“A historic crime and disgrace.”
That is how left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald characterizes U.S. media coverage of the 2020 presidential race.
Back in October, he resigned from The Intercept, a publication he co-founded with the aim of providing “fearless, adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable.” Its editors, you see, refused to publish his writing unless he removed “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”
When the New York Post, the nation’s fourth largest newspaper, reported on emails from a laptop belonging to his son, Hunter Biden, Facebook and Twitter quickly blocked folks from sharing the news. Arguing the story was “hacked,” Twitter shut down the Post’s account for the critical final weeks of the campaign.*
“We will not waste our time,” declared National Public Radio, on “stories that are just pure distractions.” Now, with Hunter acknowledging the FBI criminal investigation of the family business, the state-media outlet’s Distraction Meter appears out of whack.
But there’s more. “[A]s soon as these [Hunter Biden] documents became known,” Greenwald told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, “the operatives in the intelligence community, the CIA, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former NSA Director] Michael Hayden — all of the standard professional liars — issued a letter claiming that this material was the hallmark of Russian disinformation, even though they had no basis for thinking that.”**
This, he points out, “gave the media permission to lie to the public continuously” by enthusiastically repeating the baseless claim.
Most ominously, there was again “domestic interference on the part of intelligence agencies in order to manipulate the outcome of our election,” Greenwald explains.
The election is over. Our national nightmare is not.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* There were two huge problems with Twitter’s excuse: (a) the Post’s revelations were not from a hack, and (b) stories are continually written from information hacked and unlawfully leaked to the media — and then shared widely on Facebook and Twitter without any impediment.
** Greenwald is best known for breaking the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information showing unconstitutional NSA spying on Americans, while working for the UK Guardian. Mr. Snowden claimed his “breaking point” in deciding to release the information “was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”
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2 replies on “Mainstream Disinformation”
What difference, at this point, does it make?
Our media establishment has squandered our trust. It can never be recovered. I hope they all have fun finding new jobs. Their services aren’t worth the paper (or screens) they’re printed on.
Yes, they have burned bridges when it comes to actually reporting the news. I haven’t watched Fox for a while, we don’t have it on our small package, FOX Business only, but I always liked their slogan, “we report, you decide.”
Don’t RIP msm…