In the wake of the journalistic catastrophe exposed by the Mueller report, it is important that we record as many of the lies that we can and shine a bright light on the most dishonest goats in the media over the past two years.
No publications deserve more contempt and ridicule than The New York Times and The Washington Post. Both were once serious newspapers dedicated to ferreting out the truth and holding accountable those in power.
Sure, they have always suffered from metropolitan biases, but they also always aimed for the truth. They were nobody’s stooges — at least openly. No more. Both newspapers are now entirely dedicated to blindly advancing a crazy political agenda and, we now know, are more than willing to lie and shade to push their twisted information on readers.
In today’s world of fire hose information from every direction, the greatest human superpower is the ability to filter out all the dishonest streams of misinformation coming from all the dirty outlets that have lost all credibility.
I will never read another story about even baseball in The Washington Post ever again — now that I know just how fully committed they are to distorting every little thing.
The New York Times is an even greater disappointment considering the gold standard stature the Gray Lady once held in the constellation of American newspapers.
In February 2017, NYT published a story headlined, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence,” by Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo. The story cited “phone records and intercepted calls” and relied upon “four current and former American officials.”
The only problem: the story was “almost entirely wrong,” according to none other than ousted-FBI Director James B. Comey. Testifying before Congress, Mr. Comey said he was so alarmed by the outlandish claims in the story that he checked with the intelligence community. After confirming it was a bogus report, Comey notified congressional leaders to disregard the report.
While The New York Times appended a correction to a photo caption that ran with the fake story and appended another minor numerical correction, the newspaper never retracted nor corrected the fake news story as a whole.
Even worse, The Times submitted the story for one of the most prestigious journalism awards in America — and won!
The George Polk Award committee bestowed the highly coveted Polk Award on both The New York Times and The Washington Post.
“Special recognition goes out this year to the staffs of The New York Times and The Washington Post for their extraordinary effort in uncovering the connection between the Trump presidential campaign and the Kremlin that led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation,” the judges wrote.
“The Polk judges felt the investigative work, based on the cultivation of sources, was equally outstanding on the part of both newspapers and may play a significant role in safeguarding our democracy from foreign interference.”
Truly, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” as the sniveling Washington Post likes to preach every day.
The list of trusted, reliable sources in this post-Mueller world has shrunk to a small handful.
Two of journalism’s biggest goats from the past two years are David Corn of Mother Jones magazine and Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News website.
To be fair, David Corn is not and never has been a reporter. He has always been a crazy partisan activist that nobody really takes all that seriously.
Michael Isikoff, on the other hand, worked at Newsweek magazine, a once-respected if left-leaning newsweekly. Mr. Isikoff is most famous for getting scooped by internet sleuth Matt Drudge on his own story about Monica Lewinsky.
No two people have done more than these two buffoons to peddle fantasy claims, unfounded conspiracy theories and outright lies regarding President Trump’s supposed collusion with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.
The two of them actually co-authored a book — and I am not making this up — titled “Russian Roulette.” The book regurgitated and expanded upon the largely debunked but lurid details from the “Steele Dossier,” which mostly turned out to be Kremlin-fed misinformation campaign funded by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
The funny thing here is that they named their book “Russian Roulette,” which is entirely fitting considering who wound up getting their heads blown off in the whole misadventure.
• Contact Charles Hurt at churt@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @charleshurt.
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