JOHN HINDERAKER: Media “Truth” Meltdown: It’s 2004 All Over Again.
“Who owns the truth?” was about the Rathergate episode: how we and others exposed 60 Minutes’ attempt to swing the 2004 presidential election to Democrat John Kerry by publishing lies–fake news, one could say–about President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard.
I remember the Time cover collage very well, because I am in it. The photo in the lower left was taken in the loft of my house. That is Scott Johnson sitting with his back to the camera, and my left foot is barely visible next to the chair to his right.
The liberal media’s current hysteria about “truth” is eerily reminiscent of what we went through in 2004. We even have Scott Pelley, a thoroughly dishonest journalist, extolling the virtues of liberal editors who supposedly keep watch on liberal journalists:
Scott Pelley: Well, the benefit of intermediaries is having experienced editors check things out and research people. Check the facts before it goes out to the public. You don’t do any of that.
Was Pelley not around in 2004? Has he forgotten how stupid that refrain sounded then (“Layers and layers of fact-checkers”)? Does he not realize how false it rings today?
We have been here before: the liberal media are in a panic because their authority is being challenged. It must be worse now, though, than it was in 2004. Then, Time’s refrain was a relatively benign “Who owns the truth?” Now, they ask, “Is truth dead?” We can translate: “Is the liberal news media monopoly dead?”
Actually, none of the current controversies has anything to do with the nature of truth, or whether truth is (figuratively speaking) on its deathbed. Liberal journalists are just getting the vapors because, once again, they have been found out.
Yeah, pretty much. Plus:
The crisis that we face is not epistemological, it is political. There is no shortage of evidence, and the truth is rather clear: liberal governance has failed. The country is awash in debt, its influence around the world is in decline, its social programs have mostly failed, its borders are porous, its governing class is corrupt and incompetent, and in recent years its leaders have not even tried to advance the interests of the American people.
That is the truth. That is why Donald Trump was elected president, and why Republicans now dominate at every level of government. And that is why liberal journalists are in a panic.
Again: Yeah, pretty much.