Over the last few months I've made an effort to daily check three news sites so I can see what different people are seeing as news. I've chosen to read Sky News, CNN, and Fox News for my news sources. Sometimes I go to BBC News or read regional news like one of Israel's sites. Taking this approach, I've gotten a whole new view of both the world and how truly unbalanced and biased our media really has become.
This morning I got up and started to read the news regarding yesterday's special election in Georgia. Foreign news services have nothing to say about this remarkable election, perhaps they see it as a worthless piece of fluff. CNN and other liberal news sites though have turned the loss into a moral win for the Democrats. Fox News has offered mixed news about it showing the trouble Democrats are in as well as the bright side of the numbers over the last five special elections.
What get's me though is the complete disconnect between the multiple news sites. Almost universally, liberal news sites such as CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and major magazines are claiming the $25 - $40 million dollar loss in Georgia wasn't really a loss. The consensus seems to be building that Ossoff was flawed in that he wasn't progressive enough. Pundants are pushing for the Democrats to put up more candidates like Bernie Sanders or even Nancy Pelosi to run in rural areas against Republicans. Fox News has no consensus yet but agree that Ossoff was a bad candidate because he had no experience and didn't even live in the district for which he was running.
Reading CNN especially, not a single article framed the Georgia special election as anything but a silver lined learning experience. While some articles blame Ossoff for being too moderate, others say he should have embraced the leadership and spoke more about the Trump resistance. Two articles even mentioned the money spent, 97% came from out of state, as being the reason Republican's should be concerned because Democrats would be able to spend that much money anywhere they wanted in 2018 apparently ignoring the fact that all 435 seats will be up in the House then and spending between 8 and 12 Billion dollars just on House seats in an election cycle is beyond the ability of any political party.
Mostly though from reading the different news sites though it has become crystal clear why our nation has become so polarized. Most sites seem to report on any rumor about Trump as fact while making sure their retractions are buried too deep to ruin their narrative. Other times the reporters color the news with opinion so as to craft the narrative in a way to influence their readers to think the way they want. It has become obvious too that news sites ignore news that they feel may reflect negatively on their chosen champion or cause. CNN and NBC especially have become the networks to champion the "creative edit" of video and audio clips to take things out of context or create something that didn't happen to drive their agenda. What I have seen is the very real sensationalist tabloid style journalism taking over network news. Although Fox News also sometimes falls to the opinionated pseudo-news at least those articles are actually marked Opinion.
We've heard both the Democrats and Republican's bemoan "fake news" and it's effect on our country. The simple truth is that they are right about false narratives masquerading as news. In my opinion, the White House needs to categorize news agencies and revoke access for those who are in the tabloid category. They should create three categories for journalist. Tier 1 should be for the few sites who report facts without opinion. Tier 2 should be for mixed sites but those who report truthfully. Tier 3 should be tabloid news where CNN, The Enquirer, The Sun, MSNBC, Breitbart, Politico, Mother Jones, New York Times, Washington Post, Infowars, and many others should be relegated. Any site who promotes as top news conspiracy theories without proof should be given a warning and then be dropped to Tier 3 if they continue with the discredited or disproven "news". In the age of cyber, someone needs to take a stand for journalistic integrity and hold news agencies to the standards we held Cronkite and Woodard in the days of old.
Also... a few days ago I read a news report on Fox News about the State Department continuing it's probe of Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified email. No, this isn't old news from before the election... it's current and just getting released. At stake for Clinton is at lease having her classified clearance revoked, but at worse she could be prosecuted under Title 18 crimes. This investigation was put on hold by John Kerry so the FBI investigation could continue and was never restarted once the FBI concluded theirs. The State Department IG got involved when people complained that Kerry was obstructing justice by stopping the investigation. The IG report was VERY damning of Kerry, the FBI, and the State Department. The IG report had the effect of getting Rex Tillerson to step in and order the investigation completed.
What got me most about this wasn't the restarted investigation itself, nor was it the IG report accusing Comey and Kerry of obstruction. What got me most is that Hillary Clinton and her top staff STILL have top secret security clearance. Their clearance is granted by the State Department and is normally revoked shortly after someone leaves the job. In Clinton's case, she should have had it revoked in 2013. Although an argument can be made that she could have retained it at the behest of Obama who wanted her to be able to advise him, this argument doesn't work for peripheral individuals such as the rest of her campaign staff. Other than Fox News though, only one other news site covered the announcement by the State Department and that was the BBC. No other news site in the US or abroad covered it other than the BBC and Fox News. It's been a couple of days now and still no word from any agency controlled by Democrats that their would be queen is again in serious trouble....
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