BREAKING: “ABC: Settlement reached in ‘pink slime’ defamation lawsuit.” These are indeed tough times for legacy media. Between CNN’s multiple woes, The New York Times’ having to correct an Op/Ed and other events, media entities are more fearful than ever of facing a jury. That’s what happens when you lose public trust.

UPDATE: Late last night I posted a short item about a CNN producer admitting on hidden camera that the Trump/Russia story was “bullshit” designed to “increase ratings”. It turns out that John Bonifield (the same producer caught on tape) is knee-deep in an ongoing libel lawsuit brought against CNN by a Florida pediatric surgeon who accuses the network of libel and wait for it…wait for it…also airing an ambush video. The court denied CNN’s motion to dismiss the case (the ambush video was not part of the claim) and the parties are apparently waging war about discovery.

SUPER IRONY BONUS: “The Most Trusted Name in News” sought and obtained a protective order preventing any of the parties from talking to the public about discovery. Because, you know, champions of transparency and the right to know.

CAUGHT ON TAPE: “CNN Producer Says Russia Narrative “bullsh*t”. If secretly made tapes of Trump’s “grab them by the p*ssy” gaffe are fair game, why is this not? Hint: Ratings.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Every now and then, a small news item will restore your faith in the decency of people. This is one of those. “Video shows a teen falling off a Six Flags ride — and a crowd gathering to catch her.” Spare yourself the navel gazing about amusement parks, and watch the embedded video.

YES, IT’S STILL NEWSWORTHY: Members of both parties, including Republican Trey Gowdy, said they still don’t think they have all the answers as to what was really behind ‘Fast and Furious.’

That was so many allegedly “phony” scandals ago, it’s hard to keep track.

WELL PLAYED, HUSTLER, WELL PLAYED: “Model Wearing American Flag as Hijab on Magazine Cover Shows Underboob.”

IT’S REALLY NOT THAT UNCOMMON: The New York Post is reporting that a Washington research firm of former journalists were behind the salacious Russian/Trump dossier:

Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.” But congressional sources says it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda. “These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”

The fact is that that firms creating opposition research are often staffed with former journalists, who use their connections in the editorial world to redistribute this sort of thing. (Naturally, there are “right-leaning” as well as “left-leaning” firms of this sort.) Work in a newsroom long enough and you’ll begin to recognize “oppo” when you see it.  Sadly, a number of journalists who were laid off by big news outfits and can’t find work elsewhere have resorted to doing this kind of work. As news organizations cut back on reporting, it’s easier than ever to get “oppo” published as news without sufficient fact-checking. What’s the opposite of a virtuous circle?

**Update: Austin Bay answers the question.

IN THE MAIL: Sharyl Attkisson’s “The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.” And remember, clicking through here to Amazon ensures that Prof. Glenn maintains his lush, opulent lifestyle.

CNN SCRUBS TRUMP STORY: On Thursday, CNN published a damning report alleging ties between the President’s associates and a Russian investment fund. Last night, CNN pulled the story altogether with a complete retraction, not a correction. The original story said the Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating a “$10-billion Russian investment fund whose chief executive met with a member of President Donald Trump’s transition team four days before Trump’s inauguration.”

“That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” CNN said in an editors note posted in place of the story. “Links to the story have been disabled.”

I’ve given many lectures about the difference between “fake news” and “wrong news.” Not everyone agrees with me, but I insist that one of the distinctions is accountability. Fake news sites never correct a falsehood, while news sites that get it wrong (as CNN did here) will correct or retract.

That’s not to downplay “wrong” news. A lie travels around the world before the truth is even out of bed, and often businesses and reputations are at stake, not to mention the notion of an informed electorate. People still think President Bush served a plastic turkey as a photo-op to troops in Baghdad, despite the New York Times correcting that canard albeit a week later.

BREAKING: Washington Times reporting that “Senate announces probe of Loretta Lynch behavior in 2016 election.”

“In a letter to Ms. Lynch, the committee asks her to detail the depths of her involvement in the FBI’s investigation, including whether she ever assured Clinton confidantes that the probe wouldn’t “push too deeply into the matter.”
Fired FBI Director James B. Comey has said publicly that Ms. Lynch tried to shape the way he talked about the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, and he also hinted at other behavior “which I cannot talk about yet” that made him worried about Ms. Lynch’s ability to make impartial decisions.”

USA Today goes further, saying that:

The committee, in a statement released Friday by Grassley and Graham, cited an April story by The New York Times reporting that the FBI came into possession of a batch of hacked documents, including one authored by a “Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far.” After reading that story, Grassley requested a copy of the document from the Justice Department, which he said never responded. A month later, The Washington Post reported that the email had been sent by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., in her former role as the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, to Leonard Benardo of the Open Society Foundation, an international grantmaking network founded by Democratic mega-donor and businessman George Soros.

Soros, Lynch and Wasserman caught up in the probe? Who didn’t see that coming?

IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS: “Gawker Documentary Fails to Make Case for Publishing Sex Tape“. Reason’s Glenn Garvin asks why they didn’t interview me for a take on the ethics of webcasting an illegally-made sex tape. Hell, it seems they never they bothered to contact Dan Abrams, the son of First Amendment legend Floyd Abrams; Erwin Chemerinsky, Professor of First Amendment Law at the UC Irvine School of Law; or CNN legal analyst Paul Callan, all of whom did not see the threat to free speech that Gawker and its well-paid publicist touted:

“That there isn’t (or at least, shouldn’t be) any such thing as a legally enforceable right to privacy may be an arguable position—but then it should be argued, openly and plainly, not cloaked in a silly claim that in being punished for publishing an illicitly obtained picture of Hogan’s junk, Gawker is being thwarted in the pursuit of “real journalism, journalism that exposes things that powerful people don’t want known,” as one of the Gawkerites grandiosely claims in Nobody Speak.”

To his credit, at least Garvin cited my legal analysis on the matter appearing at Talking Biz News, a journalism website run by the Business Journalism Department at UNC Chapel Hill.  The video-hagiographers of Gawker couldn’t be bothered. Of course, they had no legal obligation to do so. They also ignored the fact that while blaming billionaire Peter Thiel and his money for their downfall, they — like their cohort cheerleaders in the media mafia — hid the fact that Gawker had their own sugar daddy (a shady Russian, no less) to sponsor their litigation.

SOCIALIST UTOPIANISM EXPLAINED: Trudy Schuett’s “Iron Ladies” blog takes an interesting look at the history of Socialist Utopianism:

“As the first of the socialists, Robert Owen made some obvious mistakes that would continue to be made until the present day. The first of those was his failure to recognize people as individuals. He saw people as a homogeneous mass, with identical needs, without taking into account the differences that abound in character, ability, intelligence and other aspects that make us all uniquely human. He never recognized that his fellow socialists had free will, and most of them wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Neither did he recognize that his solution for economic slavery and oppression was equally oppressive and enslaving, only in a different form.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

REGULATORY COSTS, PART DEUX: Axios’ Kim Hart reporting that payphones (remember them?) are so few and far between that the cost of regulation outweighs revenue:

“Cincinnati Bell asked the FCC last month for a waiver to exempt it from filing the annual audits tracking pay phone transactions. According to FCC filings, the cost of Cincinnati Bell’s audit is now about five times the amount of revenue it makes from its pay phones. Sprint also asked for a waiver.”

Most bureaucracies (particularly the FCC) are loathe to waive jurisdiction or oversight, but let’s see what happens.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: The Daily Signal breaks down revealing numbers on legislators advocating for a $15/hr minimum wage:

Almost all of the lawmakers who co-sponsored a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour also hired unpaid interns to supplement their staffs, a survey shows. A report from the Employment Policies Institute reveals that 174 of the bill’s 184 co-sponsors, or 95 percent, hire interns who are paid nothing.

Well, color me shocked!

FLORIDA MAN: If you like bizarre “Florida Man” stories (and who doesn’t) you need to read Will Greenlee in the TCPalm: “Flap involving deflated bounce house in Port St. Lucie sends man to jail.” He owns this beat.

NEW FORMULA: Want instant clicks or buzz around your article or stage production? Play to the groundlings and cast Trump as the villain: “George Orwell Saw Donald Trump Coming: Review of ‘1984’. I don’t know how old this Daily Beast writer is, but I suspect he was still in high school when this was happening:

In 2011, Obama signed a four-year renewal of the Patriot Act, specifically, provisions allowing roaming wiretaps and government searches of business records. Obama argued that the renewal was needed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. However, the renewal was criticized by several members of Congress who argued that the provisions did not do enough to curtail excessive searches.

I know, research is hard, and it would have been too much work to find out that mass-spying was commonplace under the previous administration. At least, not when there’s a click-bait narrative to promulgate. Democratic operatives with bylines, indeed.
**UPDATE: I should have linked to this Obama ad using 1984 as a metaphor for Hillary.

TO QUOTE JUDGE KOZINSKI: “ROBOTS AGAIN”. VOA News has an interesting video report about a World Bank study saying that “automation could put 70 percent of India’s jobs at risk.”

I, for one, welcome our new new robot overlords.

NEXT THING, JOHN PODESTA WILL BE GIVING LECTURES ON CYBER SECURITY: “BILL COSBY SPEAKING TOUR WILL ADDRESS HOW TO AVOID SEXUAL ASSAULT ACCUSATIONS”

“We are now planning town halls…. We’re going to talk to young people, because this is bigger than Bill Cosby. This issue can affect any young person, especially young athletes of today. And they need to know what they’re facing when they’re hanging out and partying, when they’re doing certan things that they should be doing. And it also affects married men.”

Well, I’m all for being vigilant against phony rape charges, but there must be a better spokesperson.

WHEN VICTIM GROUPS CLASH: The Daily Signal reports on an i̶l̶l̶e̶g̶a̶l̶ ̶a̶l̶i̶e̶n̶ undocumented resident who thought it might be fun to kill a 17-year-old Muslim girl:

Authorities said a man they identified as Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, attacked and abducted Nabra Hassanen after getting into an argument with a group of about 15 young Muslims on their way to a nearby mosque in Sterling, Virginia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed to The Daily Caller and other news outlets that Torres is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who was living in Sterling.

The kicker? Nabra lived with her family in Reston, in Fairfax County, a “sanctuary” county. I’m betting her grieving family is asking the same questions that Kate Steinle‘s family is asking. Here’s wishing them all peace.

STOP MAKING SENSE: ABC News featuring interview with Mike Bloomberg, saying “Bloomberg says America should ‘get behind’ Trump because ‘the public has spoken‘.

“He’s our president, and we need this country to be run well. I didn’t vote for him,” Bloomberg added. “Let’s just all hope that Donald Trump is a good president of the United States.” Also a businessman and philanthropist, Bloomberg said Americans should direct their energy toward changing the outcome of the next election rather than fighting the current administration.

All that “being reasonable” stuff is not going to play well in the #Resistance parlors on the Upper West Side and Georgetown.

**Disclosure: I worked for his company as Global Media Counsel for more than 13 years.**

WHICH BUFFOON? Washington Babylon set leftie hearts a-fluttering this morning with the headline “Trial For Venal, Buffoonish Leader Set for Fall; Process Could Lead to Ouster for Collusion.” Imagine their disappointment when they found out upon reading it was not the buffoon they were hoping for: One with a “D” after his name:

[New Jersey Senator] Menendez “is accused of improperly seeking to help Florida doctor Salomon Melgen in a Medicare overbilling case, a contract dispute with the Dominican Republic and with visa applications for three girlfriends. Prosecutors say Menendez accepted nearly $1 million in campaign donations and luxury travel, including a Paris vacation, from Melgen.”

Nice trolling!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR: Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub is floating the idea of expanding their investigative scope to include looking at political ads appearing on-line. The Washington Examiner reports that:

“A new proposal by an anti-Trump Democrat on the Federal Election Commission would expand the federal government’s probe into alleged Russian influence to foreign companies and internet sites that take political ads, like Facebook or the Drudge Report, while giving the FEC an unprecedented role that some say oversteps its authority.”

What almost any broadcaster or publisher — be it legacy or new media — will tell you is that political ads are a critical part of their revenue stream, and such mission creep would surely not stop at Drudge or Facebook, but threatens everyone from The Gateway Pundit to The New York Times.

FUN FACT: The landmark First Amendment Times v. Sullivan case was based not on something the Times wrote, but was in fact based on a political ad run by the NAACP.

A DOGWHISTLE TO INCITE VIOLENCE? “Attacking Trump is not enough,” a senior Democratic aide said late Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about strategy.”

Is this a dogwhistle for more violent attacks and assassination attempts against Republican lawmakers? If the roles were reversed, that would be the narrative, I have no doubt. Perhaps our moral betters might want to re-think words like “attack.” The heightened language of politics-as-war is the ugliest thing I’ve seen since forever.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: Again, another picture is worth a thousand words. You know, the real irony is that these brave, fearless, empowered women always seem to burst into tears when things don’t go well. I don’t mean to sound misogynistic, but the added irony is that a woman won this race.

TOO COZY, OR FLAT OUT CORRUPT? The AP reports that Jay Solomon, the Wall Street Journal’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent has been sacked:

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday fired its highly regarded chief foreign affairs correspondent after evidence emerged of his involvement in prospective commercial deals — including one involving arms sales to foreign governments — with an international businessman who was one of his key sources.

The WSJ is staying mum on details, and the AP takes pains to be fair that “It was not clear whether Solomon ever received money or formally accepted a stake in the company”, but it underscores the temptation reporters face when they get too cozy with sources. This is not the first time the WSJ has faced this problem.

**Update: The “editors” at Yahoo News (giggle) don’t know the difference between the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. HINT: These buildings are not even in the same city. Layers and layers of fact-checkers, you know.