It is not just the social media (Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc.) that contains false reporting. The main-stream-media (NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, etc.) and newspaper media (beginning with the grand old liar, the New York Times) have knowingly and repeatedly reported falsely. The only independent, vigilant watchdogs we have had this year are Drudge and Wikileaks.
Six corporations control 90% of the broadcast news: Comcast (NBC), NewCorp (Fox, WSJ, New York Post), Disney (ABC, ESPN), ViaCom (MTV, Nick Jr, BET, CMT), Time-Warner (CNN, HBO, Time), and CBS (60 Minutes). CBS and Viacom are in discussion for a possible merger, which would mean 90% of the broadcast news controlled by five companies.
All this talk about banning fake news sites is false news in itself. The main-stream media (MSM) and newspaper media are the sources of fake news, although they try to blame conservative media outlets. A classic example of fake news is former CBS anchor Dan Rather, who was forced to resign after knowingly presenting forged documents about George W. Bush’s service in the National Guard as legitimate news.
In 2008, journalists (I use the word loosely, here) on journalist, a web site for journalists, colluded to promote candidate Obama and suppress reporting on Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As the Daily Caller reported, Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent journalist, proposed as a distracting tactic to pick any Obama critic and call him a racist.
In 2012, unnamed MSM journalists were caught on a live microphone coordinating a hostile attack on Mitt Romney. The goal was to ensure that Romney was put on the defensive about fabricated mistakes in his criticism of Obama. Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lied on the Senate Floor about Romney’s tax returns, which was widely reported by the MSM.
The Public Editor (formerly Ombudsman) of the New York Times, Liz Spayd, wrote, on July 23, 2016, that “I HAVE been here less than a month, but already I’ve discovered something that surely must be bad for business if your business is running The New York Times. It comes via the inbox to the public editor, from people like Gary Taustine of Manhattan, who writes: ‘The NY Times is alienating its independent and open-minded readers, and in doing so, limiting the reach of their message and its possible influence.’”
Spayd continued, writing that, “WHAT’S happening at The Times isn’t only about The Times. It’s part of a fracturing media environment that reflects a fractured country. That in turn leads liberals and conservatives toward separate news sources. A Pew Research Center survey two years ago found that liberals are flocking to The Times, with 65 percent of its readers possessing political values that were left of center.”
“When The New York Times’ publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. wrote a letter to the paper’s subscribers saying “[we] rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor…” but then said, “[y]ou can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team….” he gave a classic non-apology apology that has since drawn snickers across social media.”
Former CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson commented, “You know, it’s fairly well discussed inside CBS News that there are some managers recently who have been so ideologically entrenched that there is a feeling and discussion that some of them, certainly not all of them, have a difficult time viewing a story that may reflect negatively upon government or the administration as a story of value….They never mind the stories that seem to, for example — and I did plenty of them — go against the grain of the Republican Party….I didn’t sense any resistance in doing stories that were perceived to be negative to the Bush administration — by anybody, ever. I have done stories that I perceived were not received well because people thought they would reflect poorly upon this [the Obama] administration.”
Former Public Editor of the New York Times, Arthur Brisbane, in his last column, August 26, 2012, wrote, “So many [reporters and editors] share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of the Times. As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in the Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.”
Will Rahn, political correspondent and managing director for CBS News Digital, captured the left wing mental state when he wrote, “Journalists increasingly don’t even believe in the possibility of reasoned disagreement, and as such ascribe cynical motives to those who think about things a different way. We see this in the ongoing veneration of ‘facts,’ the ones peddled by explainer websites and data journalists who believe themselves to be curiously post-ideological. . . That the explainers and data journalists so frequently get things hilariously wrong never invites the soul-searching you’d think it would. Instead, it all just somehow leads us to more smugness, more meanness, more certainty from the reporters and pundits. Faced with defeat, we retreat further into our bubble, assumptions left unchecked. No, it’s the voters who are wrong.”
So-called journalists and reporters at the MSM and newspaper media are neither journalists nor reporters. They are propagandists. They are Left-wing propagandists, who are skilled at controlling media narratives and promoting false stories. As a result, neither these people nor their organizations can ever be trusted again.