The Perversion and Death Of An Unbiased Press In this Country. Part 1

Record numbers of Americans are pretty disgusted with both candidates for President this year. Between the out of control quality of Trump to the lying and greedy Clinton, we are not faced with anywhere close to good choices from the Democrats and Republicans for President this year.

But we have faced incompetence before in Jimmy Carter. We have faced criminality in Richard Nixon. And we survived as a nation. But what we have likely never faced in any Presidential campaign is high degree of corruption and biased reporting of the press in this country. Rather than providing the facts and realities of life, we are now faced with press and journalism outlets that have a point of view to push rather than the truth.

And that is what scares me more than the incompetence of Trump and Clinton. Without truth, that the press has previously been relied on in the past to provide, we are forced to question everything and adjust our views not based on the realities but on the historical reporting bias of each news outlet.

To show you how biased, crooked, and dangerous news reporting is today, consider the following recent instances where journalism has had the distinct color of yellow:

1)Before giving actual examples of bad journalism, let’s consider what a recent Gallup poll says about how much Americans trust what the press and media tells us today. According to their recent opinion poll, only 32% of respondents said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media today:

While the trend in trust has been slowly declining over time, Gallup thinks that the dramatic one year drop from 40% in 2015 to only 32% in 2016 is because of the misreporting and bias going on for the 2016 Presidential election. 32% is the lowest level of trust since at least 1997 and the 8 point drop in one year from 2015 to 2016 is the second largest drop since 1997. It is the highest percentage drop since 1997.

Trust among Republicans has dropped especially fast, from 32% in 2015 to only 14% in 2016. Trust among younger Americans dropped 10 points in one year.

Our democracy can survive bad Presidents, it has done so in the past. Not sure it can survive a perverted and corrupt press and media industry where truth is secondary to ratings and the political leanings of high ranking media executives and owners.

2) Let’s take a look at some real life examples of faulty and biased reporting that supports the ever lower trust levels Americans have for news purveyors today. Victoria Taft, recently writing for the Independent Journal Review website, told the story of how CNN, cynically known as the Clinton News Network for constantly fawning over and making Hillary Clinton look better than she actually was, was got caught trying to make Trump look like a racist by inserting a word Trump never said into a Trump quote.

Specifically, Trump has always called for better screening and vetting processes before letting Middle East refugees into this country, This seems like a valid thing to do because it has become apparent that ISIS has already used the refugee stream into Europe to embed terrorists into that refugee stream, terrorists who have gone on to instigate terrorist attacks across Europe.

Given that the FBI Director has publicly said that our screening processes are not where they should be, Trump’s position seems reasonable and common sense.

Trump explained his position on Fox News: "You know in Israel, they profile. They've done an unbelievable job — as good as you can do. But Israel has done an unbelievable job. And they'll profile. They profile. They see somebody that's suspicious. They will profile. They will take that person in. They will check out."

Those are his actual words but look what CNN did to those words, according to reporting by The Hill: "CNN has been running headlines throughout the day that specifically quotes Trump as using the words 'racial profiling.' CNN.com also is using the term 'racial profiling' in its headlines."

Image Credit: Screenshot/Fox News

But Trump never called for racial profiling in this interview, as his words above show. CNN inserted the word “racial” based on nothing he said, their actions were unethical and pathetic and intended to show Trump in an unfavorable light. As Ms. Taft correctly points out: “There are many kinds of criminal profiling, including observing behavior, background and psychological characteristics, but someone at CNN assumed the 2016 Republican nominee meant racial profiling.”

If Trump said racial profiling, then CNN would be proper to report that he said racial profiling. But to say he said racial profiling when he did not is a prime example of why over two thirds of Americans think that the press media in this country is corrupted and not to be trusted.

3) Let’s stay with CNN for another trick they recently did to make their favored candidate, Hillary Clinton look better than she was, while at the same time making Trump look worse than he was. The Hill recently reported that not only was CNN busy inserting words into Trump quotes that he never said, at the same time they were busy deleting quotes from Hillary Clinton that were actually said.

The Hill: "The decision by CNN to add 'racial' to Trump's comments comes in the wake of intense criticism this weekend after the network edited out a key portion of Hillary Clinton's Saturday night statement following the terror attacks in New York and New Jersey."

In an ad hoc press conference on her plane after the Chelsea, NYC and Seaside Heights, N.J. terror bombings, Clinton referred to the incidents as bombings, much like Trump had done earlier in the day. However, CNN had criticized Trump for saying the explosions were bombs too soon in the investigation.

Even though Clinton had also used the word bombs, when CNN showed her interview on the plane, they edited out here reference to bombs, which enabled them to criticize Trump and ignore the reality that Clinton had reached the same conclusion as Trump had.

So we now see how a corrupted press can alter reality by adding or deleting words or phrases to suit their biased views, the truth be damned.

4) Let’s leave the pathetic journalism practices of CNN and report on another attempt to prejudice the news by famous news reporter, Katie Couric. Couric’s infraction of bad journalism is so grievous that she is facing a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit because of her corruptible actions.

Here’s how this news bias unfolded:

• Couric recently put together an in-depth news piece on guns and gun control.
• Apparently, she is not a fan of the Second Amendment.
• While interviewing a set of gun rights activists, she and her producer asked the activists to sit very still for ten seconds or so under the pretense of testing equipment.
• During the real interview, she asked them a question about gun violence, to which they promptly answered. 
• However, during final production and editing, when that question was asked, Couric and her producer spliced in the the ten seconds of silence to make it look like the activists were unable to answer the violence question, that they were dumbfounded and had no suitable answer when in reality they had an answer and it was immediate.

The bottom line was that Couric tried to manipulate the reality to her biased views on gun control, and would have gotten away with it if a viewer only looked at the final, skewed edited version of the interview. Fortunately, truth won out in this case and she and her producer may be facing a very costly payday for their fake journalism.

That will do it for the first part of our review of dishonest and skewed news reporting in America today, we will finish up the discussion tomorrow. Remember, once the politicians and the press unite to protect and further each other’s interests, you are no longer living in democracy, you are living in a version of the Soviet Union where the government controls the news vs. the news controlling the government. 

And today’s news reporters and journalists are nothing more than modern day Pravda workers.

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