By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
Dan Rather made up a false document to try and get you to question President Bush’s integrity and character in 2004.
Last year Katie Couric edited an interview in such a way that it deceptively misrepresented and falsely portrayed supporters of the Second Amendment as being stupid, and not having an answer to her questions.
The mainstream media actively attempts to deceive its audience constantly, yet we continue to watch, listen, and read the garbage they put out.
The media’s allies, leftist online outlets, do the same.
BuzzFeed, which got its start with cat videos, revealed how deceptively dishonest the liberal left progressives truly are with their own recent fake news endeavor.
The Washington Post gave us the following headline:
BuzzFeed’s stumble is highest-profile misstep at a time when press is under greatest scrutiny
BuzzFeed News’s erroneous claim that Michael Cohen was instructed by President Trump to lie to Congress was picked up by much of the leftist media as fact until reality slammed them in the face, and it turned out to be a false claim (that, interestingly enough, BuzzFeed refuses to admit). Because so many outlets bought into it, likely because they are grasping at anything they think they can use to discredit and remove President Trump from the White House, the fake news by BuzzFeed has become one of the highest-profile missteps for a news organization in a long time (or at least since Couric and Rather). The timing is interesting, as well, since President Trump’s battles with the media has them feeling like they are under intense scrutiny not only by the Trump administration, but by the public in general.
Leftist news outlets like the usual suspects, CNN, New York Times, the alphabet networks, Bloomberg, McClatchy News, and the players overseas, like the Guardian and BBC (to name a few), have been publishing fake news continuously since Donald Trump has been elected, but they have been able to duck and dodge the fake news bullet quite well. President Trump has been ringing the bell, accusing the purveyors of leftist dribble of being biased and irresponsible, but they’ve always dodged the accusations by throwing crap back at the President, and then stirring up new false claims. This time, however, the egg hit them squarely in the face.
Worst of all, it was one of their own that blew the whistle, and called out BuzzFeed.
The Washington Post reported: Mueller’s office cast doubt on BuzzFeed’s report.
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,” the statement said, challenging the central thrust of BuzzFeed’s explosive story — that Mueller’s team had detailed evidence of felonious acts by the president.
Mueller’s office doesn’t say much, as it is. For them to make sure they shot this one down was stunning to the liberal progressives, and had the effect of the Hindenburg explosion.
The Washington Post reported “the special counsel’s office seemed to be disputing every aspect of the story that addressed comments or evidence given to its investigators.”
BuzzFeed was slammed, and the mainstream media has been reporting it. Unlike most fake news stories exposed to be false, this one was getting front and center attention that even the liberal left voters were paying attention to it. Could it be planting seeds in the minds of the mindless automatons out there who have been voting democrat? Could it be that the news media is dishonest after all?
One wonders how in a world run amok of fake news (like the Guardian’s story in late November about a secret meeting between Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Julian Assange, who heads WikiLeaks; or how McClatchy reported that unidentified intelligence agencies had picked up cellphone signals indicating Cohen had traveled to Prague at the height of the presidential campaign in 2016, lending credence to claims in the disputed “Steele dossier” that Cohen had met secretly there with Russian officials to coordinate with Trump’s campaign. Cohen has denied the story, which also hasn’t been confirmed by another news organization; and how CNN has published at least two disputed stories on the Russia probe) why it is that the big boys don’t get frickasied with a blazing fire of inquiries and fact checkers, but BuzzFeed somehow aimlessly wandered onto the grill, and hit the heat themselves.
This is not the first time BuzzFeed has faced criticism from non-liberals. After all, they also published the fake Russian dossier, the collection of unconfirmed reports alleging that Russian officials held compromising information about Trump that was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer. Trump has repeatedly denounced it as “bogus” and “a pile of garbage.”
We just never expected the person to expose fake news for what it is, in this case BuzzFeed’s story, to be Mueller.
President Trump called the BuzzFeed story “phony” and said the media has lost its credibility.
“I think that the Buzzfeed piece was a disgrace to our country. It was a disgrace to journalism, and I think also that the coverage by the mainstream media was disgraceful, and I think it’s going to take a long time for the mainstream media to recover its credibility,” he said.