WOOLLEY: The Gold Standard for Dishonesty in News Reporting is CNN

America must have Honest Journalism to combat Corrupt Government

By Lynn Woolley

AUSTIN, Texas (Texas Insider Report) — CNN claims the mantle of “trusted news source,” and the Associated Press (AP) is supposed to be distributing straight down-the-line coverage to 100s of newspapers that faithfully print whatever they send. These services are failing the American people – and the country at large. They have chosen sides.

The gold standard for dishonesty in news reporting is CNN. If you wanted to make a poster to display in schools that would point out CNN’s constant lies, you’d use the famous screen shot from Kenosha, Wisconsin... the one with a reporter doing a stand-up in front of obvious riots while the Chyron at the bottom of the screen scolled:
 
Even CNN viewers must have scratched their heads.  But it’s not just CNN.  On August 29th, the Associated Press told us that Republicans at their national convention were lying about mayhem in the streets of cities like Portland and Seattle.

These are two of the most egregious examples of journalistic malpractice, but similar crimes against journalism take place every day. 

America now has a third-world press.

Whether it’s CNN and the AP denying that rioting and looting have actually occurred, or true state-run media like National Public Radio (NPR) refusing to cover the Hunter Biden corruption scandal, the American people are not getting the actual facts they need to make informed decisions.

Imagine voting in a presidential election if all you ever see on TV is CNN, and all you ever read is the AP!  You would think that one candidate is the Second Coming and the other is the Prince of Darkness himself.

This isn’t just about Trump and Biden.  It was also true of Trump and Hillary, Romney and Obama, McCain and Obama, Bush and Kerry – and so on.

At CNN & Other Left-Wing News Sources, Politics is Now More Important than Facts

CNN has a left-wing CEO named Jeffrey Zucker who appears to use the network as a means to further his own political leanings. There are scattered news reports that indicate CNN’s latest owner, AT&T, is uncomfortable with CNN being all-left all the time. 

AT&T may be in liberal Dallas, but it’s also in conservative Texas – and it may be worried that CNN’s biases could be bad for business.  I’ve thought of cancelling my cellphone service with AT&T because of my dislike of CNN.  What has stopped me is that other cell companies are likely liberal as well. 

A free and honest press is vital to a free country.

We talk about state-run media in countries like Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea, and we take pride is how free our media is.  But is it? 

In the above-mentioned countries, the state either owns the media, or burns it down when it dares to report on corruption at the highest levels of government.  Look what happened to opponents of Vladimir Putin in Russia, or what The Epoch Times goes through when it tries to report on government repression against Hong Kong.  Can you even imagine what Xi would have done to any news outlet in China that reported truth about the coronavirus?

Likewise, the United States needs a free and honest press. 

Our government is not comprised of angels who only want to serve.  People like Joe Biden on the Left or Don Young on the Right turn “public service” into a family business and profit from it immensely. 

(If you’re wondering why I used the Alaska representative as an example, it’s because he is the longest serving Republican in Congress at nearly 48 years.   That makes him #11 on the longest-serving list.  The top ten are all Democrats.  Joe Biden is at #92 on the list.  You’d be surprised at how many show the reason for leaving government service is: died in office.)

People that cling to power like these do are likely to resort to various ends to keep it.  That’s why we need strong, honest media.

America Used to have an ADVERSARY PRESS

In my decades of covering news, I never cared about anyone’s party affiliation.  I voted Republican, but felt like my job was to hold all politicians’ feet to the fire.  Some of the Dallas County Commissioners didn’t like me very much back in the seventies.  I covered them honestly and vigorously and I didn’t care whether they got reelected or not. 

My job was to report and not to judge.

I won’t name names, but one of them was caught paving a rural driveway up to the home of a contributor.  One was caught on camera at a racetrack in Louisiana when he should have been in budget meetings in Dallas.  Several outfitted their cars with taxpayer-funded car phones back when mobile phones were high-dollar and considered unnecessary.  The commissioners faced an aggressive press that was adversary because government was not always honest.

One commissioner I’ll name, Roy Orr, was called before a grand jury to testify and he did not wish the story to be covered. When he left the grand jury room, he was shocked that all the TV, radio, and print reporters that covered the county beat were waiting for him.  He did not want to answer questions.  He called us a bunch of “smart farts.”  In her story on WFAA-TV, Channel 8, Rita (Trevino) Flynn said:

Commissioner Roy Orr admitted that the news media was intelligent, but that it had gas.

It was a funny line, but that’s certainly one interpretation of what Orr said.  I made the front page of the Dallas Morning News the next day, holding a KRLD microphone in Orr’s face.  At one point, he called the station to complain about my reporting, and we put him on the air live. 

Why did we Report so Aggressively? 

Because the Dallas County Commissioners were doing things the people needed to know about.  Ask yourself this:  if there is not an aggressive media asking questions and doing investigative reporting, how will we know about such things?  What incentive is there for government officials to be honest and good stewards of taxpayer money?

How would we have known about Watergate?  How would we know about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden in the current scandal that is now being ignored by most of the media?

Here’s a shortlist of media that have NOT covered the Hunter Biden story to any extent:  CNN, the Associated Press, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.  I don’t read USA TODAY much, but it’s like a print version of CNN and I would guess that it ignores any bad Biden news.

Honest Media Would Cover This Story – and Others

But we no longer have honest media.  We have the aforementioned outlets that shill – flak if you will – for the Democratic Party.  They are dishonest in a variety of ways:
 

• They totally ignore any story that they think might harm Democrats – such as the Hunter Biden Scandal or the ongoing race riots and looting (currently in Philadelphia).
• They constantly cover – wall to wall on CNN and MSNBC – anything detrimental to Republicans from rumors to investigations (Russian collusion, Ukrainian phone call, Trump’s taxes, coronavirus politicization, Access Hollywood tape, and so on).
• They take good news and spin it to be bad news for Republicans (such as reporting the 33 percent economic growth, but adding that we have “yet to rebound” from the virus).
• They use POLLS as news:  CNN is particularly good (or bad) at this – using polls to suppress the conservative vote by telling you that your candidate has no chance.

Blaming Republicans but exonerating Democrats for essentially the same thing (Trump is fully responsible for coronavirus deaths, but New York Gov. Cuomo is not guilty, even though he sent infected people into nursing homes and thousands of people died).

You May Say, "What about FOX News? What about Talk Radio?"

Yes, at this writing, we still have Rush Limbaugh and other syndicated and local radio shows – but what happens when Rush is gone and the FCC works to eliminate AM radio?   We have FOX and the Wall Street Journal.

But the monopolistic social media giants – Google, Facebook, and Twitter – work to suppress stories from conservative sources.  If you take all the conservative outlets including internet sites like WBDaily and Breitbart, they still have nowhere near the reach of liberal media.  

And all this starts in schools and colleges.

Liberals flock to colleges to take journalism classes and then go into the real world as liberal crusaders instead of reporters.  They often get their candidates elected.  But a one-party country will lead to tyranny and misery. 

There should be a liberal media faction just like there is a conservative faction.  I’m part of the conservative faction.  Rush is.  FOX News is in primetime.  But there MUST be straight news readily available if America is to survive.  FOX News maintains a staff of reporters that do excellent work and the network offers Bret Baier’s “Special Report” which begins each night with straight news. 

But they – and now, officially, the Associated Press's (AP) official writing handbook capitalizes the word “Black” – but not the word “white.” 

In today’s newspapers, in a straight news story, the AP used the term “Trumpland.”  The media may be beyond repair.
 
We Have to Do Something

Since government cannot control media, the people will have to reform the system.  One way to do that is to stop subscribing to left-wing newspapers and do not watch CNN and the others if you’re being monitored by a ratings service.  AT&T is already antsy about CNN, so contact them and give them some hell.

With them and others, DEMAND fair and honest news coverage from any source you use – including this one.

I do not want to become Venezuela where the government seizes control of TV stations, or China and Russia where the state controls everything the people see and read.  But take a close look at CNN, the AP, and all the others and ask yourself:

Are we any better?

Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based author, broadcaster & songwriter.  Follow his podcast at https://www.PlanetLogic.us and check out his author’s page at https://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnwoolley. Order books direct from Lynn at https://PlanetLogicPress.Square.Site. Lynn can be reached at lwoolley9189@gmail.com.