FrontPage:
FUSION GPS, FAKE NEWS, RUSSIANS AND REPORTERS-
The media’s real business is ‘story laundering’.
“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns,” Ben Rhodes gloated. “That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Rhodes, the White House’s “Obama whisperer”, was explaining how he had pulled the wool over the media’s eyes on the Iran Deal to a journalist. The media responded to the story by attacking the journalist who reported it, not Rhodes for viewing them as easily manipulated useful idiots.
The media knew that it knew nothing. And it didn’t care. It just didn’t want outsiders to know it.
What ties together the debate about Russian collusion, fake news and Fusion GPS is the implosion of the media. What were the professional reporters doing while Rhodes was manipulating the 27-year-olds? They were working at places like Fusion GPS and ‘story laundering’ narratives to the kiddies.
The media markets its investigative journalism chops even as investigative journalism no longer fits into its business model. Companies like Fusion GPS and political manipulators like Ben Rhodes step into the vacuum by covertly providing them with the core product. Much of the media is really in the business of ‘story laundering’ by rewriting talking points, smears and hit pieces from organizations like Fusion GPS.
The readers get talking points served to them without ever knowing who actually produced them. The forensic examination of the Trump dossier answered some of these questions. Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS hired a British former intelligence officer. And he got his material from, among other sources, a Russian intelligence officer. And they passed the material to the media and the FBI.
It took a great deal of effort, including a congressional subpoena, a national scandal and the threat of impeachment, to peel back the workings of the media and expose how the dossier sausage got made. Most packaged media stories never receive this level of scrutiny. And the media is quick to indignantly defend its lack of transparency and reliance on anonymous sources in its Trump hit pieces. read more
This is a brilliant, objective and succinct analysis of the problem.
Sure, it’s hard to walk through a mine field of real versus fake news; it takes a well-developed fraud sniffer and some time.
But, I know I’m not going to get anything except “narrative” in Wa Po or the Times. …Lady in Red
This is worth discussing. The adolescents that are trying to teach us how smart they are, just don’t know anything. All they can do is regurgitate the propaganda they have absorbed.
” The media ‘rents’ space to outside interests. It rewrites their stories in the house style and runs them.”
Thank you beginning that to light, Mrs. Clinton.
Here’s how I gauge whether the news I am reading is truthful:
If the story is reported on Gateway Pundit, Heavy, Conservative Treehouse, Lucianne, PowerLine, Breitbart, Daily Caller, and IOTW (and a few others, maybe including Fox News) there is a good chance the story is truthful, and the website is willing to discover and reveal the true, unstated motive. I go there first for the truth sooner.
If the story is reported on CBS/NBC/MSNBC/ABC/CNN/NYT/WaPo/LAT and a few others, I just assume they are hiding the true story behind the story.
This philosophy really has served me well. I often know things way before most folks. Sometimes they get things wrong, but not often.
(For example, Heavy is reporting that the Sutherland Springs church shooter’s mother in law is from that town, and I surmise his wife was raised there. You see that anywhere else? I haven’t.)