image credit: woodylewis.com
I am always on the lookout for reports to share with liberal
friends and relatives – on why they should be skeptical of what they read in
the New York Times or cleveland.com -- or what they watch on TV. Today, Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart dissects
the lazy, not to say dishonest reporting on the impeachment “inquiry” – and it’s
worth printing out and taking to your Thanksgiving dinner for another attempt
to change minds. A brief sample:
The Media Neither
Read the Transcripts
Nor Watched the Hearings
The media seem not to have watched
the impeachment hearings: they stopped paying attention the moment the
witnesses’ prepared statements were leaked and the Democrats’ talking points
were posted.
Nor did many journalists bother to
read the transcripts of the witnesses’ depositions in the earlier, closed-door
hearings.
Partly that was because Rep. Adam
Schiff (D-CA) rushed the public hearings before some of the most important
transcripts were ready. Partly that was because the sheer length of the
transcripts — hundreds of pages each — was daunting for journalists working on
deadline.
But partly it was because some
journalists are simply lazy, and others share the Democrats’ goal of bringing
down President Donald Trump by any means necessary.
That’s why the media reports of the
hearings were so inaccurate.
. . .
On Wednesday afternoon, I was at
the media center outside the Democrat debate in Atlanta, Georgia, co-hosted by
MSNBC and the Washington Post. In the hours prior to the debate, MSNBC’s
live coverage of the impeachment inquiry was showing on all the screens. Many
journalists in the hall seemed not to be watching at all. They were mailing
about, chatting to colleagues, or enjoying refreshments.
Some of them were top
correspondents for leading media outlets — the ones who pose questions to
candidates, and shape public opinion on their panel discussions and Sunday
shows. Yet they were ignoring the hearings.
. . .
And what kind of journalist decides
what the verdict should be before the other side has even had a chance to make
its case?
Schiff and the Democrats broke from
tradition and refused to let the president be represented by legal counsel, or
to give Republicans near-equal control over the witness list. They held the
hearings in the Intelligence Committee so they could use a secret room. Not one
media company in the House press gallery bothered to sue for access — the way
they sue the Trump administration for any small inconvenience, like the
suspension of Jim Acosta’s press pass.
The media did not report what
actually happened in the impeachment hearings, but what they want to have
happened. They have enlisted themselves in a distortion of due process that
threatens the constitutional rights of all Americans. If the president himself
is not safe from abuse, none of us can be.
Read the whole thing here – and print it out!!!
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