Fake News
April 5, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Dan Rather has soldiered on since Rathergate. He has persisted in the face of professional disgrace. Indeed, he has retracted apologies previously offered for the fakery that ended his storied career with CBS News. He rendered the apologies with his fingers crossed behind his back. He didn’t mean them. In his 2012 memoir Rather Outspoken, Rather stands by the underlying Rathergate story and the fabricated documents on which it was
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March 7, 2018 — Steven Hayward
A lot of liberal media types are deploring the deplorable people who deplore the media because of the result of this chart drawn from Gallup survey data showing that Democratic trust in the (Trump-hating) media is soaring, while discriminating people (that is, Republicans) continue to have less and less regard for the media: Surprise, surprise! I wonder what could be causing this “polarization”? Maybe things like this, from the newspaper
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February 19, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Nina Burleigh is best remembered as the “reporter” who offered oral sex to Bill Clinton and recommended that other women do likewise. For her, Glenn Reynolds’ famous “Democratic operative with byline” doesn’t go far enough. Today, Ms. Burleigh was back in action in defense of Al Franken. Her latest effort is the purest expression of left-wing paranoia we have seen in a long time: “How an Alt-Right Bot Network Took
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February 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It really hasn’t been worth the trouble of taking notice of the ongoing collapse of Newsweek over the last several months, but this week Newsweek has moved from collapse mode to sluicing down the sewer pipe at a rapid clip. To wit: MUELLER INVESTIGATION IS PRESSURING TRUMP TOWARD ‘PUSHING THE NUCLEAR BUTTON,’ MENTAL HEALTH EXPERT SAYS By Jessica Kwong President Donald Trump’s mental health is “deteriorating” and special counsel Robert
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January 27, 2018 — Steven Hayward
The “fake news” slogan may be overused and stretched sometimes, but good catch by Glenn Reynolds to note that USA Today ran a “news” story that “President Trump May Be Giving a Speech to an Empty Room in Davos.” It was based on nothing more than a few unnamed “sources” saying that there had been a call for a boycott by some no-name figures from Africa, and that “a number
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January 25, 2018 — Steven Hayward
In today’s installment from Yes, Prime Minister, Jim Hacker explains the constituency for each major British newspaper: It is not too hard to translate this into a contemporary American equivalent: “The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country; The New York Times is read by people who think they ought to run the country; the Wall Street Journal is read by people who own the
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January 16, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Today the Washington Examiner headlined: “Google refers to Republican senator David Perdue as ‘lying, unscrupulous politician.'” That is certainly eye-catching! Where did Google say this? In the box that shows up on the right side of the page when you search on Perdue’s name, as I wrote about here. This is the screen shot that the Examiner published: That’s pretty horrific. If Google has any sense–and someone there must–they are
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January 14, 2018 — John Hinderaker
The Associated Press headlines: “Trust and truth under Trump: Americans are in a quandary.” Well, the AP is, anyway: [A] year into Donald Trump’s fact-bending, media-bashing presidency, Americans are increasingly confused about who can be trusted to tell them reliably what their government and their commander in chief are doing. Many would say that we are a year into the liberal press’s fact-bending, Trump-bashing orgy. But that doesn’t seem to
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January 5, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Never has a paraphrase of Shakespeare’s line been more fitting than with regard to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which has ignited a full-scale bonfire of the vanities in Washington this week. It is a typical example of the superficiality of contemporary journalism: full of detail and juicy gossip—some of it perhaps even true—but utterly devoid of insight and understanding. You might call it “Woodwardism,”
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January 4, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Michael Wolff is the author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, the scathing book that describes alleged dysfunction and infighting at the White House. He’s the guy to whom Steve Bannon apparently decided to spill his guts. But is Wolff a reliable chronicler? Paul Farhi, the Washington Post’s liberal media reporter, doesn’t seem to think so. He writes: A provocateur and media polemicist, Wolff has a penchant
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January 3, 2018 — John Hinderaker
New York Magazine has published an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Michael Wolff titled Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. This is the book that includes bizarre comments by Steve Bannon smearing President Trump and his family. It also contains a story that was, as liberal reporters say, too good to check: President Trump had never heard of John Boehner. The story is told in tweets, via
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December 30, 2017 — Scott Johnson
His interest having been piqued by CNN’s intense coverage of the big white truck obscuring President Trump’s golf outing at Mar-A-Lago earlier this week, Mike Magnoli of the CBS News West Palm Beach affiliate turned his investigative skills to the case. He tracked down the truck. He found that the vehicle belonged to the sheriff’s department. He determined, however, contrary to the heavy breathing at CNN, that the truck was
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December 29, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Scrolling through my Twitter feed this morning, I see that John’s designated Tweet of the Day yesterday has an afterlife on the day after. Thanks to the Drudge tweet below, we see that CNN is still on the case. The song remains the same. As for CNN’s noncoverage of Josh Meyer’s exposé of the Obama administration’s accommodation of Hezbollah, the silence remains the same. CNN’s silence, however, may be preferable
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December 28, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The problem at CNN isn’t just the fake news. Worse is the real news they never report on at all, which is well summed up in this tweet by Chuck Ross: 23: The number of times over the past day that CNN has mentioned the white box truck that obscured view of Trump golfing 0: For comparison, the number of times CNN has mentioned that Politico report on Obama admin's
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December 27, 2017 — Steven Hayward
There is something ironic about the fact that a grand White House Magnolia tree planted during Andrew Jackson’s administration is going to come down during the administration of the most Jacksonian president since Old Hickory. (By the way, if Jackson was “Old Hickory,” maybe we should call Trump “Old Spice”? It fits in some ways, if you think about it. . .) Rim-shot! Anyway, what isn’t ironic at all is
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December 11, 2017 — John Hinderaker
I wrote wrote about President Trump’s war with the Democratic Party press, in which he seems to be winning most of the battles. Of course, the press doesn’t see it that way. Michael Ramirez offers an optimistic take. I hope he is right, and in any event, his cartoon made me laugh. Click to enlarge:
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December 10, 2017 — John Hinderaker
That is what President Trump called the Democratic Party media in a tweet today–a stain on America–and he is right. Very little discussion of all the purposely false and defamatory stories put out this week by the Fake News Media. They are out of control – correct reporting means nothing to them. Major lies written, then forced to be withdrawn after they are exposed…a stain on America! — Donald J.
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