The media made their fair share of nasty comments and skewed remarks in 2021, but there were also instances where reporters (or entire networks) deliberately misled their audiences.
The Media Lies
The State of the Media Is Not Good
To borrow from the late President Gerald Ford, the state of the media as 2022 opens is not good.
Recall that Ford was happily sailing along politically in 1973 as the House Republican Leader in the Nixon era. He was the Kevin McCarthy of his day.
Out of the blue, in October, the Department of Justice revealed it was investigating Vice President Spiro Agnew on corruption charges. After much heated back and forth, Agnew resigned. Nixon, blessed with the constitutional authority to appoint a replacement to be confirmed by the Congress, appointed the popular Ford as the new vice president.
Sex Scandals, Sinking Ratings: CNN Imploding on Eve of Streaming Launch
CNN is betting big on its new digital streaming service CNN+ that will debut in early 2022, calling it the most important launch since Ted Turner introduced the cable network more than four decades ago. But a string of shocking internal scandals is threatening to steal the spotlight on the eve of the big reveal.
The Last Days of CNN
CNN is far behind FOX News and MSNBC in the ratings. It averages around half a million viewers in prime time and it recently hit a 7-year low in the demo.
So it was the perfect time for Chris Wallace to leave FOX News for CNN+.
Some might have thought that Wallace was leaving to fill Chris Cuomo’s slot at CNN. No such luck, though without Cuomo the failing news network’s ratings have crashed to new lows.
Nicholas Sandmann, NBC News Reach Settlement In Defamation Suit
Nicholas Sandmann, a former Covington Catholic student smeared after a 2019 incident with a Native American activist, has reached a third settlement in a series of lawsuits against media companies.
Sandmann announced over Twitter Friday that he had reached a settlement with NBC News. Sandmann’s legal team has already reached settlements with CNN and The Washington Post.
How the media lost touch with reality
Batya Ungar-Sargon on the ‘Great Awokening’ of American journalism.
The American mainstream media are losing touch with reality. Journalists are increasingly drawn from elite backgrounds, and newsrooms are coalescing around a woke worldview. The media’s interest in race, gender and sexuality has exploded, while class issues and economic concerns struggle to get a look in. And when stories arrive that disrupt the woke narrative – from the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse to Jussie Smollett’s hate-crime hoax – journalists often find themselves on the wrong side of the truth. How did the American media get into this state? And how can proper journalism recover?
30 million Americans ready to ‘take up arms’ to overthrow Biden say the folks who brought you the Covington kids, Jussie Smollett, Russiagate etc etc etc…
MSNBC’s national affairs analyst John Heilemann shocked many Americans by claiming on a Sunday show that “20 to 30 million people” are ready to “take up arms” to remove President Joe Biden from office.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd focused on a recent Atlantic article declaring that Donald Trump’s “coup has already begun” for a segment, finding Heilemann in total agreement with the piece’s premise.
“There is this research that shows something like 8% and maybe up to 12% who say that Joe Biden was illegitimate and that violence is a suitable tool to remove him and restore Donald Trump. This represents between 20 and 30 million people,” Heilemann said, claiming these supposed “20 to 30 million people” are ready to “take up arms.”
Off record… that 30 million estimate seems low.
The Media’s Color-Coded Parenting Standard: White parents of school shooters are culpable; black parents of inner-city gangbangers are blameless.
On April 19, 2021, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski suggested in a text to Chicago’s mayor that the parents of two children recently killed in Chicago’s gang activity had “failed those kids.” Kempczinski’s text became public in November 2021, prompting widespread accusations of racism and calls for his resignation. Kempczinski confessed to his white privilege and apologized profusely for holding parents responsible for the fate of their children.
Joy Reid Displays Her Ignorance About Guns
If you’re like me, you have probably noticed that the vast majority of those in the anti-gun crowd know very little about that which they seek to regulate. Most of the anti-gun sentiment coming from the left is predicated on a combination of ignorance and fear.
This reality was on full display when MSNBC media activist Joy Reid took to Twitter to chime in on the mass shooting that was carried out at Oxford High School in Michigan on Tuesday. She also tried to use the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict to call gun laws a form of white supremacy, as my colleague Mike Miller wrote on Friday.
Print the Legend
The events in Wisconsin’s Kenosha and Waukesha offer useful perspectives on a recent clash between pundits Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark over the accuracy of the news media. Sullivan argues that the press makes numerous errors, while Last suggests that they get almost all matters of fact correct.
The Media Stopped Talking About Darrell Brooks Because He’s Black and His Victims Are Mostly White
If Darrell Brooks were a white man who drove a car into a crowd of black people, the media would still be talking about Waukesha.
The name Darrell Brooks hasn’t been uttered a single time on CNN since last Thursday, November 25. Today marked the first time anyone on MSNBC mentioned Brooks by name since last Wednesday, November 24. The scant coverage came in the form of a hasty (34 seconds) news brief that ran once each on the network’s two morning programs, Way Too Early with Jonathan Lemire and Morning Joe.
CNN insists ‘a car’ killed six people at Wisconsin Christmas parade
Despite multiple media outlets being hammered for blaming the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre on a vehicle rather than its black driver – a murder suspect – CNN continued to blame “a car” for the mass killing.
Repeat felon Darrell Brooks killed six people and injured more than 60 when he plowed an SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, last week. Though Brooks has been arrested and charged with six counts of murder, media outlets covering the massacre have seemingly made a point of avoiding naming the suspect, instead ascribing blame to the vehicle and calling the killing spree a “crash” or an “accident.”
How the media politicize weaponized-car attacks — and spin the Waukesha murders
As we learn more about the senseless SUV attack on the crowd attending a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis., some liberal media outlets are energetically attempting to spin away from the suspect Darrell Brooks and his left-wing politics on social media.
That’s funny. With Kyle Rittenhouse, they quickly dug into his social-media activity. The Washington Post warned last summer that “the 17-year-old shadowed local law enforcement, filling his social media feeds with posts declaring that ‘Blue Lives Matter’ and photos of himself posing with guns.” For Brooks, the paper lamely mentioned he wrote under the name MathBoi Fly and that “after multiple legal battles,” he “started turning the life he lived in the streets into music.”
h/t MW
CNN Analyst Has ‘No Idea’ What’s Behind ‘Smash and Grab’ Robberies — Then Gives up the Answer
In today’s episode of “This… Is CNN… The Most Trusted Name in News™”…
A CNN analyst — a former Philadelphia police commissioner and CNN senior law enforcement analyst, no less — serves up a perfect example of why CNN’s ratings continue to swirl down the toilet at breakneck speed. Simply put, can’t make it up; don’t have to. And the best part is they totally don’t get it. Or do they?
When did the Babylon Bee start writing headlines for the Washington Post?
The headline that appeared at the top of the following tweet from the Washington Post, about the massacre in Waukesha, Wisconsin, appeared to have been written by the Babylon Bee.
