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| -Great Cultural Revolution | |
| A Pair of Colossal Media Failures | |
| 2023-02-08 | |
This week has produced two of the most stunning, wide-ranging and humiliating revelations in the history of American media. Bombshell No. 1. Hunter Biden has acknowledged that the laptop is his. The laptop denied by the entirety of the mainstream media. The laptop about which accurate reporting by the New York Post got the country’s oldest newspaper kicked off of Twitter during a hotly contested election. The laptop that was alleged by 51 National Security experts to have “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Bombshell No. 2. Former New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth has completed his massive four-part review of how and why the mainstream media spent two years obsessively focused on a RussiaGate story that turned out not to be true. In a comprehensive, 24,000 word analysis —he begins by wondering why the New York Times itself didn’t do any public introspection as it had when it publicly filleted itself for credulous coverage leading up to the Iraq War — Gerth concludes … it was all bullshit. The fact that neither bombshell has produced the nonstop, industry-wide soul-searching and self-flagellation that they should have speaks to the lack of integrity of the majority of mainstream media rather than the explosive power of the revelation themselves. To my knowledge, not a single reporter who spent two years on Russia Russia Russia has apologized for the error. Not a single one of the 60 intelligence experts has retracted his or her signature. Politico never retracted its headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say” even though what they actually said was that it might be (which itself turned out to be false). None has apologized for not only breaching their duty to remain non-partisan, which would be bad enough had the material is true, but so much worse for having done so when the “Russian disinformation” charge turned out to be a lie. This should not be a surprise. After all, they didn’t apologize when the Washington Post finally acknowledged the authenticity of the laptop in March 2022. That’s only 18 months after chief WaPo fact guy Glenn Kessler cast doubt on it with his October 2020 column headlined “Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop.” They didn’t apologize when the New York Times finally acknowledged the authenticity of the laptop in March 2022. That’s only 18 months after Adam Goldman cast doubt on it with an October 2020 column that contained a paragraph that would have been right at home as a DNC bullet point: “The laptop prompted concerns about Russian disinformation because the intelligence community has warned for months about Russian attempts to influence the election, including by spreading disinformation about the Biden family.” If the 51 experts (plus nine who declined to be named in the letter) and countless Russia-obsessed journalists didn’t apologize when the twin pillars of lefty mainstream intellectual thought finally admitted the truth, why should they now that Hunter himself—via the mind-boggling strategy of his own lawyer demanding that his father’s Justice department investigate his tormentors—has acknowledged the veracity of the laptop. But the fact that the purveyors of the two big stories of the last two elections — Russiagate in ‘16 and the laptop in ’20–lack the integrity to question their own motives and tactics doesn’t diminish the explosiveness of these charges. | |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #5 I mean, you don't expect them to trumpet the fact that they are full of shit, do you? |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2023-02-08 12:13 |
| #4 This should not be a surprise. Well, no, it isn't for some of us. Sadly though, MSM has so much power that most folks will never notice. |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2023-02-08 12:12 |
| #3 “What difference, at this point, does it make?” “It worked, didn’t it?” Nothing will happen - and they’ll use the same playbook for 2024. |
| Posted by: KBK 2023-02-08 08:22 |
| #2 w respect to bombshell 1 - Hunter's lawyers are claiming that they do NOT acknowledge that the laptop is Hunter's even though that is the premise of their request for prosecution w respect to bombshell 2 - Gerth left the NYTimes in 2005; the review of the Russia Gate was published in the Columbia Journalism Review |
| Posted by: lord garth 2023-02-08 00:19 |
| #1 The Sound Of Even More Balloons Bursting |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-02-07 09:17 |