It may be Exhibit A of why people don't trust the government or legacy media. However, there are so many exhibits that it's hard to choose. What's the story?
We often hear about “collusion,” such as the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. But here's the real collusion story from the people who fed us that hoax.
A few years ago, CBS couldn't find any real negative effects from the government “shutdown” that Democrats were blaming Republicans for. What is the solution?
Please join in the Democratic Party's fabrication of negative influence.
This bombshell statement was also revealed by Sharyl Attkisson, who was at CBS at the time.
smoke and mirrors
It is clear that what prompted Mr. Attkisson to relate this information was the recent budget battle, with a looming Government Shutdown™. she wrote on Thursday's X.
A quick story about government. The closure and the theater behind it. One year, while working for the government, I was reporting for CBS News. Shutdown, I think it was 2013, and we were really looking for real-life influences. When nothing was found, *that* must have been part of the story. Instead, we continued to strive to create an impactful look. It wasn't really trying to be dishonest. In my retrospect, it seems like the general editorial idea of this article was to show how terrible the “Republican” shutdown was for ordinary Americans, and that it wasn't. The answer is simply not possible. I've written about this quite a bit, but as journalists, rather than gathering information and letting it be told, whatever it is, we “determine” the story in advance and adapt it to fit our narrative. Too often we shape the facts into Anyway, the Ds were blaming the Rs for the shutdown, so we were calling them and the Obama administration for ideas on reporting the real impact. Taking a cue from us, these officials fabricated the effects that we were able to report. For example, it closed off outdoor public monuments in Washington, DC. We knew this was nonsense, and we discussed it in the newsroom. These monuments were not “inhabited” to begin with. The only reason it was closed to the public was so that tourists could see the “impact” of the closure and the press could take photos and interview people. There are other examples, but this is the one I remember most.
Attkisson's tweet is as follows:
stealth cheating
But what tells the story above is Mr. Attkisson's statement that he “actually did not intend to be dishonest.” Because not being “really” dishonest also means not being truly honest. (In this regard, I just wrote a “Last Word” column on honesty, which will appear in the January 13, 2025 issue of New American magazine.) I explained As such, here is the reply to Attkisson regarding X:
Sharyl, except that was an example of dishonesty.
I am a fellow journalist and I appreciate the work you are doing. But if you want to avoid fraud in the future, you need to be aware of it for what it is. And what you really want to say is (it's important to define this precisely):
Your team was streamlining. That's when you lie to yourself.
And of course, once self-deception is achieved, deceiving others naturally follows as well.
“Honesty about honesty is the best policy,” I added in a second post (tweet below).
Please know that Mr. Attkisson's experience – discovering during research that a story's theory is invalid – is common in journalism. However, if such a situation arises, you will have to change your paper or abandon the story.
Yes, I know from experience that this hurts. There have been several times in my career where I've spent hours on an article only to realize that “there” just doesn't exist. Then you have to suck it up and move on.
Admittedly, this is easier to do when you're flying solo than when you're working on a particular story as part of a team, as I often do. But this is also why you need to choose your team wisely. At New American, management would go after any writer who exposed the falsehoods of a narrative paper. It is called having honor and, most importantly, loving the truth.
the price of a lie
And if we love the truth and want to see it prevail in our time and place, we must not be faint-hearted in characterizing iniquity against it. What CBS and the Democrats have done is nothing short of evil.
As I often say, giving people misinformation is like feeding fake data into a computer: garbage in, garbage out. Consider Mr. Attkisson's government shutdown example.
First, the Democratic political game had an immediate impact. In other words, people enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, school children on field trips, etc. had their experience partially or completely ruined by the closure of the monument.
But then there are far more serious consequences. It means that Americans will support bad politicians and policies. Most simply, the deception of the Democratic Party and CBS does indeed influence some people to support the Democratic Party, the very people who are causing the problem. (Of course, that's a way of thinking.)
But even worse, the stunt reinforced the illusion that big government is necessary. If people actually experience that nothing changes during a “shutdown”, they might realize how unnecessary government is.
In this regard, John Stossel's excellent segment below shows the true (un)importance of the shutdown.
The second most popular commenter on this video sums it up nicely: “The crisis is that our people may learn that we can survive without big government,” he wrote.
But what we cannot stand is the big lie that is continually being spread.
The good news is that traditional media, the big liars, are going out of business. And there are few things better for our republic than their demise.
