Марк Дайс - The True Story of Fake News - How Mainstream Media Manipulates Millions

ABC anchor and chief political correspondent George Stephanopoulos used to work as Bill Clinton’s former communications director so he can’t pretend to be an objective journalist when he was literally on the payroll of the Clintons and even donated $75,000 dollars to them through their sham charity. When his donation was discovered he apologized for not disclosing it to ABC News and its viewers. 842He was then forced to drop out from moderating one of the Republican presidential primary debates. Despite the obvious conflict of interest caused by him donating tens of thousands of dollars to the Clintons, ABC News called it “an honest mistake.” 843

After President Trump’s controversial travel ban was blocked by an injunction from an activist judge appointed by President Obama, an Iraqi immigrant named Hameed Darweesh, who had just arrived to JFK airport in New York, was interviewed by the media. He was very gracious and said America is the greatest nation in the world and that he was happy to be here, but that’s where ABC cut the clip they posted online. What they didn’t show was that immediately after that, someone asked him, “What do you want to say to Donald Trump?” trying to tee him up to denounce the president’s new travel screening.

Instead of criticizing the president, he responded that he likes Trump and was very understanding of the extensive screening he had to go through before being allowed into the United States. 844If ABC showed him saying that he didn’t have a problem with the increased travel restrictions, that would have contradicted the narrative the media was pushing at the time which was that it was ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ and ‘government-sanctioned discrimination.’ 845

ABC issued an apology for deceptively editing former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher’s comments about Trump’s first few days in office after they cut him off mid-sentence in order to cast him in a false light. In a segment where ABC was complaining about the newly inaugurated president, Ari was shown saying, “It looks to me if the ball was dropped on Saturday,” talking about the way Sean Spicer handled criticism about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration. 846The newscast continued to nitpick Trump’s first week as president but after the segment aired, Fleisher tweeted, “ Nightline proves Spicer right about MSM’s [mainstream media’s] dedication to negativity,” adding, “If this is how the press reports, Trump is right to go after them.” He concluded, “When the press distorts someone’s quote and twists their words, we all have a problem.” 847

He said they twisted his words because they left out the rest of his sentence when he said, “Sean recovered it and ran for a 1st down on Monday.” After being called out by Fleisher on the deception, ABC issue an on-air apology, saying, “ Nightline aired a segment Monday night about the first three days of the new administration including Sean Spicer’s statement to the press on Saturday. As part of the report, we interviewed former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. In editing the piece for air, his quote was shortened and as a result his opinions mischaracterized. We are fixing the piece online to include his full quote and context. We apologize and regret the error.” 848

ABC News was sued for $1.9 billion dollars by a South Dakota meat processing company for a series of reports calling their ground beef product ‘pink slime.’ 849The company alleged that their revenue dropped 80% after the reports aired, causing word of the ‘pink slime’ to go viral online. ABC later settled the lawsuit for a reported $177 million dollars, which is close to an entire year’s profit for the network. 850

Stories showing behind the scenes activities of meat processing plants tend to be sensational and shocking, but it appears ABC went too far trying to scare up some viewers for their ‘pink slime’ exposé and it came back to bite them.

Before the 2016 election season began, MSNBC’s viewership was at historic lows with their prime time shows only getting between 25,000 to 103,000 viewers in their demo audience. 851The “demo” audience is the key demographic advertisers are marketing to. The first quarter of 2015 MSNBC averaged only 316,000 total viewers during the day, 852and by the fourth quarter they barely had 500,000 total viewers during prime time. 853

With Trump’s election victory and liberals getting whipped up into a frenzy hoping to find some dirt on him that would get him immediately impeached, MSNBC’s viewership dramatically increased as the network became increasingly more radical with their anti-Trump agenda. The primary face of MSNBC is the butch lesbian Rachel Maddow, whose convoluted ramblings appear to be unprepared streams of consciousness she just comes up with off the top of her head once she’s seated at her desk, but somehow her viewers are entertained by her scatterbrained diatribes.

Like CNN, MSNBC often grasps at straws trying to create artificial outrage over minor things◦— a business model that often just leaves them looking ridiculous. Since Donald Trump wouldn’t release his tax returns during the presidential campaign, which is somewhat customary for candidates, the Democrats fixated on them thinking they must contain connections to Russia or that he somehow weaseled out of paying any taxes at all. Then, two months into the Trump administration, Rachel Maddow tweeted she was about to reveal a “bombshell” on her show.

She claimed to have obtained a copy of his tax returns and a countdown clock was put up on screen ticking down to the big moment he would be ‘exposed.’ When her show went to air she began rambling on, and on, for eighteen minutes without actually showing them, or even saying what was in them. The network then went to a commercial break and when the show returned, she revealed two pages of his 2005 returns which showed that he paid $38 million in taxes that year.

That’s it. No bombshell. No controversial revelations. No nothing. In fact they actually debunked the rumors that he hadn’t paid taxes for ‘nearly two decades’ as had been previously reported. 854There hadn’t been such an overhyped television event since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s vault on live TV back in 1986 to find absolutely nothing, and Rachel Maddow became the laughing stock of the Internet and late night talk shows. 855

One Washington Post reporter published an op-ed titled, “Rachel Maddow takes conspiracy theorizing mainstream with Trump tax ‘scoop,’” and said that after she rambled on for 20 minutes, “I realized that we weren’t watching a news broadcast so much as a modern recreation of X’s monologue from Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK.’” 856

It’s not just Rachel Maddow; other hosts on MSNBC comprise what is basically a conspiracy carnival on cable. After President Trump launched a few Tomahawk missiles and destroyed a Syrian airfield in response to Bashar al-Assad killing rebels with chemical weapons, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell dedicated his opening monologue to his conspiracy theory that Vladimir Putin may have ordered Assad to launch the chemical attack to provoke President Trump into a military response to distract the media and “change the subject from Russian influence” on the election. 857

It appears that nothing is too crazy for MSNBC. One of their contributors appeared to encourage the bombing of Trump Tower in Turkey. 858Malcolm Nance, who is the channel’s ‘terrorism analyst,’ tweeted, and then later deleted, a photo of Trump Tower in Turkey and added, “This is my nominee for the first ISIS suicide bombing of a Trump property” 859He had previously called Trump the “ISIS candidate” and said that the president is inciting Islamophobia. 860