Fake News: The Fake-Stream Media Devours Itself

The Great Recession Blog

When their Anointed One lost the election, big television news networks and primary newspapers coined the term “fake news” because they were angry at alternative media for eroding deep into their domain. It was time to expose these fakers because audiences were fleeing to alternatives to establishment media as certainly as they fled to alternatives to establishment politicians.  

Without a doubt there is a ton of fake news on alternative media sites, which often publish what works for them without much fact checking. So, to launch a war on their competition, the mainstream media employed their standard sound-byte strategy that has worked well for them in the past. They simultaneously started circulating the new talking point “fake news” to try to stop the migration of audiences toward alternative news sites. It was time to point out how they, the mainstream media, do a superior job of editing out the baloney for you.

Fake news spews all over itself

Everybody else’s news became fake news, but the mainstream media’s own exaggerated and highly spun stories, which they ran day after day … that was just bedrock reality. Following Fox’s years of example, the MSM dropped even the pretense of separating their own commentary from news stories, and much of their news became commentary about alternative media; but the “fake news” mantra all backfired this time.

It only became all the more evident that the MSM was doing many of the fake stories, even as they commented against the fake news of the alternative media. Much of the news during the campaign had been the MSM’s own fake news like the endlessly repeated false fact that Trump has said Mexicans are rapists and all need to be sent packing. What he really said was that a certain few Mexicans who actually were rapists should have been sent back to Mexico because they were illegal aliens anyway, so why were we keeping them here? Common-sense stuff that most Americans (and probably most legitimate Mexican immigrants) agree with. Why are we keeping rapists here? Do we need them? Is it our responsibility to store them and feed them for Mexico? Thanks to the MSM’s sloppy handling of such nuances, however, much of the Hispanic community in the US believed as fact that Donald Trump thinks Mexicans are rapists.

Then, of course, there were all the stories about Trump’s lead advisor Stephen Bannon being anti-Semitic and working at an anti-Semitic alternative news site called Breitbart. (Wow! The MSM could kill two things they didn’t like with this one — Trump’s advisor and Breitbart.) Never did the stories mention that Breitbart was founded by Jews and is still owned by Jews, who hired Bannon because they like him, and that many of the editors and writers Bannon had working for him were Jews who think highly of him. All that mattered was that one writer (who was also a Jew) had published an article there calling another Jew a renegade Jew because he was, for a fact, a Jew and was renegade in that he was doing something that isn’t normally considered very Jewish. Well, that and the fact that Bannon’s ex said something nasty about Bannon’s opinion of Jews. (In divorce court, where we know ex’s never exaggerate or make false statements.) The MSM shared this fake news back and forth so much that it became another famous false fact that Breitbart is anti-Semitic.

Nevertheless, a lot of people were on to what was happening. So, when the MSM launched the term “fake news” millions of people readily grabbed the useful moniker and hung it like a lead collar around the necks of the MSM. They didn’t see that coming! Now, the members of the establishment media are beside themselves because they can’t claw the collar off.

Besides losing their audiences, the fake-stream media also finds they now face an incoming president who doesn’t even pretend to put up with their prattle and who is willing to simply ignore them as being too insipid to be worthy of his time. Instead, he refuses to take their questions and turns to their competitors:

The whole establishment press looks to be cracking up over the fact that the president-elect thinks he can ignore them. How insulting. How peevish. One of Whoopi Goldberg’s Five Talking Girls gave her view that she was actually “terrified!” (Chills. But, oh, how fun it is to watch: The ladies of The View go wild over Trump’s accusation of CNN’s fake news.)

The most recent and outrageous example of fake news came last week when CNN thought they could capitalize on a salacious and completely uncorroborated story about Trump hiring prostitutes to do naughty things to a mattress the Obamas slept on. CNN passed on publishing the baloney themselves because it didn’t meet journalistic standards (and, therefore, might easily turn out to be fake news). That, however, didn’t stop CNN from seizing the opportunity to tell the whole world as soon as an alternative news site (albeit a liberal one) published the scurrilous story. With CNN’s heightened publicity, the story exploded like a small fire given oxygen.

CNN thought they could wash their hand of all guilt because they righteously reported only the truth — that someone else had reported some likely fake news. Of course, they provided links to the story, which had its own links to the salacious document, in order to prove that someone had published this horrible stuff that they would never touch. Alas, their self-righteous attempt at arm’s-length, plausible deniability didn’t work for them, and they came out looking as dirty as the journalists who did published the story.

Then NBC took the high ground, digging into the fake-stream media. I have to say it is fun to watch them go at it. It’s like watching a dinosaur fight:

It’s fun, too, to watch Anderson Cooper stumble all over himself and then get schooled by Kelly-Ann Conway as he tries to claim that CNN held the moral high ground by only reporting that others had reported the fake news: (Again, almost hilarious)

“We did not publish the … unsubstantiated allegation,” said Cooper over and over. True. You only put up the bright neon arrows pointing to where this baloney mud-raking could be found. You were just a publicist for fake news, CNN. (However, when Cooper says CNN didn’t link to the Buzzfeed story, his is telling an outright lie. I KNOW because CNN was where I first found the story through CNN’s links. I had never heard of the story until they publicized it.)

“We didn’t put the poison in the caviar; we just told everyone where the buffet was that we knew was going to serve it … and that it was yummy.”

How’s that cop-out working for you CNN? Are people still stupid enough to buy into that kind of dodge? Apparently not. According to CNN,  the flack they are now receiving publicly for their fake news isn’t their fault. It’s all Trump’s fault for having the audacity to call them out on it. He’s going to get them killed:

Poor, hated CNN. Fake news was so much more fun when people simply trusted you with it.

I do feel badly for them and feel they’ve been abused in that they have created fake news for so long, and they are only just now getting recognized for how good their fakery has been. The recognition has been a long time coming. And to hear now that people want to beat their reporters up when they are just getting recognized for how effective their fakery has been, that’s too much!

The Great Recession Blog