RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/more-shoddy-hydroxychloroquine-journalism/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first

Last week, I wrote about the stupidity of rooting against hydroxychloroquine simply because Donald Trump has mentioned that it holds some therapeutic promise in the fight against coronavirus. This NBC News piece by Heidi Przybyla is the kind of shoddy journalism to which I was referring:

A New York woman with coronavirus symptoms died last week after being prescribed a drug cocktail with known cardiac side effects, and family members say she was not tested for COVID-19 or for heart problems before receiving the medication.

The piece goes on to mention — twice — that Trump touted the drug, and notes that Media Matters says that Fox News touts the drug. But it offers no evidence that the woman’s death had anything to do with hydroxychloroquine.

Despite strongly suggesting that Trump had a hand in death of a defenseless 65-year-old woman, the reporter failed to speak to the physician who prescribed the drugs, or even to obtain additional confirmation about the cause of death.

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2020/04/14/can-we-talk-about-american-medias-connections-to-chinese-interests-n2566887?utm_campaign=inarticle

Several weeks ago, we detailed how American mainstream media outlets were intent on parroting communist propaganda talking points coming from disinformation ministers in Beijing.

At first glance, it would be easy to write this disturbing surrender of journalistic integrity to advanced stages of Trump Derangement System. It would be reasonable to suspect that reporters, producers, anchors and editors held such an intense zeal to oppose, resist and damage President Trump that they’d even stoop so low as to hand their bylines over to propagandists supporting the totalitarian murderers at the top of the Red China food chain.

However, something even more disconcerting may be at work here.

Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty has assembled a disturbing and thorough timeline of the communist Chinese government’s complicity in the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

The story of the coronavirus pandemic is still being written. But at this early date, we can see all kinds of moments where different decisions could have lessened the severity of the outbreak we are currently enduring. You have probably heard variations of: “Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be transferred from human to human until it was too late.” What you have probably not heard is how emphatically, loudly, and repeatedly the Chinese government insisted human transmission was impossible, long after doctors in Wuhan had concluded human transmission was ongoing — and how the World Health Organization assented to that conclusion, despite the suspicions of other outside health experts.

It’s fantastic reporting and well worth your time when you’re finished reading this.

This is fantastic work by Jim, but why is he the one who put this together? Jim’s one of the best, don’t get me wrong, but he, like so many of us, works for a scrappy media outlet with limited resources. I mean, there are huge media companies in this country covering this story who have resources and reporters all around the world at their fingertips to assemble this data.

Why didn’t NBC News do this reporting? Or ABC News? Or CNN?

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/16/media-hope-in-covid-19-they-finally-the-event-that-will-unseat-trump/

A blatant bias against Republicans and conservatives and in favor of Democrats and the left has existed in the media for decades. But never have we seen its fevered as it is today.

The mainstream, or legacy, media was triggered by candidate Donald Trump months before he was elected in 2016. Its palpable hatred of the man was ratcheted up when he beat Hillary Clinton, and hasn’t let up since.

If anything, it’s even become more intense during the COVID-19 crisis. The media, playing well the role of propagandists for the Democratic Party, has only a single objective in its “coverage,” and it’s not reporting relevant information. It simply wants to: Get Trump.

This is not some misreading of events on our part — 43% of the country, and 65% of Republican voters, believe most in the media “are trying to hurt Trump politically” with their coronavirus coverage, says a Rasmussen poll. That 43% would move up well over 50%, and likely even higher, if open minds would read what we’re about to say.

Unable to chase Trump from office through Russia, Russia, Russia; impeachment; and incessant whining about the Electoral College, the media are now riding the coronavirus panic. If they could just convince the public the president is responsible for every COVID-19 death, that he acted too soon, and acted too slowly, that he’s wielded too much power, and not enough, that he hasn’t said enough, but now he’s said too much, they could get their man elected in November. It’s almost as if the press was working from a list of Get Trump bullet points.

https://spectator.org/trump-fights-back/

It was May 2014.

I was interviewing then-private citizen Donald Trump for The American Spectator in his Trump Tower office. The subject in general was his view on issues of the day, along with a possible presidential run in 2016. But I had one question in particular that I wanted to ask.

The question: There were a lot of Republicans who felt their presidential nominees, the perpetual targets of the media, never fought back when attacked. Were he to run, not to mention were he elected, would he fight back? And note: the mention of Donald Sterling, the then-owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA franchise, revolved around a just-released secret recording of racist remarks made by Sterling to his mistress, who had recorded him and released the tape to the media. It was, for a moment, the news story of the day, and as such Trump was asked to comment in an appearance on Fox and Friends. His response to me as follows, verbatim:

Well, I see firsthand the dishonesty of the press, because probably nobody gets more press than I do. As an example, last week I was on a Fox program, and I very much lambasted Donald Sterling. And then at the very end I said, “On top of which, he has the girlfriend from hell.” And the haters and the very dishonest reporters who have their own agenda, they didn’t cover what I said about Donald Sterling. They only took the girlfriend from hell and they said, “Oh he’s not blaming Donald Sterling. He’s defending Donald Sterling. He’s blaming the girlfriend.”

The press is extremely dishonest. Much of it. Some of it I have great respect for, and they’re great people and honorable people. But there’s a large segment of the press that’s more dishonest than anybody I’ve seen in business or anywhere else. And the one thing you have to do is you have to inform the public. The public has to know about the dishonesty of the press because they are really bad people and they don’t tell the truth and have no intention of telling the truth. And I know who they are and I would expose them 100 percent. And I will be doing that. I mean, as I go down the line, I enjoy exposing people for being frauds and, you know, I would be definitely doing that. I think it’s important to know. Because a lot of the public, they think, oh, they read it in the newspaper, and therefore it must be true. Well many of the things you read in the newspaper are absolutely false and really disgustingly false.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/04/new-york-times-editor-admits-biden-sexual-assault-daniel-greenfield/

Dean Baquet is not a very bright guy. The New York Times isn’t there for any obvious reason except his willingness to be both a token, and, unlike his predecessor, submissive to the Sulzberg clan, while pushing assorted identity politics agendas.

It takes a very ‘not bright guy’ to make the admission that Baquet did about the Times’ hit piece on Tara Reade, the former Biden Senate staffer who had accused him of sexual assault.

The New York Times whitewashing piece had initially included and then deleted a paragraph that attracted a lot of attention.

“The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses, and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/targeting-tony-fauci-11586819293?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The U.S. may be fighting through a public health and economic emergency, but for the media resistance the most important story is always Donald Trump. Monday was again dominated by breathless reports about Mr. Trump’s relationship with Anthony Fauci after the President retweeted something that included a #FireFauci hashtag. While Mr. Trump’s antagonists feign protectiveness of Dr. Fauci and horror that Mr. Trump might question expert judgment, the truth is they are eager for a public brawl that will hurt the President politically.

Monday’s dust-up was prompted by an interview Dr. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, gave Sunday on CNN. Host Jake Tapper, fishing for criticism of the Trump Administration, compared the U.S. to South Korea and pressed Dr. Fauci on whether “lives could have been saved” if the U.S. started shutting down in February.

Dr. Fauci was reluctant to take the bait, saying it was “little bit unfair” to compare the U.S. to South Korea but said that of course earlier shutdowns could have made a difference. CNN ran with the headline “Fauci admits earlier Covid-19 mitigation efforts would have saved more American lives.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/fauci_strongly_rebuts_media_efforts_to_paint_him_as_a_trump_hostage.html

Monday’s COVID-19 press conference will be memorable because President Trump used it to slap back at the media’s attempt to rewrite his timely and aggressive response to COVID-19, even as media types were on the airwaves saying it was nothing more than a flu. What shouldn’t get lost about that same press conference is how Dr. Fauci responded to a reporter who tried to get him, not just to blame Trump, but to act as a hostage to or puppet of the administration.

The press conference that ended up shooting off so many fireworks began innocuously enough. Trump walked out and offered “condolences and best wishes” to those in the South who had experienced severe and deadly weather. Then, he stated that the number of new infections is flat and that hospitalizations are slowing in hot spots, something that is especially good in light of the apocalyptic nature of the expert predictions.

Trump next invited Dr. Fauci to step to the podium. Fauci cheerfully said that, while last week was bad, it seems as if this week we may be on the other side of the bell curve. He was also enthusiastic about his discussion with the Congressional Black  Caucus, and ways to help minority communities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/a_cbs_reporter_screeches_at_trump__but_shes_wrong_about_her_facts.html

“Anti-Trumpers, of course, didn’t care about the facts nor about respect for the office. They simply liked seeing a shrieking leftist shrew hurling lies at the Republican President of the United States.”

CBS’s Paula Reid was on fire during Monday’s Presidential task force press conference about COVID-19. She started by demeaning Dr. Fauci by asking him a question that implied he’s either hostage to or a puppet of President Trump. That was just a warm-up. Later in the press conference, she started shrieking at President Trump that a video he had shown earlier in the press conference misrepresented his affirmative response to COVID-19 because it implied that he was on top of things in February.

A visibly irritated Trump answered that, in fact, he had taken many steps during February to respond to COVID-19, but CBS’s disrespectful little harridan wouldn’t let up. Aside from being a disgraceful way to talk to the leader of the most powerful nation on earth (if you don’t respect the man, at least respect the office), Reid was completely wrong in her assertion. In other words, she wasn’t a powerful woman taking on a tyrant, she was a shrill Karen being disrespectful to a President of the United States who’s been working hard to protect the American people:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-hits-back-at-media-speculation-on-fauci-says-trump-not-firing-him

The White House hit back Monday at rumblings in the media about whether President Trump might be preparing to oust Dr. Anthony Fauci, calling the speculation “ridiculous” and issuing an on-record show of support for the man who is the face of the administration’s coronavirus response.

Speculation of a frayed relationship between the president and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reached a fever pitch when Trump retweeted a message that included the hashtag “#FireFauci,” but the administration said that the reaction to the post missed the point.

Rather, Trump was just trying to respond to a media “falsehood” about the coronavirus response, according to the White House.

“This media chatter is ridiculous – President Trump is not firing Dr. Fauci.  The President’s tweet clearly exposed media attempts to maliciously push a falsehood about his China decision in an attempt to rewrite history,” White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement.