I stumbled my way into an interesting experiment this weekend and realized that, depending on where you get your news, the world is a very different place. There’s no bulletin in the fact that media outlets skew and intentionally mis-report stories to fit their desired narrative. What’s interesting is what now is no longer even reported, lest mentioning it might not align with a certain viewpoint.
So I discovered this weekend that if you only get your information from the conservative media, flag-shipped by Fox News and joined by talk radio behemoths Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck, and flanked by the Wall Street Journal and the UK Daily Mail, you have a much different view of the world than someone who only gets their information from the liberal media. Not just because of how things are reported, but the things that are completely ignored. CNN and MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and network news, just as their counterparts on the conservative side, systematically simply don’t report things…hey, if they never happened, the people involved can’t be held accountable.
On Memorial Day morning you woke up to video of cops arresting and punching a woman on the beach. Well, you did if you check USAToday.com. No mention of it ever happening on Fox News.
The FBI and congressmen alike are all now asking what President Obama knew and when he knew it regarding investigations into the Trump campaign and maybe even spies being placed in Trump’s campaign. At least that’s what the conservative media reported all weekend. The liberal media never mentioned it at all.
Did you know an American held hostage in Venezuela for two years came home this weekend? You sure don’t if you watch CNN. However, as far as Fox News was concerned, there was no other story on Saturday.
Gas prices have eclipsed $3 per gallon nationally and $4 in California. You know this if you drive, or if get your news from anywhere other than the conservative media who never mention it now that a Republican is president again. Of course, during eight years of Obama it was a never ending story, and the roles flip with every new party in power.
This one isn’t so much an issue of ignoring facts, it’s just amusing; President Trump is playing North Korea’s Kim-Jong-Un like a fiddle if you’re a conservative news consumer. On the other hand, the liberal media has made it clear that Kim-Jon-Un is in the driver’s seat and is making Trump look like a fool.
Over the weekend, President Trump claimed that a member of his administration “didn’t exist,” when asked about a comment he had given during a white house press briefing that didn’t shed appositive light on Trump’s handling of the North Korea summit. The aide does exist. You know what doesn’t? Any mention of this story for 24 hours in the conservative media. And then, in a stunning double down, the conservative media instead went on the attack claiming that the aides’ remarks were mischaracterized, rather than ever addressing the fact that he does exist and did make remarks, the two things Trump said never happened.
Harley Davidson eliminated 350 jobs but is still raking in millions of dollars this year on the heels of the corporate tax cuts enacted. In fact, Harley bought back 15 million of its own shares just last month, costing them $696 million. You could pay 350 employees $1.9 million each for a year on $696. I know all of this because it was actually reported on by the liberal media. Watching and listening to the conservative media would leave me only knowing that it was, in fact, Memorial Day Weekend, and apparently, everything is great everywhere.
Over a year ago, president Trump claimed that the Obama administration had spied on his campaign and he was derided by the liberal media. A year later, it is now not disputed that the FBI had an agent secretly placed within trump’s campaign. That is confirmed by all involved. If you believe the conservative media, this person was a spy collecting information on the Trump campaign, placed there by Obama himself to help Hillary Clinton win. For 24 hours, if you watched liberal media this simply wasn’t a story. Then, once former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper hit the airwaves, the media followed suit with the narrative that the person in question was an FBI informant placed within the Trump campaign to protect Trump and America from Russian meddling without ever telling Trump of anyone in his campaign.
In one of the more despicable displays of the week, the liberal media spent days on President Trump calling immigrants “animals.” That of course, never happened, since he was referring very specifically to members of MS-13, the horrifically brutal gang butchering American citizens. By day three, there were actually discussions on panels about whether it’s ok to call any human an “animal.” Jesus.
None of this is meant to seem as though I’m breaking new ground with this information, as I’m not. The dishonesty of the media has been long known and understood by most. What’s sad is that we mostly accept it, and in some cases cheer it, as we follow only the outlets that tell us what we want to hear. Secondly, the fact that they’ve gone from distorting the truth to writing only with a political skew to now lying via omission is just one more sign we’re going the wrong way.
