Enemy of the people

It shouldn't have taken this long, but this week I've finally reached the end of my objections to those (especially former President Donald Trump) who referred to the media as the "enemy of the people."

What am I talking about? Well, do you recall last summer's bombshell story from the New York Times about Russian officials paying bounties to the Taliban in exchange for the killing of American troops in Afghanistan (a story corroborated by several other media outlets)? Yep. It was bull pucky. 

It was a blockbuster story about Russia’s return to the imperial “Great Game” in Afghanistan. The Kremlin had spread money around the longtime central Asian battlefield for militants to kill remaining U.S. forces. It sparked a massive outcry from Democrats and their #resistance amplifiers about the treasonous Russian puppet in the White House whose admiration for Vladimir Putin had endangered American troops.

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

Of course the usual anti-Trump suspects were insufferably indignant when this story first broke. 

SUPERCUT:

A look back on how cable news went all in on the discredited Russian bounties story. pic.twitter.com/QaG9xAqiuR

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 15, 2021

Of course this isn't the sole example of media dishonesty/hackery/incompetence. Hell, in the past 12 months alone the media has breathlessly reported on news items with little to no disregard for veracity. 

Erick Erickson compiled a list. 

• The New York Post was punished by social media giants, particularly Twitter, for its expose of Hunter Biden, his laptop, and other lurid details. Access to the New York Post’s account was restricted. The story turned out to be true.
• Social media routinely allows pictures of celebrity homes to be posted and details about the neighborhoods in which they live. When conservatives exposed the Marxist BLM co-founder buying a million dollar house in Los Angeles, that was a bridge too far. The address was not listed, but using “privacy rules,” social media giants restricted shares of any story about the purchase. They even restricted stories about her other multi-million dollar property purchases.
• This morning Latham Saddler launched his campaign for the Senate against Raphael Warnock. He is a former Navy SEAL and Trump Administration staffer who is running in Georgia. As of this writing, Twitter has restricted his account for…ummm…tweeting.
• The media pushed out a number of falsehoods about Georgia’s new voting law and, only now, are walking back the wild claims about restrictions on early voting, restrictions on absentee balloting, etc.
• The media ridiculed Donald Trump as a liar when he called the Russian bounty story a hoax. The Washington Post gave him four “Pinocchios.” It turns out he was right. Now that he is out of office, the media will tell the truth. The story is not believed by the Biden White House or the intel community.
• Sixty Minutes continues to stand by its widely discredited story on Ron DeSantis. A social media that blocked the New York Post for its truthful story on Hunter Biden is unwilling to block CBS News.
• Ron DeSantis had a discussion with doctors and experts who noted what European scientists were saying and advising European nations about COVID. YouTube took it down because it disputed what the Biden Administration claims, even though the scientific community actually has no settled consensus and European scientific advisors are advising their nations differently from the American health care officials.

The media's sole purpose is to report facts. Not truth, which people these days seem to think is in the eye of the beholder and thus subject to bias. But facts, which are indisputable. From there, the American people take in the information and react accordingly. But when reporters utilize narrative journalism, the trust in their industry craters when their stories are determined to be at best deficient of context and at worst emphatically false. 

Bottom line: if you're allowing your bias to cloud your reporting of facts in a news story, you have zero disregard for your consumers. And since that sure as hell doesn't make you their ally, you become (by default) their enemy. Sorry. 

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