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

Phil Donahue was fired by MSNBC in February 2003, less than a month before the invasion of Iraq, which he was very much against. The network claimed they canceled his show because of low ratings, but it was actually the highest rated show on MSNBC at the time. 107A leaked internal memo said he was a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” 108thus confirming he was fired for opposing the planned invasion of Iraq.

Years later he would reveal, “This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer.” 109[General Electric was the co-owner of MSNBC at the time, and GE has been a major manufacturer of military products]. 110

Several years after the invasion, public opinion on the War in Iraq dramatically changed as the reasons for getting involved in it kept falling apart, but people have short memories and as the years passed, after George W. Bush’s presidency ended and was replaced with Obama, the anger about the deceptions that lead to the war quietly faded. Well over four thousand U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq alone, not to mention the countless who have been injured, with many missing limbs and permanently disabled, all with nobody in the government or the media held accountable for the lies which caused it all.

Propaganda isn’t just something that’s used by the news industry◦— it’s used in comedy as well. Less than two months into Donald Trump’s presidency, Jimmy Fallon was reportedly under pressure to make his show “more political” because “he’s too weak on Trump.” 111He also apologized for having Donald Trump on his show shortly before the election and regretted ‘humanizing’ him after viewers (and the media) were outraged that Fallon was “too nice” to him. 112

Fallon, while making regular use of Trump as a punchline, tends to shy away from politics and focuses his humor on other things like skits and games with celebrities, but since network executives felt the anti-Trump theme is what viewers want, or perhaps, that’s what they themselves wanted in order to use the show as their own political weapon, Fallon was forced to turn up the heat on President Trump. Some even speculated that The Tonight Show was shut out of the Emmys in 2017 because Jimmy Fallon wasn’t attacking Trump enough. 113

After NBC fired Jay Leno as The Tonight Show host and replaced him with Jimmy Fallon in 2014, rumors were rampant in the industry that Leno was forced out because he was going too hard on President Obama. He was number one in the ratings for 20 years and still number one when he was forced out, so many people wondered why NBC would get rid of him since he was still on top. 114Leno was the first late night comedian to take the gloves off and really start bashing President Obama. For years, most comedians treated him with kid gloves and very few of their jokes really took him to task, but after the “hope and change” wore off and was replaced by regret and despair for many Americans, Jay Leno started bashing Obama like nobody else in the business. 115

Right after Leno’s final episode, Johnny Carson’s head writer Raymond Miller wrote an Op-Ed saying that most late night hosts protected Obama, and that Leno broke the mold by taking Obama to task, while “Leno’s competitors haven’t exactly hammered President Barack Obama, hardly a smidgen.” 116Sure, they joked about him, but it was all light-hearted humor, and nothing like the way comedians had treated previous presidents. A lot of people feel NBC got rid of Leno because he was helping turn too many people away from Barack Obama. It’s interesting that immediately after Jimmy Fallon replaced Jay Leno as The Tonight Show host, one of his first guests was Michelle Obama who came on to promote Obamacare. 117

Unlike Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, who took over The Late Show from David Letterman in 2015, made Trump-bashing a staple of his show to the point where it is an obsession. 118President Trump is his number one enemy, and after the election he made no secret of the fact that he uses his show, not just to get laughs at Trump’s expense, but to paint him in as negative a light as possible. 119Many nights his entire monologue is about Donald Trump, and it serves as more of a nightly anti-Trump editorial than stand-up comedy. The liberal media regularly boasts of Colbert’s anti-Trump rants, writing stories about them in order to bring them to the attention of those who don’t watch his show. 120

Colbert’s constant pushing of the liberal agenda resulted in The New York Post running a story with the headline, “Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ has become propaganda for Democrats.” 121And that’s not even a secret at this point. In fact, one of the emails Wikileaks released of Hillary’s campaign manager John Podesta shows that a Clinton insider was able to get Colbert to do two different segments to promote the Clinton Foundation. 122 The Hollywood Reporter conducted a survey and found that many conservatives quit watching his show because of the blatant liberal bias, and that he was most popular amongst Democrats and atheists. 123

Jimmy Kimmel also uses his show as part of the anti-Trump entertainment complex, but not with the level of distain and hatred of Colbert. Kimmel also uses his show to regularly promote liberal political agendas. After his newborn son was found to have a heart defect and had emergency surgery, Kimmel gave a tearful monologue telling his viewers what happened, thanking the doctors and the nurses, but then turned his emotional story into an anti-Trump rant, blasting the President for his plan to fix Obamacare. 124The next day New York Magazine said Kimmel might have “struck the final blow against the GOP health-care plan.” 125

Other late night hosts like Samantha Bee on TBS, Trevor Noah on Comedy Central, Seth Meyers on NBC, John Oliver on HBO, and Chelsea Handler on Netflix, all use their platforms to constantly push the liberal agenda and attack conservatives. There is really no debating that they’re doing this, and I only mention this to encourage you to not watch them or give them one more follower on social media. But if you still have any doubt that comedy can be a vehicle for political propaganda, just keep reading.

In an interview with CNN in 2008, Chevy Chase openly admitted that he used his position on Saturday Night Live back in the 1970s for propaganda purposes. One of his skits was playing then-President Ford, who was facing off against Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election, and Chase admitted, “I just went after him. And I certainly, obviously my leanings were Democratic and I wanted Carter in and I wanted [Ford] out, and I figured look, we’re reaching millions of people every weekend, why not do it.”

Alina Cho, the CNN reporter interviewing him, responds, “Wait a minute, you mean to tell me in the back of your mind you were thinking, ‘Hey I want Carter?’”

Chase responds: “Oh, yeah.”

Cho: “And I’m going to make him [Ford] look bad?”

Chase continues, “Oh yeah. What do you think they’re doing now, you think they’re just doing this [mocking Sarah Palin] because Sarah’s funny?,” talking about SNL skewering her when she was John McCain’s running mate that year. He continued, “I think that the show is very much more Democratic and liberal-oriented, [and] that they are obviously more for Barack Obama.” 126Many people actually credit Tina Fey’s depiction of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live with being largely responsible for people seeing her in a negative light. 127