Fake News 24/7

At American Thinker, Peggy Ryan opens with a brief account of the alien invasion of New Jersey:

'War of the Words': A Global Media Production

On Sunday, October 30, 1938, thousands of radio listeners heard terrifying news: aliens had invaded New Jersey. 

From a New York Daily News article, October 31, 1938:

A radio dramatization of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" which thousands of people misunderstood as a news broadcast of a current catastrophe in New Jersey created almost unbelievable scenes of terror in New York, New Jersey, the South and as far west as San Francisco between 8 and 9 o'clock last night.  

Ridiculous, you say.  Why would people believe that aliens had invaded?  They believed because it was news.  Orson Welles's adaptation of the War of the Worlds novel used familiar, trusted devices to report the fictional attack — news bulletins, updates from live reporters on the ground.  He used actual government positions like New Jersey governor and secretary of interior and physical locations like Trenton, Mercer, and Princeton.  These positions and locations were all too familiar to those listening to the "news" updates — confirmation that the reports were real. 

Still, does hearing it on the news make it any less impossible?  Apparently, because thousands were convinced right up until they switched channels or heard the retraction.  But what would have happened if War of the Worlds had been on every channel, reported by all news outlets?  What if there'd never been a retraction?  Wouldn't millions have believed the impossible?

These lessons were not lost on power brokers around the world.  In the U.S. today, eight billionaires control our once free press, while their oligarch allies monopolize social media.  Their messages are not only uniform across all channels, but often repeated word for word.  And because it's every mainstream media channel, because nearly every social media site backs it up, fake news is the order of the day — fabricated stories, nonexistent sources, blatant propaganda presented as fact. 

So how could these information power brokers use this imperium?  Could the "news," say, take a story made from whole cloth, total fiction, and make it real, use it to damage and possibly remove a sitting president?  They could, and they did. 

Read the rest here;  Ms. Ryan explains how “They could, and they did” – and “they do” pretty much all the time.  Ms. Ryan seeks a remedy:

It falls to those who seek truth to help those who can't "judge" for themselves.  We must expose media as the enemy, be armed with facts from reliable sources, expose the lies, and reject the illusions.  It falls to us to educate others.

That’s a tall order.  Keep trying. 

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Woke vs. awoken

photo credit: foxnews

From guest blogger Pat:

Leo Terrell was woke but now he has awoken. He's not alone.

People are seeing the destruction wrought on major American cities by looters and rioters, led by Antifa shock troops armed with hammers, bear spray, blinding lasers, commercial fireworks, Molotov cocktails, and more while protected by shields, helmets, industrial quality gas masks and the ability to blend into a larger crowd of BLM protesters for protection. 

The MSM [mainstream media] support Antifa and BLM and hide from public view the violence committed by those radical groups. When Rep. Jim Jordan showed a video of the violence at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Congress, the MSM cut away. The head of the Committee, one Jerrold Nadler, flat out denied that the protests were anything but peaceful.

But, the MSM no longer has a monopoly on the news. Citizen journalists, bloggers, talk radio and even local TV channels are reporting on the destruction, which largely impacts poorer neighborhoods. The locals are figuring out that the white Antifa radicals that attacked their local supermarket, drugstore and police precinct are not fighting to improve their lives. Nor are the mobs that follow, under the umbrella of BLM, that loot and destroy these neighborhood foundations. 

BLM, Antifa and the MSM may be the woke darlings of today's Democrat party but they have awoken a silent coalition of all races and creeds that rejects divisive rhetoric and violence and wants a civil society restored. Despite the best efforts of the woke tech giants, it will be restored on November 4th, 2020.

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President Trump is FINISHED, according to the media

T'was the Night Before Election Day, and our favorite blogger, Sundance, has posted a short video (just over 3 minutes) that proves that President Trump is FINISHED!  At least according to the ever-breathless media. It would be hilariously funny if it were not so deranged:

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Media lies

Art credit: William DeBurgh at thedailycoin.org.

Some of the contributors to the American Thinker closely monitor the mainstream media, so you don’t have to. Here’s an extract from Timothy Philen’s “Trump vs. the Media”:

The jobs report numbers for May were stunning: unemployment dropped to an 18-year low of 3.8 percent, an unexpected 223,000 non-farm jobs were added, and year-on-year wage gains rose to 2.7 percent.  Black unemployment dropped to a record 5.9 percent, a month after Hispanic unemployment hit a record low of 4.9 percent.

The only thing more stunning was the mainstream media's announcement of this economic milestone, typified by NBC News's blaring headline: "Trump Breaks Protocol with Jobs Report Tweet."

It seems obvious now that we've reached a tipping point where the mainstream news media are so thoroughly intoxicated with animus toward this president that their journalistic sobriety is in a state of permanent collapse.  Evenhanded reporting is evidently seen as capitulation to the enemy.  Defending Trump in any way would, no doubt, be considered treasonous.

This isn't media bias anymore.  This is war.

. . .

[George] Will's highbrow jeremiads against President Trump delivered on cue to a smirking Lawrence O'Donnell or solemnly nodding Chuck Todd are hard to witness.  One almost expects him to hold up a copy of the day's newspaper to prove he's still an alive and happy hostage. 

It doesn't stop there.

The rest of this column is here.

Easter Egg Rolling at the White House

“A color-tinted magazine illustration of children 

being watched by their caretakers 

at an 1880s White House Easter Egg Roll. 

Source: whitehousehistory.org”

It was probably First Lady Dolley Madison who introduced the egg roll to Washington, DC.  A White House “frozen in time” page provides the history of the White House egg roll here.

The countdown to the Trump Administration's first Easter Egg Roll is here. (And if you do an online search, you will find the usual media carping about the 2017 White House Easter Egg Roll, from Vanity Fair wailing over how disorganized the administration is, to the NY Times reporting in its "Politics" section how behind the staff is in its planning, to claims that the Egg Roll was cancelled for this year. Is there anything the MSM won't use to try to discredit the Trump Administration?

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Transparency: the media's double standard

From the Fox News website: 

And the mainstream media is complaining today about the lack of transparency regarding Donald Trump's meeting today with the President Peña Neito of Mexico. 

A YouTube link to the Neito/Trump press conference is here. (Press conference starts around the 31:20 mark.)

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Coulter on Trump, Media, & Crooked Hillary

art credit: guerillagraphix.com

Coulter on Trump, Media, Crooked Hillary, 

Guns, and the Second Amendment

I run hot and cold on Ann Coulter, but her column yesterday at The Daily Caller -- on Trump, the Media, Crooked Hillary, and the Second Amendment blow-up -- made sense to me:

Even having predicted that the media’s attacks on Trump would be unprecedented, I’m still amazed. Every single news outlet is dedicated to hysterically denouncing Trump, every minute of every day, while cooing at Hillary.

Everything Hillary has ever touched has failed, been engulfed in scandal, resulted in massive investigations, litigation, financial ruin, prison or death. The final stage of any Hillary enterprise is a grand announcement that Hillary did not technically break the law. Or no one can prove she did. Or, even if she did, no one ever gets prosecuted for it.

She’s prone to coughing fits and lapses of memory in the middle of speeches, and falls down all the time. But that’s not nearly as important as the media’s manufactured story about Trump throwing a baby out of a rally!

. . .

The main story this week: The media’s psychotic claim that Trump called for Hillary’s assassination.

Trump said: “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Hmmm. What could Second Amendment people “do”? One thing they could do is what they did do — in 1994. That was the year gun rights supporters voted out dozens of Democrats who voted wrong on guns, ushering in the first Republican Congress in 40 years.

It’s been nearly a quarter century, and the Democrats are still so traumatized by their sweeping losses in 1994, that, even after Gabby Giffords was shot in Arizona, even after the Aurora movie theater shooting, even after the Sandy Hook massacre, Democrats refused to take up a gun bill in the U.S. Senate.

Apparently, the only news you’ll be getting from now until the election is the media’s own insane interpretation of every little thing Trump says or does. . . .There’s no way to phrase something so that it can’t be lied about.

. . .

There’s no strategy for overcoming this level of media hostility. Trump has made some mistakes during this campaign, but he hasn’t done anything wrong for months now. He could say “yes,” and the media would change the question to, “Are you a child molester?”

Just when you think it can't get any worse. . . .

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Media Mission: Destroy Donald Trump

art credit: pinterest

Jeffrey Lord is a regular contributor to The American Spectator blog, but more Tea Party people may recognize him as a regular panelist – often the only conservative – on CNN prime time news. He attended a recent Trump rally and published a piece exposing the utter dishonesty in the mainstream media. The following is an extract from NewsBusters:

The other night I spent some time with Donald Trump. He had come to Cumberland Valley High School in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, a mere five or so miles up the road from my house.

The Trump rally was filled - completely - with thousands inside and outside thousands more waiting (in vain) to get in the door. Here’s what interested.

Never once - not once - did I hear Donald Trump mention the Khans, the now famous parents of a son killed in battle in Iraq. Even more to the point? In talking with many people in the audience before and after the rally, no one - say again not a single soul - mentioned the Khans. What I did hear from Trump was talk about jobs, trade, the economy, ISIS and more. Which was the talk from members of the audience when I spoke to many of them before and after the rally. They volunteered directly to me, conversation after another, their thoughts about ObamaCare, a sick child, jobs, trade ,pride in America, Hillary and so on.

And yet? Mysteriously when I returned home and turned on the television or checked on-line it seemed to be all-Khan all-the-time. As if Trump had spent the evening re-hashing the whole subject yet again. Which he had not.

In my conversation with Donald Trump himself he was upbeat, every bit as enthusiastic as his audience. Yet what was the media take on the Trump campaign this week? Here’s ABC’s Jon Karl:

“I am told that senior officials at the party are actively exploring what would happen if Trump dropped out. How to replace him on the ballot.  They can’t force him out, he would have to go out voluntarily. And then it would be the 168 members of the RNC through a complicated process they would pick a new candidate.” 

Over here at Politico was this headline:

Insiders to Trump: Drop out

'I’d rather take our chances with nearly anyone else than continue with this certain loser who will likely cost the Senate and much more,' said a New Hampshire Republican.

This media jewel began this way:

“Amid widespread chatter that Donald Trump could drop out of the presidential race before Election Day, Republican insiders in key battleground states have a message for The Donald: Get out.”

And over here at The Washington Post was this: 

GOP reaches ‘new level of panic’ over Trump’s candidacy

“Turmoil in the Republican Party escalated Wednesday as party leaders, strategists and donors voiced increased alarm about the flailing state of Donald Trump’s candidacy and fears that the presidential nominee was damaging the party with an extraordinary week of self-inflicted mistakes, gratuitous attacks and missed opportunities.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was described as “very frustrated” with and deeply disturbed by Trump’s behavior over the past week, having run out of excuses to make on the nominee’s behalf to donors and other party leaders, according to multiple people familiar with the events.

Meanwhile, Trump’s top campaign advisers are struggling once again to instill discipline in their candidate, who has spent recent days lurching from one controversy to another while seemingly skipping chances to go on the offensive against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“A new level of panic hit the street,” said longtime operative Scott Reed, chief strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It’s time for a serious reset.”       Hours later Politico took note of the Trump announcement of his economic team - a team filled with seriously competent businessmen  with considerable experience in making the American economy work.  What did Politicosay? This: 

Trump unveils all-male economic advisory team

“Donald Trump's campaign on Friday announced more than a dozen members of the Republican nominee's all-male economic advisory team, including several prominent real-estate investors, hedge-fund managers and bankers.”

Then there was this from the Media Research Center: 

CNN's 'New Day' Airs Nearly 200 Times More Coverage On Trump Controversies Than Iran

“CNN set aside nearly half of its air time on Wednesday's New Day to various recent controversies involving the Trump campaign — 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 18 seconds over three hours. By contrast, the program clearly didn't think much of the Wall Street Journal's Tuesday revelation that the Obama administration secretly airlifted $400 million in cash to Iran. John Berman gave a 27-second news brief to the report, but didn't mention that the payment was sent on "an unmarked cargo plane" New Day, therefore, devoted over 187 times more coverage to Trump than to the millions to Iran.”

. . .

To the larger point.

Monday night at that Trump rally here in Pennsylvania, a rally I have described here in The American Spectator, Trump drew what was unarguably his most sustained applause when he said of his campaign: “the biggest problem is the media.” The audience erupted, applauding and cheering, with many turning - unasked by Trump - to the back of the room where the television cameras were perched on risers and booing repeatedly. Trump went on to say this:

These are among the most dishonest people you will ever, ever meet. These people — you know, I’ve had days where I have said, ‘Boy, this was a great day. I’ll look forward to seeing it tonight or tomorrow and it’s brutal.’ And I say, ‘What happened?’

We are going to punch through the media. We have to! The New York Times is totally dishonest. Totally dishonest. The Washington Post has been a little bit better lately but not good. By the way The New York Times, which is failing badly. I call it ‘The Failing New York Times.’ Every story that they write is a hit job. I could do the greatest thing in the history of the world. I could come up with a cure for the most horrible disease in the world and they give me a front-page horrible, horrible story. The New York Times is very dishonest but it will be out of business soon. I hope. It will be out of business. It will. Really dishonest reporters. Not all of them, but most of them.

There was more, with another attack on CNN. 

But the point here is very simple. Out and abroad in the land there are millions of Americans who feel intensely that “the media” - fill in an outlet of your choice in print, TV, radio and now the Internet - are out there with the sole object of destroying Donald Trump [emphasis added]. That the slightest misstep of Trump’s will be magnified and replayed over and over endlessly - while major events like the clear case of the Obama administration’s payment of $400 million in cash to ransom Iranian hostages are simply downplayed.

. . .

Buckle in. It is a long way to November. And everything including the kitchen sink is coming in Trump’s direction courtesy of the media.

Read more here.

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