Fake News Propaganda – a Case Study

art credit: Henry Payne cartoon at Townhall 

Happy New Year! I’m starting off 2018 with a close-up look at how the media manufactures Fake News.

Frank Miele publishes news commentary in the Daily Inter Lake, a Montana newspaper. On Dec. 30, he ran an editorial about an AP wire report, the misinformation it contained, and his subsequent efforts to wrench a correction out of the AP higher-ups (h/t Thomas Lifson). It is a bit of a read, but I am linking to it, because it provides a look inside a newsroom and how “Fake News” gets so widely disseminated. It is also a classic illustration of Trump Derangement Syndrome infecting the media pushing progressive propaganda. The Russian Collusion phony baloney is starting to collapse of its own weight, and Miele’s report is related to that, insofar as Andrew McCabe is one of the cast of characters at the FBI. Miele’s report starts off:

I took a rare shift as news editor last Saturday, which gave me an unexpected chance to put my finger in the dike holding back the flood of fake news caused by those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. 

As I was sifting through the Associated Press news report looking for wire stories worth putting into the Sunday paper, one story on the news digest caught my attention right away: “President Donald Trump reacts to reports about the retirement of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by retweeting falsehoods about McCabe’s wife.” 

“Oh no,” I thought. “What has Trump done now?” Because even though I am a Trump supporter, I’ve learned that Twitter can be a cause of trouble in the Trump administration as well as a frequent force for good.

But when I looked up the story, I discovered that my worries were unfounded. So, unfortunately, was the story.

When I read AP reporter Darlene Superville’s story, it was immediately obvious that she had either misunderstood Trump’s tweet or intentionally lied about it. She also plainly didn’t know the meaning of the verb “retweet,” since Trump had tweeted an original statement, not a quoted one.

Getting to the truth will take a bit of context, so here goes . . .

And he goes on from there in some detail. He eventually gets a correction from the AP, but here’s his conclusion, and one which I will put in my mental file for the next time I have a conversation with a liberal on media propaganda:

It was a small step, but an important one. Yes, I felt like the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike to stop the floodwaters, but it may be a hollow victory in the war on fake news. I have to wonder about all those hundreds of editors who put the same erroneous story in their newspapers or websites last weekend without question. Didn’t anyone other than me question the accuracy of the report? Besides, with the power of the Internet, the damage may be irreparable. I checked on Tuesday and found out that the fake version of the story was listed in a Google search 7,790 times whereas the corrected version only appeared on 5,710 websites.

Let the reader beware. 

You can read the rest here. It’s an uphill battle, so please pass it on!

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Happy New Year ~ 2018

Gif credit: 9to5animations.com

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from the Cleveland Tea Party

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Rep. Dave Brat on immigration – THE issue in 2018

R McKee cartoon credit: teapartyamerica.blogspot.com

Rep. Dave Brat spoke to Breitbart about the immigration issues ahead of us in 2018. Brat (R-VA) is the one who beat Eric Cantor, then the House Majority Leader, in the primary – and his upset victory put the amnesty bill on hold. But amnesty is the creature that wouldn't die.

Brat discussed Congress’s considerations to codify the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy into federal law.

Congress must prioritize four repairs for the immigration system before contemplating any DACA-style amnesty negotiation, said Brat: 1. Ending chain migration and the visa lottery; 2. Mandating employer use of E-Verify; 3. Construction of a southern border wall; and 4. Interior enforcement of immigration law.

The four aforementioned “permanent fixes” must precede any DACA negotiation regarding amnesty for illegal immigrants, said Brat: “It shouldn’t be about trusting or hoping, the permanent part has to come first, you see in that place and then you negotiate later.”

The rest of the report is here.

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Mark Steyn on illegal immigration

We can expect a lot of work in 2018 to do what we can to block the passage of DACA, start building the wall, and end chain migration. My fave, Mark Steyn, guest hosted for Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and his segment on illegal immigration and The Wall were reported at both Breitbart (“Mark Steyn: In the End, Trump Presidency ‘Will Stand or Fall on How He Tackles Immigration’”) and on Steyn’s blog page (“The Wall Is All”). The transcript report by Jeff Poor at Breitbart is below.

“[T]here’s a lobby — there’s lobbies for everything in this country,” Steyn said. “And there’s a strong lobby for illegal immigration. There’s a strong lobby for refugees, which again is a completely fraudulent operation by and large. Trump won because a significant [number of voters] were serious about building a wall, about ending illegal immigration and about doing something about people who walk into this country illegally, stay here illegally, take jobs illegally, get driver’s licenses illegally, use Social Security numbers illegally. And at some point … I would have liked him to hold the inauguration ceremony on the southern border and for it to culminate after the oath of office with him ceremonially laying the brick in the wall. But in the end, his presidency will stand or fall on how he tackles immigration.”

Steyn pointed to how low-skilled mass immigration has impacted the American economy, and there is a demand for low-skilled workers. He added that it isn’t just policy for Trump that is important [but] shifting “attitudes” as well.

“In the end, the Trump presidency I believe will stand or fall on how permanently he manages to shift not just the number of people coming into the country, but how he manages to shift attitudes towards remorseless unskilled mass immigration,” Steyn added. “That’s what got him elected, and that’s what [will] actually be the basis on which his presidency is judged.”

Steyn’s page is here. Ann Coulter recently published an article along the same lines, at Townhall and Human Events here. Her take is that if the United States does not stop illegal immigration, then all other issues are essentially academic. 

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Serious course correction on the S.S. Trump

Ben Garrison cartoon credit: governmentpropaganda.net

Kurt Schlichter does not take prisoners. He does not mince words. His latest column at Townhall, titled “Trump Ends 2017 Residing In His Enemies’ Heads” is an optimistic preview for what’s to come in the New Year:

Slowly, it’s dawning on Trump’s enemies – on our enemies – that this isn’t just an unfortunate, temporary bump in the road to the Californiaization of America, but a U-turn. The people who elected Donald Trump were something his allegedly conservative Never Trump opponents never were: serious about being conservative.

It’s easy to grift the donors with big talk about culture wars and policy initiatives when you never expect to be in a position to actually pull them off. But the Normals finally got sick of election year bomb-throwers morphing into pliable puffboys once their reps crossed into the Beltway. And that’s how you got Trump.

Schlichter’s description of Trump’s election as “a U-turn” reminded me of Mark Steyn’s reaction when Barack Obama was re-elected, since it suggested that the American electorate lacked the will to effect a “serious course correction.” And that is surely because the GOPe ran another RINO candidate, in that instance, Mitt Romney. A lot of conservatives stayed home on Election Day. 

Now here we are on board with President Trump, making the U-turn, making the serious course correction. The rest of Schlichter’s column is here.  

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Mr Speaker on Fake News

Photo credit: painepubllishing.com

Speaker Newt Gingrich’s latest emailing is titled “The Republican 2018 Surprise: Victory.” A short extract:

[Scott] Adams, the author of Dilbert, has a list of 20 political opinions and predictions made about President Trump and his Administration, which were just plain wrong. He suggests if you were wrong about 15 or more of these assertions, you might quit talking about politics while Trump is in the White House. By Adams’s standard, most elite "analysts" would have to be quiet, because they have been so consistently wrong about Trump.

As I listened to the end of the year "analysts," I was struck by how little they know, how little they have questioned their own mistakes, and how mutually reinforcing their false information has been.

These are not analysts. These are liberal propagandists. Much of what they assert is just plain wrong. Fake news is, sadly, an accurate term. And the topic about which they have been the most fake is the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Newt predicts a GOP win in the midterms. But that would not be enough. I can’t help but hope that in the process of draining the swamp, members of the UniParty, including those with an (R) after their name, are exposed as the corruptocrats that they are. 

Newt’s column is online here.

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Three on the Fox bench

art credit: worldartsme.com

Subtitle: Hosts who don’t interrupt

Over the Christmas break, the pinch-hitters are guest hosting most of the prime time news and opinion broadcasts at Fox. In some cases, the bench team outperforms the regular hosts.

Guest host for Sean Hannity is David Webb. He is intelligent, he listens, and he asks follow-up questions. Webb is calm and collected and measured, never strident or frenetic.

Guest host for Tucker Carlson is Mark Steyn. Disclosure: Mark Steyn is my favorite online commentator/blogger. But Steyn as host, even when saddled with a ghastly line-up of guest talking heads, is informed, incisive, and FUNNY. (And when he is a guest on Carlson's show, he usually has Tucker in stitches).

Daytime host Brian Kilmeade subbed for Hannity or maybe it was Laura Ingraham, and not once did I reach for the mute button. He also has co-written a book about Andrew Jackson and The Battle of New Orleans and hosted a recent Sunday night special on the subject. It was excellent, and I hope Fox re-runs it.

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