All the News That’s Fit to Suppress
Sharyl Attkisson says, “Every day … stories are killed because powerful people know how to get them killed.”
“I can tell you that every day, in newsrooms around the country, stories are killed because powerful people know how to get them killed.” —investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson
By all accounts, Harvey Weinstein is a contemptible human being. But his two-decade spree of sexual predation that included allegations of rape, possible criminal assault and a recording of him admitting he groped model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez has revealed something far more disturbing: America is besieged by a thoroughly corrupt Democrat/MSM Propaganda Machine. One whose most egregious failing is not the avalanche of slanted opinions they present as news, but the truth they bury when it doesn’t accrue to interests.
In stark contrast, Attkisson is a woman who represents a dying breed of reporters who follow a story wherever it goes. That instinct precipitated her resignation from a 20-year career at CBS News and the writing of a book, “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.” It details how network executives buried her reporting about the Benghazi attack, the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking scandal, and the ObamaCare rollout.
Attkisson cites “liberal bias” as the reason those stories were killed.
Yet there is also a “powerful people” element that cannot be ignored. The president of CBS News is David Rhodes. His brother, Ben, was Obama’s National Security Advisor. Ben was a key figure in the effort to scrub original references to terror in the Benghazi talking points a lying Susan Rice regurgitated on Sunday news shows. The same Ben Rhodes who bragged about his ability to create an echo chamber among “handpicked Beltway insiders” to help the Obama administration get its message across.
CBS insisted David was not involved in any editorial discussions about his brother. And actress Meryl Streep contended she knew nothing about Harvey Weinstein’s abuse.
Both are equally credible.
With regard to Weinstein’s depradations, there is little doubt “errors of omission” were involved. The same New York Times that published the initial story on Oct. 5 had a version of it in 2004 — 13 years ago — courtesy of reporter Sharon Waxman, who insisted the Times “gutted it” and then buried it after pressure from Weinstein, who “was a major advertiser in the Times.”
The Times’ response? Former Times editor Jonathan Landman insisted the story wasn’t solid enough to publish.
What was solid enough for the Times to publish? An incorrect story about Trump and Russian collusion, another piece former FBI director James Comey insisted the paper got “almost entirely wrong,” and leaks from unnamed sources who may have committed felonies to disseminate unsubstantiated claims to the paper. Those are the same “standards” that precipitated CNN’s retraction of a Russia-related article and the resignation of three “investigative” reporters.
In terms of burying the Weinstein story, NBC is Exhibit A. The network passed on Ronan Farrow’s bombshell New Yorker report. Why? “NBC says that the story wasn’t publishable, that it wasn’t ready to go at the time that you brought it to them,” stated MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview with Farrow.
Farrow vehemently disagreed, insisting the New Yorker recognized that it was, and “that there were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC.” And despite the reality Farrow had women willing to go on the record and the aforementioned recording of Weinstein himself, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim insisted, “We didn’t feel that we had all the elements that we needed to air it.”
Really? According to the Daily Beast, Weinstein “had enjoyed a long business relationship with NBC Universal.” The Times story also raised questions “about whether NBC executives caved to the well-connected Weinstein and his formidable lawyers, Charles Harder, Lisa Bloom, and David Boie,” Fox News reports.
Fox also reports that Oppenheim is a Hollywood screenwriter whose agent, Rowena Arguelles, “declined to answer whether Oppenheim had business dealings with Weinstein.” The network subsequently denied any relationship between the two men, but an industry insider told Fox News that for “a guy writing highbrow movies, eliminating the single most prominent producer of upmarket material would not be a wise move, and is of course a direct conflict of interest.”
It’s not the only possible conflict of interest. NBC had the infamous Billy Bush/Donald Trump tape, but the Washington Post published the story. There is speculation the reason why is because the show that generated the tape, “Access Hollywood,” is produced by NBC.
And it’s not just the usual media suspects doing their best to suppress “inconvenient” stories. Twitter temporarily suspended the account of Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein’s main accusers. They cited a rules violation, publishing a personal phone number, for doing so. The suspension precipitated calls for a boycott from celebrities and others who weren’t buying it. In response, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the company needs to be “a lot more transparent.”
So does Jack Dorsey. He shares a personal and professional relationship with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, that included making a donation to McKesson’s failed mayoral campaign in Baltimore. Executives from Netflix and YouTube also contributed to McKesson’s campaign.
Facebook? The tech giant routinely “suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential ‘trending’ news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project,” reported Gizmodo last May.
YouTube and Google are also in the suppression business. The former “demonitizes” videos that disproportionately affect conservative users, while the latter announced in 2015 it was working to rank search results “based on how factual websites are,” Fox News Tech reported.
Factual according to whom? In 2014 Google ranked as the sixth highest contributor to the DNC.
In 2016? “A review found at least 57 people were affiliated with both Clinton — in her presidential campaign, in her State Department, at her family foundation — and with Google or related entities,” reports the Google Transparency Project.
And last, but not least, CBS and the NFL Network declined to broadcast the National Anthem on Thursday night football last week, apparently believing a blackout of protesting players would mitigate the damage the league has already inflicted on itself.
“In the last ten years, I’ve talked to many reporters who have complained to me that they believe they’ve had stories improperly changed or killed at CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and in local news,” Attikisson reveals.
Political correctness is the glue that holds that odious agenda together. It is what allows the Democrat-Media complex to claim that any story conflicting with their narrative constitutes some sort of bigotry, justifying its improper change — or outright suppression.
Thus, it is no accident that Donald Trump has been given the most negative media coverage of any president in the last 25 years. In efforts ranging from bumbling to brilliant, he has taken a wrecking ball to the Democrat-Media complex’s long-unchallenged ability to frame the argument and control the national conversation. And what Trump has exposed, Weinstein has now affirmed.
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act,” George Orwell presciently observed.
Let the revolution begin.