USA 2020 Elections: Thread

[grarpamp]

> yet another "anonymous" lie published
> by the Leftists Fake News Corps.

https://technofog.substack.com/p/the-sources-who-lie-and-the-reporters

The Sources Who Lie And The Reporters Who Protect Them

Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

Protecting anonymous sources - or covering-up government misconduct?

Imagine you’re a major media outlet like The Washington Post or CNN.
You have a huge platform on the web, in print, or on TV. You publish
consequential stories with information from anonymous sources on
Trump/Russia collusion, an email Donald Trump, Jr. received about a
Wikileaks release, and President Trump’s instructions to a Georgia
election investigator to “find the fraud.” Your stories shape agendas
and become national news. They fuel conspiracies, divide Americans,
and influence elections.

[Click and drag to move]

And then you realize you’ve been played. Your anonymous sources gave
you false information. You have to issue a correction. Why should that
be the end of the story?

Fake News and “Find the Fraud”

On January 9, 2021 The Washington Post published a story that
President Trump ordered a Georgia election investigator looking into
2020 election irregularities to “find the fraud” in a late December
phone call.

This purported call was pushed by Washington Post reporters to further
allegations of criminal obstruction of justice. A serious crime, if
true.

    The case for impeachment grows by the minute:

    Exclusive - ‘Find the fraud’: Trump pressured a Georgia elections
investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to
obstruction @amyegardner https://t.co/ZloXeWLg87
    — Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) January 9, 2021

 House Democrats even cited this reporting in their trial brief:

And now, The Washington Post has issued a significant and concerning correction.

This Washington Post correction was necessitated by the release of an
audio recording, which showed that Trump’s comments on the call were
misquoted “based on information provided by a source.”

This isn’t the end of the story, however. There’s still a story and
it’s a good one. It has to do with the anonymous source who lied about
Trump’s call - potentially for political gain.

In other words, the question still remains:

Who is the source that lied about Trump’s call with the Georgia
election investigator?

The Washington Post doesn’t say. Others have suggested the general
source of the leak: The Georgia Secretary of State’s office. The name
eludes us. But if Mr. Shafer’s tweet is true, what a story that would
be.

    The Secretary of State’s office secretly recorded the
conversation, mischaracterized its contents to The Washington Post and
then attempted to delete the recording. It was recently discovered in
a laptop “trash” folder as part of an open records search.
    — David Shafer (@DavidShafer) March 15, 2021

Anonymous Sources and CNN

This isn’t the first time the media has been burned by an anonymous
source. Remember the entirety of the Trump/Russia investigation?

Granted, that gives us a lot to choose from. I’ll be more specific.

Back in December 2017, CNN reported that Trump Jr. received an email
regarding a Wikileaks release on September 4, 2016. This date –
9/4/2016 – was material because it was 10 days before the Wikileaks
release of the hacked DNC materials. CNN had its smoking gun. It had
evidence that Trump Jr, and by extension the Trump Campaign, had
advance notice of the hacked DNC documents. Until it didn’t.

Other outlets, including The Washington Post, NBC News, and The Wall
Street Journal cleaned up CNN’s mess, reporting that the email was
actual sent on September 14, 2016. This was significant because the
correct date showed the email to Trump Jr. was sent based on “publicly
available information.”

Who burned CNN? According to CNN’s own reporting, it was “two sources
who had seen the email.”

CNN never disclosed its sources. It made a correction and went on. In
doing so, CNN killed an important story: the names of the government
officials who lied about collusion.

A Pattern Emerges.

The public has endured countless stories that were disproven by the
media’s anonymous sources. These are just two important examples. The
infamous September 3, 2020 article from The Atlantic’s Jeffrey
Goldberg - where Goldberg accuses Trump of calling dead American
soldiers “losers” - also comes to mind. In that article, Goldberg
cited anonymous sources who told him that Trump lied when blaming the
rain for a canceled “visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near
Paris in 2018.”

Goldberg’s story - which was really the story of his anonymous sources
- fell apart within the first paragraph. Navy FOIA records, obtained
by Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold in 2019, showed the visit was actually
cancelled due to rain.

    On that Atlantic Story - @JeffreyGoldberg and his "four sources"
claim Trump's helicopter flight to the US/French cemetery wasn't
cancelled due to weather.

    FOIA docs prove this to be false.

    Their "sources" are failing basic fact checks - making them
essentially worthless. pic.twitter.com/wAa7FrSxoW
    — Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 4, 2020

A New Media Standard

All this goes to the broader issues within the media: the reliance on
anonymous sources without documentary evidence; failures of basic
fact-checking; and sources who lie without consequence. The media
created this monster.

But there’s more to it than that. These anonymous sources cited by the
Washington Post (and CNN and The Atlantic) are undoubtedly current or
former government officials. This informs us of the process. A
government official lies to the press. The press publishes the lies
and is forced to issue a correction once the the truth is discovered.
The failure to disclose the identity of the government official is,
therefore, a cover-up of government corruption.

This also gives us some perspective. A few years ago, the Washington
Post introduced its banal motto: Democracy Dies in Darkness. Well,
here is documentary evidence of the darkness. The media knows about
it. They know where it is. They just won’t tell the public.