Allen deserves mention; cautionary because it NEVER HAPPENED
See if you can detect the subtle differences:
A) Pre-Debunked-Hoax NYT headline: Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks on Playground
B) Post-Debunked-Hoax NYT headline: Virginia Girl Recants Story of Boys Cutting Off her Dreadlocks
Despicably detestable Lefties!
The Gotch
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One more thought on this subject. When was the last time you took a class that taught you “how to think” and not “what to think”?
I can only think of the (1) class I took in high school that taught me “how to think”. All the others taught me “what to think”.
The only way I learned “how to think” was my father. He would sit us down at the supper table and when we would make a statement about a subject, he would ask us “why” we thought that way. What evidence, what hard facts, what research had we done on the subject we were opining about.
A big shout out to my Dad and Mr. B who taught me “how to think”.
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I learned the value of questioning authority at a young age, although I was more rebellious in thought instead of actions. Got taught how to think (and how to spot BS in an argument) by a couple English classes in high school. Unfortunately, there were a couple more that tried to tell me what to think but it didn’t really take, especially when personal experience told me otherwise. College helped immensely as well, especially a couple philosophy courses, but this was when most instructors encouraged free thought instead of stomping on it.
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“Critical Thinking” isn’t taught in schools or universities anymore. Just repeat the propaganda from whatever side.
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It’s been replaced by “Astrological Immersion”. Just ask Aarron how to get your tickets.
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