Last week, CNN thrust itself into what could very well be the biggest scandal in the history of the American media.<\/p>\n
And it couldn\u2019t have happened to a more deserving group of people.<\/p>\n
However, that the fake journalists at CNN are as deserving as anyone to be called out for what they are doesn\u2019t mean that there aren\u2019t legions of others in the media who aren\u2019t as deserving of the same.<\/p>\n
The only difference between the fake journalists at CNN and fake journalists at MSNBC; ABC; CBC; NBC; The New York Times; The Washington Post; <\/em>and numerous other media organizations is that CNN got caught red handed in the act of cooking their anti-Trump story of choice: the Vast Left-wing Russian \u201cCollusion\u201d Conspiracy.<\/p>\n CNN got busted in two respects.\u00a0 First, it was forced to retract a fake news story regarding \u201ccollusion\u201d between one of the President\u2019s associates, Anthony Scaramucci, and those nefarious \u201cRussians.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, Project Veritas released video exposing, first, a CNN producer and, then, CNN contributor Van Jones, both admitting that there had never been anything to the \u201ccollusion\u201d conspiracy other than ratings gold.<\/p>\n The CNN scandal confirms two things that many of us have been insisting upon all along:<\/p>\n (1)Fake News is a real and pervasive phenomenon.<\/p>\n (2)The Russian \u201cCollusion\u201d Conspiracy is, and has always been, the most recent paradigmatic expression of this phenomenon.<\/p>\n This being said, there is much confusion regarding this notion of \u201cfake news\u201d that equally inflicts both the friends and enemies of this term.<\/p>\n The Origins of \u201cFake News\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n First, \u201cfake news\u201d did not originate with President Trump or, for that matter, with any Trump supporters.\u00a0 I\u2019ve noticed recently in my exchanges with the President\u2019s critics that they seem to assume that had it not been for Trump\u2019s routine use of the label to dismiss his media critics, there never would have arisen any talk of \u201cfake news.\u00a0\u00a0 Considering that \u201cfake news\u201d became part of our political-cultural lexicon as recently as the last election, it\u2019s odd that anyone would be in doubt just seven months or so later as to its origins.<\/p>\n At any rate, neither Trump nor any of his supporters invented \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to the language of \u201cfake news,\u201d there was much hand-wringing by conservatives over the \u201cliberal bias\u201d of the \u201cmainstream media,\u201d and comparable mocking by Fox News detractors of \u201cFaux News.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, shortly after Trump got elected, his Democrat enemies began attributing his victory to the dissemination of \u201cfake news<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n To repeat: It was Trump\u2019s opponents<\/em> who created the moniker \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n However, they didn\u2019t anticipate\u2014incredibly, given that Republicans and tens of millions of other Americans had been complaining about the dishonesty of the media for decades\u2014that the right would waste no time commandeering this nomenclature from its coiners.\u00a0 For Democrat politicians and operatives and their propagandists in the media to accuse anyone of promoting fake news was analogous to the Clintons accusing Trump of mistreating women because he made some lewd remarks about women in a private conversation.\u00a0 It was like Hitler attacking Harry Truman for mistreating Jews because the latter used ethnic epithets when referring to them.<\/p>\n \u201cFake News\u201d was exactly the expression for which those on the right had been looking\u2014and the left handed it to them on a silver platter.<\/p>\n The Meaning of Fake News<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Trump-haters seem to think that it is only negative coverage of him that the President and his supporters label \u201cfake news.\u201d\u00a0 This is incorrect.\u00a0 The left-liberal media had been disseminating Fake News long before anyone heard of \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n Fake News doesn\u2019t consist only in false reports\u2014though it does indeed encompass assertions that are, like the Trump-Russian Collusion Conspiracy, patently false.\u00a0 Fake News consists as well in claims that may be true, as far as they go, but which, it\u2019s painfully obvious to all who aren\u2019t blinded by the prejudices of the \u201cjournalists,\u201d are not newsworthy<\/em>.<\/p>\n Fake News is fake news. <\/em><\/p>\n A perfect example of this is \u201cthe story,\u201d all of the rage in the Democrat media not very long ago, regarding President Trump\u2019s alleged preference for two <\/em>scoops of ice cream at White House dinner parties. Trump may very well prefer two scoops of ice cream. This could be as true as that the Earth revolves around the sun is true.\u00a0 What makes it Fake News, though, is that those in the media mentioned it only so as to weave it into their larger, anti-Trump narrative.<\/p>\n Trump, they told us, insists upon two scoops while allowing his guests only half of this amount.<\/p>\n This, his enemies in the Fake News media, confirms further that the President is \u201cnarcissistic,\u201d \u201cmean-spirited,\u201d and the like.<\/p>\n It was the media spin on this wholly uninteresting, trivial detail regarding Trump\u2019s dietary habits that made it Fake News.<\/p>\n Or consider a hypothetical illustration to drive home this point that Fake News is not limited to claims that are untrue.\u00a0 Suppose that I and some imaginary \u201cjournalist\u201d disliked one another for whatever reasons.\u00a0 Now, suppose that this person\u2014let\u2019s call him \u201cX\u201d\u2014reported on his nightly television program that I did not beat my wife today<\/em>.<\/p>\n What X said would be true, but only because I never <\/em>beat my wife.\u00a0 In telling this truth, X would give the impression, and mean to give the impression, that I regularly beat my wife.<\/p>\n That I didn\u2019t beat my wife today, though true, is not news.\u00a0 To make this claim about me so as to make it sound like news is for X to be guilty of disseminating Fake News.<\/p>\n Fake News existed long before Trump.\u00a0 It will, unfortunately, remain with us as long as partisanship remains with us.<\/p>\n Thankfully, though, the ever-rapid proliferation of \u201calternative\u201d sources of news and commentary, particularly of those that are now exploding all over the internet, Fake News is easier than ever before to recognize and call out.<\/p>\n It is also easier than ever before, and will only grow easier in the future, to squash Fake News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, CNN thrust itself into what could very well be the biggest scandal in the history of the American media. And it couldn\u2019t have happened to a more deserving group of people. However, that the fake journalists at CNN are as deserving as anyone to be called out for what they are doesn\u2019t mean…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n