All the news that’s wished to print

All the news that’s wished to print

It’s no longer a secret — or even easy for the mainstream media to deny — that the news is no longer the news. Journalism in the year 2017 has become a pissing contest of sorts. The goal, driven by wishful political thinking, is to see who can come up with the most damning bit of gossip about Donald Trump and/or the Republicans, who (if you accept the premise that Supreme Court decisions are driven by the majority ideology among the justices) currently control all three branches of the federal government.

No outlet understands this better than CNN, which appears twice in this morning’s breaking stories, albeit in the byline of neither.

The first story about rather than by CNN has to do with shakeups over the now-infamous single-sourced story about Russia ties that the network was forced to retract in its entirety. Yesterday, an internal CNN email intercepted by BuzzFeed directed that no content involving Russia was to go live without the approval of higher-ups. In addition, three reporters at the network who had a hand in the retracted story “resigned.”

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The second story in which CNN plays a role is a new undercover series about the mainstream media by Project Veritas titled “American Pravda.” The first installment of the series focuses on CNN. In a video that is widely circulating, a CNN producer is captured on a hidden camera discussing the pressures the newsroom has been under to promote the Russia story, even though — as he admits — the network has no proof:

Project Veritas has released a video of CNN Producer John Bonifield who was caught on hidden-camera admitting that there is no proof to CNN’s Russia narrative.

“I mean, it’s mostly bullsh*t right now,” Bonifield says. “Like, we don’t have any giant proof.”

He confirms that the driving factor at CNN is ratings:

“It’s a business, people are like the media has an ethical phssssss… All the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school you’re just like, that’s adorable. That’s adorable. This is a business.” …

“Just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN (Jeff Zucker) said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with that, let’s get back to Russia.”

Sadly, there is no indication that the Fourth Estate has any intention of returning to work to do the job it signed on to do. It would be nice to think that James O’Keefe’s glimpse at the grimy underbelly of the MSM might impel them to find their conscience. But CNN’s ratings are up. What’s the chance they’re going to spurn the almighty dollar (that they pretend to loathe in the fake stories they put out!) for a chance to deliver the news?

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles is a freelance writer and regular contributor to "Liberty Unyielding."

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