Staff Reports
I want to begin by introducing Shannon O'Conner, a Daily Beast reporter, to all of you. O'Connor clearly demonstrates her qualifications as a "legitimate journalist," so we are aware of this. She delivered a lecture this past weekend on why citizen journalists are useless and have a lesser life form than legitimate news organizations. Since they all attended school and other related institutions, they are, like, absolutely fantastic at what they do and superior to everyone else barred from the Cool Table.
O'Conner's appeal to her own greatness in this instance is very funny, from publishing her anger with Twitter authors while ON Twitter to turning off her replies so she won't have to put up with their remarks. However, her sect's actions over the past week involving the elections absolutely disprove her claim of unquestionable media quality.
In order to disprove Shannon's assertion that journalism is free of "false and misleading information," let's ignore for the moment how these superior news organisations pushed the false Russian collusion story for years and buried the now-verified Hunter Biden Laptop story. Instead, let's examine the false information these prestigious news organisations disseminated to the public.
In the days leading up to Tuesday's election, the press warned us to anticipate protracted tabulation delays and unusual behaviour from unidentified precincts across the nation after years of telling us that our election system is above reproach and anyone questioning the integrity of our voting process threatens the foundation of our democracy. Therefore, it is incorrect to imply that there is a problem with the counting of the votes, but we should also be prepared for problems in specific regions. Sure.
As Arizona became the focus of tabulation disputes, the press defended the clearly flawed procedures that were being used. Arizona remained stuck with an antiquated procedure while states with with larger populations were able to finish their tallies in a single day. However, there were also reports from Maricopa County precincts claiming that voting was hampered by technical difficulties that prevented votes from being cast, but the press dared no one to voice an objection. The same media that said that states like Georgia would make voting difficult didn't seem to care if voters couldn't cast votes there.
The New York Times jumped in to claim that Twitter had not done enough to silence people who had expressed concerns about the Arizona election process. The article said explicitly that these were free speech advocates who ought to have kept quiet about this subject.
Let's think back to O'Conner's statements from earlier, where she criticised those for disseminating erroneous information because it appears that the Times is saying the same thing. However, they are actually the source of misinformation. This purported "Paper of Record" argues that certain accounts should not have been allowed to speak out when they were discussing real facts. Officials from Maricopa County confirmed that there were issues with precincts not being able to take votes. This issue affected numerous precincts; it did not just affect a small number of machines.
The Times is arguing that people should not have been allowed to spread accurate information. The Times sought to advance the demonstrably false story that there was no problem with Maricopa County's voting machines. And it wasn't the only instance. One of the most highly recognized fact-check sources delivers the same false information after assuring us that news companies are a trusted source since they employ fact-checkers, and it is quickly refuted by itself.
In order to defend Maricopa County from "fraudulent accusations," Politifact intervened. The website used Tucker Carlson as their bulwark, using his remarks regarding the technical glitches to declare claims of voting-related problems in that county to be "False."
Although both the county and Politifact claimed that the polling machines were not functioning, it was untrue to claim that they were preventing individuals from casting their ballots. In a razor-thin race for governor, when one of the candidates is the secretary of state and in charge of these very same elections, the same county that was having those problems is now taking a week to complete its vote-counting. The press accuses everyone who suggests that this could lead to illegal activity of being part of a conspiracy, despite the fact that they were the ones who warned us last week to anticipate delays of this nature. Those who foresaw this outcome condemn those who are observing it today and deny what has occurred even though they acknowledge it happened.
This is where our journalistic complex is right now. While professing to be the only ones who can determine what is true, they are demonstrating levels of ignorance that are astounding. The biggest example of disinformation being spread these days may be those telling us they have educated brains and that only they are authorized to present the facts.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on Red State.
