Fake News Strikes Again And Again - Response

  • Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Two major stories exploded across the headlines this past week which confirm my opinion that the mainstream media (MSM) is biased, incompetent, and can seldom be trusted to impart the news fairly and accurately.  The first instance was the BuzzFeed story regarding Michael Cohen and how he allegedly lied on President Trump's behalf to Congress.  Virtually all of the big media outlets gleefully jumped on this story as it appeared to be the silver bullet they have all been looking for to end Mr.
Trump's presidency.  Although BuzzFeed's journalistic reputation is rather sketchy and all of the sources were anonymous, the MSM couldn't stop hyping the story continuously.  Unfortunately for the MSM, the Special Counsel's office issued a statement last Friday indicating that this "blockbuster" story was "inaccurate".  You could almost hear the air going out of the balloon in newsrooms across the nation.

The second instance occurred this past weekend involving high school students from Kentucky, a Native American activist, and a hate group on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  The initial story, based on a short video, depicted the students, some wearing MAGA hats, as a bunch of racists surrounding and mocking a lone Native American activist.  Again, the media weighed in with all sorts of condemnation of the students which led to doxxing their names and threats of violence against the students and their families.  But like the BuzzFeed story, this story blew up in the media's face once a much longer video surfaced which showed that, instead of perpetrators, the students were anything but.  Both the hate group, Black Hebrew Israelites, and the Native American activist were trying to provoke a scene.  Yet somehow, the media managed to get the story totally wrong.  Even several days after it occurred with the full video out on the internet, the Times Free Press, via the AP, had a story about the incident that was filled with half-truths and fake news based primarily on comments from the Native American activist who has, by the way, changed his story numerous times.  But since the students checked all the boxes for leftist hate, being white, male, and some wearing MAGA hats (not to mention they are Christians who attended the March for Life), they just had be the bad guys in the eyes of the MSM.  Pathetic.

Is it any wonder that most Americans have very little trust in the media when they let their biases and incompetence color story after story.  At this point, I am not sure if responsible journalism in the MSM is on life support or if it has already died.

James Nelson
 
* * *

Mr Nelson, 

In 1972 I took a journalism class at McCallie School with Henry Henager. Mr Henager pulled two stories from the Chattanooga Times and the Chattanooga Free Press about a mine disaster in South Africa. One story stated over 100 miners died in a fall in the mine. The other story related that the miners were forced at gunpoint to go down a not long enough ladder into an abyss where they died from impact with the floor of that shaft. 

If you wrote your letter Saturday when the confrontation story first arrived I could see your point. The letter was published this morning, four days later.  I read the first and second and third accounts from four different news sources and they all related the same facts. They do not match your account. 

The pizzeria owners in a suburb of our Capital can relate a lie about their address that caused a young man from  rural North Carolina to serve 5 years jail time for shooting the place up. There was no child molestation ring there. And that lie did not 
Originate from your term for the press.

A very angry neighbor of mine, hand shaking, explained to me one time the physical manifestations of finger pointing. When you point one finger at another in rage or anger you are also by the position of three other fingers pointing them at yourself. 

Go figure.

Prentice Hicks 

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