The Year In Irresponsible Journalism – How the mainstream media helped perpetuate hoaxes, lies and false stories

To be sure, 2015 was another landmark year for journalism. Although it died several years prior when journalists and reporters failed to properly vet Barack Hussein Obama when he initially ran for President of the United States in 2008, the mainstream media continues to perpetuate lies, untruths and false stories about anything that threatens their liberal, leftist narrative, often about issues having to do with race.

Last year’s biggest journalistic debacle occurred in August 2014 when the infamous case of Michael Brown emerged and the media hit an all-time low. In case you were in a coma at that time, Michael Brown was an 18-year-old, over 300-pound black male who robbed a convenience store and assaulted its owner. Shortly after doing so Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer, encountered Brown and his friend walking in the middle of a Ferguson neighborhood street. When Wilson drove by, he told them to not walk in the middle of the street. Noticing that Brown fit a description of a person complained about in a call regarding the earlier assault at the convenience store, Officer Wilson asked him to approach his car. When he did, Brown reached inside and tried to grab Wilson’s weapon. In the scuffle the firearm discharged and Brown retreated down the street. After an apparent adrenaline surge, he then changed direction and proceeded to charge toward Officer Wilson who was forced to shoot Michael Brown.

The media managed to take false reports from standers-by who were more than eager to brand the white officer and the entire Ferguson police force as racist. The popular slogan “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” was originated via one eye witness who gave not only a misleading but an outright false account of the fatal incident. The media ran with it because 1) it sounded good, and 2) it fit their leftist narrative. Although a thorough investigation disproved it, the media continued to perpetuate that lie. Fortunately, Officer Wilson was exonerated and not forced to stand trial.

This year was filled with more stories with anti-police narratives. One of them had to do with the arrest of a 25-year-old black man named Freddie Gray, who was stopped outside a housing project on Baltimore’s west side following a foot chase when Gray fled from police. Officers had to drag him to the paddy wagon because he was being so uncooperative. Once they finally managed to put him in the back of the van they failed to put the seatbelt on him. Accusations were made that they intentionally did that in order to take him for a “rough ride.” After Gray was brought to the station, he was taken into medical custody and died a week later from a spinal cord injury. However, it has not been proven that his death was caused by an alleged rough ride in a police vehicle or from other circumstances the Baltimore Police were responsible for.

No matter, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby rushed to judgment and pressed charges against six Baltimore police officers, including Officer William Porter, the first officer to stand trial. Mosby is embroiled in a conflict of interest due to her husband’s position on the West Baltimore city council and for her political relationship with an attorney representing the Gray family. Fortunately, just recently, Officer Porter’s case was declared a mistrial as the jury was deadlocked on the charges against him.

In another spillover story from late 2014, actress, writer and director Lena Dunham in her memoir used and accused a prominent college Republican named Barry of “raping” her one night while attending Oberlin College around 2005. In her book she gives details of Barry’s appearance and personality as well as the name of a talk show he hosts. But upon investigation after investigation these details failed to surface. There was a student named Barry who attended Oberlin at the same time as Dunham, and he was a prominent Republican on campus, but the details she gave just didn’t match Barry at all.

Initially, the media wrote stories about this incident as they gushed over Dunham for her courage, but later were forced to retract their reporting since the whole thing was a fraud.

A very notable story this year, one that the media fell head over heels for, was about a young Muslim boy named Ahmed Mohamed, aka Clock Boy. Clock Boy was a student at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas who brought a home-made clock, which looked like a bomb a terrorist would have made, into his classroom. A rightfully concerned teacher alerted the school administration because, well, the thing looked like a bomb. When it was discovered that it was actually a clock that looked like a bomb, the teacher and administration apologized for the “confusion.” But an apology was not enough for some and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was brought in by the family to exacerbate the situation and blow it way out of proportion.

The fact that the clock looked like a bomb was reasonably suspicious enough for the school officials to react the way they did, but somehow that was seen as Islamophobic, which is a cardinal sin to the left. Ahmed and his family should have been severely questioned and investigated by top authorities such as the FBI, but CAIR helped turn this into a circus eventually leading to a $15 million dollar lawsuit. It turns out that Ahmed’s father Mohamed ElHassan Mohamed is an activist against Islamophobia and the instigator of similar stunts designed to create controversy. However, the media scarcely reported on that truth, but instead hailed Ahmed as some kind of courageous hero.

How about the media’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s testimony at the House committee hearing regarding her emails and the Benghazi incident which should have happened years earlier? Listening to the mainstream media reports, one would think she just endured 11 hours of verbal torture by the committee. In reality she was asked poignant questions from Republican committee members whose objective it was to get to the truth of what happened. However, from Democratic committee members she was gushed over and praised for being a strong female Secretary of State who made important decisions under harsh conditions. Those same Democrats and others claimed that nothing was learned from this hearing and saw it as a charade from Republicans, another “vast right-wing conspiracy” if you will.

Despite what Democratic committee members say, we did learn a thing or two about Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi incident on September 11, 2012, when four Americans were killed under her watch, including Ambassador Christopher Stephens. She still refuses to take responsibility for her actions and her partisan colleagues have no problem giving her a pass. While they accuse Republicans of being partisan, they are the ones being partisan. They complain about this investigation costing $4.7 million. Since when has money mattered to Democratic politicians when they have no problem spending $500 million for Planned Parenthood to perform abortions and harvest baby parts?

Toward the end of 2015, we were treated to stories upon stories of racism at the University of Missouri, among other campuses. However, at University of Missouri there had been no hard evidence that the campus was riddled in racism and that University President Tim Wolfe didn’t do anything about it. There were false stories circulating about feces smeared on a wall in the form of a swastika but in this age of technology where virtually every student has a cell phone with a camera, not one photo emerged to prove this claim. Nor was there any proof that someone yelled the N-word at a black student there, as was claimed. It could have happened, but how is that President Wolfe’s fault?

Ironically, as the media were writing stories on how racist this campus was, Black Lives Matter groups such as one called Concerned Students 1950 were setting up “safe spaces” for themselves and banning the media from entering. How’s that for respecting others’ First Amendment rights?

Finally, the media failed to report as ridiculous the claim that “climate change” is the cause of terrorism and the reason groups like ISIS are raping women, torturing and beheading Christians, and even killing other Muslims. Democratic candidate for US President in 2016 and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has made this laughable claim. Even more egregious, perhaps, is the fact that in the wake of the Paris, France terrorist bombings in late November, at the G-20 summit on “climate change” in Antalya, Turkey, President Obama didn’t feel the need to change or adapt to an effective strategy for dealing with ISIS when asked about it. It seems that the importance of dealing with “climate change” is what is really important to him. Dealing with ISIS? Eradicating terrorism? Pressing other countries to join a coalition to combat global terrorism? No, global climate change seems to be the real threat according to Obama.

With reporting like this, who needs the mainstream media? Thank God there are the internet, citizen journalism and an alternative media.

 

Tom Folden is a political strategist, conservative author, and Editor-at-Large of RightWingWriter.com, a website for conservative viewpoints. An original member of the Tea Party, he takes part in pro-America rallies when his time permits. He is also a singer/songwriter and recording artist. For interviews and/or appearances, please contact him at spencergroup@Hotmail.com.

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