Leftist Reporters Pretend They're Not Partisan News Squashers!

Eight years ago, the leftist media took great offense to being dismissed by Donald Trump as "fake news," but they never seemed to grasp this is exactly how they painted the conservative media, as truth-defying propaganda outlets.

When the Trump trial turned to the National Enquirer, we could find national unity that the Enquirer defines "fake news." The lefties are very excited to remind voters how the Enquirer was a Trump-allied tabloid full of garbage stories. But the liberal media spread some of them.

In May 2016, the Enquirer uncorked some garbage that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had cheated on his wife. ABC, CBS and NBC spent a combined 15 1/2 minutes spreading the word of this character assassination campaign.

The pro-Biden "media reporters" are still upset this week about the Enquirer and how they played "catch and kill" with Trump accusers, squelching stories that might embarrass Trump. NPR's David Folkenflik complained to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that burying salacious stories is "not a journalistic impulse, it's not even a tabloid gossip impulse, this is essentially a partisan or propagandistic arm of the Trump campaign in all but name."

This is coming from NPR, which aggressively trashed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a "pure distraction." Folkenflik engaged with the story only to dismiss it as "a story marked more by red flags than investigative rigor." When The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories acknowledging Hunter's laptop was real in March and April 2022, Folkenflik didn't file a story with his regrets. He just kept attacking Fox News, his usual bread and butter.

So on the Hunter laptop, we can throw it back in Folkenflik's face -- NPR's suppression was not a journalistic impulse, and NPR was essentially a propagandistic arm of the Biden campaign in all but name.

Worse yet, we fund it with our taxes. That gravy train should end.

Ex-CNN reporter Brian Stelter said the same thing on Joy Reid's MSNBC show about the Enquirer: "It has nothing to do with journalism." David Pecker's "not a news man. He's an advertiser! He's a marketer, and his product was Donald Trump." Thanks, Sherlock Stelter. Nobody should define Mr. Pecker as a news man.

Like Folkenflik, Stelter squashed the Hunter Biden laptop in 2020 as a Murdoch plot, or as a Russian disinformation campaign, because CNN's a marketer and its product was anyone but Trump (meaning President Joe Biden).

Stelter also showed up on Alex Wagner's MSNBC show. Wagner was hopping mad, asking what's the point of a gag order on Trump when you have a "media-industrial complex that is effectively acting as a public defense line" for Trump? Once again, Wagner can't imagine MSNBC acting as a "media-industrial complex" for the Democrats.

So, does Wagner wish the judge could issue a gag order for the entire conservative media landscape? No criticism allowed of the get-Trump prosecutors and judge? I thought this was a democracy.

Stelter broke out the usual bravado that the liberals live on "Earth One," and they must see what's happening on "Earth Two," which is an alternative universe of hallucinations. Stelter claimed, "For Jesse Watters, Trump is God, and that is the programming every hour of every day on these other networks."

That sounds like some crazy religion. Would Stelter survive a little fact-check on whether Fox and Newsmax perpetually pray hourly to the Orange Lord and Savior? Both sides suggest the other side of the media is fake. But both sides are slinging a lot of opinionated hot takes, and Stelter can certainly flip a flapjack on that skillet.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.