Did you hear the news? They say “five million people” took to the streets to protest “No Kings” last Saturday. Know how I know there are five million people? Because the public relations firm hired by organizers – fully funded by spoiled, entitled, white billionaires – put out a press release saying so, that’s how I know. Well, they put out the press release, then “honest journalists” all across the media spectrum simply repeated the number without making even a passive attempt to verify it. Accuracy is for suckers when the agenda is on the line.
That’s how the scam works: Leftists declare something is going to happen, and it’s going to happen all across the country, in “2000 cities across the country,” then the media dutifully reports that. They are reporting that something “will happen” and the size of it, which is not news, it is PR. Then, when it does happen, they report whatever numbers the leftists give them.
I noticed this phenomenon during the “Fight for $15” – the push to destroy fast food restaurants from coast to coast. They swore there would be 200 protests across the country, but were there? No one ever checked.
Why would they? With “200 events,” that breaks down to 4 per state. Yet, I only ever saw footage from New York, Chicago, DC, LA, and maybe St. Louis. Always. Seems like I would have come across one in the wild, if only by accident, if they were nationwide, or the local news stations would have footage from one, but they didn’t. Only the major liberal cities events.
Weird, right?
Not really. The game isn’t to turn people out to these events across the country to show how big your “movement” is, it’s to get whatever number you’ve determined to be impressive repeated, true or not, to give the impression that you’ve got a big movement.
If a Republican says anything, true or not, the media cuts it with a “Republicans claim” or “We could not independently verify” or some other qualifier to distance the outlet from the assertion. No such concern in the other direction. Donald Trump asserts things “without evidence,” Democrats simply declare thing and no value judgement or jaundiced eye is cast in their direction.
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Weird, right?
It’s not weird at all, it’s a big part of how media bias works now.
When something is in dispute, leftists will note that Republicans deny it or claim the opposite in paragraph 23 of a piece exclusively about whatever it is Democrats are saying. When, much later, the truth comes out (usually by accident or, in the case of Joe Biden’ senility, a book someone was paid a lot of money to write) they point to that one paragraph in one piece as “evidence” they reported honestly. Never mind the 15 articles all asserting the liberal spin without mentioning anything to the contrary, they made passing reference to what ultimately turned out to be the truth once and that means they’re honest brokers.
But they aren’t honest brokers. Yes, they do straight-up lying and repeating Democrat Party spin without shame or decency, but they also do the subtle spin too. Once you see it you can’t not see it going forward.
Were there five million leftists in the streets protesting Trump? I don’t know. But I do know that five million is a lot of people, so it’s highly unlikely that there were. I also know that exactly zero of the Democrats in the media repeating that five million number have any idea if it’s true or not either. But they aren’t interested in accuracy or else they’d add a qualifier about how they couldn’t verify that number if they wanted to and they do not.
Media bias is a lot more than simply lying about Republicans or on behalf of Democrats, it’s how those lies are reported as truth, in one direction or another. None of this is by accident. It might not always be conscious, but every bit of it is deliberate. It’s second nature to the media, which is why you need to point it out every time so more people will take note and fewer will fall for it the next time.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, DC, and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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