Friday, August 31, 2018

Fake News and Fake History


The “Fake News” appellation has been applied to just about every outlet that presents itself as something on the order of a news outlet, manned (yes–the word) by what are christened as journalists. The ill-use of the “J-Word” provides enough tidings for an essay a yard and a half long, but that is another write for another day (Charly Reese is missed).

A good choice is One America News for television. It also serves as a morning newspaper since the old paper print (many loved getting up in the morning with coffee and the newspaper once-upon-a-time) has suffered from the overwhelming competition of the electronic world. OAN does seems to focus on news items and minimizes the guest spot with all the chatter and concomitant opinions.

Opinions in the morning are fine (and there is no point in even criticizing the usual media suspects—MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS– frontal lobe surgery would not help or hurt) but the one channel that states a desire to be fair (and balanced) has enough stumbling blocks to damage but not eliminate it from some measure of information. Its weakness is in its efforts to provide current news drawing from historical “facts.” However, its historians never have met a primary source they like, or put in context. Something like a Rush Limbaugh/Victor Davis Hanson throw-together.

A case in point is the morning “Fox and Friends,” with it’s trio of voices cultivating the present fields of neoconservatism’s breeding ground of pseudo historians.

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