Conservative Musings

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Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts

Thursday, May 14, 2020

The News Media Needs A Major Self Reflection

'It was a disaster': Brit Hume takes media to task for amplifying Trump-Russia conspiracy

'It was the worst journalistic fiasco of my more than 50-some years of journalism'

Image source: YouTube screenshot

CHRIS ENLOE

Veteran journalist Brit Hume declared Tuesday that the mainstream media's coverage of the Russia investigation is the "worst journalistic fiasco" he has ever witnessed.

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Hume, whose career in the news business spans more than a half-century, was responding to criticism of the Russia investigation, which was resurrected last week when the Justice Department dropped its charges against Michael Flynn. That action was harshly criticized by former President Barack Obama, who complained that the "rule of law is at risk." Obama's reaction resulted is newfound scrutiny over what role he played in the Russia investigation and Flynn case.
"As for the journalism involved in the pursuit of that story, the collusion narrative that we lived with for so very long before it was blown up in the Mueller report, it was the worst journalistic fiasco of my more than 50-some years of journalism," Hume said on Fox News.
"It was a disaster," he declared.

Specifically, Hume criticized the New York Times, whose newsroom was organized to amplify the Trump collusion narrative, the paper's top editor admitted last year.
"It was a terrible journalistic misjudgment," Hume said. "It was rooted in their view of Donald Trump that when this charge arose, they thought so little of him and that he was such a terrible person, that it had to be true," Hume said.
"The Washington Post and the New York Times pursued it relentlessly: Their coverage did not reflect any real doubt that it may not turn out to be true at any time," he continued
"In the end, it all blew up," Hume said. "You'd think they learn. But they don't seem to learn."

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

This "Journalist" And His "Paper" Just Broke Through Their First Amendment Rights!

Journalist Urges Waiters to Tamper, Contaminate Trump Official’s Food

While those on the left preach the importance of tolerance and kindness, their actions are often very different from their words. When it comes to Donald Trump and anyone who is even remotely allied with him, any idea of tolerance quickly goes out the window.

Far left extremists have attacked Trump supporters in public places, have driven members of the Trump administration out of restaurants, and have openly called for the assassination of a sitting President. Now, one so-called journalist working for the Boston Globe has written an abhorrent op-ed urging waiters to contaminate a Trump official’s food with “blood and urine”.

On April 18, Luke O’Neil wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe in which he lamented the fact that he never took the opportunity to infect the food of Republican political commentator Bill Kristol during the time that O’Neil was working as a waiter. He then encouraged other waiters who would be serving food to the soon-to-be-replaced head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielson not to miss the opportunity that he failed to capitalize on.

“As for the waiters out there, I’m not saying you should tamper with anyone’s food, as that could get you into trouble. You might lose your serving job,” O’Neil wrote, “But you’d be serving America. And you won’t have any regrets years later.”

By some, this sickening call to action may be taken very seriously. As a journalist writing for a highly popular publication, Luke O’Neil wields a lot of influence through what he writes. Instead of using that influence to help heal the divide in our country and bring Americans together, O’Neil is using it to encourage violent acts against Trump officials.

At the same time that those on the left decry Trump’s so-called “rhetoric” as being dangerous, they apparently don’t think twice about directly calling for waiters to poison a Trump official’s food.

Such is the nature of “tolerance” for the modern left, though. While the left prides itself on supposedly being a champion of tolerance, the truth is that the left only stands for tolerance of identity and not tolerance of ideas. In other words, they don’t care if you’re black, homosexual, Muslim, or transgender so long as you support their leftist agenda.

If your viewpoints don’t fall within what the left considers to be acceptable, though, you can’t expect to receive very much of the tolerance that those on the left preach so much about. Instead, those on the left meet goals for the country that differ from theirs with a level of close-minded hatred and violent resentment that even the most cranky, old GOP politician could never come close to rivaling.

Luke O’Neil is not an outlier when it comes to just how low those on the left are willing to sink. The fact that the Boston Globe – a once renowned and respected paper – chose to publish his vile and dangerous op-ed is evidence enough that O’Neil and his ideas enjoy a terrifying amount of support.

In the wake of the backlash that ensued over O’Neil’s piece, the Boston Globe did try to edit the language to make it a little more palatable before the piece was eventually pulled after it was noticed and condemned by the owners of the paper, John and Linda Henry.

Luke O’Neil, however, stands by his words. In a series of tweets, O’Neil defends his article and the dangerous call to action that it contained, never coming close to issuing an apology or realizing the seriousness of his actions.

If the backlash against O’Neil continues to mount, there’s little doubt that he will try to shift the blame and defend the article as a piece of comedy. It’s a common scapegoat for radical journalists such as O’Neil – if the public decides that something they say or write crosses the line to a degree that their careers are put in jeopardy, proclaiming that it was simply a “tasteless but harmless joke” is an easy out.

What’s even more sad about this is that even though O’Neil has gotten some backlash for his call to violence against Trump officials and supporters he is still free to continue writing pieces like this in the future. Neither he, nor anyone else on the left, learned anything from this incident. Their refusal to show people this this call for violence is unacceptable can only lead radicals to believe this kinds of behavior is normal and acceptable.

Rest assured there will be more “blood and urine” to come from the left because they really aren’t sorry when a MAGA supporter gets hurt.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

When You Control The Media, You Control The Government. Trump's Problems Are Proof

Big Brother In America Is Now The U.S. Media

TOPICS:Media Propaganda Rory Hall

MARCH 6, 2017

By Rory Hall

Journalism and a free, open media is another “check and balance on the three branches of Government and we don’t have that check and balance anymore.” – Shadow of Truth

One of the hallmarks of a totalitarian political regime is control of the media. In 1996 president Bill Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This law, which was bought and paid for by corporate media lobbies, allowed big corporations to acquire and consolidate media outlets nationwide.

The 1996 law lifted the limit on the number of television and radio stations any one corporation could own. In 2003, the FCC voted to lift the ban on cross-ownership of newspapers and full-power broadcast stations that serviced the same community. This was the final nail in the coffin of free and competitive media and news reporting in the U.S.

The 1996 Clinton law followed by the lifting of the cross-ownership ban enabled Corporate America to increase their monopoly on the flow of information in the U.S. and around the world. Now six corporations control well over 90% of all media in the U.S.: NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS and Comcast.

“Wall Street slips on and geopolitical worries” (Reuters headline). What does the Trump/Obama wiretapping squabble have to do with whether the stock market goes up or down? It has nothing to do with whether or not corporations can produce goods and services profitably. To be sure the accusation of wiretapping and the possibility that the accusation is accurate is troublesome in and of itself. But it has nothing to do with the fact that the stock market is currently the most overvalued in U.S. history.

The headlines, however, reflect the degree to which all media reporting in the U.S. is now under the control of Corporate America – a Corporate America that has assumed control of the political process and has become Orwell’s Big Brother.

Most people associate the term “fascism” with an authoritarian and nationalistic political system. But it’s much more than that. Mussolini described “fascism” as the merger between corporations and government. The political system in the U.S. can easily be considered “fascist,” as Corporate America and Wall Street have used billions of dollars to take over the entire political process including all of the mainstream outlets of communication and news reporting.

The result is directly reflected in the nature of the 2016 presidential and congressional elections. The content of any news reporting is now a product of the material fed through the broadcast and print communication outlets controlled by six corporate monoliths and the Too Big To Fail banks that finance the system.

A good friend and colleague of the Shadow of Truth, John Titus, once quipped with regard to the public’s consumption and acceptance of anything reported as news, “put it on CNN and it’s true.” This statement succinctly summarizes the propaganda which supports the process by which the government seeks to control the views and perceptions of the public at large. In today’s Shadow of Truth podcast, we toss around that fact that the United States has become a Goebellsian “playground” and George Orwell’s nightmare:

You can read more from Rory Hall at his site The Daily Coin, where this article first appeared.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Tough Questions Are For Trump. Hillary Only Gets Softballs. This Is Journalism In 2016

Jake Tapper Slams Reporters' 'Ridiculously Sycophantic' Questions to Hillary

(Wire Services Photo)

By Cathy Burke | Tuesday, 07 Jun 2016 09:11 PM

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CNN anchor Jake Tapper ripped reporters' "ridiculously sycophantic" questions to Hillary Clinton at a Monday news conference, saying the media hasn't applied the same standard with Donald Trump.

During a panel discussion led by Tapper Tuesday, Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany charged the media delivered nothing but softballs at Clinton's briefing on the eve of primaries that could seal her Democratic presidential nomination.

The Washington Free Beacon reports a third of the questions focused on how she felt about making history as the first woman to win a major party's nomination.