Media Corruption
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Many Reporters Paid for Covering the Russiagate Story
Many of us who followed this story — a number of reporters on both sides of the aisle did so obsessively — have long had a good idea about the general direction of that House investigation. The tale of improper CIA and FBI surveillance mixed with manufactured intelligence has been in the ether since late 2017 and early 2018.
I’ll list just a few of the names who reported stories in this direction over the years, in some cases day after day on broadcast shows. An attentive reader will notice nearly everyone on the list has been denounced at some point by the mainstream commentators who got this story horribly wrong. Aaron, considered a traitor by former mainstream colleagues, faced pressure from staff at The Nation, was denounced by The Guardian as part of a “network of conspiracy theorists,” and failed to gain support from any major media outlet or press advocacy organization when the FBI passed on an outrageous request from Ukrainian secret services to remove him from Twitter.
Others who got this story right but were singled out for dismissal or ridicule include:
- former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who was called “fringe” and “conspiracy-mongering” by Max Boot, a member of the illustrious club of pundits who botched both the Steele dossier and Iraqi WMD stories;
- former NYPD officer and Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, who has been on this subject for years and was called a “misinformation superspreader” by the New York Times after the 2020 election;
- Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald, denounced as a pathological bigot for dissenting on Trump-Russia themes, and ultimately forced out of his own publication for writing critically of Hunter Biden and Burisma without adequately addressing the question of “Russia’s hand”;
- former CIA operative Larry Johnson, who said years ago that the surveillance campaign began with the GCHQ, Britain’s version of the NSA, in 2015 and was among the first to say publicly what our source just told us, that there is intelligence suggesting Maltese professor and supposed Russian asset Joseph Mifsud was British intelligence. He’s naturally been denounced as a “conspiracy theorist”;
- Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, declared “bonkers” by the Daily Beast, perhaps the most aggressive promoter of the “collusion” theory and one of the most dependable producers of factually dubious stories on this subject in the mainstream press landscape;
- author Lee Smith, the major chronicler of the HPSCI work (more to come on this), who naturally was ripped for “conspiracy theory” for publishing a book on the subject;
- Pulitzer-winner Jeff Gerth, who wrote a 24,000-word deconstruction of Trump-Russia coverage in the Columbia Journalism Review that included a quote from Bob Woodward saying the media needed to “walk down the painful road of introspection.” He was called a “Trump-Russia denialist” who “can’t handle the truth,” by David Corn of Mother Jones, one of the first people to publish the phony Steele-blackmail story;
- another RealClear writer, Paul Sperry, who wrote about CIA chief John Brennan overruling dissent to create the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. Sperry popped up in the Twitter Files when the office of California congressman Adam Schiff, who infamously said he had “more than circumstantial” evidence of collusion, asked to have Sperry banned;
- Professor Margot Cleveland of The Federalist and Chuck Ross of the Daily Signal, who both got this right and were both marked “unreliable” by Pentagon-funded NewsGuard;
- former The Hill and current JustTheNews writer John Solomon, who published a significant amount of the key documents in this matter, and was the subject of a poisonous media campaign that crested particularly during the period of the first Trump impeachment;
- citizen investigators like the Racket-profiled “Sleuth’s Corner” of @Walkafyre, @TECHNO_FOG, @RyanM58699717, @climateaudit, @FOOL_NELSON, and @Hmmm57474203. This group who uncovered the name of the “primary sub-source” of famed British ex-spy Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, not only went roundly uncredited, but was immediately accused in the New York Times of putting Danchenko “in Russia’s sights” by Virginia Senator Mark Warner.
There are countless others. Even I took more than one whack at this material in the past, among other things listing episodes involving illegal classified leaks as a way of focusing attention on intelligence abuses surrounding the Trump-Russia scandal. I heard the gist of this week’s story six years ago, but didn’t have the details and the multiple people willing to be sources I needed to put something in print. That changed when Michael, Alexandra, and Public got their scoop a few weeks ago.
Anyone can go back and read the reports of the figures listed above and piece together pretty much the whole story we ran this week, minus a few conspicuous details. We learned there were 26 surveillance targets among Trump’s aides and associates in the 2016 campaign year, and we were able to use a number of key quotes, including the internal intelligence community analysis that Russia wasn’t desperate to avoid a Hillary Clinton presidency at all, but saw her as “manageable and reflecting continuity” and a “relationship they were comfortable with.”
From The Atlantic:
Or, you know, people forget to pull the curtains? Or maybe they like the light coming in?
Writers at The Atlantic have way too much free time on their hands.
WaPo Dragged For Article Criticizing Lack Of Racism Lessons At Nikki Haley’s ‘All-White High School’: ‘Now Do Joe Biden’s High School’
Mediaite staff writer Isaac Schorr chimed in, writing, “This article has nothing to do with Nikki Haley. What a classic of the ‘[Republican’ Name…Something Bad Unrelated to Said Republican]’ genre.”
The article’s main sourcing came from interviews the Post conducted with classmates of Haley who complained that they “weren’t adequately instructed about South Carolina’s history of divisive racial issues — from Jim Crow laws to Ku Klux Klan raids to lynchings.”
In the sixth paragraph of the Washington Post story, the reporter writes, “Neither Haley nor officials at Orangeburg Prep responded to questions from The Washington Post about her time at the school, and thus it could not be determined what she was taught there.”
The former South Carolina governor graduated from Orangeburg Prepatory in 1989 before going on to Clemson University. Haley was born to Indian immigrants, which The Washington Post article mentions, and has previously discussed growing up in a majority white school.
A nonbinary 16-year-old student at Owasso High School in Oklahoma was beaten in a school bathroom and died the next day. The media are being cautioned not to deadname Dagny "Nex" Benedict (oops, we just did). As we reported earlier, all fingers pointed not toward the student who beat Benedict, because they're not to blame — they were incited by Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok.
"That same district was targeted by the self-described 'stochastic terrorist' who runs Libs of TikTok," tweeted Wendy Suares, who is the anchor at KOKH FOX 25.
We've already covered a lot of the back-and-forth between Raichik and Suares, with Raichik asking how people knew the beating was "a direct result of hateful rhetoric" from her and Oklahoma lawmakers. There's a lot we don't know, but since Benedict was nonbinary, a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that it was a hate crime.
The Independent went a step further than local news, noting that Benedict "greatly admired" a teacher whose video had been reposted by Libs of TikTok. Raichik notes that the tweet was about two years ago, and Benedict was a sophomore and probably not in high school when this teacher was featured.
"That same district was targeted by the self-described 'stochastic terrorist' who runs Libs of TikTok," tweeted Wendy Suares, who is the anchor at KOKH FOX 25.
We've already covered a lot of the back-and-forth between Raichik and Suares, with Raichik asking how people knew the beating was "a direct result of hateful rhetoric" from her and Oklahoma lawmakers. There's a lot we don't know, but since Benedict was nonbinary, a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that it was a hate crime.
The Independent went a step further than local news, noting that Benedict "greatly admired" a teacher whose video had been reposted by Libs of TikTok. Raichik notes that the tweet was about two years ago, and Benedict was a sophomore and probably not in high school when this teacher was featured.
Trump's getting angry! He must be getting rage-y and lashing out after all the Dem attempts to throw him in jail for being a "threat to democracy" with totalitarian goals.
Or maybe not.
The person involved took to Twitter(X) and provided a massive buzzkill:
A nonbinary 16-year-old student at Owasso High School in Oklahoma was beaten in a school bathroom and died the next day. The media are being cautioned not to deadname Dagny "Nex" Benedict (oops, we just did). As we reported earlier, all fingers pointed not toward the student who beat Benedict, because they're not to blame — they were incited by Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok.
Associated Press: Laken Riley’s Murder Is About ‘Dangers Female Runners Face,’ Not Illegal Immigration
A report from the AP suggested that Riley’s murder highlights “the fears of solo female athletes” and is about “the dangers female runners face.” The AP report also mentioned the death of Mollie Tibbetts, the 20-year-old University of Iowa student who was murdered by an illegal alien while jogging in her hometown.
The AP reported: