Big Media Keep Lying Without Repercussion

By Donald Jeffries

Those who have studied historical events from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to Pearl Harbor to the Gulf of Tonkin to the assassinations of the 1960s to Waco to 9/11 to “weapons of mass destruction” to the 2020 presidential election, understand just how naturally and regularly our mainstream media lie. They happily subvert the truth to sup- port the corrupt state and turn a hefty profit.

In 1991, during the midst of embarrassingly fawning coverage of the absurd Gulf “War,” CNN was caught faking a dangerous SCUD missile at- tack, with reporter Charles Jaco and his crew looking terrified as they ducked for cover. In reality, Jaco and his crew were nowhere near any action. CNN not only never apologized, but Jaco’s career went on unimpaired, and, years later, someone purporting to be him threatened posters on a Reddit forum with a lawsuit for the “lie” that it was faked. This hubris epitomizes the arrogant nature of American “journalists.”

Last May, Project Veritas caught CBS News recruiting staff from a Michigan hospital to line up in their cars for coronavirus testing, to make it look much busier. CBS deflected the blame onto the hospital, claiming they’d added staff to the line without their knowledge. The previous month, CBS admitted to “mistakenly” using footage from an Italian hospital to make things in New York seem much more hectic. In a 2016 panel discussion on gun control, Katie Couric edited comments from Second Amendment supporters to make them look “speechless.” Couric’s apology was more of an at- tempt to throw her director under the bus. In 2012, NBC edited an audio tape of George Zimmerman talking to a police dispatcher during the Trayvon Martin incident, and changed the context to make Zimmerman look racist. The Washington Post was forced last month to correct its inaccurate reporting of Donald Trump’s comments in an early January phone call with Georgia election officials.

Media reporting on the death of officer Brian Sicknick, following the Jan. 6 incident at the U.S. Capitol, has been consistently inaccurate. Reports from every mainstream outlet stressed that the “mob” had murdered Sicknick, by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher. The media had access to medical reports, which found no evidence of blunt force trauma to Sicknick’s head. Needless to say, being bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher would leave significant marks behind. Last week, it was finally officially acknowledged that a full autopsy had found no injury or reaction to a chemical irritant, and, in fact, Sicknick had died from suffering two strokes following the en- counter at the Capitol.

Glenn Greenwald is one of the few honest jour- nalists on the left today. He was highly critical of the constant stream of disinformation about Sick- nick’s death and the laughable “insurrection” in general. “The corporate media lies to you con- stantly because they only care about pleasing the political ideology and flattering the preconcep- tions of their audience. Subtsack and similar plat- forms allow truth to be aired, which is why they hate it.” Greenwald declared:

These people never gave the slightest s*** about Brian Sicknick. He was a toy to them. They needed to create a lie about how he died because he was the only one they could claim was killed by pro-Trump protesters. So they invented a har- rowing story that was complete bulls***. Just as with the fictional Russian bounty tale, they will never acknowledge what they did. Their audience wants to be lied to—are grateful for it— for partisan gain and emotional pleasure, and that is why they prefer these media outlets not provide accountability or self-critique. The most amazing thing of all is these same outlets that keep drowning the country in lies and dis- information are the ones demanding ordinary citizens be censored from the internet because they’re spreading disinformation.

A recent story on 60 Minutes about rising Re- publican star Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was widely criticized even by some in the mainstream media. Yahoo News called it “a political hit job.” CBS’s Sharyn Alfonsi was as stridently biased against DeSantis as NBC’s Savannah Guthrie had been during a viciously contentious October 2020 town hall meeting with Donald Trump. Recently, CBS News was caught editing the bodycam footage of a youth in Chicago, and NBC creatively edited the 911 call of a racially charged Ohio incident where a 16-year-old attempting to stab another teenager was shot and killed by a police officer.

While independent truthseekers and many oth- ers in the alternative media have been “canceled” by bans and “fact checkers,” no one appears to be “fact checking” the mainstream media. As Green- wald noted, “Truth matters. Noble lies are never justified no matter the cause, especially in jour- nalism.” Establishment reporters exist to promote a partisan agenda, and regurgitate the statements of corrupt officials, even when they’re knowingly false—without apparent consequence.