6 eye-popping cases of mainstream media fake news
Exclusive: Mychal Massie exposes scandalous reports by CNN, ABC, NBC Published: 21 hours ago
 Mychal Massie About | Email | Archive
Mychal Massie is founder and chairman of the Racial Policy Center (http://racialpolicycenter.org/), a conservative think tank that advocates for a colorblind society. He was recognized as the 2008 Conservative Man of the Year by the Conservative Party of Suffolk County, New York. He is a nationally recognized political activist, pundit and columnist. Massie has appeared on cable news and talk-radio programming worldwide. He is also the founder and publisher of The Daily Rant: mychal-massie.com.
The latest grave concern for the mainstream media, Democrats and Republicans who side with them has become “fake news.” Depending upon whom you ask, “fake news” is of greater concern than the Russians hacking Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump win the election (sarcasm intended). If these intellectually dishonest drama queens want to focus on “fake news,” let’s have at it.
In January 2005, I wrote that Eason Jordan – then executive vice president and chief news executive of CNN, chairman of CNN’s editorial board and member of CNN’s executive committee – had by his own admission kept secret that Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, planned to murder two brothers-in-law. And Jordan, while keeping Uday’s intentions secret, then engaged in a massive disinformation campaign to the public under the guise of CNN News.
Fake news is something that CNN, et al., have long indulged in. In 1998, Joseph Farah, the publisher and founder of WND, exposed the fake news cooked up and reported as gospel truth by Peter Arnett, April Oliver and Jack Smith (aided and abetted by CNN’s CEO, president and Eason Jordan).
I wrote at that time:
This internationally pimped fiction launched (and sunk) the new CNN-Time venture and its flagship program, NewsStand, when they claimed that the United States had used sarin nerve gas to murder [our own] soldiers – as well as women and children – and Arnett’s introductory manipulation provided the political means for Saddam to oust the United Nations’ weapons inspectors. CNN’s own military adviser retired U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Perry Smith resigned in protest after his attempts to show the literal truth to CEO Tom Johnson were flatly rejected out of hand.
In the same column, I also wrote: “On the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, a fellow journalist bemoan[ed] the fact that he was assured by Jordan that CNN published ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ to his face.”
I also reported in the piece that CNN’s Eason Jordan: “brazenly and habitually lied to fellow journalists about the integrity of his network’s reporting.” The truth, as Jordan would later admit, was quite different. Jordan admitted that CNN under his watch, “rarely publish[ed] the truth, preferring to parrot the party line of [Saddam] who they personally knew was a bloody maniac with terrible weapons and plans.” Jordan would later admit CNN misreported the news in Iraq so as to retain a news desk there and also retain a favorable relationship with Saddam Hussein.
Another example of “fake news” by those supposedly concerned about same was revealed by Michael Martinez. In 2012, he reported: “George Zimmerman … is suing NBC Universal for using ‘the oldest form of yellow journalism’ by editing an audio tape of his 911 call to make him sound racist, the lawsuit says.”
Martinez reported that the suit stated: “Because of NBC’s deceptive and exploitative manipulations, the public wrongly believes that Zimmerman ‘use(d) a racial epithet’ while describing Martin during the call to the dispatcher on that fateful night.”
NBC claimed, “There was no intent to portray Mr. Zimmerman unfairly.” The problem with their claims of innocence is that “NBC aired various edited versions of the 911 call on March 19, 20, 22, and 27,” the suit said.
Dan Rather, in an epic example of “fake news,” forever destroyed his own credibility and exposed how far network news programs would go to report lies as fact. In 2004, Rather, on the news program “60 Minutes,” did a segment that he reported proved then-President George W. Bush had received preferential treatment to enter the National Guard in 1968 so as to avoid being drafted and sent to Vietnam. Rather had documents that were presented as irrefutable proof that political pressure had been exerted to shield Bush from the draft.
But almost immediately after the airing of the segment, the documents were exposed as crude forgeries. Alternative conservative news blogs revealed that the typeface and spacing on the documents were inconsistent with any known typewriter of the early 1970s. When Rather was forced to acknowledge his sin, his producer, Mary Mapes, and three other producers were fired.
NBC News suspended its “Nightly News” managing editor and anchor Brian Williams for six months, without pay, after he was exposed making false statements about his experiences during the Iraq War.
Another example of “fake news” is “Dateline,” the NBC so-called investigative news program. It staged the explosion of a General Motors pickup truck in a designed effort to discredit General Motors and validate a knowingly false narrative. General Motors, which removed all advertising from the network, sued NBC. Then, in a face-saving strategy, they had Jane Pauley, who had no connection with the false story, read a scripted mea culpa.
That the mainstream media has made an agency of disinformation is irrefutable. That these same purveyors of lies marketed as news are now attacking those of us who, in fact, are accurately reporting is morally opprobrious and disingenuous, but obviously in keeping with their character. |
