I have written about “Journalistic Integrity” before and this week a couple big events led me to dust off some draft text and work on another journalist post again… in doing so, I ended up ripping it in half and creating two different posts.  This one about Fake News, and one about researching pornography.  Seriously.  Hopefully it comes out tomorrow.  Yes, I know that it is April 1 today but I am really posting about porn tomorrow. Trust me.

Now the problem became how to rip these two posts apart.  Let’s talk about what on earth journalism is, because I am clearly NOT a journalist, but I seem to spend more time hunting down facts than a vast majority of the journalists I read do.

Meriam Webster:

writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation

American Press Institute:

Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. It is also the product of these activities.

When I went to school, and I have heard others use a very similar definition, Journalism was:

Journalism is the act of reporting the facts in the most interesting manner possible.

So here is my problem.  Where do we get the facts?  The media today is so bent on agendas and pushing a predetermined narrative, that nobody reports all the facts any longer.  I have noticed for the past decade, that I find it harder to trust anyone reporting on anything.  Everyone seems to have good days, but then most have days that make me wonder how journalists aren’t in prison for the lies they spread and the obvious facts they omit from stories.

One of Canada’s largest newspapers, the Toronto Star, seems to revel in the integrity of the Washington Post, they appear to be no better than the New York Times, one of the largest newspaper’s in the US.

Real reporters do not simply publish what anyone tells them, no matter how dramatic the story presented. Real reporting demands that journalists always take steps to verify what sources tell them, check out the reliability of all sources, seek documentation to back up what sources tell them, ask questions, go back and ask more questions.
Toronto Star editorial: ‘Journalistic standards protect against fake news‘

What is Fake News?

“Fake News” has become more mainstream since Donald Trump started using the term so often during his presidential run.  Most of his claims are more justly characterized as propaganda, but he was definitely targeted with several instances of both.

When the news is bent to push a narrative or agenda, that is just crappy journalism.  When stories are created and promoted to forward that narrative or agenda out of nothing, that is Fake News.

1. My first real introduction to it was back in 2010 when every news outlet was reporting about racism in the tea party movement and a particular instance at a rally where democrat politicians accused tea party protesters of yelling racial slurs.  A reward was offered by Andrew Breitbart which progressively rose from $10,000 to $100,000 until he gave up after not receiving a single shred of evidence though there was several hours of video recorded from several vantage points.
2. All the media promoting Trump collusion with Russia?  Probably fake news, or redirection of Democrat collusion maybe.  The Mueller Report cleared that up for us.
3. More recently, in January of 2019, Buzzfeed was busted for reporting outright lies about the anticipated Mueller Report.  In an unprecedented move, the FBI actually responded to the lies by stating that the BuzzFeed reporting was not based on any factual evidence.  It turned out to be based on lies.  Total Fake News.
4. The Covington Christian High School coverage… bent news 180 degrees from facts and promoting lies, but the story itself wasn’t fake, just wrong.  The agenda was clear though.
5. The whole Jussie Smollett story was Fake News.  Not that the news made the story up, the victim made it up.  But every single mainstream media source I could find was 100% convinced and reported everything Jussie said, without corroborating a single piece of evidence, or waiting for the police to do any work.  Not that the police effort mattered because Obama staff (how do they still have any pull?) got Jussie released and all charges dropped.
6. The New York Times went through hell after being caught twisting facts and lying about nail salons.  You can do your own search but here is the Politico article and the Reason.com article.

Let’s face it, we could make a list longer than your arm just off a simple online search.

Fake News Awarded with Pulitzers

The president did not need to tweet about this but the fact is that writers received Pulitzer Prizes for writing about lies.

If we are going to take away Pulitzer Prizes for fake news and lies, do we need to take away President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize?  I never understood how he got a Nobel Peace Prize in his first year in office but eight years later, Obama became the ONLY president in the history of America (I can’t find conflicting evidence at any rate) who was at war with a foreign nation through his entire presidency.  Clearly Barrack Obama did not deserve a Nobel Peace Prize… did he?

Fake News comes from Politicians

AOC, or Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez comes to mind as she seems to love talking without thinking or knowing anything about the facts.  This is the NY Congresswoman who comes off like some kind of superhero because she answered a casting call to audition for the role of congresswoman.  Where does she draw the line between her acting role and serving the people?

Before you speak about congress enacting the 22nd amendment in 1947 (approved in 1951), you can admit that it was in part due to FDR getting elected to a fourth term, but you can’t say it was to stop him from getting a fifth term as he was dead before the amendment was introduced.  FDR died in office in 1945.  We should also mention that in 1947 AND 1951, The US had a Democratic president.  The republicans did not do this to the Democrats as AOC has chosen to state but facts matter less to this young lady than any politician I have ever heard.

How hard are Facts to find?

This week an Arizona SWAT team kicked down a family’s front door to take their children into state care because the state allowed a doctor recommendation to come above the decision of the parents.  I could talk about this story for half an hour and I don’t even know if I disagree with the law there.  But how do I know the story so well?  Because I researched it… on several different media sites… for several hours.  Here is the breakdown of those news reports I had to study…

Source	Medical cost	Bed Stains	Child Abuse charges	Court Ruling
Breitbart	Yes	No	No	No
NBC	No	Yes	Partial	No
CNN	Yes	No	Yes	No
Reason	No	No	No	Yes
The Blaze	No	No	Opposed	No

The reporting is varied on the different sites but you can see some clear red flags like the Blaze and CNN disagreeing on whether charges were laid. A couple reports mention the medical costs being an issue and unanimously every report mentioning that the parents worried about the kids not being vaccinated.

Close-Minded Individuals

So when someone says something to you in social media like this…

Understand that they really don’t understand.  You need to decide now if your search for the truth is worth more than spending time with people who are clearly only interested in opinions that agree with their own.

The point I am trying to make is that you need to educate yourself.  You cannot trust a single news source anymore to relay the facts.  I would be ecstatic to find a single place to get my news but I haven’t found one yet.  There is simply nobody I trust out there with telling me the truth.

The fact that I haven’t found a single shred of evidence that Rebel Media has ever supported hatred or racism and nobody in this thread could send me any as well.

It gets worse, because you can’t simply be willing to turn the channel to find another opinion to find all the information.  You actually have to seek out alternative viewpoints.  I do it with my news as you can see above.  Breitbart, The Blaze, and Reason are right-leaning and you can see that there is clearly differences in the facts that they reported as they often omit items that push a liberal agenda.  CNN and NBC are typically left-leaning and ignore facts of their own to promote a narrative.  The CNN report, as typical for them, goes a little farther by using a click-bait title to attract more hits.  (as a blogger, I will admit to being a big fan of the click-bait… but to get clicks, not to change the story or push an agenda)

Police raided a home to take an unvaccinated child to the hospital.

The vaccinations of the child were one of the few facts mentioned in every story, but only CNN thought they could twist the story into something that barely resembled the facts or concerns that the story should bring.  It was a fact, but really had nothing to do with the basis of the story.  Yet CNN found it made for a great headline so it looks like SWAT kicked in a door because a child was unvaccinated.  Fake News or just twisting facts to push an agenda? I just call it CNN.

I have posted this video before, but Denzel Washington best explained the issues we have today with the media…