"Riffed from the Headlines" is Townhall's daily VIP feature with coverage of the deeply flawed aspects of journalism in the nation. We'll look to bring accountability to the mishaps, malaprops, misdeeds, manipulations, malpractice, and manufactured narratives in mainstream media.
05.31.22
Artisanally-Crafted Narratives – THE ATLANTIC
- If he keeps repeating it, then it is bound to become factual.
For Memorial Day, you can always count on some journalists feeling the need to deliver commentary critical of the nation. That it was Jeffrey Goldberg was noteworthy and that he elected to redistribute one of his infamous misinformation screeds was especially wonderful.
Goldberg took the occasion to share his article from the Fall of 2020, where he claimed Trump had bad-mouthed fallen US servicemen after he supposedly canceled a visit to a French cemetery. This fable has long been disproven, as Goldberg's anonymous sources had been refuted by those actually in attendance at the meetings and were willing to go on the record, as well as the Secret Service showing the call to suspend the visit was made from its office, due to weather concerns.
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It also has to be mentioned that Goldberg, the purveyor of this myth, was the master of ceremonies at the recent disinformation seminar hosted by The Atlantic.
A reminder that on Memorial Day, 2017, Donald Trump and John Kelly, his chief of staff, visited the Arlington National Cemetery grave of Kelly's son, a fallen Marine officer. Trump turned to Kelly and said, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?" https://t.co/4PUGrR7tCS
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) May 31, 2022
Pulitzer Prize Nomination – CBS NEWS
- Taking investigative journalism to a new nadir.
Over at CBS, they sent their intrepid reporter Robert Costa to Houston in order to attend the annual NRA Convention.
Once inside, their muckraking gumshoe reporter made some shocking discoveries. It turns out that at the gun convention, he found there to be guns on display!
Inside the NRA convention in Houston, days after a mass shooting of children a few hundred miles away
— Robert Costa (@costareports) May 27, 2022
?@CBSNews? pic.twitter.com/87P083QWZq
Low Octane Gas Lighting – MSNBC
Normally the rantings of Dean Obeidallah do not warrant inclusion, but when his undermedicated screeds are published by a news network, they then rise to the level of journalistic flotsam. Dean really tries hard to sell the concept that Americans have the right to own firearms due entirely to a court decision in 2008. This is only the beginning of the glaringly impressive ineptitude he displays about the Constitution.
He also pretends that the words "shall not be infringed" do not exist anywhere in the founding document, as well as displaying a supreme level of ignorance that militias were government-supplied groups and not citizens banding together while outfitting themselves with their own weapons and gear.
There is NO constitutional right to own a gun. That was literally made up by 5 GOP Justices in 2008 decision of DC v Heller. We need to make overturning Heller a cause like the right made overturning Roe v Wade. My @MSNBC https://t.co/4K6mhc38bi
— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) May 28, 2022
Gilded Reframe – RAW STORY
Meanwhile, in Wyoming, Donald Trump was holding another rally, this time in Liz Cheney's home state, where Trump is looking to have the belligerent representative unseated in the upcoming midterm election. There was the attempt made by a number of journalists to show pictures from a half-filled arena and declare that the former president was not drawing a crowd and his influence was waning.
Raw Story provided examples of this phenomenon and then had to issue a correction, as the arena was at overflow capacity by the time Trump spoke Saturday afternoon. It completely undermines the intent of the article.
#BREAKING
— Raw Story (@RawStory) May 28, 2022
Trump fails to fill Wyoming arena at rally against Liz Cheney: report #TrumpRally
https://t.co/l6TsBQZEXd
Presentation Paradox – ASSOCIATED PRESS
- Providing direct quotes is the absolute height of misinformation!
Nina Jankowicz is still at it, trying vainly to repair her shredded public image as the former head of the very brief tenure of the Disinformation Governance Board. Janko continues to sell the concept that she was victimized by harsh disinformation from the Right, all while appearing oblivious that since this was her specific charted duty as head of the DGB, her failure to combat the alleged misleading intel becomes justification for disbanding the failed entity.
To keep up appearances, Nina supplies a piece from the AP that states how she was misleadingly said to have been in favor of having verified accounts charged with editing tweets that were declared to give false information. What the AP and Janko have to overlook are her supplied quotes where she specifically said she was in favor of that very practice. This is her response to a question regarding Twitter granting this ability.
-" 'I haven't looked into this in a huge way yet because it just came out, and I am eligible for it because I am verified," Jankowicz responded. 'But there are a lot of people who shouldn't be verified, who aren't, you know, legit, in my opinion. I mean, they are real people, but they're not trustworthy. Anyway, so verified people can essentially start to edit Twitter, the same sort of way that Wikipedia is, so they can add context to certain tweets.'"
I never wanted to edit your tweets.
— Nina Jankowicz ???????? (@wiczipedia) May 28, 2022
My response to a question in January 2021 about Twitter's then-brand-new Birdwatch program (which exists to add "informative context" to potentially misleading tweets) was decontextualized to make that absurd claim.https://t.co/9XQ2ZtuSlA pic.twitter.com/PVP4276mw9
It is all but assured we are hateful and intolerant for supplying the misinformation above – of Nina Jankowicz's own words.
Pounce of Prevention – NEWSWEEK
Over the weekend, Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul was arrested when he was found to have been driving while intoxicated following an auto accident in California. As usual, the story is not that a prominent and wealthy Democrat broke the law and endangered lives, it is that mean Republicans were callous enough to have noticed what took place.
"Save a life, call an Uber @SpeakerPelosi," GOP Representative Lauren Boebert tweeted Sunday. https://t.co/bGAwOI1CF6
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) May 29, 2022
Anti-Social Media – ABC NEWS
- This is why the interns on your social media need supervision during a holiday weekend.
In what is really a non-story with very little international impact, a yacht in Great Britain was filmed going up in flames in a harbor. What makes it all the more sophomoric is that a dispatch from ABC News was more than a little giddy about the prospect of a wealthy individual seeing their private watercraft engulfed and becoming totaled, complete with an ALL CAPS commentary.
BURN BABY BURN: Multi-million dollar superyacht goes up in flames on English coast. https://t.co/EAhrTX6S2u pic.twitter.com/y1FL7N9MIc
— ABC News (@ABC) May 30, 2022
