Liberals Trying to Label Conservative Media as “Fake News”

By Onan Coca 

We’ve been forced to talk about the idea of “fake news” in recent days, due largely to the crush of pressure from the left following Donald Trump’s “surprising” election victory. 

Liberals, searching for the nearest scapegoat (that doesn’t have anything to do with them) have latched on to the “right-wing” media as the reason for Hillary Clinton’s spectacular collapse. For them it is more likely that conservative websites publishing “fake news” caused Clinton’s downfall than it is that they made a mistake in letting the DNC select the most corrupt, untrustworthy candidate in recent memory. 

They don’t care about the WikiLeaks releases, they don’t care about the undercover video from Project Veritas proving that the Democrat Party was involved in illegal electoral behavior, they don’t care that the DNC rigged the primary for Hillary Clinton, they don’t care that the media was found to be working with the Democrat Party in an effort to win the election.
Nope. They care about conservative websites running content that they disagree with. Which is why they’ve started labeling us all “fake news,” whether or not the moniker is accurate.

For example:
CNN ran this story on Wednesday saying that Trump supporters were considering boycotting Pepsi over comments that the CEO of the company never actually made. If I were a fact-checker I’d rate this story as half-true and the CNN story as “fake.” CNN complained that several sites said that PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi told Trump supporters to “take their business elsewhere.” (She never said this.) Based on these four words, CNN argued that the entire Nooyi as anti-Trump story was “fake.”
However, any reader of Constitution.com knows that this CNN story is just plain wrong. Sure, the fake quote may have swayed some folks, but there is more to this story and Nooyi’s disdain for Trump and his supporters than CNN (and Brian Stelter) let on. In the interview in question, Nooyi makes clear what she thinks of Mr. Trump and his supporters, and we reported on it at Constitution.

PepsiCo’s CEO said the election of Donald Trump as president was terrifying her employees.
“I had to answer a lot of questions from my daughters, from our employees. They were all in mourning,” PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi told Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times’ DealBook conference on Thursday. 

“Our employees were all crying,” she said. “And the question that they’re asking, especially those who are not white, ‘Are we safe?’ Women are asking, ‘Are we safe?’ LGBT people are asking, ‘Are we safe?’ I never thought I would have to answer those questions.” 


That quote alone is enough to cause Trump’s supporters to boycott Pepsi. In fact, Yahoo’s title to their story would probably be enough – “PepsiCo CEO: Employees are scared for their safety after Trump’s Election”. 

Consider the implications of her comments. Why would PepsiCo’s employees be scared? They can’t be scared that they’ll be deported – they have jobs at PepsiCo, so they must be legal residents or citizens. So what fear does Donald Trump and his supporters instill in them? The reality is that while Nooyi may never have said that she wanted Trump supporters to “take their business elsewhere,” what she did imply with her comments was far worse.
Here’s another example of “Fake News” this time from NBC:

Check out this headline: As Trump Leaves Press Behind for Steak Dinner, Incoming Admin Already Showing Lack of Transparency.
Donald Trump took his family out for dinner on Tuesday night after the Secret Service had told the press who were following him that he was in for the night. The decision to go out to dinner prompted NBC to say that Trump was “already showing” that his administration would lack transparency. While the title might be discounted as simply foolish, consider that this is the same media that allowed Hillary Clinton to hide for the better part of two years as she simultaneously campaigned for the presidency. Trump has allowed an unprecedented amount of public access into his life, but the first time he goes to dinner without the press… he’s excoriated for not being “transparent” enough.

But don’t worry, NBC doesn’t do “fake news,” only the right wing media does.
Just in case you think these are cherry-picked, here are some more examples of the main stream media posting “fake news” by using clickbait headlines, false headlines, burying the lede, and other “fake news” methods.

• One of the more famous “fake stories” from the recent presidential campaign argued that Mr. Trump mocking a disabled reporter. Sadly, for the media, it only looked as if Trump was mocking him if you edited the video footage just right.

• CBS caught editing Bill Clinton’s comments about Hillary Clinton’s health.
• The New York Times announcing Donald Trump’s election victory used this headline to lead their paper, “Democrats, Students and Foreign Allies Face the Reality of a Trump Presidency.” The headline was so terrible that even the folks at MSNBC were shocked and disgusted.

• Here’s the AP with a story titled, GOP Lawmaker: FBI gave immunity to top Clinton aide. Sounds innocuous enough… until you dig down to the 22^nd paragraph (out of 25 paragraphs) and learn that President Obama had been emailing Clinton on her private server! Something the President said he had no knowledge about.
• Many different mainstream news sources have been reporting on the “surge” of hate crimes in 2016. Only problem… no such “surge” has occurred.

• Here’s one from the Washington Post back in May. They had just conducted a poll showing Donald Trump with a 2-point lead over Hillary Clinton but decided to go with this headline for the piece: Poll: Election 2016 shapes up as a contest of negatives. Weird, right? The big story was that Trump had overtaken Clinton in their poll, but instead WaPo chose to focus on… the negatives.
• Here’s a story that almost every major media organization ran some version of – Trump tried to get his kids security clearance. The only issue with this story is, that again, almost every major media organization ran with – is that it never actually seems to have happened.

• Remember when CNN used a misleading headline to tie Donald Trump to shock-jock Howard Stern?

• ABC basically invents the idea that Newt Gingrich agreed with Mitt Romney about Romneycare.

• A bunch of main stream media sources published headlines about a Palestinian terrorist attack that forgot to mention the terrorists.
• Just last year NBC argued that “free” college was “a goal everyone can agree on.”

• How about the time that the NY Daily News cover compared NRA president Wayne LaPierre with 5 different murdering terrorists?

• When the main stream media sees ethics problems with conservatives who do business with foreign entities, but never seemed that concerned with Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation’s activities.
• CNN runs a story about a professor predicting Donald Trump’s impeachment just days after Mr. Trump wins the White House. This is the definition of “fake news,” isn’t it?

These are just a few, and probably not even the best examples. The point is that when it comes to calling out “fake news” websites, the mainstream media is the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.