The political story of the moment focuses on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It feels as if we’re in a time machine taking us back to his confirmation hearings in September of 2018. Why? Two writers from The New York Times dropped an Opinion Piece late Saturday night that sent Twitter into a frenzy.
First, it immediately went viral due to an incredibly odd tweet focusing on the (alleged) topic of the article. The tweet was perfectly designed as click bait to encourage views. It worked like a charm. The timing is oddly suspicious. First, the paper permitted a glaring omission, and allowed for reckless reporting. Why? Was it to assist the two writers in their book sales that oddly enough hits shelves today?
Second, there is no such thing as bad publicity, right? Well, this seems to be the case for The Times in their attempt at driving up headlines for a noticeably fake story. Ask Kavanaugh the same question, and something tells me he’ll disagree. The left is relentless in ensuring they brand him with a Scarlet Letter.
Third, the best part of the story is the twist. How did we get here? Well, conservative reporter Mollie Hemingway noticed the omission, and connected the dots of inaccuracy on Sunday. How? She had a copy of the book set to be released on Tuesday and took to Twitter to throw cold water on the already blazing fire. Kavanaugh had already been the center of nearly one million tweets by then, commanded the top story for nearly twenty-four hours, and had resulted in countless Democrat Presidential candidates blindly calling for his impeachment.
You’ll notice one thing. There is no mention of the actual story yet. Here is an adequate summary presented by The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board from Tuesday’s paper.
The problem here is once misinformation spreads, it’s hard to put it back in Pandora’s Box. As of late, the left has racked up quite the laundry list of offenses similar to this.
- Billy Bush outed NBC for their antics leading up to the 2016 election. Bush explained that NBC timed the drop of the now infamous Access Hollywood tape. He explained to Gayle King, that “everyone at the network knew about the tape.”
- MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell was guilty of this live on the air only two weeks ago as he handed his show off to Rachel Maddow while dropping a ‘bombshell report’ on Russian collusion. He had to retract the story, and apologize to viewers for his non verified report
- CNN was guilty of this last week before the CIA came out to publicly discredit a story that may likely out a secret agent of ours and potentially result in retaliation from Putin that could end in death.
This is from three leading news companies in as many weeks.
Let’s make a juxtaposition. The New York Times is allegedly the paper of record, yet finds itself wrapped in a controversy dating back to a (random) Saturday night news dump. In comparison, The Wall Street Journal has dropped multiple, exclusive, and well-documented reports since then.
The Journal has been the lead reporter on the Saudi oil attack, has exposed the pending WeWork IPO as a sham, and unearthed a story outing Amazon for price fixing.
You find The Times in damage control issuing retractions and adding corrections, while The Journal pumps out intelligent reporting.
Why is this? Well, maybe it’s because one paper is solely devoted to appeasing their readers with relentless pieces trying to take down Trump and his counterparts, while the other is simply trying to investigate and report news for their readers, regardless of the topic. Life is always easier when you go about it without a grudge.
A few additional points to drive this story home.
- Now Christine Blasey Ford’s friend seriously doubts her story. This makes you wonder why we even went down this road in the first place.
- Big players in Silicon Valley were in on helping Blasey Ford as the situation quickly spiraled out of control last year. This includes Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandburg assisting her seek legal counsel, and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman permitted Ford to use his private jet when flying across country.
Remember when we were told we had to delay the hearing because she was scared to fly? Nice to know the companies who control how information spreads are unbiased.
Phil Your Day 