Get access to Brad Slager's "Riffed From the Headlines," a daily VIP feature where he looks to bring accountability to the mainstream media. Use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
Body Checking the Fact-Checkers – THE NEW YORK TIMES
This could be fact-checked by a satire site.
Over on our sibling site RedState, we had year-end journalism mockery awards, which include one category for Headline of the Year. Barely even a week into this new calendar we have a front-runner that will be tough to overtake. In reporting on the swirling upheaval of Meta announcing it is dropping fact-checkers from its platform, The New York Times delivered this gem of a banner on its coverage.
NYT Headline: Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False pic.twitter.com/gAbl0W8ata
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) January 7, 2025
First Amendment Strike Force – CNN
The media guru manages to miss out on the problematics of this scenario.
Yesterday, we showed how CNN’s Brian Stelter is among those who are bothered by the dismissal of fact-checkers on Facebook and Instagram. Amid his lengthy threads on the matter, he delivered this nugget that managed to escape his snare-like intellect. In his lamentations, Brian states there are newsrooms that were reliant upon funding from Meta for their fact-check divisions to remain viable.
Recommended
This means that news outlets that exist due to the First Amendment were depending on the money they pocketed for limiting free expression on social media platforms. That this backward thinking evaded Stelter’s critical mind speaks volumes.
Today's Meta changes will likely lead to layoffs at some news outlets. As @JaneLytv noted, Facebook and Google are “chief funders of fact-checking outlets” around the world, and “there are newsrooms around the world for whom that funding means survival.” https://t.co/sBfTQm6Rvu
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 7, 2025
News Avoidance Syndrome – MSNBC
Anyone noticing the ghastly crimes is clearly the bigger offender.
Britain is currently embroiled (yet again) in a massive scandal involving Muslim gangs committing pedophile rapes in that nation. The ever-rational Joy Reid brought on her show the pundit her network saw fit to fire a year ago for his tasteful anti-Israel commentaries, Mehdi Hasan.
This brain trust came together to look over the issue and declare the true demonic figure in all of the disgraceful news – Elon Musk, for pointing out what has been happening. There is nothing more that needs to be said when you are willing to look away from organized pedophilia in order to castigate a name in the news the press is collectively targeting.
Joy Reid shall join the new list of this column of journalists so disgraced professionally they are no longer worthy of coverage.
NEW: MSNBC's Joy Reid and Mehdi Hasan hold a joint struggle session to whine about Elon Musk and Trump, blast Musk for condemning the UK grooming gangs.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 8, 2025
If you are mad that someone is condemning pedo gangs, *you* are the bad person.
"The anti-Muslim stuff is a common theme...… pic.twitter.com/lQyiF70ZSb
Democratic Custodial Services – USA TODAY
This interview feels like passing a student who cannot even read a chapter.
In what many feel is the final interview of the Joe Biden term in office, USA Today delivered a whitewashed account of the White House denizen, and it is embarrassing on many counts. In boasting the president as a forthright figure, Biden lied repeatedly, was asked no challenging questions about his term, stumbled, could not get dates accurate (he could not pin down the decades involving Hunter’s tax evasion), and in a portion, Joe asked to speak off the record – and the interviewer obliged.
It is actually enough of a trainwreck to serve as an apt coda to his presidency. The headline alone is so far beyond reason that it could be read as a lie for both Biden and USA Today.
USA Today, folks. Quite the hill to die on… pic.twitter.com/QxTEcz0wi5
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) January 8, 2025
BlueAnon – CNN
When he does not say something, this stands as a non-denial of the worst possibility, according to Dana.
Well, already it is appearing as if we are not going to see any type of course correction from the media complex that all but collapsed in 2024. Instead of looking to repair the severely damaged ethics, it appears the journalists are content to just keep doling out the fractured version of their profession; Dana Bash provides the newest exhibit of proof this is the case.
Following a speech from Donald Trump at his news conference, he took questions from the media. (Let’s just pause for a brief moment and gather in the novelty of that alone, considering the paucity of Biden’s press interactions for four years.)
Trump fielded a question from a reporter about the levels the U.S. might go to regarding keeping the Panama Canal open should a conflict with China arise. Trump simply said he was not ruling anything out in that regard.
As a result of that non-committal answer for which he was prodded, Dana Bash came forward to declare that this means Trump is poised to invade the Canal Zone, Greenland, and Canada.
Dana Bash is left in shock after Trump's news conference:
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) January 7, 2025
"Some new information about what he intends to do, or at the very least is not ruling out... including a military invasion to conquer Greenland, the Panama Canal and perhaps the annexation of the country of Canada." 🤣 pic.twitter.com/nzDiAlMwog
Ah, yes…2025 is looking to be a trainwreck off the trestles and into a flaming ammo dump for the media so far…
