CNN Tapes

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James O'Keefe (of investigative journalist site Project Veritas) asked CNN President (Jeff Zucker) some questions on their weekly call, like how do they call themselves news when they worked to suppress and spin facts that didn't further their agenda? O'Keefe mentioned they he had been secretly taping their calls for months (during the pre-election coverage) and was going to release those tapes. Instead of answering, CNN panicked, hung up, and said they'd changed the call process to prevent transparency in the future. They also threatened lawsuit, because after they released secret tapes of the First Lady, suddenly when that was turned back on them, they felt that investigative journalism, whistleblowing and speaking truth to power was a crime. So the tapes were released and we got the leadership conspiring on tape to do the following:

  • Jeff Zucker admitting that the network is pushing the agenda of the Democrat Party by making all their news completely “impeachment” focused (and he was fine wiht that).
  • After Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, inventing the narrative that Trump was "acting erratically"
  • They should stop being friendly towards and be more caustic in attacking Sen. Lindsey Graham (in order to swing an election against him)
  • They should pretend that Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson is a White Supremacist (based on no evidence)
  • They should continue to suppress the Hunter Biden tapes story
  • Conspiring on how to help Joe Biden with Miami Cubans (by downplaying his pro-Socialist/Communist statements).


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📚 References

CNN
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In 1980 Ted Turner started CNN, and put his left center spin on "the news". His later marriage to Hanoi Jane Fonda didn't help perceptions, nor did the newsrooms agenda convey a fully objective tone. He wanted to be the 24 hour version of the same left of center news outlets like CBS, ABC, NBC. So it was founded on his flavor of bias, and went downhill. It wouldn't be quite so bad, if they were just honest about it: but the faux air of objectivity, and denial of any bias, makes it worse.
Project Veritas
Project Veritas (created by James O'Keefe) uses the long practiced investigative journalism techniques of using secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters to expose academic, governmental, and social service organizations doing abusive or illegal behaviors. Because he's conservative and is exposing such abuse of leftist organizations, he's unfairly censored/attacked by far left Social Media outlets or media organizations who have no interest in exposing abuses on the left.
FakeNews
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While the term goes back 100 years, the history is summed up well in a Sharyl Attkisson TedTalk on FakeNews. While our media has always had false narratives and bad stories that are Fake News (exampled include: Edward R. Murrow's "See it now" McCarthy'ing Joe McCarthy (1954), Richard Jewel story (1996), story about a plane crashing into Camp David after 9/11 (2001), Duke LeCross Rape Case (2014), Michael Brown and 'hands up, don't shoot' narrative (2014), and so on). We didn't use the term "Fake News", just liberal media bias or incompetence, but it's been around since the first liberal got sloppy or partisan at a newspaper, somewhere back in Roman times.

Then on September 13, 2016 Hillary Clinton supporters Google and Eric Schmidt, used a shell charity (a non-profit called "First Draft,") to start seeding the term to attack right wing websites ("to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports"). Hillary Clinton and her surrogate David Brock of Media Matters admitted in a campaign letter that they pressured Facebook to join the effort. Google warned Conservative websites to remove stories that Google didn't like, or they'd take away their ad revenue. And Barack Obama and the liberal media followed along, regurgitating what they were told: none were going to let this opportunity (to curate what information we could see) go to waste, all in the name of protecting free speech. All coincidentally done at the same time, in what could only be a coordinated campaign attack.

Unfortunately for them, it backfired when people noticed that the mainstream liberal media made more errors and was less honest, and started throwing it back in their face. Fake News applied more to the News, Google, Facebook, Obama and other curators and finger pointers than their victims. Donald Trump used that to hijack the term and use it back against them. The left tried to change the narrative and pretend that Trump had created the term, and they wanted to stop using it and claimed it was a hateful term and an attack on free press to point out the Presses bias or errors. And that's where we are today.