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Tales from the Mark Side: A snapshot of media manipulation over the years

mark.young@manateeherald.com

We all know by now how much the mainstream media lies and manipulates, and over the course of our visits, I have shared my own experiences of media bias from my time inside of newsrooms.

I thought I’d take a look back at some of the biggest headlines over the past few years as examples of how the manipulation process works and the overall lack of accountability in today’s journalism.

For example, we know the media was all in when it came to the Russian collusion hoax, which lasted for several years and proved to be false. And sadly, there are still those on the left who think it’s true.

So if we take a look at the most read stories of 2017 as an example, it’s no surprise that the so-called Mueller investigation dominated the news. 

Other most read “articles” that year were essentially stories laden with assumptions that Trump was going to start a nuclear war.

You remember. The media chastised Trump for being tough with North Korea and then chastised him for cooling down tensions with North Korea. 

Other top stories that year included the birth of the culture wars and the rise of Black Lives Matter, which the media couldn’t stop gushing over.

Alleged “news” articles excessively called BLM riots peaceful protests while referring to Conservative counter protests as filled with violent White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis.

These were all top read stories the left shoved down the throats of the American people and they all proved to be somewhere between embellishment and flat out lies.

So what didn’t make the most read stories of 2017? What truths didn’t make it to the American people?

How about the 200 arrests that had to be made because of the violent protests by triggered liberals in our nation’s capital on the day Trump was sworn into office.

The left and the media have referred to the Jan. 6 incident at the capitol as an armed insurrection by traitors. It’s been called a coup attempt and according to the left, is now a day to be somberly marked in comparison to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor.

And yet it is conveniently forgotten that the left lost their minds when Trump beat their demon goddess Hillary Clinton and the inauguration exploded into violence throughout D.C.

Not long later, St. Louis erupted in violence over the acquittal of a white police officer. There is little memory of the violence, but plenty of remaining media coverage where the media took the direction of, “The birth of the BLM movement.”

BLM was around much longer than that, of course, but it was the election of Trump that shoved them to the forefront of the discussion and filled their coffers with White Guilt money that they used to personally enrich themselves.

All thanks to the media and the looney left. But you’ll notice that since the media was duped yet again as it became evident BLM was essentially a ponzi scheme, the media just moved on from it.

That outbreak of violence by lefties on Trump’s inauguration day is not a widely read story because it didn’t fit the narrative that Conservatives are rebel peasants and liberals are royalty.

So what is the difference between the capitol riots of January 2017 compared to January 2021?

Why did one make it to the top story list and continue to garner national attention and outrage while the other simply disappeared into media archives?

It’s a rhetorical question of course, because we already know the difference between the two incidents. The left might argue the difference is that “protestors” entered the Capitol building on Jan. 6, but we also know that they were let into the building.

So if it’s a building that’s the difference, what about all the federal buildings that were attacked in the ensuing months of Trump’s election? What about all those federal officers who were injured?

It’s all about the narrative and which narrative the media wants to push. The Jan. 6 narrative was carefully constructed to benefit the leftist ideals so it is kept out there for public consumption.

So much so, it’s important to the left to make it an annual remembrance.

The riots on Trump’s inauguration day don’t fit the leftist narrative so the media ignores it, and thus so does the short attention span of the American people of which the media and liberals rely upon to seize and maintain power.

Essentially: if the media can’t manipulate a story to their advantage, they simply move on from it so it’s no longer part of the news cycle. Any truth is deleted while distorted variations of the false narrative survives thanks also to big tech’s alliance with the left.

2018 was no better as the Russian collusion hoax continued to dominate the most read stories of that year, to include the lies that were told by convicted perjurer Michael Cohen that the media took as gospel.

The news cycle shifted somewhat that year to the crucifixion of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Also, former Congressman Devin Nunes was raked over the coals as evidence began to mount that Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid to have a fake dossier made that started the collusion hoax.

Kavanaugh was put through hell by the disgusting left extremists in Congress and Nunes was mocked by the media for the initial exposure that it was the democrats, and not Trump, who were working with the Russians.

In the meantime as this was going on, BLM was joined by ANTIFA in 2018 to burn cities to the ground and stepped up their attacks on federal buildings and statues they didn’t like.

The media continued to call them peaceful protests and showered these domestic terrorist groups with praise.

2019 was a banner year for the fake media, which delighted in Trump’s impeachment by the House’s parade of leadership clowns still caught up in the Russian collusion hoax even though they knew it was fake.

In the meantime, actor Jussie Smollett’s story about two MAGA men beating him up in the middle of the night in what the media dubbed a hate crime began to fall apart. Smollett dominated the convenient hate Trump news cycle but the mainstream media soon began to turn away from the story when they realized they were duped.

The media likes to be the ones duping but they don’t like being duped themselves.

Also in 2019, the George Floyd riots began and that’s when we saw the CNN reporter standing in front of a burning city saying it was mostly peaceful protests. The BLM-Antifa and media lovefest remained in full swing.

2020 became all about the election cycle and, of course, COVID.

It was a cycle of lies as the George Floyd riots spread to other major cities and Joe Biden hid in his basement only to emerge later to take credit for Trump’s warp speed vaccination distribution and then launched his destroy America agenda.

Once again, my fellow Patriots, we only have time for mere snapshots and these examples are just drops in an ocean of media hysteria and corruption.

In my own personal experience within newsrooms, media manipulation began with a lack of coverage of the Obama-Biden failures and scandals.

From the fast and furious scandal to AG Eric Holden ignoring a congressional subpoena to Obama’s epic “shovel ready project” spending spree on projects that didn’t exist and weren’t shovel ready, the media didn’t care.

It was quickly becoming self-evident to me that my industry was on the take. From the left’s ACORN voting scandal to Obama making up nonexistent congressional districts to spend money, it just didn’t matter.

It’s exactly why the idiot left to this day say the Obama-Biden administration is the only scandal-free administration in U.S. history.

Huh?

Trump’s election turned the media on its head and the industry turned away from their age old practice of selective coverage as a means of manipulation to outright lies.

It’s not conspiracy theories as my leftist haters like to claim. It’s facts and as usual, they are simply indisputable as this little glance into media coverage shows.

And again, I witnessed it from the inside. I’ve mentioned these incidents before but we get new readers every week so I’ll just throw out a couple of examples for their benefit.

On Jan. 6, I filed an accurate and eyewitness account of some of the events that played out at the Capitol. My editor refused to run the story because it didn’t fit his own personal narrative of an armed insurrection by right wing extremists.

Of all the stories McClatchy ran about Jan. 6, mine was the only one that was proved to be fair and accurate and yet never ran.

Prior to that, Trump bashing in the newsroom was a daily occurrence. My copy editor asked our managing editor what he wanted off the wire for the national page and my editor would respond with, “Whatever negative headline is out there on Trump.”

Journalists were allowed to show their support of BLM on social media but a show of Blue Lives Matter was prohibited. That, McClatchy leadership said, would be too political.

McClatchy even considered allowing journalists to participate in BLM protests. I have the proof and McClatchy knows it.

When you talk about election interference, the conversation must include the media because the media is constantly attempting to manipulate how voters vote.

The media relies on two kinds of people. They rely on the sheep who will consume whatever lie they tell them and they also rely on those they know simply glance at headlines to get their news.

This isn’t a new revelation for us, but it is a truth that we must continue to share because even after years of the media’s intent being exposed, it’s still a battle.

I don’t know if we can ever be successful in getting a liberal mind to see the truth. Actually, I know we can’t be successful. Getting a liberal to see logic is like … well we can skip the analogies. It’s just impossible.

It’s the headline readers that we can make some progress with. I can’t even tell you the number of people I’ve heard say in conversations that Gov. Ron DeSantis is a horrible racist person because he’s banning books and African American studies.

Both are as ridiculously false as the media dubbed, “Don’t say gay,” bill, and this is the true battle. It’s with the lazy people who take a headline as the truth and run with it without taking 15 minutes out of their day to do their own research.

They not only take false information into account when making voting decisions, but vote on tiny little tidbits of false information within headlines that are designed to intentionally mislead no matter the substance of the story itself.

It’s a media tactic to manipulate and it’s been far too effective for far too long.

And that, my friends, is why I almost always close out our visits by saying we must remain vigilant, we must keep ourselves informed and we must spread the truth.

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