A Fox News headline read: “CNN fires back at Trump, stands by controversial story: ‘CNN does not lie.’” (Brian Flood, Aug. 30) Oh really? So, CNN does not lie, writes Mychal Massie, who is founder and chairman of the Racial Policy Center, a conservative think tank that advocates for a colorblind society. First published at WND.
We know that the definition of a sexual intimacy, according to serial sexual molester Bill Clinton, depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is. Are we now to also understand the definition of baldfaced lie is the exclusive determination of CNN?
I submit the “truth” for CNN is at best fluid and selective. At its worst, truth for CNN is non-existent. Paraphrasing a paragraph written about the Clintons by Robert Chernin, vice president, RedTech Data, to make it fit CNN: Truth for [CNN] is not a code to be honored. It is not a bond with the American people to be nurtured and protected. To [CNN], truth seems to be more of a tool to be used or at times a trap to avoid. Use it when necessary, but only with the precision of a scalpel. When it comes to the truth, [CNN] are experts at parsing the English language like a veteran contortionist. (See: “Hillary Clinton’s Lying: Does It Depend On What The Meaning Of The Word ‘Is’ Is,” The Daily Caller, Aug. 23, 2016)
CNN has an uninterrupted history of lies. In January 2005, I reported: “Eason Jordan – then executive vice president and chief news executive of CNN, chairman of CNN’s editorial board and member of CNN’s executive committee – by his own admission kept secret Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday’s plan to murder two brothers-in-law, after Uday had indicated his intent to Jordan, before actually committing the assassinations.
Jordan also admitted concealing Hussein’s horrific atrocities, including, no doubt, the filling of mass graves and torture chambers.” (See: “Throwing Stones From Inside Glass Houses,” WND.com, Jan. 18, 2005)
As I wrote in the same syndicated column: “Hugh Hewitt wrote, [CNN’s] Jordan even misled the New Republic’s Franklin Foer on the very subject on CNN’s reporting on Baghdad. This after, as Franklin Foer wrote, Jordan in October of 2002 told him … flatly that his [Jordan’s] network [CNN] gave a full picture of the region – he at that time challenged Foer to find instances of CNN neglecting stories about Saddam’s horrors.”
I reported that CNN’s Jordan “brazenly and habitually lied to fellow journalists about the integrity of his network’s reporting.” The truth, as Jordan would later admit, was quite different.
Jordan admitted that CNN under his watch, “rarely publish[ed] the truth, preferring to parrot the party line of [Saddam] who they personally knew was a bloody maniac with terrible weapons and plans.”
Jordan would later admit CNN [intentionally] misreported the news in Iraq so as to retain a news desk there and also retain a favorable relationship with Saddam Hussein. (See: “6 Eye-Popping Cases Of Mainstream Media Fake News,” WND.com, Dec. 19, 2016)
So, after years of documented and confessed lying that resulted in American lives being lost and the military coalition forces being set back because of CNN’s acknowledged lies – we’re supposed to believe that CNN has suddenly found religion and no longer lies?
CNN’s fallacious reporting from Iraq was second for its unadulterated dishonesty only to President Franklin Roosevelt’s coercing American newspapers to falsify and whitewash the horrors Hitler’s Germany was perpetrating upon the Jews.
Roosevelt downplayed atrocities and certain topics that cast Hitler in a negative light, and the newspapers followed suit. “The result, according to Laurel Leff, the leading expert on American coverage of the Holocaust, was a ‘feedback loop’: The Roosevelt administration, which carefully monitored 425 newspapers daily, downplayed the plight of the Jews, and then ‘used the lack of prominent news stories to confirm its judgment that the public was not interested and to justify its lack of response.’” (“The American Papers that Praised Hitler,” Dr. Rafael Medoff, dailybeast.com, Dec. 20, 2015)
The complicity between the Roosevelt administration and the American newspapers provided a veil of protection that allowed Hitler to inflict unimagined suffering upon the Jews.
So too the brazen misinformation shovel fed to the American people by CNN, invented by Eason Jordan, did irreparable harm to our brave men and women fighting in the Middle East. The lies CNN parroted from Jordan each day gave comfort to the enemy at the cost of our servicemen.
For CNN now to say, “Make no mistake, Mr. President, CNN does not lie. We report the news. And we report when people in power tell lies. CNN stands by our reporting and our reporters,” forces me to ask the questions, when did CNN stop lying? When exactly was it that they stopped reporting outright lies, distortion and biased news?
CNN stood behind Jordan for years as he provided lies upon lies upon lies that cost the Iraqi people their lives. After publishing knowingly false news reports, CNN turned around and viciously castigated our military and the Bush administration’s handling of the war.
But now, just because CNN says they aren’t lying we are supposed to blindly believe them? I don’t think so.
