RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/16/liz-cheney-was-a-primary-culprit-of-spreading-fake-news-on-russian-bounties-to-undermine-trump/

U.S. intelligence agencies debunked on Thursday what was treated as blockbuster election-year reporting last summer of an anonymously sourced story in The New York Times claiming the Kremlin placed bounties on American troops in Afghanistan.

President Donald Trump, went the tale, deliberately downplayed the aggression to appease Russia and accelerate the timeline to withdraw U.S. forces. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, currently number three in House leadership, was a primary purveyor of the fake news.

“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks on U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said, according to the readout of a call with reporters in the Daily Beast.

Officials said their conclusion of “low to moderate confidence” in the story, which effectively means it’s at best unproven and potentially false, came “in part because it relies on detainee reporting,” an often unreliable source of intelligence on which to base such explosive claims.

As the story picked up traction in the corporate press, however, Cheney appeared to sense a prime opportunity to capitalize on what was treated as a scandal, to not only undermine Trump, but also justify a prolonged military presence in the region while the administration took steps to pull out. Neither to Cheney, nor legacy media, appeared to hesitate due to the claims’ poor sourcing.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/nbc-unintentionally-dunks-on-the-ruling-class-over-

A recent piece shows the mercifully pathetic nature and irrelevance of U.S. white supremacists, while revealing the threat posed by a Ruling Class targeting millions of Americans.

To the Ruling Class’s communications arm doing business as the corporate media, America is besieged by white bigotry, not a nation that has more successfully integrated diverse peoples into a common culture of liberty and justice than any other in human history. It is imperative to explain away any and all evidence to the contrary. It is also critical to champion one’s political allies in this project, no matter their own potential villainy.

NBC News recently provided a textbook example of such mendacity, and odiousness, while inadvertently undermining the favored Ruling Class narrative of American deplorability in covering “White Lives Matter” rallies that never materialized.

As I argue, actual white supremacists, as Zadrozny’s reporting shows, mercifully seem to lack power in this country—contra the popular narrative, which I challenge in the piece.

Consider:

by an authoritative measure of national animus like the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) hate crime statistics, the latest annual figures from 2019 show some 8,812 victims of bias, 4,930 of which suffered from single-bias incidents concerning race/ethnicity/ancestry, in a country of 330 million, where the number of interactions between different peoples are virtually infinite. To put these numbers in perspective, the FBI reported nearly two times as many estimated murders—16,425—as hate crimes in 2019. Victims of all hate crimes, whether classified as concerning one, or multiple biases, represented .00269 percent of the total U.S. population.

Now, what of the perpetrators of these crimes? Of the 6,406 known offenders identified in 2019, 23.9 percent were black or African American, almost two times the 13 percent of the country this population comprises. That is, blacks committed disproportionately more hate crimes than did those of any other race, including whites, who committed 52.5 percent of all hate crimes while comprising 60 percent of the country.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-learning-they-spread?token=eyJ1c2V

The most significant Trump-era alliance is between corporate outlets and security state agencies, whose evidence-free claims they unquestioningly disseminate.

That Russia placed “bounties” on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was one of the most-discussed and consequential news stories of 2020. It was also, as it turns out, one of the most baseless — as the intelligence agencies who spread it through their media spokespeople now admit, largely because the tale has fulfilled and outlived its purpose.

The saga began on June 26, 2020, when The New York Times announced that unnamed “American intelligence officials” have concluded that “a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops.” The paper called it “a significant and provocative escalation” by Russia. Though no evidence was ever presented to support the CIA’s claims — neither in that original story nor in any reporting since — most U.S. media outlets blindly believed it and spent weeks if not longer treating it as proven, highly significant truth. Leading politicians from both parties similarly used this emotional storyline to advance multiple agendas.

The story appeared — coincidentally or otherwise — just weeks after President Trump announced his plan to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2020. Pro-war members of Congress from both parties and liberal hawks in corporate media spent weeks weaponizing this story to accuse Trump of appeasing Putin by leaving Afghanistan and being too scared to punish the Kremlin. Cable outlets and the op-ed pages of The New York Times and Washington Post endlessly discussed the grave implications of this Russian treachery and debated which severe retaliation was needed. “This is as bad as it gets,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Then-candidate Joe Biden said Trump’s refusal to punish Russia and his casting doubt on the truth of the story was more proof that Trump’s “entire presidency has been a gift to Putin,” while Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) demanded that, in response, the U.S. put Russians and Afghans “in body bags.”

What was missing from this media orgy of indignation and militaristic demands for retaliation was an iota of questioning of whether the story was, in fact, true.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/russian-bounty-story-falls-apart-after-being-used-to-slam-trump-admin/

The credibility of last summer’s bombshell report alleging the Russian government was paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan took another hit this week when a senior Biden administration official told reporters they only have “low-to-moderate confidence” in the intelligence behind the story.

The intelligence was based on notoriously unreliable “detainee reporting,” the official said on the call, meaning that it came from militants looking to get out of jail.

News of the alleged bounties was first reported last June by The New York Times, which reported that “American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan – including targeting American troops.” The story, based entirely on unidentified sources, claimed that the U.S. had actually known about the alleged bounties for months.

Media outlets across the country rushed to find their own anonymous sources to “confirm” the story. Then-President Donald Trump called it “fake news” and a “Hoax started to slander me & the Republican Party.” He denied that he’d been briefed on it, and did not discuss the alleged bounties on a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July.

Democrats jumped on the report and used it to attack Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election. Joe Biden said Trump’s “entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale. It’s betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way.” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said “This is as bad as it gets,” and John Kerry weighed in at the Democratic Convention, saying that Trump did “nothing about Russia putting a bounty on our troops.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/04/14/why-a-former-cnn-producer-shredded-the-media-over-their-covid-vaccine-coverage-n2587950

Steve Krakauer is a former CNN producer and media executive. His recent Fourth Watch newsletter touched upon what we’re all talking about: the COVID vaccine. Specifically, the pause over the Johnson and Johnson vaccine after six women aged 18-48 suffered blood clots six-to-thirteen days after receiving the shot. Nearly seven million doses have already been administered. The risk is still IMMENSELY LOW—but the message is clear and vaccine hesitancy, which was already an issue, has now become another area where the panic peddlers can latch onto though it makes no sense. The experts want us to get vaccinated but then think we’ll just be nonreactive to news that’s packaged to scare us half to death. Is it good that Dr. Anthony Fauci said there’s no cause of alarm or anxiety for those who have received the J&J shot? Yes, but his credibility balance is negative. The experts have said that impending doom was upon us. Nothing happened. And now, on top of the expert class indirectly peddling vaccine hesitancy with their advice to get the shot but remain in the bunker and in abject terror, the media has also played a part in the hysteria. 

MSNBC’s Joy Reid said she’s going to remain hiding even after getting vaccinated. CNN’s Brian Stelter is mad more people, journalists especially, aren’t sharing their vaccine selfies. CNN also published why that could be a security risk. Krakauer noted that whether intentional or not, the media establishment is only fanning the flames of vaccine hesitancy (via Fourth Watch):

Consciously or subconsciously, the media is continuing to drive fear around COVID that undoubtably will lead to vaccine hesitancy. Take MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Sunday. The 7pm host tweeted to her two million followers that, when she’s fully vaccinated, she will be too “scurred” to get on an airplane or do “indoor activities” and that she plans to continue “double masking…for the foreseeable future”…

https://townhall.com/columnists/timgraham/2021/04/14/the-press-is-infrastructure-for-biden-n258786

Sen. John Cornyn came under blistering attack from Washington Post scribe Aaron Blake for having wondered whether President Joe Biden is really in charge, since he’s kept an extremely low profile with the press. Blake took after the senator for implying the Trump spin that old Joe has lost a few mental gears and is something of a “Manchurian Candidate.” “It’s a baseless and ugly bit of innuendo,” Blake wrote.

On Twitter, Cornyn linked to a Politico story in which writer Eugene Daniels noted: “The president is not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional. The public comments are largely scripted. Biden has opted for fewer sit down interviews with mainstream outlets and reporters.” He’s had one press conference during his 84 days in office.

One obvious explanation for the Biden strategy is his tendency to insert his foot in his mouth. But it’s also obvious that he has zero fear of his low availability to the press being a problem with “mainstream” reporters, since about 99.96% of them surely voted for him in November.

Most Americans are relieved that the president’s tweets are “unimaginably conventional.” But the press slid back to its Obama-era tone, championing sappy Biden tweets about his love for his wife, “Jilly,” and Jilly’s buying treats at black-owned bakeries. White House chief of staff Ron Klain routinely retweets the “mainstream” reporters, implying that he endorses their helpful pro-Biden spin.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/07/legacy-media-corruption-is-at-the-heart-of-our-national-conflict/

The media’s false reporting about new election legislation in Georgia whipped up a controversy that left millions of people grossly misinformed, frightened voters, mired major corporations in high-stakes public relations frenzies, distracted the political discourse, and furthered the country’s divisions. In short, it’s a perfect example of how the media is fueling our national conflict.

In this case, the media uncritically regurgitated Georgia Democrats’ partisan hyperbole, treating a narrative the party strategically crafted to defeat the legislation as fact and turning it into a long and false national news cycle. That news cycle left the public with an impression that the legislation was objectively racist.

That impression scared and motivated the public, leading employees to pressure executives into action. Worse, the false coverage led millions of people to believe that a major political party representing half the country was seeking to reinstate Jim Crow.

The coverage from our country’s major publications was so bad that after a few days, even liberals like Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and Will Saletan of Slate began pushing back. Those responsible for the bad coverage, which is the bulk of the legacy press, appear to be facing no consequences.

Over at RealClearPolitics, Carl Cannon wrote a poignant column on the offensive absurdity of invoking Jim Crow in this context.

“When Donald Trump likened his being impeached to a lynching, living relatives of Willie Edwards and Emmett Till called this comparison ‘ignorant’ and ‘insensitive’ and ‘offensive.’ They were right,” Cannon wrote. “But now Biden is invoking racist history, and doing it to score partisan political points. Millions of Americans who voted for him hoped they were done having to listen to such blasphemy from the White House.”

Sadly, the media parroted that partisan spin, legitimizing the Democratic Party’s narrative by presenting it under the banner of journalistic neutrality. For a clearer glimpse at the consequences, read this New York Times report on the internal frenzy at corporations like Delta and Coca-Cola, which spent days fumbling to respond under pressure from the media, activists, and staff.

That pressure stemmed entirely from misinformation peddled by the legacy media. Without the media’s legitimization of a partisan narrative, concerned employees wouldn’t have been reaching out, the external pressures of a PR threat would have been negligible, and the corporations could have focused on the business of taking us on spring break and making our mixers.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/watch-how-60-minutes-deceptively-edited-ron-desantiss-full-answer-on-publix-vaccinations/

CBS’s 60 Minutes alleged that Florida governor Ron DeSantis enlisted grocery chain Publix to help with coronavirus vaccine distribution because of a campaign contribution, but edited DeSantis’s full response to the allegation.

“Publix, as you know, donated $100,000 to your campaign, and then you rewarded them with exclusive rights to vaccination in Palm Beach,” a CBS reporter said at a press conference for the governor in Orlando. DeSantis said the reporter peddled a “fake narrative” when she alleged he engaged in a “pay-for-play” scheme.

However, 60 Minutes omitted a key section of DeSantis’s response, in which he states that the first pharmacies to take charge of vaccine distribution were CVS and Walgreens, and were initially tasked with vaccinating residents of long-term care facilities.

DeSantis said that in January the state wanted to expand distribution sites and contacted other large chains with pharmacies.

“You had the counties, you had some drive-thru sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more,” DeSantis said. “So we reached out to other retail pharmacies: Publix, Walmart, obviously CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission and we said we’re going to use you as soon as you’re done with that.”

DeSantis has grown in popularity among GOP voters, who view the governor as a potential presidential candidate in 2024 if President Trump decides not to run again.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/a_list_of_questions_that_real_journalists_would_ask_joe_biden.html

When I grew up, despite their general Democrat-leaning bias, journalists still asked probing questions, that saw them seeking information. That’s not the case anymore. When a Republican is the president, the journalists just play “gotcha.” And when a Democrat is in office, especially a senile Democrat, the journalists pose delicately prepared questions that are intended to elicit a planned speech from the president. Mollie Hemingway has done a great service by setting out a list of questions real journalists would ask Joe Biden about the MLB boycott in Georgia.

If you want a perfect example of what passes for journalism nowadays, you can’t do better than the question PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, a hardcore Democrat activist who operates partially on the taxpayer’s dime, and who functions as the straight man, feeding lines to our joke of a president:

You’ve said over and over again that immigrants shouldn’t come to this country right now. This isn’t the time to come. That message is not being received. Instead, the perception of you that got you elected as a moral decent man is the reason why a lot of immigrants are coming to this country and entrusting you with unaccompanied minors. How do you resolve that tension and how are you choosing which families can stay and which can go given the fact that even though with Title 42 there are some families that are staying? And is there a timeline for when we won’t be seeing these overcrowded facilities run by CPB when it comes to unaccompanied minors?

Fourteen years ago, a great video came out showing a man being pulled over by the world’s most loving cop. Watch the video and tell me if that cop isn’t indistinguishable from the tongue bath the media give Biden:

The same thing happened when ESPN’s Sage Steele asked Biden what he thought of having MLB boycott Atlanta, a city that voted overwhelmingly for Biden because Georgia had revised its voting laws to require ID for absentee ballots (something common in most states). Biden enthusiastically supported the boycott, an answer he propped up with grotesque lies. Steele just let all that lie there like rotten fish.