Fake news - the archipelago of lies

“Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.”

                               -       Thucydides

                       History of the Peloponnesian War

George Orwell remarked famously that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. A major aspect of politics is to persuade. Unfortunately, for the politicians who are lazy, dishonest, cynical, bigoted and power hungry, they can be fast and loose with the truth. There is, however, the media, whose job it is to prick the bubbles of obscurantism. However, as history tells us, the fourth estate is not always the independent, impartial and even-handed truth dealer that it is supposed to be. This occurs when the media institutions become wedded partisan of a particular political side. It then ceases to see its role as the disseminating of facts but as one of editorialising news with the aim of manufacturing consensus towards that political objective. Therefore, ultimately it is incumbent on the voters themselves to be informed and educated enough to see through the miasma of half-truths and innuendos and outright lies. This can take more effort, principle and courage than may first appear.

George Orwell exemplify the idea of uncompromising honesty and unyielding fortitude in standing up for the truth and the freedoms of thought and speech in the face of oppression; the distilled essence of the classic Liberal. The polemicist died a Dickensian death at the age of 46 from tuberculosis in early 1950. He never had a steady publisher and was always poor. Christopher Hitchens, author of Why Orwell Matters, said of Orwell that he was the only writer to have correctly diagnosed the three big questions of the 20^th of century – that of imperialism, fascism and Stalinism. For this reason, he was disliked by both the pro-Stalinist Left and the Conservative Right. Oscar Wilde wrote that ‘a dreamer can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.’ Orwell paid the price of the idealist; despite his towering reputation today, with both the Left and Right claiming him for their mantle, he was, during his lifetime, an outsider and an independent mind.

It is therefore very amusing to see the news that in the wake of the election of Donald Trump, the utter histrionic emotional hysteria from certain facets of the Democrats, including the news of increase in sales of Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984. This is attributed, as it were, to the terrified masses studying up on the incoming 'totalitarian regime'. However, this phenomenon means two things – firstly, it reveals that the so-called Leftists rushing to the bookshops, who have been using Orwellian language throughout the campaign in describing their opposition, haven’t read the classic novel written by an Leftist icon, and secondly, had they read it, they would have realised that some of the Left’s behaviour, such as comparing Trump to Hitler, banning speakers with different views from universities with increasing violence, storming of Republican Town Hall meetings, and headlines such as ‘There’s no such thing as a good Trump voter’ - in other words, one of censorship, intimidation, emotional blackmail, name calling and thought policing, is exactly what Orwell was warning society against.

But you may not have heard of any of these news. I have written elsewhere about the Left bias of the major media outlets in the US. This in itself is not necessarily a problem, but when they, in pursuit of chaperoning their chosen political side, become mendacious and complicit, prostituting their services as megaphones and deciding for you what you don't need to know, then the pact between journalism and their consumers has been betrayed. Furthermore, the media’s fanning the flames of this new, toxic brand of ‘Leftism’ that is almost exactly the opposite of what the Left used to aim for should be unsettling. One virtue discarded by the media is what Orwell personified, that of decency. It annoys me to no end to have to defend Trump, whom I think is an unsuitable candidate and whom I dislike. But nevertheless, not liking someone does not license lying about them. So here are some examples from an almost infinite list of the times when the Leftist media has propagandised news and exercised bewildering double standards. For those whose news comes from only New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Slate, VOX, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, to name just a few of the worst offenders, perhaps these recent examples will persuade you to consider balancing your diet with other outlets and arm yourself with the full set of facts.

Obama vs Trump

Despite the multiple failures of his policies, Obama is fawned upon by the media. The double standards in the reporting is staggering.

I quote from my previous blog:

[The] NBC, who, when Trump ditched the press pool to have dinner with his family at a steakhouse, apoplectically reported that this move ‘seemed to deliberately limit access to the media’. And “showing a lack of transparency.” This from people that were hand in hand with the Clinton campaign, as shown by Wikileaks, and didn’t give a hoot about Obama’s administration being one of the most opaque towards the media. New York Times reported: 

[...]when Mr Trump ducked out to dinner Tuesday night without informing the journalists assigned to cover him, it struck White House reporters as a small but significant omen that cordial relations between the president and the press corps, a hallmark of the West Wing, were under threat.

To contrast, when Obama ditched the press in 2008 while on holiday the same paper indulgently reported:

In the news-free zone that is Barack Obama’s preinauguration Hawaiian vacation, this passes for a bulletin: The president-elect ditched his “press pool” of media minders to take his daughters to a water park on Friday Morning.

In making his dash – with his Secret Service security detail, to be sure – Mr. Obama drew attention both to the seemingly odd but important rituals of the presidential (and prepresidential) bubble and to just how much this very private public man chafes under its constraints. 

Obama vs Kelly-Anne Conway

When Kelly-Anne Conway knelt (somewhat needlessly, one has to say) on the couch in the oval office to take a photo of Trump with the leaders of the historically black colleges, the typically outraged Left castigated her as being “disrespectful” and worse. The same people failed to make a sound when Obama, on multiple occasions, was photographed putting his feet on the late 19^th century Resolute Desk, made from the timber of the British Arctic exploration ship Resolute, and a gift from Queen Victoria to President Hayes.

Obama vs Ben Carson

The Republican Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, a black man, received a lot of vociferous abuse from the Left when, in a speech, he referred to African slaves as also being “immigrants”. Clumsy, maybe. But once more, the Left did not make a peep when Obama gave the exact same sentiment, even using very similar words in an address in 2015.

Trump vs Clinton

The Russia-Trump link has been allowed to fester for more than six months despite complete absence of evidence from the CIA, FBI, NSA or elsewhere pointing to Russia having ‘hacked’ the election for Trump. It is very telling to note that James Clapper, director of the National Intelligence Agency under Obama, who served in that position until the 20^th of January 2017, when asked in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press if intelligence existed of “improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials”, replied:

“We did not include any evidence in our report,” He continued: “I say, ‘our’, that’s NSA, FBI and CIA, with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians”.

His interviewer persisted: “I understand that. But does it exist?"

“Not to my knowledge,”

Despite lacking any evidence up till as late as the end of January, the Left pundits keep pushing this to the fore, to the point where even the CNN, who is massively left leaning, had to push back. The mendacity of the Leftist media can be epitomized here: the New York Times ran a juicily titled piece the day before Trump’s inauguration – “Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry into Trump Associates”. Casually thrown into the article, however, there was this little detail that an impartial person might think is important and undermines the whole point of the article: 

“It is not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or Mr. Trump himself. It is also unclear whether the inquiry has anything to do with an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and other attempts to disrupt the elections in November.”

Shouldn’t the headline be much more accurate if it was “No links between Trump campaign and Russians yet found”? But I don’t have a degree in journalism.

Regarding Russians, the media tend to forget what Obama did - promising the then Russian president Medvedev "flexibility" after his 2012 election with regards to the delicate issue of missile defense. This was caught on a hot mike and hence most candid. The puppet Medvedev then replied "I will transmit this information to Vladmir". Interesting how a president feels he can promise this 'flexibility' as soon as he is done being answerable at the polls. And interesting too how little ripple it made in the media. 

Furthermore, while perfectly willing to lap up a ghost of a conspiracy, the Leftist media would abjectly bend backwards to defend, obfuscate and under-report Clinton’s actual multiple questionable and criminal activities. Just regarding Russia, who may or may not have hacked Clinton’s and the DNC emails and gave them to Wikileaks, nothing that was leaked had been false. If an American journalist had revealed the DNC corruption or the Benghazi scandal or the fact that Clinton had lied to the FBI multiple times about her unsecured server, would they not have gotten the Pulitzer? In addition, it was certainly not the Russians who had told Clinton to use a secretive and unsecure server, liable to be hacked. Or to lie under oath to the FBI. Or to BleachBit over 30,000 subpoenaed emails. Or to destroy multiple devices with hammers to make data unrecoverable. 

It is also under-reported that Hillary facilitated the Russian purchase of 20% of US uranium assets, interestingly coinciding with over $140 million being donated by stakeholders in the deal to the Clinton Foundation and Bill getting a lucrative $500,000 speaker fee from a Moscow-based investment bank. No journalist as far as I can find has asked her about this during the campaign. Few would remember the Skolkovo project which the Clinton Global Initiative was involved in, designed to create a Russian Silicon Valley. The FBI reported that Skolkovo, backed by the Russian government, may have created, through Clinton’s State Department, legal avenues to access classified US technology applicable to espionage. Furthermore, in what must be pure coincidence, 17 of the 28 companies listed as key partners in Skolkovo were also Clinton Foundation donors, in the realms of tens of millions of dollars. Tellingly, immediately after her loss in the election, the Clinton International Initiative, the ‘pay-for-play’ arm of the ‘charity’, is closing down as foreign donations immediately dried up, now she is politically arid. 

Trump vs the Media
Rachel Maddow, the long-winded and dogmatic 'leftist' host on MSNBC, stepped on a giant rake when she revealed part of Trump's tax return from 2015. The Left has been after Trump's tax return for a long time, which he should have released long before now. However, the high ranking Democrats, including Clinton in the presidential debates, pushed the idea that he is hiding it because it would reveal the fact that he is not that rich, and that he hasn't paid any taxes since 1995, when he took a $916 million loss. After the long and tedious lead up, of which Stephen Colbert did a great lampoon, Maddow's supposed coup de grace revealed that not only did Trump earn $150 million in income for 2005, he paid a massive $38.5 million in tax. So he is both rich and pays a lot of taxes. In fact, Trump paid more taxes as a proportion of his income than Obama in 2015 (19%) and Sanders the Socialist in 2014 (13%). How very awkward. The demeanor of the deflated CNN panel reacting to the non-news tells a lot. The wailing lamentation that the document didn't show that Trump is a tax cheat demonstrate the media's desire to utterly destroy Trump, so much so that they will jump on any fetus of a scandal and swallow any half-baked story, as long as it is detrimental to Trump or the Republicans, without any compunction. This is not journalism. If they keep this up, they should expect to step on a few more rakes. And richly do they deserve it.

This is a flavour of the sort of ‘angling’ of news that is mendacious and overtly and unashamedly political. It also distracts the public from serious things that we should be criticizing Trump for, and there are plenty of those. It is the reason why one should take care to find out for oneself what the truth is. Those watching from overseas, fed mainly from Left-leaning media, might think that the US is on the verge of a civil war. However, a recent Gallup poll showed that despite the one-sided media attack, 54% think Trump will do a good job in making America prosperous. A March Morning Consult/POLITICO poll found 52% of Americans approve Trump's job performance - a 3% increase since his inauguration and higher than the majority of Obama's presidency. Even the controversial travel ban, which was rolled out very clumsily, had majority approval of 55% (with 35% saying they “strongly approved”), with only 38% saying they “disapproved”.

This is why the Right-leaning and often unwatcheable Fox News ended 2016 as the most popular network. This is why the very biased Breitbart is doing so well. What the Leftist media paints is not life as the Americans experience it. Finally, Reasons to vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide by Michael J. Knowles, managing editor of the conservative news outlet Daily Wire, a book containing 260 pages of blank paper, is the top selling book on Amazon, despite a price tag of $9.99, making it a rather expensive notebook. These few things highlight from the other side the disconnect and failure to reflect reality that the Leftist media has sunken to.

The highly volatile and divisive environment that surrounds politics is the result of such mendacity. Not only has this atmosphere retarded civil discourse, it has also helped Trump to win the election and to drive a lot of people unwillingly to his side, being disgusted by the media's lack of ethics that turned Trump of all people into the 'truth teller' and underdog. By all means hold Trump accountable, but do it judiciously and with facts. If the Left abandons decency, they would have forsaken their vital position as an invigilator of the government because they would have lost the trust of the American people.

In this climate of histrionics, one might find it hard to simply question a point taken for granted. But to avail to Orwell's unread 1984:

"Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."