OPINION
Premium

The ‘Cheap Fake’ Real Video Fake News Edition

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Jun 19, 2024
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

With the news industry behaving like a kicked-over anthill regarding Joe Biden videos, we will look at the amazingly partisan spin merchants in the press doing the bidding of the administration.

Low-Octane Gaslighting – CBS NEWS

  • This is just brazenly biased coverage of the administration it’s supposed to hold accountable.

It was one thing for the White House and the Biden campaign to come out with laughably weak claims that the damaging videos of President Silver Alert were “false” or “lies.” But to see the press come out in force and continue broadcasting this ridiculous “Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes” narrative is disgraceful.

Leading this pack of shameful displays is CBS News, which goes on at length to explain to the masses that the videos we have all seen are false reports and “Cheap Fakes.” This is the press taking up the cause for the administration rather than demanding answers and explanations for what is happening. 

As “evidence” of these fake videos, it showed the clip of Joe Biden trundling away from the other world leaders at the G7 Summit and needing to be corralled back into the fold by Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. CBS tells us that Biden did not wander off, you see him walk over to speak with one of the troop on site. Making this laughable is that no one was suggesting he drifted off into the wildness for no reason, it was that he was distracted and peeled away from the gathering he was supposed to be a part of, indicated by the Italian leader drawing him back into the fold. This is simply weak, pathetic spin merchant behavior from the press.

Recommended

Here's What Led to Chaos Erupting Between the LAFD Chief and the Mayor's Office Yesterday Matt Vespa
CNN's Fact-Checker Proves Why Facebook Booted These Clowns Off the Platform Matt Vespa

Gilded Reframe – CBS NEWS

  • Ummmm, you were JUST complaining about outlets delivering inaccurate videos…

For that first entry, I had to use my own post because the CBS News account deleted its entry with that news segment. This is because it put up the wrong video clip in its reporting of incorrect video clips.

Prose & Contradiction – CNN

  • Say, Brian? We’re going to need you to pick one here, buddy…

Perhaps there is no better example of how much the press is tied up in a knot over these videos than this analysis from expert media analyst Brian Stelter. While visiting his former haunts at CNN, Stelter attempts to have it both ways. He declares Biden’s visible actions are a genuine issue for him, the administration, and his campaign — but these clips Republicans share are fraudulent. 

To reiterate Stelter’s stunted point: Biden’s problems are real, but the videos displaying these real problems are fake. 

Make sense of this if you can, because Stelter is making no sense at all.

Glossary Over Things – WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE

  • Citing them for the term you coined for them to use…is…certainly interesting.

With shades of the Steele Dossier “confirmed” by courts when the press reported on the files the FBI had fed them, Karine Jean-Pierre responded to questions in the White House briefing about the slew of Biden videos. She declared these videos were “cheap fakes” — the term her office used over the weekend to spin away these clips — by stating that this was proven because the press called them fake…at the direction of the White House:

They are 'cheap fakes' video, they are done in bad faith, and some of your news organization have been very clear, have stressed that these right-wing critics of the president have a credibility problem. This is something coming from your part of the world, calling them cheap fakes and misinformation.

Matching Media Memorandum – VARIOUS OUTLETS

  • Seems like a purely organic explosion of the use of that term.

To illustrate just how rabidly willing the press has been to tote the water for the Democrats and the Biden administration, Tom Elliot of Grabien looked into the frequency of this term being used and it appears the description of “cheap fakes” is a real preference in the press.

Presentation Paradox – CNN

  • Now…who will be blamed for THIS video of his issues?!

Considering all of the revisionist reporting we have witnessed, it will be deeply interesting to see how the blame gets distributed for this one! Amid all the tumult of Biden’s diminishing faculties, he was giving a presser, surrounded by Democrat sycophants, and delivered the newest example of his decrepitude.

We cannot wait to find out how the Republicans are responsible for this latest “fake” clip of Biden slurring unintelligibly, as it comes to us from a LIVE news report broadcasted on CNN.