Posted on 12/08/2016 7:16:15 AM PST by Kaslin
Mainstream media is on a jihad against “fake news,” stories made up or conspiracy theories formulated by people either to push an agenda or simply mess with people. But not all “fake news” is created equally.
The media has a point: Fake news is a problem, as evidenced by the guy who shot up a DC pizza place because he wanted to “investigate” whether top Democrats were running a child sex ring out of the basement. The theory came from rumors online strung together out of the emails hacked from Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and involved code words and a healthy dose of paranoia.
The pizza place, it turns out, doesn’t have a basement, which blows a pretty big hole in this insane story. Still, the media is treating one unstable man’s bizarre actions as a call to action to censor what they consider to be fake. But what about the fake narratives they push?
To just take one example, in surfing news sites to prepare for my radio show on Monday, I noticed something weird – six glowing stories about the same man.
This man is a billionaire – one of the media’s “good” billionaires because he’s liberal on the issues and donates to a lot of liberals. But his fortune comes, in large part, from subsidies from taxpayers.
Who is this man? Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX.
Make no mistake, Musk is a smart man and a bit of a visionary, but he does not walk on water nor turn it into wine.
His Tesla cars are beautiful and may, one day, revolutionize the auto industry. But that day isn’t today. SpaceX has an ambitious goal of sending manned missions to Mars by 2025, but its rockets keep exploding.
So with Tesla being more of a novelty at the moment, and SpaceX suffering regular setbacks, what about Musk warranted six glowing stories on the same day?
Musk is wealthy – an early investment in PayPal secured his initial fortune. But his companies have received nearly $5 billion in government subsidies (and is seeking another $10 billion). You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn’t be successful if you dumped that much money in their lap.
I don’t want to take anything away from Musk, who by all accounts is a smart and ambitious man. But unless you cure cancer, nothing justifies this sort of throne-sniffing by the media on one day.
Call it what you want, but it is fake.
Just look at these headlines:
From the Times Of India: Why Elon Musk's A Modern Visionary Deserving Of All Our Respect.
From Business Insider: Startup founders say they admire Elon Musk more than any other tech CEO.
From Game N Guide: Elon Musk News, Update: Why He’s Most Admired Tech Leader, Stepping On Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg; SpaceX Still Looking For Partners?
And the New York Times: Want to Bring Back Jobs, Mr. President-Elect? Call Elon Musk.
The content of these “news” stories are about as close to a journalistic exercise as their titles suggest.
Honestly, you couldn’t buy a better day of PR if you used all those subsidy billions to do it.
These are media outlets publishing stories that are just this side of reprinting press releases, and we’re supposed to take their concerns over “fake news” seriously?
I agree, fake news needs to be called out and spiked by the media whenever they see it. But where do we go when you spot six glowing, non-critical stories in one day on a subject the media favors? Nowhere.
Therein lies the problem with the crusade against fake news: No one is pure enough to call it out. There is no arbiter of newsworthiness or merit. One man’s admirable billionaire is another’s liberal hack suckling the government teat. One man’s visionary is another’s opportunist. And they can both be right and wrong, depending on the situation.
Elon Musk isn’t history’s greatest monster, nor does the bathroom evince the scent of a dewy meadow after he’s done his business. If you like subsidies and support the idea of government manipulating markets in an attempt to influence consumers and outcomes in the name of a progressive agenda, he might be your hero. If you oppose your tax money going to pay for the dreams of others, probably not so much.
In the case of something insane like the “#PizzaGate” story, we can all agree that made-up stories are wrong and should be called out wherever they’re found. When it comes to the Elon Musk public relations one-day fire sale masquerading as news, it’s becomes a little more nuanced.
News outlets are responsible for what they choose to publish, and they need to be held accountable for it. But ultimately, the responsibility lies with the consumer. If a story, either positive or negative, aligns a little too perfectly with an established narrative, a jaundiced eye would serve you well.
The internet’s curse is that anyone can start a website and spin anything they want. But its blessing is everything else is out there too. Don’t take the word of any source as gospel; if something piques your interest, check it. If something seems crazy, it probably is. And if someone is portrayed as the second coming, dig deeper.
You choose your standard of proof, but we’d all benefit by raising our bars a little. As President Ronald Reagan famously said, “Trust, but verify.”
He's no Steve Jobs. He seems to be an extraordinary self-promoter.
That graphic should go viral.
It says it all.
I like when they tell you what to think right in the story.
No need to "investigate", .. it's insane. We say so. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
It would have been bigger if it hadn't been discovered. "The Russians hacked us" is fake news too, as is global warming. Hard to pick a "biggest" or otherwise award prizes for duplicity.
Here is one that the press won't remind us of ...
In 1782, Benjamin Franklin created a fake issue of a Boston newspaper. The main story was quite gruesome: it maintained that American forces had discovered bags of money and goods that appeared bound for the King, but included among them that included the scalps of soldiers and civilians. The bag of scalps included a letter addressed to the King asking him to accept the scalps as a token of friendship and loyalty. Franklin sent the newspaper to his friends, who forwarded it to their friends and soon enough the story had been republished in other colonial newspapers. There were signs the original document was a fake--the typeface, for example-- but these clues were lost in the sensationalism of the information. The public was outraged. In this case, Franklin's "news" added to the animosity directed against Native Americans and helped establish them as non-Americans who could not be trusted nor should be accepted in the new Republic. The story was resurrected at a later date as well as "evidence" of the depravity of Native Americans during the War of 1812.
The liberal media coordination was obvious when they wouldn’t report anything bad about Democrats, or in the EU, Muslim migrants.
German State Media Defends Not Reporting Girl Raped and Murdered by ‘Refugee’
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/12/06/german-state-broadcaster-fails-report-migrant-rape-murder/
Scott Adams discussed it when he put up a post about liberal bullying, the Hillbullies hash tag - and within 36 hours, three major articles came out questioning his sanity and abilities. AKA, orchestrated hit job.
Oh, another one to throw into the contest. What about "Obama is eligible for the presidency." Fake news enabled by a feckless Congress that did not even debate the question of dual citizenship at birth vs. the constitutional requirement.
"Hands up, don't shoot!" Riots ensue.
The issue is simple — who is going to decide what is fake? The consumer in a free market for debating truth? Or censoring big internet companies like Google?
So Comet has no basement? That doesn’t change the rest of the story.
Looks like ABC hires people with minds that never made it past the teenager stage.
bmp
Thanks. That was an easy one.
I actually thought it did, based on the most recent story I read.
But your point is excellent.
The liberals think that debunking one detail of a story is somehow enough to invalidate the entire story. If I tell you that there was a 4 alarm fire and 3 houses burned down and it turns out that it was a 3 alarm fire and 2 houses burned down, that doesn’t make those houses any less burnt.
The MSM CLAIMS that Comet has no basement because Edgar Welch, who they claim walked around the pizza joint with an automatic rifle was unable to find any door to the basement and the abandoned subway tunnels (Where there recently was a pizza joint).
Also consider this: Alefantis owns several ‘businesses’ on that block, and no one has said that the other businesses DON’T have a basement or old subway access.
I doubt that children were being marched into Comet and drug down to the basement for sex. It just doesn’t happen that way. The real point (that is not being discussed) is that Alefantis is part of a group of deviants and if you want something ‘special’ , he can arrange it. He’s not the only one either. The DC Insiders are well aware of his reputation, and the reason he is one of the TOP 50 MOST POWERFUL MEN in WASH. DC is because he has the goods on his ‘customers’.
Love the article. Has lots of good points. Unfortunately, it takes something seriously wrong and literally mocks it.
1) The idiot who went into the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria and supposedly fired a shot at the floor, was an actor. Years ago, he literally did a short film called “Something About Pizza” where he was “The Gunman”
2) 24 hours before he was accused of walking in and shooting the place up, the cameras outside the location were turned away. 8 hours after, the same traffic cameras were point at the door again.
3) The guy who in in charge at Comet Ping Pong has posted pictures of the basement. He has also posted pictures of him with little boys and little girls duct taped to the tables.
4) John Podesta and his brother both have pornographic artwork in their homes depicting young girls obviously below age being abused.
5) The FBI has printed out considerable documents showing how the pedophilia underground uses certain code-words to depict small children in various descriptions (those who do certain acts on command are given specific names). Those names were used in conversations that really seemed out of place in the Podesta e-mail dumps.
6) The Haitian connection is too strong with all this. The murders, the descriptions and literally the conversations about Haitian Pizza.
7) To claim it’s impossible ignores history. Look at what happened in England with their child porn and pedophilia rings in high government.
It may all be overactive imaginations and connecting dots too far, but there are WAY too many things with smoke pouring out of them not to think possible fire.
Also, Alefantis is romantically involved with David Brock of Media Mutters (Sorry, I meant to say Matters, but they don’t, so I didn’t.)
He’s also visited the White House at least once.
There are WAY too many pieces of this puzzle that show some serious corruption.
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