Fake News Is Real

B oth Dan McLaughlin and Michael Brendan Dougherty have already weighed in on the media’s embarrassing “Russian bounties” story. In June, the New York Times reported that United States intelligence officials “have concluded that a Russian military-intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan.” No doubt you remember the hysteria.

Now that Donald Trump is gone, and new president Joe Biden needs to garner public support for his Afghanistan withdrawal, NBC News informs us: “Remember those Russian bounties for dead U.S. troops? Biden admin says the CIA intel is not conclusive.” You know, in the old days — like, maybe six years ago — reporters would generally hold off publishing stories that accused the sitting president of engaging in seditious behavior or a dangerous nuclear adversary of targeting American soldiers until after officials had investigated those claims. Modern journalism is a bit different.

When I initially began writing this piece, I was hoping to assemble a list of major blown stories, and the corrosive media frenzy that accompanied them, but I quickly realized I don’t have that kind of time. Let’s just say that major media outlets have spent five years spreading disinformation, first in an effort to delegitimize the outcome of an election, then to undermine the (especially foreign) policy of an elected president, and finally, to help elect their preferred candidate, Joe Biden.

The rollout of these fake-news pieces — and really, what else can we call them? — was almost always the same: Political reporters without any ethical qualms about being manipulated became stenographers for politically motivated “officials.” Sometimes their scoops were wholly concocted. Other times, they might contain some sliver of truth to create plausibility. Once the story hit, cable-news hosts would breathlessly report on the report, accepting its veracity without doing any of the legwork. From time to time, outlets might pretend to verify the news themselves (almost surely using the same sources.) For instance, a June 2020 CNN piece — festooned with five bylines — informed us that “a US official familiar with the latest information” was certain that Trump had lied about not being “personally briefed” and claiming the intelligence “wasn’t verified.” (Trump was right.)

Outlets then amplify the scoop by closely covering the Democrats’ feigned outrage and calls for investigations. Reporters stalk Republicans down hallways and into elevators demanding they comment on the newest outrage. Favored “analysts” and “experts” put on solemn voices to bemoan the destruction of American norms. And anyone who questions the veracity of the reporting is smeared as a sap for Putin or a partisan shill. At CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, almost no one will show the slightest journalistic skepticism.

Then, as the story incrementally loses its impact, or it starts falling apart, as so many do, it will either be walked back or quietly “clarified.” Journalists will even pat themselves on the back for being transparent and correcting the record, never once bothering to explain how every single one of their mistakes skews in the same partisan direction. None of the pundits or reporters or editors or Sunday-talk-show hosts or owners of media outlets feel the need to explain how they were supposedly duped. Sources that lie to reporters aren’t burned. No, the lesson the media learned from the Trump years, as we saw after 60 Minutes’ transparent hit piece on Ron DeSantis recently, is that there are no consequences for unethical activist journalism.

I yearn for mere media bias. This is corruption.