In this age of bullshit out in the open, our media is not doing a real good job of reporting on the reality of what’s actually occurring in front of our collective faces. The airwaves and InterWebs allow ‘alternative facts‘ to play out in the same fashion as genuine/verified facts, like a lie needs space, too.

Our Fourth Estate seems not to be into authentic journalism right now, and it’s shitty — today Jen Psaki at the White House daily brief took control of a dumbass question:

REPORTER: Americans are saying immigrant surges are happening under President Biden's watch

PSAKI: Who are the Americans?

REPORTER: The former president

PSAKI: Former President Trump?

REPORTER: Yes

PSAKI: We don't take our advice or counsel from former President Trump pic.twitter.com/I5d0utFNs9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 5, 2021

The nit-twit reporter sounds like the T-Rump with his bullshit-crap of conspiracy/rumormongering ‘a lot of people are saying‘ catchphrase, as if it’s truth whatever the subject. In fact, “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy” (March 2019), describes that same shit, but in darker words — via Princeton University Press and a change in lying reality:

Classic conspiracy theory insists that things are not what they seem and gathers evidence — especially facts ominously withheld by official sources — to tease out secret machinations.
The new conspiracism is different.
There is no demand for evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of shadowy plotters.
Dispensing with the burden of explanation, the new conspiracism imposes its own reality through repetition (exemplified by the Trump catchphrase “a lot of people are saying”) and bare assertion (“rigged!”).

Members of the MSM play right into the right’s un-gloved hands.

Eric Boehlert in his PressRun this past Wednesday wrote about words, like employing the word, ‘lie,’ to describe a lie, not a soft-sounding ‘false,’ or the half-true-maybe inclination. ‘misleading,’ — a lie is a lie:

By depicting the lies as merely disputed claims, the press continues to downplay a Republican cancer in our culture.

It’s a problem that the GOP’s Big Lie, as its been dubbed by many online, often isn’t even called a lie by the mainstream media, which years ago put up artificial guardrails against calling Trump and his followers liars.

Lying about presidential election results is now, without question, a mainstream Republican talking point, or at the very least the claim that ‘millions of Americans have concerns’ about election integrity.
The Big Lie is dangerous because it’s clearly being used to fuel an avalanche of sweeping voter suppression initiatives in state houses around the country, as Republicans use election propaganda to pass bills to make it hard to vote. (The RNC recently set up Committee on Election Integrity, in the wake of an election that had no integrity issues.)
It’s an extraordinary one-two combination, the likes of which our democracy has rarely faced — it’s the essence of pure propaganda.

The media help by giving a voice to the Big Lie and treating it as another Republican debating point, as if the finer points of immigration and tax reform are being discussed.
It was the Big Lie that sparked a murderous insurrection on Jan. 6.
It’s the Big Lie that goes to the heart of American democracy.
The Republican Party is waging war on free and fair elections in this country, and the Beltway press, especially the Sunday morning network talk shows, too often acts like disinterested spectators facilitating a Both Sides debate — Republicans say elections are rigged, Democrats disagree!

Whataboutism/both-sidesism and a lie is just spoken fiction taken as fact. And the press must do it’s real job and keep assholes’ toes to the fire about the Big Lie. If you allow Republicans to get away with the election lying, which will in turn fuel voter suppression action, they could scoop the mid-terms next year, maybe even regain the White House in 2024, and and we’ll all be fucked.
And in today’s PressRun, Boehlert took a look at the CBS News intervew this week with the “QAnon Shaman” guy and his mother — Jacob Chansley (aka the Shaman) in jail, and mom, Martha Chansley, apparently somewhere else. I haven’t seen the show, nor will I, as I don’t care. Young Jacob is an insurrectionist/rioter, caught on tape/film/cell phone whatever attempting to overturn an election, and in doing so, made a huge asshole/dullard of himself.
Main media highpoint:

The whole CBS segment had the unfortunate feeling of a rehabilitation effort, and specifically the national press using a sympathetic lens through which to view white, right-wing political criminals.
It’s part of an ongoing, compassion campaign to better understand Trump sycophants who are so divorced from reality and the rule of law that they eagerly ransacked the Capitol in a dangerous effort to overturn an American election.

And the mother is indeed a sad, but nasty idiot:

Additional problems arose when Segall (CBS’s Laurie Segall) interviewed Chansley’s mother, Martha Chansley, who justified her son’s inclusion in the January mob by claiming the 2020 election was stolen.
“I don’t think it’s right that [the election] was won fraudulently. I don’t believe it was won fairly at all,” she told CBS.
Segall was not shown confronting that lie on camera. Instead, during a voice-over she said, “Both Jacob and Martha Chansley are part of a significant group of Americans who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent, that Donald Trump actually won.”

Time way past giving an inch to lying piling-up to the Big Lie.
Yet, there was long, long ago, seemingly far, far away:

“I’m not here…”

(Illustration found here).