Unmasking CNN — Outlaw Sports
Edmund Burke reportedly once said that “there are three Estates … but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sits a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.” In America, the Founders considered a free press to be so essential that they not only enshrined it in the Constitution, but they put it in the first amendment. The free press, as the Founders saw it, would be an unofficial check on the government. If all three official branches were to fail, the press presumably would inform the public. This check could ensure that tyranny born of secrecy would not take root in the three branches.
But what if the free press fails? What if journalists forsake the objective truth for the sake of their preferred ideology? What if the free press became little more than an extension of the political parties to which they aligned? Put simply, what is the check on the free press? The answer it would seem-is Donald Trump. For all his foibles, if Donald Trump has done anything right during his four years, it is that he exposed our countries major news outlets as nothing more than partisan hacks. In the age of 24-hour news cycles, journalism is what we don’t get. That is to say, we do not get the who, what, where, when, and why. Instead, we get opinions masquerading as objectiveness. However, the media would go to great lengths to maintain the facade that they were merely truth tellers in the vein of Woodward an Bernstein, but it was the election of Donald Trump that caused the media to abandon the charade and finally unmask themselves. The election of Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that our free press’s journalism-is nothing more than activism.
The MSM’s hatred of Trump is so strong that their desired ends-justify their unethical means. For the majority of the media, Trump is an evil-racist-fascist-dictator that must be stopped no matter the cost. Trump is, to the media, the modern-day Hitler. Consequently, when you believe you are fighting Hitler, any tactic, no matter how unscrupulous-is acceptable. This how it is possible for media outlets to promote conspiracy theories as facts and why it’s common to hear the media demagoguing the upcoming election as the “election for our lives.”
A short two-minute video for those of you in the media pitifully insisting that no media reckoning is needed and journalists performed beautifully, soberly and responsibly throughout this whole saga: pic.twitter.com/PF5s2kTcYA
- Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 25, 2019
To be clear, this is not an argument meant to castigate the mainstream media while canonizing Trump. After all, there is merit to many of their complaints. Is he a liar? Yes. Does he tweet too much and say unpresidential things? Absolutely. Does he have a history of treating women badly? Yes. Has he done some ethical and legally questionable things during his campaign and presidency? Yes. But is he a White supremacist? I don’t see the evidence for it. Is he a Russian plant? We had a multimillion-dollar taxpayer-funded investigation that said he wasn’t. Does he love this country? He seems to. Is he a moral compass to the people of this country? Nope. Should he be? I would suggest to anyone who is looking for a politician to be their beacon of morality-get used to disappointment.
However, for outlets like CNN, President Trump is not just a flawed human being-he is the Antichrist. There is no amount of human tragedy or suffering that cannot be attributed to him. Furthermore, it is their solemn duty to use the worst event in modern history as a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire to beat the President to death. If you browse CNN’s website, you’ll see numerous headlines similar to this one by “journalist” Christina Maxouris:
Large gatherings are fueling rising Covid-19 cases, but they keep happening
The headline reads like objective news and there is no editorial or opinion label. Moreover, the article does not read like an opinion. Accordingly, readers should expect to get information or just the facts, but only selective information is available in the article, and if you check the author’s Linkedin page -it gives away the game entirely.
Maxouris tells “ stories” about many things, including social justice. Is there any question where her bias lies? After reading her journalism story on how Americans having large gatherings are causing the rise in Covid-19 cases, there is little doubt.
During a stop in Kentucky over the weekend, White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx urged states who are seeing a concerning increase in cases to downsize their gatherings to less than 10 people, adding many of the young people who are spreading the virus are asymptomatic. Despite the grim numbers and stern warnings, some Americans have chosen to return to pre-pandemic habits, ditching guidelines and attending parties.
It’s all these parties that are causing the Covid-19 spike, don’t you see? In fact, Maxouris gives us bona fide examples to three states that had large gatherings, despite the draconian measures put in place by their governments. In New York, home to one of those mass gatherings, Governor Andrew Cuomo, took a break from cramming Covid-positive elderly patients back into nursing homes to clutch his pearls and breathlessly declare:
Videos from a concert held in Southampton on Saturday show egregious social distancing violations. I am appalled.
The Department of Health will conduct an investigation.
We have no tolerance for the illegal & reckless endangerment of public health. pic.twitter.com/gf9kggdo8w
- Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) July 28, 2020
Now, this is the part of the “story”, that if it were remotely objective and factual, Marxious would juxtapose the Governor’s statement on the BLM protests:
This shouldn’t require any sort of opinion from an actual journalist, it is simply the entire context of the situation. Readers would be free to connect the dots for themselves. Instead, Marxious uses only the first tweet by Cuomo to suggest that people who are out enjoying themselves, are irresponsible murders. Unfortunately, this omission isn’t the worst part of the piece because Marxious decided to set the gaslight to ten.
And in Minnesota, despite restrictions on gatherings, thousands of people- many without masks — attended a rodeo last week in protest after officials attempted to limit spectators.”If people would like to come and protest against this ridiculous Government Over Reach, feel free to do so, I will not stand in the way of peoples ‘Right to Assemble,’” wrote Cimarron Pitzen, who hosts the annual event, on Facebook.The post was shared hundreds of times and thousands answered the call. The state’s latest coronavirus plans prohibit outdoor gatherings of more than 250 people and even then, require residents keep at least six feet distance.
Marxious’s reporting is attempting to lead readers to believe that because of large social gatherings are held by those deemed to be irresponsible, the U.S. is seeing a rise Covid-19 cases. However, one example she chooses as evidence is a protest that took place on July 28th, against Government Over Reach-in Minnesota of all places. Presumably, CNN expects everyone to ignore that mass protests started and have continued consistently since May in Minnesota. We are also expected to accept the suggestion that protesting for reasons that Marxious and CNN like-such as racial injustice-apparently confers immunity from Covid-19. After all, that’s just factual and accurate reporting.
It seems Marxious is telling the truth in her bio. She does tell stories. Fictional stories inspired by selective facts to support her and CNN’s agenda. An agenda they no longer attempt to hide and is comprised of the principles of social justice. Their goal is to remake the American system so that it redistributes wealth, opportunity, and privileges. A goal that sounds noble in the abstract, but collapses under the weight of its inherent hypocrisy.
For CNN’s agenda to succeed, they must lie more than Trump. They require that their preferred politician seize and redistribute the wealth, opportunities, and privileges. Even more absurd is that this requires the use of some sort of police-which CNN currently advocates being defunded. In short, they must install the dictator that they claim Trump is. In truth, what CNN wants-is to abolish freedom-but what is a free press without freedom? In a time where the wearing of masks is becoming common for everyone, the irony of CNN removing theirs seems to be lost entirely.
Originally published at https://theoutlawsports.com on July 31, 2020.
