Fake News
February 12, 2019 — John Hinderaker
I am so old, I can remember when liberals invented the term “fake news” to refer to pro-Trump commentary on Facebook. Those days are long gone, of course, and President Trump has made the phrase his own. “Fake news” now refers to the partisan falsehoods that dominate the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and many other news outlets. Which you can tell by the fact that
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February 1, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Things are looking bleak for McClatchy Company: This morning, Craig Forman, CEO of McClatchy Company, emailed all staff to say about 10 percent of the newspaper chain’s employees would be offered voluntary buyouts. *** McClatchy publishes newspapers across the nation, including the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Idaho Statesman, Fresno Bee, and Charlotte Observer. Last August, the company cut about 3.5 percent of the staff, nearly 140 employees. The slow
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January 21, 2019 — Scott Johnson
A reader writes from China to lend a hand to attorneys who may represent the MAGA hat-wearing Catholic high school studentsin their potential libel lawsuits. According to the AP and other outlets, these students allegedly mocked a Native American after they participated in the pro-life rally in DC on Friday. John posted a screenshot of the principal AP story by Adam Beam and Brian Melley here yesterday. The story has
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January 20, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I’m wondering whether Buzzfeed should be known as Buzzbomb or Buzzfizz, since so many of their stories fizzle out or blow up in their own face. Or maybe we should adapt the old French-inspired phrase, “hoist by their own Buzzbomb”? I think there might be an analogy here to the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. Postwar studies of bombing showed that Allied air raids missed their targets
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January 19, 2019 — Scott Johnson
On Thursday evening BuzzFeed posted a story with the attention-grabbing headline “President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project.” CNN ran with the story essentially nonstop yesterday. Below is CNN New Day’s tweet with a video clip of the show’s interview with BuzzFeed reporter Anthony Cormier discussing his story yesterday morning. The excitement was palpable. “If true,” Trump was toast. Democrats couldn’t
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January 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
In “Fakiest news of 2018” I gave the award to Greg Gordon and Peter Stone of McClatchy News. They earned it with their peddling of the Prague connection element of the Russia hoax and the smearing of Cleta Mitchell. When it comes to fake news, Gordon and Stone are Exhibit A. I posted Cleta Mitchell’s email correspondence with Gordon and Stone so that readers could see with their own eyes
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December 29, 2018 — Scott Johnson
McClatchy News reporters Greg Gordon and Peter Stone are the authors of the latest version of the Russia hoax story featuring Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s putative trip to Prague to work out the details of the Trump campaign’s collusion with the friends of Vladimir Putin. The story is more of the same bushwa they have been peddling for some time (see below). The byline of Gordon and Stone is a
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November 26, 2018 — Steven Hayward
As if we need any more reason to distrust media bias, this juxtaposition says it all:
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November 18, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Fake news is a serious problem in our political life. I’m not referring to a pathetically small number of Facebook ads bought by Russian provocateurs. I’m talking about the fake news that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee; fabricated by Democratic Party-allied consultants; propagated by the FBI and the CIA; promoted by the broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington
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October 31, 2018 — Steven Hayward
My impression is that Trump has been steadily growing stronger and more confident as president since his inauguration. He still has some very bad moments and ill-advised tweets, but it is a fantasy that he will be driven from office barring anything truly scandalous from the Mueller investigation, and I’m pretty sure we’d have had it by now if there was anything to the Russia collusion story. I’m thinking there’s
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October 21, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I was asked by our local chapter of the Cardozo Society — an affinity group of Jewish lawyers of which I am a member — to speak over lunch as a counterpart to ABA Foundation Fellow and historian Victoria Saker Woeste on the subject of fake news at the society’s October 8 continuing legal education program. Ms. Woeste was the featured speaker. Her theme was that the term “fake news”
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September 20, 2018 — Steven Hayward
It is hard to single out the most egregious media treatment of the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh because the field is so large and the competition so intense. But The Guardian at least deserves to make the Finals with its story today entitled “‘No accident’ Brett Kavanaugh’s female law clerks ‘looked like models’, Yale professor told students.” It is a transparent attempt to paint Kavanaugh as a sexist
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September 13, 2018 — Steven Hayward
• As has already been noted here in the latest Green Weenie Award, the climatistas are all spun up to say that Hurricane Florence proves that catastrophic climate change is upon us and that we need to hand over our car keys to Al Gore right now. If you pay attention to extreme weather trends, you’ll know that the period between Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and last year saw no
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August 25, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I first met Lanny Davis when he came up to Dartmouth, as I recall, in the spring of 1971. Lanny had come up to pitch students on the presidential campaign of Edmund Muskie. Lanny was the National Director of Youth Coalition for Muskie at the time. Judging by the turnout that night, it was a small coalition. He seemed like a decent guy. Even then I knew enough to keep
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August 19, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post ran a front page story today called “As Trump hurls racial invective, GOP is quiet.” The story begins with this sentence: The president of the United States had just lobbed another racially charged insult — this time calling his former top African American adviser a “dog” — but Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) had no interest in talking about it. (Emphasis added) Notice how the Post backs away
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I noted here last night the desperate attempt of the left to smear Brett Kavanaugh by trolling for possible cellphone photos of him at Washington Nationals baseball games, and hoping that somebody somewhere would be working up some good photoshops fit for the moment, especially since I am too snowed under this week to do it myself. Fortunately faithful Power Line reader Stephen Manning is up to the challenge, and
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August 14, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Got a whole bunch of short items to get off my spindle this morning. • So Elon Musk says the Saudis are interested in financing Tesla to go private. Why would the Saudis want to become the major financial player in an electric car company? I simply can’t imagine. I guess Musk is too young to remember an old Johnny Carson Tonight Show line about an idea being as bad
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