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Fake News Central and the Comey Affair

by | May 16, 2017 | LN Radio, Politics

The American establishment media is doing the limbo again – as in how low can you go. With each passing week of having to endure the Trump administration, they become more extreme, more hyperbolic and undeniably unhinged.

This time it’s an apocalyptic, hysterical, meltdown to President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, and the insane (and asinine) comparisons to Watergate.  The hue and cry by the extreme leftist media is beginning to sound an awful lot like an Aesop Fable; you know the one – the boy who cried wolf.   So here we are with another fake narrative, a la the “Trump-Russia collusion,” for which there is not a single shred of evidence after months of investigations by the FBI and two congressional committees. Move over Archibald Cox: here comes James Comey ready to fill your shoes. All this means is that it’s time for a logical conversation about what the media is up to and why.

And so, Liberty Nation Radio called on Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis for the nation’s foremost media watchdog, the Media Research Center, for some perspective.

LN: Speaking of crying wolf, is this reaction to the Comey firing not the most hysterical, over-the-top, out-of-control behavior we’ve witnessed from the media since the election six months ago?

Tim Graham: They are so consistently hyperbolic. I think the Comey firing is definitely a moment for them because these are all people who believe in the Watergate myth that somehow Watergate was the lowest scandal in all of American history and they caused it so that they’re going to say, “Here we get to go again. Let’s destroy another president. Let’s get out our whole bucket of hyperbole and let’s ignore all the facts that get in our way that we don’t really want to talk about.”

LN: Indeed. Has the media completely lost any sense of self-awareness? In the past, it seems the establishment media has at least considered the consequences of their obviously biased reporting, if you want to call what they do reporting. But now it seems they’re on a religious mission to take down Trump any way they can.

Tim Graham: I wouldn’t use the word religious because they’re not religious people.

LN: Religious in the secular sense. It’s an article of faith with them, in other words.

Tim Graham: Yeah. They believe that this is the worst president in American history and they are delusional in that they somehow think that this happened and they had nothing to do with it, that their hyperbolic coverage in the first place, which they thought would destroy Trump, instead is causing the destruction of their own credibility. I think that what makes Trump so “dangerous” in their idea is that he’s willing to denounce them in a way that the Bushes would never do and the way that Reagan would do it in a mocking, slightly gentle Reagan-esque way. The Trump just goes out and says “You’re fake. You’re a bunch of fakes.” They cannot stand it.  They cannot abide anyone suggesting not only that you got this story wrong but that what you’re manufacturing is a bunch of genuine imitation garbage.

LN: How’s the public reacting to this drumbeat of condemnation of everything that Trump does and says? Has the public’s level of approval of the media gone up or down since Trump was elected and took office?

Tim Graham: The (recent) Politico poll showed that 35% said Trump was right to remove Comey and 33% say he should have let Comey stay. That’s not exactly matching where the media is where you have basically 99% saying Trump shouldn’t remove Comey. That’s the reaction. This is where you simply say nobody can tell the difference between the rank and file Democrat and the rank and file “objective journalist”. That’s the problem for them. That’s the whole idea that they are clueless or delusional about how people view their reporting. “Oh, we are the bringers of fact.” No. You are the bringers of insults and mockery and denunciation. There might be some facts in there but facts really are just a small part of the pie. 

LN: Another fact that hasn’t really been brought forward because it’s from a somewhat obscure poll that was taken a while back which measured the overall approval of James Comey as FBI director … this was probably a few weeks ago. The public gave him a 17% approval rating. But among Democrats, it was 12%. Yet now they’re in a full froth about this whole Comey firing. Now I’m going to give you a chance to hand out the grand prize for media bias on the Comey story. Which publication, which writer, or both, would win your grand prize for the most distorted and biased coverage of the Comey firing?

Tim Graham: I’m just going to say that instant panel of jerks on CNN. The way they’re like, “And now … Is he Stalin or is he Nixon? Pick one.” Jeffrey Toobin in particular for coming out and just screaming hour on the hour, “This is not normal. This is dictatorial. This is authoritarian.” They all get completely unwound about how this is the end of democracy as we know it. That’s where I think Trump can say, “This isn’t news what you’re putting on here.” This is theater. Jeffrey Toobin is like Howard Beale in the movie Network but it’s not news.

LN: Well said, Tim. Thanks for joining us and providing some rational insight on a rather irrational situation for our listeners and readers today.

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