Tag: fake news

Backlash After Washington Post’s ‘March 4 Threat from Militant Trump Supporters’ Story a ‘Mirage’

“On the day when former president Donald Trump’s most delusional supporters swore he would return to power — and the House suspended its business because of supposed threats to the U.S. Capitol — Washington looked on Thursday morning much the way it has for the past two months,” the Post wrote on Thursday.

“National Guard members armed with M4 rifles braced for rebellion that never came. Razor wire lined miles of steel fencing that went unbreached. Trump remained in Florida, where it was 70 degrees and sunny,” it continued.

“I really expected to see more Trump people or something,” one individual present was quoted as saying. “It’s weird how quiet it is today.”

The overreaction included the National Guard being asked to remain in Washington, DC, for another 60 days, as reported by Breitbart News.

Republican lawmakers have blasted the continued deployment, which to date has cost nearly $500 million in American taxpayer funds.

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Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List

We the media have “fact-checked” President Trump like we have fact-checked no other human being on the planet, and he’s certainly given us plenty to write about. That’s probably why it’s so easy to find lists enumerating and examining his mistakes, missteps and “lies.” But as self-appointed arbiters of truth, we’ve largely excused our own unprecedented string of fact-challenged reporting. The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago. Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump’s claims are “lies” when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trump’s statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if they’re established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news stories,without labeling them as opinions.

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Not News But A Juicy Collection Of Narratives – How The New York Times Failed Its Readers

The striving for ‘juicy narratives’ is the biggest mistake of current news media. Their attempt to copy the success of Hollywood dramas by creating narratives has destroyed their credibility. It has put incentives on the wrong aspect of a reporter’s work. Instead of requiring well checked facts the editors are now asking for confirmations of preconceived tales:

What is clear is that The Times should have been alert to the possibility that, in its signature audio documentary, it was listening too hard for the story it wanted to hear — “rooting for the story,” as The Post’s Erik Wemple put it on Friday.

Callimachi is far from the only one guilty of creating fake news to fulfill her editors demand of narratives. The four year long coverage of ‘Russiagate’, the fairytale collection of made up connections between Donald Trump and Russia, was full of such. The editorial push towards narratives is rooted in the desire to create clickbait and to generate a social media echo around the reporting. That may be profitable in the short term but it is also a guarantee for a long term failure.

False of hyped narratives will over time get debunked. People then lose trust in the media that provided them with the fake news. That again will cause a long term loss of readership.

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NBC News Misrepresents Internal DHS Memo About Their Response to the Kyle Rittenhouse Case

NBC News misrepresented an internal memo given to Department of Homeland Security officials that was meant to brief them on the Kyle Rittenhouse situation the week it occurred in August. 

NBC News reported “officials were directed to make public comments sympathetic” about Rittenhouse and it included quotes from the document:

“Federal law enforcement officials were directed to make public comments sympathetic to Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with fatally shooting two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, according to internal Department of Homeland Security talking points obtained by NBC News.

“In preparing Homeland Security officials for questions about Rittenhouse from the media, the document suggests that they note that he ‘took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners.’

…

“The Rittenhouse talking points also say, ‘Kyle was seen being chased and attacked by rioters before allegedly shooting three of them, killing two.’

‘Subsequent video has emerged reportedly showing that there were ‘multiple gunmen’ involved, which would lend more credence to the self-defense claims.'”

Townhall has obtained the DHS memo and it is different from how NBC News described it. There are two sections of the memo, “Situation” and “Response,” a fact not included in their story.

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