With the advent of television and the monopolization of print

Posted: Dec 18, 2016

ability to forensically analyze the news; we have become passive consumers and got what we deserved -- propaganda, largely megaphoning the increasingly leftward tilt of the Democratic Party and various “nonprofit” organizations who promote scare stories about food, health, and the weather and challenge wars only when a Republican is in office. To be sure, there are some fine people (operating largely online) who take the time to read the accounts with a critical eye. Among the best are James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, bloggers Don Surber, Glenn Reynolds, Sheryl Attkisson, and Tom Maguire. If you read them daily you may reacquire this lost, but important art. This week the clash between fake and real news became even more obvious. Sharyl Attkisson who has sued the Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service for matters relating to intrusions on her computer and who is known for her outstanding reportage, took aim this week at the Obama-Clinton suggestion that Clinton lost because of fake news reports. Obama called “fake news” a “dust cloud of nonsense” and Clinton dubbed it “an epidemic”. Right on cue, Facebook announced it was empaneling a group of outsiders, including Politifact, Snopes, ABC, AP, the Washington Post and Poynter’s IPCN to announce to readers which sites are fake and to jiggle with the news feed to spare the readers from seeing them often. Obviously, this is intended to shield Facebook from liability for news posted on the site, but it appears ill considered. The far left manipulator George Soros, for example, funds Poynter. AP regularly shades its stories, as my editor friend in upstate New York, Steven Waters, keeps noting, and the Washington Post just admitted this week it had posted a fake list of fake news sites. As for the news organization fact checkers, James Taranto has regularly exposed them as – well -- fakes, the way he nailed PolitiFact years ago: PolitiFact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” was the central ObamaCare fraud: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” As this column noted at the time, the site had previously certified the promise as “true” (2008), then equivocated and labeled it “half true” in both 2009 and 2012. Everyone’s entitled to his own opinion, but “fact checkers” think they’re entitled to call their own opinions facts. As the president perpetrated a fraud on American consumers, journalists have often helped him along. They would never dream of doing the same for an unscrupulous CEO of, say, a beer company. ;