2017.05.25 Headline Sensationalism

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Burying the lede is an old time propaganda trick: a headline that says one thing, "JARED KUSHNER NOW A FOCUS IN RUSSIA INVESTIGATION"... wow, that's bad. Then bury plausible deniability in the 5th Paragraph: "[WaPo] has NOT been told that Kushner is a target — or the central focus — of the investigation, and he has NOT been accused of any wrongdoing." <- you just contradicted what you lead your readers to believe. That's the definition of FakeNews. Especially for readers that stop at the headline, or can't see the truth past the paywall! (The NYT and NPR did it as well).


This whole series had gone on to opine that Kushner (thus Trump) was having 'inappropriate clandestine meetings with the Russians before inauguration". Then buried in A-15 it says, "he appears to have offered a channel on Islamic Terrorism", something completely appropriate to talk to the Russians about. And all Presidents before Trump, have had those same meetings. So inappropriate is OpEd, NOT News!

Oh, and while they don't point it out too clearly, "The communications channel was never set up", so even if the meetings were inappropriate (they weren't), they didn't happen! They were only talking about having them.

And while it's not clear, what was "inappropriate" was actually referring to the Russians saying using their top secret communications was "inappropriate" not the meeting or topic. Misleading the reader (or poor writing) hints at FakeNews.

I listed to multiple NPR reports on 05/27 (well after enough details were out) that flat out lied (lies of omission and commission) about what was going on. "The Russians were taken back by the offer", was the far left meme of the week.... and not detailing what was offered, or why. They made it sound scary to their gullible listeners.


Why were they clandestine or talking about using the Russian embassy? Because in late December the Trump administration had figured out that the CIA/FBI were committing high crimes by illegally wiretapping his staff, and illegally leaking information that endangered assets to the public. That context is omitted to give their readers the worst impression as to what was going on, or why: and that's called a lie of omission and is another example of FakeNews.

The NYT wasn't as bad on that particular day -- but a month later (on the same topic) they were using the same tricks with, "‘I Did Not Collude,’ Kushner Says After Meeting Senate Investigators". They repeat accusations by democrats, but nowhere in the article do they point out there was no evidence against Kushner that he colluded, or that collusion isn't technically a crime. They let the accusation be the crime in the headline, and commit a lie of omission by not clarifying in the article.

Just like they say in the article, "Months of reports about repeated contacts last year between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russians have buffeted Mr. Trump’s staff." -- without pointing out that it was the DNC and their FakeNews allies, doing it for stuff that all turned out to be not-Newsworthy later, and fail to live up to the hype of the headlines! Which reflects more on the partisan reportage, than on Kushner/Trump. Anyone that passed their first journalistic ethics class would know better than that shit. But shit sells to WaPo/NYT readers.

Oh, and buried in paragraph 20 of the article (wrapped in fluff and distractions), "meetings with foreign diplomats are common during presidential transition....", oh, ignore the headline and first 19 sensationalized paragraphs, this is not News all along! Fucking frauds.

Are you getting the picture? If not, WaPo/NYT has a subscription they'd like to sell you.

If I had trust in NYT/WaPo subscribers skepticism, it wouldn't be a problem. But I've had too many conversations with the non-skeptical lefties that lap this shit up, and don't read the fine print and understand what it really said. That they have subscriptions still makes me wonder if they even can read the headlines without their lips moving. (Otherwise they would have cancelled long ago).

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