Here's a quick rundown of how the media grabs control of an issue and spins it around to its advantage:
- Deny the issue. When that fails...
- Acknowledge the issue and blame your enemies.
- Repeat step 2 as long as it takes for polling to show that enough people believe it.
It seems fitting that a discussion of "Fake News" should be published on April Fool's Day. But I digress. By way of example, remember when the term "Fake News" started showing up? It was sometime during the 2016 Presidential campaign, and it was coined to describe how the Establishment media were just plain lying, fabricating stories, and lapping up staged episodes designed to promote Hillary Clinton and to slander Donald Trump.
Remember? There were outright lies about the candidates, outright lies about events surrounding the candidates, and outright lies about the outright lies about the candidates. The so-called "Alternative Media" -- everyone who is not on the payroll of CNN, A/NBC, CBS, ESPN, et al -- in its homespun way called this practice what it was: Fake News.
Despite being caught spreading numerous such lies, The Media Perps continued to deny it all until it eventuated that their Champion would not be ruling after all, thus forcing them into crisis mode. As an example of how poorly desperation plays, the NYT began splashing bus stops with ads like this:
 |
| "Truth" For Sale, Cheap |
This pitiful display plus an entire month's NYT ad budget worth of similarly smarmy schlock was followed by a number of "news stories" by the Times designed to convince readers that everyone else was spreading "fake news", but goodness no, not the NYT! or those who dutifully echoed NYT content.
Once again, a principle your mother taught you applies here as it does to nearly every analysis involving the antics of the Left: when the NYT points its metaphorical finger at someone, it has three metaphorical fingers pointing back at itself.
