Friday, March 29, 2024

Top 5 This Week

spot_img

Related Posts

Washington Post leads the pack in false/fake news — irony undetected by them

(From BoldColors.net)

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]obody is doing a better job of deciphering and explaining the latest round of false/fake, totally biased, and just plain bad journalism, than the left’s very own star reporter, Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept.

I first read the facts behind the false news about the supposed Russian hacking over the Christmas holiday, when Wordfence (a security app for WordPress users like us) boss Mark Maunder completed a detailed review of the hack, and of the information provided by the FBI and DHS, as filtered by Obama spokesmen.

As soon as I read Maunder’s work I knew there was going to be a media shitstorm — the media would be lying to you again. And there was.

Obama’s spokesmen took the information for a spin — “literally, not just figuratively,” as Joe Biden would say. The obedient left-wing media, led by the Washington Post, thereby began telling what quickly devolved into a massive viral lie around the information the FBI/DHS released in December about hacking. Much of the media is still going with this lie. I’m looking at you, CNN, MSNBC, and pretty much all the rest.

This was easily predictable. Maunder had to issue another newsletter to clarify, including this FAQ point:

Does the report prove that Russia Hacked the 2016 US Election?

No it does not. What Wordfence revealed on Friday is that the PHP malware sample that the US government provided is:

  • An old version of malware. The sample was version 3.1.0 and the current version is 3.1.7 with 4.1.1 beta also available.
  • Freely available to anyone who wants it.
  • The authors claim they are Ukrainian, not Russian.
  • The malware is an administrative tool used by hackers to upload files, view files on a hacked website, download database contents and so on. It is used as one step in a series of steps that would occur during an attack.
    […and much more…]

Mark Maunder pointed us in the direction of Glenn Greenwald’s writing on the subject, saying, well, let’s quote him directly: “Glenn Greenwald has provided some magnificent reporting on this incident and the response from the media and from US senators.”

Greenwald has since followed himself up too:

IN THE PAST six weeks, the Washington Post published two blockbuster stories about the Russian threat that went viral: one on how Russia is behind a massive explosion of “fake news,” the other on how it invaded the U.S. electric grid. Both articles were fundamentally false. Each now bears a humiliating editor’s note grudgingly acknowledging that the core claims of the story were fiction: The first note was posted a full two weeks later to the top of the original article; the other was buried the following day at the bottom. …

If I had one complaint about Greenwald’s take, it’s that he washes over what I think is the sole reason for this DNC/Obama/media perfidy. Greenwald seems to blame the media’s lies on the notion that they were all about bitch-slapping Russia simply because “DC” wants a foreign bogeyman — as if it might just as easily be any other foreign land, or as he says, “Scary Foreign Threat.”

Beyond the journalistic tendency to echo anonymous officials on whatever Scary Foreign Threat they are hyping at the moment, there is an independent incentive scheme sustaining all of this. That Russia is a Grave Menace attacking the U.S. has — for obvious reasons — become a critical narrative for Democrats and other Trump opponents who dominate elite media circles on social media and elsewhere. They reward and herald anyone who bolsters that narrative, while viciously attacking anyone who questions it.

He buries the lede here I think. “[T]he obvious reasons” is the main point of it — it’s really the whole point of this DNC/Obama/media lie-fest. For example, China has been hacking for years — including hacking the White House itself (and yet Hillary’s private email server couldn’t possibly have been hacked!), and there have been reports of Russian and other state-sponsored hacking for ages. So why fret now, suddenly, about Russia alone?

Let’s spell out “the obvious reason” instead of washing over it: it is that the Democratic Party (and team Obama Legacy and team Hillary Poor Loser) and the media are in cahoots, nefariously (that they are in cahoots is already nefarious, but that they are doing it for these reasons doubles the wickedness); and the target of their derision — and of their agenda — is not Russia, but rather the President elect of the United States, a Republican, Donald Trump.

That makes it political and media corruption at the highest level (“literally…”). And it stinks to high heaven. They are, together — a political party and the media — trying to delegitimize and take down Donald Trump, and they’re using a series of lies — the latest being the false narrative about Russian hacking of the election to cause the Trump victory — to help them do so.

Among the other damage they are causing (journalistically, to the trust in the news media, to trust in political process, to trust in political parties, to themselves…), they are causing harm to democracy and to the strength of the nation itself. You’d think they would be aware of that — or would cast politics aside and care about that rather than treat the nation as mere collateral damage of their more important goals.

They’d like you to think the corruption is between Trump and Vladimir Putin. They whine all day long about “church and state” and other phony canards such as the one about “the rich” and “big business” being in bed with Republicans when it’s actually, factually, the Democrats with whom they spoon. But the most real and most dangerous collusion is between the Democrats and the media — even more so than the Democrats and academia.

This political and media perfidy is a huge story in and of itself. And “for obvious reasons” it can’t even be covered by the Washington Post.

Joel Johannesen
Follow Joel
Latest posts by Joel Johannesen (see all)

Popular Articles