Doing A Journalism
Relentlessly push your angle. Lie if you have to.
Before we get into today’s article, I want to extend “Get Well” wishes to Nancy Pelosi, who fell and apparently broke her hip today in Luxembourg at an official event:
And while this injury is no laughing matter to somebody of Pelosi’s age, I DID get a kick out of this line in the above article:
“In her spare time, Pelosi stays active by playing pickleball and torpedoing democracy!”
Today I want to very briefly (turns out not-so-briefly) highlight a couple instances of incredible “journalist” malpractice over the last couple days. First up, CNN’s Clarissa Ward wanders through a cleared-out Syrian prison, only to — SUPRISE — come across a guy under a blanket with a trimmed beard and nails who has somehow missed the fact that everybody around him has vanished. (What a heavy sleeper! He didn’t even wake up when the guard ‘shot the lock off’ his cell!)
CNN actually put this on television. Five entire minutes of obviously staged news. All in service of the “look at all the good our work is doing in Syria!” — a country that we’ve been trying to overthrow for over a decade.
Because the most important thing to the Blob is foreign policy. Billions and billions of mostly unaccountable dollars, shoveled to anybody who will do the Blob’s short-term bidding. This is why anybody who even CONSIDERS the idea that maybe we should re-think our foreign policy is relentlessly attacked by the media:
Shades of “51 former intelligence officials” who told us Hunter’s laptop had the classic earmarks of Russian disinformation, right? It’s for the same exact reason.
That leads us to Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica and his non-coverage of a story about Pete Hegseth, who’s currently embroiled in a battle with the Blob over his confirmation as Secretary of Defense.
Eisinger (apparently randomly?) decided to fact-check Hegseth’s claim he was accepted to West Point. Two separate officials at the Academy told him that Hegseth never even applied. Hegseth provided his acceptance letter proving them wrong. What happened next?
Nothing. The officials gave Eisinger an “oops”, and that was that.
No journalistic curiosity into why multiple “officials” supplied incorrect information. No story about the fact they even did it! Eisinger set to to wrote a specific type of article, and when the facts no longer supported that particular article, the entire incident was (supposed to be) shoved down the memory hole.
See if you can deduce from this email the type of article ProPublica was going for:
The ironic thing is that we would have never known any of this if Eisinger hadn’t felt the need to brag about how good of a journalist he was for not printing a false story. How many “journalists” simply can stories with inconvenient facts?
I bet we found at least one — Politico’s Josh Gerstien:
Yes, that’s exactly what we want you to do, Mister Journalist Man! Maybe then government wouldn’t lie so often! But wishing for truth from government and their media allies might as well be wishing for water in the Sahara. It’s just not gonna happen.
A perfect example is the “journalism” following an Office of the Inspector General report about January 6th:
I’ll be going through the full 88-page report and almost certainly be doing a write-up on it, but the attention-grabbing passage appears on page 9:
CHS refers to “confidential human sources”, which means exactly what you think — informants. Over half of which entered restricted Capitol grounds — and none of which have been punished for it.
But here’s a sampling of articles about the report:
Et tu, Blaze?
Only the NY Post actually told the actual story:
But that isn’t the story those other outlets want to write, so they focus on the report not finding evidence of “undercover employees” — as if that was even the goal of the report in the first place. (Go ahead and go back and read the title again. I won’t hold it against you.)
More on this report to come after I devour it, but we do have one last bit of January 6th-related news to cover. Just the News has the bombshell story of Ashley Babbit shooter Michael' Byrd’s treatment at the hands of government officials……
And it’s a story about how they bent over backwards to make him happy. (Click to enlarge)
“Government has investigated government and found that not only has government done nothing wrong, government deserves a car.”
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Catch up on previous January 6th reporting below!
Biden’s “Extremist MAGA” Claims Lie on Dubious, Opaque Foundation
It’s now been a few days since Joe Biden stood in front of an ominously lit Independence Hall and declared nearly half of Americans as backward-looking dangers to America itself. (Before moving on, check out CNN’s real-time editing of the color scheme to make the video seem less ominous. Probably just a private company making a private decision! Best wi…
It’s No Surprise Media’s Ignoring the Twitter Files
Across mainstream media, there were two general reactions to the initial Twitter Files revelations — both of them completely predictable. The first (which we’ll get to later), was to simply ignore the story. The second was to attack Matt Taibbi personally — sometimes hilariously
Reviewing FBI Emails Involving January 6th
(Note: This full-length article is too large for e-mail, so make sure you view this from the webpage to see everything!)
New Footage Undermines Official January 6th Narrative
Greetings Screamers! A friend dropped by unexpectedly today (a good thing in this instance!) so I don’t have a lot of time, but I DID want to let you about this article from Revolver News exploring new footage involving the January 6th pipe bomber. The article is long, but very very good — and suffice it to say, the official story looks even fishier tha…
I think the claim there were no “undercover employees” at J6 is a bald faced lie. I know someone (extremely well) who was on the west lawn of the Capitol on J6. He never crossed an erect barrier, and at one point, moved toward the southwest lawn near the south entrance. Four men in olive drab tactical gear, including body armor and ballistic helmets adorned with obviously brand new “Elect Trump” stickers approached him and another man he was chatting with.
These “confidential informants” (if we believe the report) urged them repeatedly to, “Move up! They’re shooting patriots in the hallways. They just shot a woman. You must move up and show them we’re not going to take it!”
My friend and the man next to him just stared at them. He said, “everything about the way they were acting was fake. Their clothing and equipment looked real and used (except for Trump bumper stickers on their helmets) and they wore it like they were used to wearing it.”
When they realized my friend wasn’t buying their bullshit, they left and approached the next knot of folks standing around and talking. That group ignored them, too. My buddy says the “Feds” (as he calls them), left and entered the south lower entrance of the Capitol.
The guy standing next to my friend said, “If those werent Feds or law enforcement, I don’t know what is.” My buddy asked him why he was saying that. He replied, “I own a police supply house. I’ve seen the type for 3 decades. They have law enforcement written all over them. I can spot them a mile away.”
My buddy (ex-military) replied, “It’s funny you say that. I was thinking the same thing. I’ve trained with SEALS, Green Berets, SWAT teams, and basic cops for 25 years. I thought they were Feds, too.”
They both decided then that something felt off about the whole event and decided to get off the X.
Based on everything my friend has told me about his experiences that day, I think the Horowitz report is a limited hangout with extreme parsing of language. Maybe that tactical team that approached my friend weren’t actual FBI employees, but they were definitely being paid and ordered there by someone in the government. They could have been Homeland Security or agents of a hundred other militarized federal agencies that hire almost exclusively ex-military or other experienced LEO types.
Maybe the FBI really did only have 26 CI’s there that day, but the report doesn’t say anything about how many agents were there from hundreds of other federal and DC agencies or even undercover special ops guys from the US military (like from Grey Fox or the Army of Northern Virginia… or whatever their undercover name is now.)
This is a complete whitewash. “We investigated ourselves and find that ourselves really didn’t do anything nearly as bad as you think we did.”
I raise the bullshirt flag.
The latest bombshell report from the department of health on breast cancer contains no implication that peanut butter and jelly actually exists, finding that it is actually a right wing conspiracy myth.
So what you're saying is a report on one thing didn't mention another thing which of course proves that other thing which they were not including within the scope of the report didn't happen. That's journalism.
Here's an example from the past - the days when "press" meant ink on paper. The three major Southern California newspapers ran the story: "Biker shoots and kills mentally ill man". In the story they make it out to be a crazed biker brutally killing an innocent man.
Now here's the real story: A 70 year old retired physician, who happened to own a Honda Goldwing (Cadillac on two wheels), who was a member of a group of other retired guys who rode Goldwings, was home with his 70 year old wife when there was a knock at the door. It was a crazy guy known around the neighborhood (with some connection) as dangerously ill, who'd been locked up in jail and mental wards several times. The crazy guy violently forces his way in and beats the old doc, threatens his wife, ultimately leaves with the cash the couple had on hand. Police are called. They take a report. Old doc is treated for his injuries and sent home. A few hours later while the couple is sleeping, crazy guy shows up again, breaks down the door, having remembered that the old doc had a collection of expensive shotguns. The old doc meets him in the front room and is ordered to retrieve his most expensive shotgun and give it to the crazy guy. The old doc complies, retrieves the shotgun, and as the saying goes, gives him both barrels. Then calls the cops again to report the dead body in his living room.
This was in Orange County in the early 1980s. Defending yourself and your family was legal. There were no charges against the old doc. The DA elected not to charge the crazy guy on account of him being dead. Doc sues all 3 papers (apparently he had some old lawyer friends). Papers agree to print an accurate story to avoid a day in court. The accurate story appears buried in the back pages of each paper. The difference between then and now? No news outlet in 2024 would print a revised story or retract their original headline!