Topic category:  Corruption of American News Media

Whenever we encounter fake news, it should be identified and exposed. This would be a monumental task to undertake, considering the torrent of fake news that regularly spews from what has traditionally been labeled "mainstream news media" (more recently, "legacy news"), but which is now more appropriately labeled "fake news media".

Among the very worst purveyors of "fake news" are CNN and the NBC network and cable news operations, each employing a preponderance of journalists with a strong Progressive Left bias. Of course, the Progressive Left never really views its propaganda as biased or "fake news", but the labels are well-deserved descriptives of what they routinely dish out as news.

In an interview with New York Magazine, CNN President Jeff Zucker shot back at the Trump Administration's immediate response to CNN's fake news coverage of President Trump's inauguration: “It’s just unfortunate that the most powerful person in the world is trying to delegitimize journalism and an organization that plays such a vital role in our democracy”.

This, from the president of the Fake News organization that pushed a fake news "story" about a fabricated intelligence dossier and which organization still cannot admit it was duped into treating the fabrication as a real story!

News flash #1 for Mr. Zucker:  You and your fake news organization, CNN, are responsible for delegitimizing journalism and CNN.

News flash #2 for Mr. Zucker:  There is no "vital role in our democracy" for the fake news churned out by your organization.

News flash #3 for Mr. Zucker:  Viewers are on to your organization's politically-correct fake news.

Like most Leftwing Progressives, Zucker apparently deludes himself by believing his own propaganda. But belief is neither truth nor reality. Perhaps Zucker should emerge from his politically-correct Progressive-Left bubble and open his eyes to the bias in his own news organization.

Does Zucker deny that the vast majority (about 95%) of legacy news "journalists" support the Leftwing Democratic Party? Is Zucker unaware that nearly every journalist he employs carries a Progressive-Leftwing bias that creates an atmosphere highly conducive to breeding fake news?

If so, then CNN will continue to crank out politically-correct fake news with a strong bias against constitutionalists and Republicans in general and the Trump Administration in particular.

People have had enough of repressive political correctness and the fake news that encourages it. It's time Zucker and his cohorts acknowledged this. Yet Zucker appears to adamantly remain in denial.

The Trump Revolution is not about what the Clinton campaign and fake news alleged with their incessant namecalling. Trump supporters are not "racists", "homophobes", "bigots", "misogynists", "xenophobes" and every other "deplorable" label Leftist Progressives could toss Trump's way. The Trump Revolution is about making America great again by taking America back from the increasingly Leftwing contagion of political correctness and fake news influencing our national politics, our national news operations, and our public schools and universities.

As obvious as it should have been, fake news organizations and the Leftwing Democratic Party were blind to the signals that heralded both the need for and the fulfillment of the Trump Revolution. Donald Trump was the right person at the right time to lead the revolution. The Trump presidency will go down as the turning point when Americans united to say, "enough is enough" of Leftwing Progressives and their politically-correct repression of basic freedoms.

Here are just a few of the indicators that fake news and the DNC overlooked:

• On, September 11, 2012, the 11^th anniversary of the "9/11" terrorist attack on the United States that claimed over 3000 victims, Islamic terrorists attacked the US mission in Benghazi. A non-responsive Obama Administration sat idly by as the terrorist attack killed Ambassador Stevens and three other U.S. nationals.
  
  The Obama Administration quickly labeled the attack a "spontaneous protest" of an obscure online video that mocked the Islamist Prophet Muhammad, despite few people worldwide having ever seen the video! Because it was an election year, the Administration repeated again and again their story that the attack was a reaction to religous intolerance (thereby providing a tacit justification for the attack). The video maker was jailed (evidently, there is no right of free expression when the expression isn't "politically correct" and jailing serves the re-election interests of the President).
  
  Hillary Clinton (then Secretary of State), candidate Obama, and the Obama Administration doggedly maintained their story of a spontaneous protest over a video, a story that had no foundation. To this day, CNN continues to peddle the fake news that the Obama administration really believed the video was the cause of the attack, despite a June 17, 2014 report in The Washington Post that begins:  "On Sept. 11, 2012, heavily armed Islamist militants launched an organized attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, setting fire to buildings before all U.S. personnel could escape or reinforcements could arrive." Clearly, "heavily armed Islamist militants" are not "spontaneous protesters".
  
  Yet, Fake News media accepted without question Obama's made-up story that the attack was in response to an anti-Islamist video until the false narrative was quietly dropped by the Obama Administration shortly after Obama's November 2012 re-election. Mission accomplished. True to their bias, CNN persists to this day in supporting the false narrative that the Obama Administration believed the attack was a spontaneous protest.
   
• Chick-fil-A's President and CEO Dan Cathy's personal opposition to same-sex marriage precipitated the Progressive Left's call for a nationwide boycott of Chick-fil-A restaurants. In response to the boycott, on Wednesday, April 1, 2012 the average Chick-fil-A restaurant increased sales by 29.9% and had 367 more customers than typical for a Wednesday. In August 2012, a Rasmussen Reports survey of likely voters revealed 61% viewed Chick-fil-A favorably, while just 13% would participate in the boycott.
   
• A Forbes.com article (Confirmed:  NFL Losing Millions of TV Viewers Because Of National Anthem Protests) cites statistics from a Sporting News story that illustrate the significant degree to which decreasing NFL TV viewers and game attendance are in response to NFL players disrespecting our National Anthem without an effective NFL response:  "Nearly one-third (32 percent) of adults say they're less likely to watch NFL game telecasts because of the Kaepernick-led player protests... Only 13 percent said they were more likely to watch an NFL game because of continuing protests by Kaepernick and supporters". A net 19% decline in adults watching NFL games can be attributed to the NFL's refusal to take any action against players who disrespect our National Anthem.
   
• Ongoing public disapproval of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") and it's disastrous and costly impact on most Americans and the skyrocketing premiums announced just before the election should have been seen as a bad omen for Clinton, who promised more of the same.
   
• Overflow attendance at every Trump rally throughout the 2016 campaign season indicated a movement bigger than Trump that was substantially boosting his support. While Trump's rallies drew tens of thousands, Clinton had to import celebrities to try to boost paltry attendance at her rallies.

While there were other indicators (for example, crowd responses to Trump's pledges to secure our borders and drain the Washington swamp), these indicators should have been sufficient warning to Clinton supporters that a campaign based on "more of the same" was a prescription for failure.

Evidently, Clinton's hubris blinded her to her own precarious position until it was too late to take effective action. Her last-ditch attempt to campaign in states deemed "safe" for her and in which she hadn't campaigned (notably Michigan and Wisconsin) was countered with a rapid Trump response, scheduling last-minute return rallies in those states, rallies that far out-performed Clinton's. Perhaps this explains the real reason the Clinton campaign cancelled their planned election night fireworks.

Throughout the campaign, fake news operations like CNN's continued to present biased polling and election coverage that served only to buttress their own false expectations. When you've lost credibility, any attempt to influence others is doomed to failure.

Now that the election is over and we have a new President, Mr. Zucker and CNN evidently plan to continue their assaults on truth and honesty in journalism by refusing to acknowledge and address their own biased operation, in particular, their fake news and politically-correct biased reporting that will ultimately prove fatal to their ratings.

Zucker's views are clearly not in the best interests of CNN's future ratings. His denial of CNN's role in propagating Fake News serves to discourage objective journalism while rewarding biased journailsm. He certainly indicates no interest in supporting any effort to assure CNN is contributing to an objectively-informed public.

Finally, there have been no official crowd estimates for gatherings in Washington, DC since the controversy over crowd size at the October 16, 1995 "Million Man March". So anyone's estimate is pure guesswork.

Bob Webster
WEBCommentary (Editor, Publisher)

Biography - Bob Webster

Author of "Looking Out the Window", an evidence-based examination of the "climate change" issue, Bob Webster, is a 12th-generation descendent of both the Darte family (Connecticut, 1630s) and the Webster family (Massachusetts, 1630s). He is a descendant of Daniel Webster's father, Revolutionary War patriot Ebenezer Webster, who served with General Washington. Bob has always had a strong interest in early American history, our Constitution, U.S. politics, and law. Politically he is a constitutional republican with objectivist and libertarian roots. He has faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and reason over deception and emotion. He is a strong believer in our Constitution as written and views the abandonment of constitutional restraint by the regressive Progressive movement as a great danger to our Republic. His favorite novel is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and believes it should be required reading for all high school students so they can appreciate the cost of tolerating the growth of unconstitutional crushingly powerful central government. He strongly believes, as our Constitution enshrines, that the interests of the individual should be held superior to the interests of the state.

A lifelong interest in meteorology and climatology spurred his strong interest in science. Bob earned his degree in Mathematics at Virginia Tech, graduating in 1964.