OPINION:
The CIA was busted in Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s by famous Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein for using America’s news organizations as their propaganda and intelligence arms — in some cases, paying, in other cases, forcing, reporters to do their secret, sneaky, semi-subversive bidding. It was called Operation Mockingbird.
And given the utter scorn many of today’s news’ outlets have for truth, combined with the Donald Trump-era outing of a significant Deep State presence in Washington, D.C., it’s hardly eyebrow raising to wonder: Is this operation still ongoing?
“The program,” wrote The Daily Beast in 2017, “has never been officially discontinued.”
That would explain a lot.
That would explain, for example, why The Washington Post just explained away its report on Trump’s call with Georgia’s election investigator — the one where the paper outright falsified statements using third-party and unnamed sources — as an “oops” without accountability. Did anyone get fired?
That would explain that whole three-plus years of media witch-hunting against Trump for Russia collusion, for Russia conflict-of-interest, for Ukraine telephone coercion — you know, the whole three-plus years that led to Robert Mueller investigations and taxpayer-funded inquiries that led, get this, nowhere.
That would explain the impeachments and after-presidency impeachment conviction calls against Trump for fabricated and falsified and fanciful offenses that at certain points seemed even rooted in the fact that he dared to deny committing any impeachable offense. How dare he!
That would explain the media’s willingness to report on the absurdities of long-distance psychoanalysis of Trump’s behavior; of unproven, unverified, unbelievable “pee tape” Christopher Steele-tied dossiers against Trump; of out-of-context and cut clips of Trump showing him as a racist and misogynist.
That would explain the media’s cheering of President Joe Biden’s baffling buffoonish first press conference as a big “win,” as Deadline wrote it, or “almost startling in its coherence and cogency” — “an almost disorienting return to the legacy of presidential dignity and honor,” as WBUR framed it. Did they miss the part where he trailed off muttering, or the part where he spoke of his “120 years” of experience in the Senate?
Perhaps the worst Mockingbird media moments of late have been all the reports about the guaranteed safeness of the coronavirus vaccine, despite the fact the long-term safety effects of the coronavirus vaccine are impossible, at this point, to know; as well as all the dismissal of pure COVID-19 facts in favor of government messaging.
How come, for instance, schools still aren’t open for all students, despite the fact students hardly ever get the virus? How come all the Republican governors who want to open states for business as usual are villains and super-spreaders, but Black Lives Matter organizers and their supporters who congregate by the hundreds shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing bottles of booze in some instances, are heroes of the First Amendment?
How come the Microsoft-by-trade Bill Gates is a coronavirus expert whose advice should be taken as sacrosanct — but all the good citizens of America, who are maybe just as schooled, just as educated, just as well-researched on health matters as Gates need to nonetheless shut up and obey? How come Anthony Fauci is hailed as a coronavirus superhero despite being wrong, wrong, wrong on every flip-flopping thing?
Maybe Mockingbirds in the media aren’t so conspiratorial after all.
Well if that’s the case — it’s time to clip their wings. It’s time to turn off and tune out those sources of news.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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