PrintJim Acosta doing his best to prove Trump is right about CNN as 'fake news'
See also Thomas Lifson's "Christiane Amanpour doing her best to prove Trump is right about CNN as 'enemy of the people'"
CNN has been accused repeatedly by President Trump of being "fake news."
He couldn't be more correct, given that CNN's coverage of the border crisis, which not too long ago was characterized by a drumbeat of reports debunking any crisis, is now all about reporting that yes, indeed, there is a crisis.
Breitbart News's Joel Pollak points out the startling U-turn in CNN's coverage:
A few weeks ago, @Acosta accused @realDonaldTrump of "concocting" a national emergency at the border.
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) April 2, 2019
Tonight, @CNN reports that it's a "crisis." pic.twitter.com/MMuwNNOoEI
But here is what CNN had been reporting and commentating on in lockstep coverage:
There is no national emergency at the border
Jorge Ramos: Border threat' is a 'presidential tantrum'
David Gergen: There's No Border Emergency, It's A Fake And Everybody Knows It
Don Lemon Blasts Donald Trump's Emergency 'Non-Crisis At The Border'
And here is leading CNN newsman, Acosta himself, covering what he claims are the facts of the matter:
Trump to claim 'crisis' in border wall pitch
Trump claims emergency, Dems say not so fast
Trump responds to Acosta's claim of 'concocting' a national emergency
CNN's Acosta Confirms Walled Part of the Border Is Crisis-Free
CNN was also suppressing news reports it was getting. Remember this incident, when CNN suppressed a local San Diego reporter from KUSI from going on the air to report that yes, there was a border crisis based on the opinions of his Border Patrol sources? Here's The Hill's report again:
A San Diego television station on Thursday said that CNN had asked for a "local view" and then "declined to hear from us" after past reports from the station showed that a border wall was effective.
A CNN spokesperson pushed back on KUSI's claim on Friday, calling it a "non story" since the network ultimately didn't book any reporters from stations in the San Diego area.
CNN called the incident "a non-story." Actually, it was the story, and not just because CNN got negative coverage for its suppression - it's actually the story that CNN is belatedly reporting right now.
Now, it's possible to argue that Acosta's CNN colleagues above are polemicists. That's true, but real commentators don't march in lockstep the way these people did. They obviously were getting talking points, not news. Tucker Carlson has reported many such incidents of CNN taking orders from its political masters in the Democratic Party, such as this time here.
But Acosta's role is news. And he claims to be a hard-edged newsman.
The fact that so many of his reports emphasized that "there is no crisis at the border," when, in fact, there was, suggests that Acosta doesn't actually know how to report the news. His credibility is shot, because the data about huge waves of border crossings on the way were out there, just from reading Immigration and Customs Enforcement press releases. You use data to start your story and fill it out with details later. Acosta apparently doesn't know this. Yet he still could have managed to get the story right if he paid attention to the news of the November caravan, which drew massive press coverage and served to encourage more illegal entries to the U.S. That was a dinner triangle to illegal aliens as word got out that crossing the border was now riskless. It happened. Acosta missed every last warning from that, too.
What we have here is a guy who doesn't know his stuff. Among the White House press corps denizens, quite a few correspondents think CNN's Jim Acosta is just stupid.
But the recent switcheroo in CNN's news coverage suggests there's more to it than just a low I.Q .here; there's a failure to report news, which is Acosta's stock in trade. Is there anything worse than a newsman who knows less than his viewers?
He should be embarrassed as hell. He's been caught reporting a long-running fake news story when he could have had the true one, given the data lying all around him, and if he were smart, he might even have been motivated to report it despite his political inclinations, given that anyone with brains could see that a border crisis was rapidly coming down the pike whether he liked it or not. Yet he didn't even have that kind of wiliness to look ahead and do it.
His credibility as a newsman is shot. He's nothing but a narrative boy, doing the bidding of his Democratic Party masters. Fake news is the only thing to call him because there's nothing believable about him.
Image credit: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia and Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0
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