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MEDIA

Networks devote 291 minutes to Trump scandals and zero seconds to Biden’s by Paul Bedard,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/networks-devote-291-minutes-to-trump-scandals-0-seconds-to-bidens

Just as they did in 2016 when it became clear that Donald Trump was the golden goose of viewership, the Big Three networks have turned all their cameras to the former president and practically abandoned covering President Joe Biden.

While Biden’s own classified documents scandal is important, and he is also tied up in bribery allegations linked to his scandal-plagued son Hunter Biden, TV executives apparently have decided that wall-to-wall coverage of Trump is the key to success.

According to a count conducted by our friends at the Media Research Center, which teams with Secrets for the Monday “Liberal Media Scream” feature, ABC, CBS, and NBC have devoted all of their scandal coverage to Trump and none to Biden or the first son.

And the numbers are staggering.

In a report from MRC’s Newsbusters, the three have devoted 291 minutes to Trump and zero time to Biden’s scandals. That is not just a Grand Canyon-sized gap, but figuring each full half-hour newscast devotes 20 minutes to news and the rest to advertising, that amounts to nearly 15 shows devoted to nothing but Trump.

“Over four days (June 8-June 12), the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) broadcast networks predictably crammed their evening, morning, and Sunday roundtable shows with a total of 291 minutes of coverage dedicated to the Trump indictment,” said the report from Geoffrey Dickens, the director of media analysis at the Media Research Center.

“The double standard is breathtaking,” he added, especially when considering the similarities between the classified documents scandals.

Wrongium, the Media’s Favourite Element Salvatore Babones

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/media/2023/06/wrongium-the-medias-favourite-element/

Everyone likes a good beat-up. On May 31, Nature magazine—the world’s most prestigious scientific journal—published a news article under the headline “India Cuts Periodic Table and Evolution from School Textbooks”. Do notice that,according to Nature, they cut evolution too.

Why would such a science-obsessed country as India do something so stupid? The standard take across Western media is that a religiously conservative government has declared war on rationality. Richard Dawkins went so far as to belittle Hinduism an “idiotic religion”.

The actual answer is all of this is fake news. Neither the periodic table nor evolution has been dropped. The periodic table was moved from Year 9 to Year 11, and evolution was moved from Year 9 to Year 12.

The main reason for the change was to ensure that university-bound students who missed out on in-class instruction during the coronavirus pandemic shouldn’t be disadvantaged in their higher education studies. In other words, India’s National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) thought that evolution and the periodic table were so important that no university-bound student should miss them, though early school-leavers might reasonably live without them.

Nonetheless, search “India” and “periodic table” or “evolution” and you’ll find that Nature‘s (unretracted) fake news narrative is now the received truth. And with all due respect to Nature‘s Melbourne-based science writer Dyani Lewis, who authored the piece, her article is technically accurate. She wrote that “children under 16 returning to school this month at the start of the school year will no longer be taught about evolution, the periodic table of elements or sources of energy”. Her report simply omitted that students over 16 would.

While one might see a lack of proper journalistic skepticism in the report, Ms Lewis is perhaps not to blame for creating the fake news. She may have simply been a dupe of credible-sounding sources in India: activist academics and op-ed writers who spare no opportunity to besmirch the reputation of a religiously conservative government that they personally loathe. It is quite possible that none of the eminent Indians she interviewed for the article bothered to mention that the subjects were simply being rescheduled, not removed.

You can’t ‘Perestroika’ CNN By Silvio Canto, Jr.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/you_cant_perestroika_cnn.html

Who remembers Perestroika?  It was a “Hail Mary pass” from Mikhail Gorbachev to save the USSR.  Perestroika means “restructuring” in Russian, but it did not save the communist economy.   

Well, not long ago CNN hired a fellow named Chris Licht to save the ratings-challenged network.  He fired Don Lemon and tried to change the image of the network.  This week, we learned that Mr. Licht is out.  This is the story: 

Mr. Licht’s 13-month run at CNN was marked by one controversy after another, culminating in his exit earlier this week. He got off to a bumpy start even before he had officially started when he oversaw the shuttering of the costly CNN+ streaming service at the request of its network’s new owners, who were skeptical about a stand-alone digital product. The cuts resulted in scores of layoffs.

David Zaslav, the chief executive of CNN’s parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, informed staff on Wednesday morning that he had met with Mr. Licht and that he was leaving, effective immediately.

As Gorbachev learned, you can’t fix communism.  It does not work.  In a short time, the next leader of CNN will learn the same thing, that you can’t fix a news channel that can’t stop talking about former President Trump. 

The network’s basic problem is that no one is watching, a rather difficult challenge for the account executives selling airtime:  “494,000 average total viewers in primetime in May — and just 113,000 viewers in the key 25-54-year-old demographic, according to Nielsen.” To be fair, cable news ratings are down but nobody does it “worse” than CNN.

Corporate Media Trips Over Itself Trying To Downplay Biden’s Faceplant By: Evita Duffy-Alfonso

https://thefederalist.com/2023/06/05/corporate-media-trips-over-itself-trying-to-downplay-bidens-faceplant/

Americans know the corporate media launders disinformation on behalf of the Democratic Party.

After President Joe Biden faceplanted during the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation ceremony last week, the corporate media immediately began running PR for the president, waving away legitimate concerns surrounding his mental and physical fitness.

“Biden ‘fine’ after fall onstage at Air Force Academy graduation,” reads an NBC headline, framing their story around the totally impartial word of a White House aide. Politico ran a similar story titled, “Biden falls on stage at Air Force graduation but is ‘fine,’ according to spokesperson.” Reuters’ headline read, “Biden trips and falls during graduation ceremony, recovers quickly,” and Newsweek had the creative angle of blaming the whole thing on the Secret Service.

But the most shameless piece of media manipulation after Biden’s tumble comes from The New York Times, which ran a piece titled “Inside the Complicated Reality of Being America’s Oldest President.” You have to hand it to the Times. It takes some truly dedicated propagandists to spin a story about Biden falling before the world on national television into an opportunity to praise the president for his “sharp[ness],” “fit[ness],” and “striking stamina.”

“The two Joe Bidens coexist in the same octogenarian president: Sharp and wise at critical moments, the product of decades of seasoning, able to rise to the occasion even in the dead of night to confront a dangerous world,” read the Times article. “Yet a little slower, a little softer, a little harder of hearing, a little more tentative in his walk, a little more prone to occasional lapses of memory in ways that feel familiar to anyone who has reached their ninth decade or has a parent who has.”

CNN Provides Forum for Representative of Hamas-Linked Groups No challenge from host, who allowed CAIR’s Wilfredo Ruiz to distort reality about Israel. Joe Kaufman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/cnn-provides-forum-for-representative-of-hamas-linked-groups/

On May 15th, the United Nations (UN) held an event to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Nakba or Catastrophe, the Palestinian term condemning the creation of Israel. In holding this event, the UN, which played a large role in recognizing Israel as a nation, over seven decades ago, has now denounced Israel’s existence. To showcase and distort the true nature of this obscene occasion, CNN en Español, CNN’s Spanish language channel, interviewed Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, a representative of groups tied to Hamas and someone who has previously vilified the Jewish religion. Ruiz’s propaganda and lies went unchallenged by the host.

Wilfredo Ruiz, a ‘prized’ convert, is a pillar of the radical Muslim community, as he speaks fluent Spanish, while proficiently communicating Palestinian and general Islamist talking points. When members of the Hispanic media look for a Muslim figure to discuss subjects about the religion of Islam or Islamic affairs, many times, Ruiz (misguidedly) becomes their ‘go to’ guy by default.

CNN en Español has frequently invited Ruiz to appear on its shows to comment on a number of subjects. The channel’s latest issue featuring Ruiz was the recent commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, held at UN Headquarters in New York City, which included an address made by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and music performed by a 25-piece orchestra. This was an especially egregious issue to involve Ruiz in, as he is an active participant in a variety of organizations that have documented ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Ruiz is the Communications Director for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The CAIR logo hovered behind him, throughout the CNN interview. CAIR was founded, in 1994, as part of the American Palestine Committee, headed by then-global leader of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US government, a party to the financing of Hamas, during federal trials concerning fellow Palestine Committee member, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). In July 2014, Ruiz’s own CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in downtown Miami, where rally goers repeatedly chanted, “We are Hamas.”

CNN: apologists for terror By Robyn Dolgin

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/cnn_apologists_for_terror.html

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour appeared tone deaf to the public outcry over her “news analysis” involving a mother and her two young daughters left for dead by three Palestinian terrorists in Northern Samaria.

She used the blatantly false term “shootout” to describe the cold-blooded murder of Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia, 20 and Rina, 15, as if suggesting an exchange of gunfire had taken place at the time the terrorists sprayed bullets into the Dee family vehicle. The Dee family was unarmed and en route to a holiday at the seaside.

Amanpour’s fanciful imagination at painting a “moral equivalency” between the two groups was not lost on Rabbi Leo Dee, husband and father to the victims. He astutely described the reportage as representing a new age of “terror journalism.”

“Christiane’s false reporting caused my family unimaginable pain and suffering at a time when we could least bear it,” Rabbi Dee said in the Jerusalem Post. “This type of terror journalism perpetuates the conflict in the Middle East… The real cycle of violence is a comment like this followed by a terrorist atrocity and them more of the same.”

This sort of impassioned commentary is something Amanpour has become accustomed to hearing as a virulently anti-Israel commentator. But she’s less accustomed to looking down the barrel of a $1.3 billion lawsuit proposed by a grieving family member against her personally and her news organization, CNN. Rabbi Dee is consulting with legal experts and has made his intention clear of expressing his concerns to David Zaslav, CEO of CNN. He has requested a meeting with Zaslav.

The rabbi’s attempt to right a wrong appears to have motivated Amanpour to emerge from behind her wall of silence and issue an apology. “I referred to the murders of an Israeli family: Lucy, Maia and Rina Dee, the wife and daughter of Rabbi Leo Dee. I misspoke and said they were killed in a ‘shootout’ instead of a shooting,” Amanpour offered. “I have written to Rabbi Leo Dee to apologize and make sure the he knows that we apologize for any further pain that may have caused him.”

Rabbi Dee publicly accepted Amanpour’s apology, but his grander vision of holding CNN accountable goes beyond acknowledging a two-paragraph apology. He wants to change the network’s “cycle of false reporting:” His intention is to hold the global network accountable for news reporting that just doesn’t obfuscate the truth, but repackages the facts to the extent that viewers fail to learn the most essential truths.

In this case, CNN viewers would never know from Amanpour and her Israel-bashing colleagues, that the Dee family was murdered at close range, the matriarch had donated her organs for the benefit of others, and among the recipients would be an Arab citizen, as well as Rabbi Dee expressing his sentiment that the “vast majority of Palestinians are good people.”

Could “Journalists” Sink Any Lower: Beware of Alex Novell by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19681/alex-novell

[He wrote] me: “I’m a graduate student at NYU working on a documentary film.” Not “I’m a former graduate student with no current connection to NYU.” He was deliberately deceptive and did make false statements.

He apparently believes that because I defend Israel, he is justified in defrauding me.

This, then, is a warning to other people who support Israel to be aware that this fraudulent and pretend “journalist” is out there ready to employ sleazy tactics unworthy of real journalists. No one should ever agree to be interviewed by Novell. And NYU should be aware that its good name is being misused and tarnished by Novell’s unethical misrepresentations.

Novell has now tried to shift blame to me, saying that I should have checked him out on Google before agreeing to be interviewed. So I did, and I found nothing that would have alerted me to his fraudulent intentions and action. This is why I am writing this op-ed: so that anyone Novell seeks to interview in the future, will be able to learn about his sordid history.

Journalists are supposed to be governed by rules of ethics, but too many of them will do anything, violate any rule, break any trust, lie to any source, in order to get a career-building story. Most journalists comply with their ethical obligations, but the ones who do not cause understandable distrust among the general public.

Recently, a young man named Alex Novell emailed me saying: “I’m a graduate student at NYU working on a documentary film about the history of the Taglit-Birthright program.” He asked me for “an interview with you as it would provide expert commentary for the film.” I agreed first, because I like to encourage students who are doing interesting projects; second, I assumed, as he indeed led me to assume, that he was a current student New York University and that his project was part of his studies under the supervision of the school; and third, I care deeply about Birthright and its impact on American students and, having worked with the program, deeply respect it.

Majority Of Americans Know Regime Media’s Favorite Narratives Are Fake News By: Samuel Boehlke

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/23/majority-of-americans-know-regime-medias-favorite-narratives-are-fake-news/

While the news from Harvard CAPS/Harris’ recent poll that received the most coverage was former President Donald Trump’s lead over President Joe Biden, the poll also demonstrates that a majority of American voters disagree with corporate media narratives. Journalist Glenn Greenwald drew attention to the report and key themes on Twitter over the weekend.

The Harris Poll and HarrisX conducted an online survey on May 17-18, 2023, of 2,004 registered U.S. voters, weighing the results by demographics according to their proportion in the population and likelihood of online presence.

According to key results released on May 19, a majority of Americans believe the allegations included in the Steele dossier and Russia collusion stories are “false,” but approximately 70 percent of Democrats still believe those corporate media lies.

A majority of Americans also know “the Hunter Biden laptop is real.” A majority of Democrats, however, still believe legacy media’s claim — devised by Biden’s team and a cohort of corrupt intelligence officials — that it was Russian disinformation. 

How Long Does the Media Think It Can Cover for Fetterman’s Cognitive Impairment? By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/05/17/how-long-does-the-media-think-it-can-cover-for-fettermans-cognitive-impairment-n1696212

Hello, goodnight everybody. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) may have returned to the U.S. Senate, but contrary to the media’s attempt to paint a picture of a triumphant comeback, things really aren’t going all that well.

Following his discharge from Walter Reed, Fetterman eventually resumed his senatorial duties and was presented with an opportunity to showcase his triumphant return by chairing the lesser-known Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. The media was poised to assure the public of his capability to fulfill his Senate responsibilities with the appropriate fanfare. However, Fetterman’s first major outing served as a painful reminder of the cognitive impairments he suffered.

If there was anything Fetterman’s first subcommittee hearing made clear, it was that despite his extended absence from the Senate, there appeared to be no visible advancements in his stroke recovery. So, the media instead opted to paint him as a hero for being so open about his bout with depression, hoping we’d forget about or excuse his obvious frailties.

One cannot help but notice a shift in the media’s strategy since that calamitous hearing in mid-April. Fetterman has discreetly made appearances at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, as well as a Senate Banking Committee hearing. The media took no interest. There was no extensive coverage of him back in the saddle, doing the business he was elected to do.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Media Malpractice: Russian Hoax Confirmed by the Durham Report By Greg Byrnes

https://pjmedia.com/columns/gregbyrnes/2023/05/16/pulitzer-prize-winning-media-malpractice-russian-hoax-confirmed-by-the-durham-report-n1695646

Seven years later, we learn from Special Counsel John Durham’s report what was obvious seven minutes into this nonsense: The Russian hoax story was a childish prank. The puerile document was created by political opponents of Donald Trump. Duh — and double duh. Those who perpetuated it helped avert peace abroad and destroy tranquility at home. Divide countries, divide the public, and engender paranoid hate; that’s one heck of a prank.

In 2016 this Hilary Clinton paid-for schlock piece of fabulist political fantasy was discussed in a White House briefing. Were these a confederacy of dunces, devils, or serious intelligence analysts? You be the judge. And ask yourself what was the collective IQ in that meeting as CIA Director John Brennan breathlessly went over Hilary’s hoax documents with President Obama, Vice President Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey ooing and ahhing. Confirmation bias? Lack of critical thinking? Lack of judgment? Or just any stick to beat a dog named Trump with?

On August 3, 20I6, within days of receiving the Clinton Plan intelligence, Director Brennan met with the President, Vice President and other senior Administration officials, including but not limited to the Attorney General (who participated remotely) and the FBI Director, in the White House Situation Room to discuss Russian election interference efforts. According to Brennan’s handwritten notes and his recollections from the meeting, he briefed on relevant intelligence known to date on Russian election interference, including the Clinton Plan intelligence [the Dossier]. Specifically, Director Brennan’s declassified handwritten notes reflect that he briefed the meeting’s participants regarding the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.