Monday afternoon, Melissa and I were casting about for ideas for segments on this week’s The Spectacle Podcast and she referenced a post on X cataloging the breathtaking number of complete falsehoods peddled by the legacy corporate media over the past several years. I’ll show it to you in just a moment, and I’ll even reproduce the list so you can see just how jaw-dropping the volume of fake narratives is that we’ve been subjected to. (LISTEN TO THE LATEST EPISODES OF The Spectacle Podcast)
But first, I want to point out that these same people were making nonstop accusations that the Right was full of “conspiracy theorists” and peddling “disinformation,” and to back those accusations they were engaging in activities designed to punish, if not eliminate, independent media sources who would attempt to check the false narratives they were peddling.
And I’m not unjustly conflating the legacy corporate media with social media platforms. Many of the organizations in question were colluding with nonprofit organizations, some funded by our government, to demonetize independent media websites with accusations of “disinformation” and sic propaganda organizations like NewsGuard on journalists refusing to toe the ruling elite line.
They did so as a means to freeze out the competition and stifle attempts to hold them accountable. It wasn’t even a secret at the time. (RELATED: Trump Humiliates His Media Enemies)
So while attempting to kneecap any real competition for site traffic and/or subscription revenue, these same media organizations were engaged in trying to make Americans believe the following lies…
🚨 I’ve updated the Democrat Media Hoax List.
1a. The Assassination Attempt(s) on Trump were staged by the Trump campaign
1. Suckers & Losers
2. Russian collusion
3. Mischaracterizing Trump’s “very fine people” comment after Charlottesville as praise for neo-Nazis
3a. The…— Publius (@OcrazioCornPop) December 16, 2024
The full list…
- 1a. The Assassination Attempt(s) on Trump were staged by the Trump campaign
- 1. Suckers & Losers
- 2. Russian collusion
- 3. Mischaracterizing Trump’s “very fine people” comment after Charlottesville as praise for neo-Nazis
- 3a. The A-OK Hand Gesture Is A White Supremacy Symbol
- 4. 51 Intelligence Agents
- 5. 16 Economists say Trump will create an Inflation problem
- 6. Drink Bleach
- 7. Trump has Dementia
- 7.5. Biden is sharp and doesn’t have Dementia
- 8. COVID-19 lab leak theory as a conspiracy when it was initially suggested by Trump and Republicans
- 9. J6 was an “insurrection” (J6 committee coverup & destroying evidence)
- 10. Ivermectin / HCQ doesn’t work & is dangerous
- 11. Claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”
- 12. Accusing Trump of inciting violence on January 6th, despite his calls for peaceful protest
- 13. Russian bounties on American troops, which lacked strong intelligence backing
- 14. Portraying Trump’s response to COVID-19 as completely dismissive, after travel bans
- 15. KC Chiefs’ child fan with face painted is racist for half red half black face paint
- 16. Covington teen kid is racist after Indian man got in his face, beating drum
- 17. 2020 election was MOST secure in American history, mail in ballots and machines had no problems – 81 Million Votes for Biden
- 18. Covid Vax protects against infection, is “safe & effective”
- 19. Jussie Smollet “This is MAGA Country”
- 20. Bubba Wallace Garage Pull
- 21. Governor Whitmer FBI Kidnapping
- 22. Chinese weather Balloon loose over America
- 23. Steele Dossier
- 24. Russia bombed their own pipeline
- 25. Border Patrol agents whipped migrants
- 26. Trump put kids in (Obama’s) cages
- 27. Trump had Nuclear Secrets at Mar-a-Lago
- 28. “Muslim” Travel Ban
- 29. Cuomo performed best leadership during Covid
- 30. Ghost of Kyiv
- 31. Al-Bagdhadi was an “austere religious scholar”
- 32. Trump overfed Koi fish in Japan
- 33. Trump tax cuts only benefits wealthy
- 34. Trump mocked a reporter’s disability
- 35. J6 protesters killed a police officer
- 36. Putin inflation price hike Hoax
- 37. Trump overpowered Secret Service to grab wheel of “The Beast” from back seat
- 38. Masks prevent Covid
- 39. BLM / Antifa were “mostly peaceful protesters”
- 40. Trump used teargas to clear peaceful protests for Bible photo op
- 41. KAVANAUGH gang rape train Hoax
- 41. Democrats must “Protect & Save Democracy in 2024” (by keeping Political opponent off the ballots by lawfare and jail)
- 42. Rape charges from a woman who didn’t know when it happened (also accused 12 other of rape), and best friend said it never happened
- 43. New York changed statute of limitations on NDA FEC (election interference)
- 44. Ukraine can win war with enough money & weapons from US
- 45. Putin will invade Europe next
- 46. Climate Change (Global Warning rebranded) is the most existential threat to humanity
- 47. The US Border under Biden is Secure
- 48. Mar-a-Lago is only worth $18 million so Trump overstated value on loan docs and is a criminal
- 49. The “Bloodbath” (in auto industry)
- 50. The Secret Service was NOT responsible for the 150 yard ROOFTOP security next to the stage where Trump was speaking
- 51. Trump has a slur/lisp on Conversation with Elon on X
- 52. Trump said that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no big deal
- 53. JD Vance “Fact of Life”
- 54. Trump is planning a “Project 2025” to do bad things to muh democracy
- 55. CNN obtains screenshots of decades old online profile saying “black nazi” & sexual fantasies must be Mark Robinson’s (couldn’t be easily created by programmer)
- 56. John Kelly remembers Trump likes Hitler’s generals after 5 years 2 weeks before election
- 57. Model remembers Trump groped her 31 years ago 2 weeks before election
- 58. Trump wants to execute Liz Cheney (he called for her to fight in wars she starts & supports)
- 59. Trump said “he shouldn’t have left” in 2020
- 60. Trump said he wouldn’t mind someone shooting the press
That isn’t even an exhaustive list. Getting it to 100 items over the past, say, six years probably isn’t even very difficult.
They have lied, and lied, and lied to us. And they expect us to simply lay down and accept it.
This list tells a story of a media monolith. Of an industry that has gone septic and needs a reformation.
Now, you could say that the alternative media, be it the podcast sphere or independent media sites like this one, is growing as an alternative to the old-line news organs like the CNNs and Washington Posts of the world and you might be correct.
But I present this list with a suggestion for possibly solving the problem of having a supposedly free press that nonetheless actively disinforms large swaths of the public at the behest of malign actors both inside our government and outside our country.
Which is that a very small number of companies control an outsized share of our media space. Only five companies own more than 80 percent of the cable channels out there, for example, and what’s left of the newspaper business is mostly owned by only a few media conglomerates.
And as such there is very, very little community ownership and investment in trusted news organizations. News media organs like CNN and MSNBC are essentially loss leaders for entertainment media companies, and as such they’re not truly independent in their reporting.
How this works, for example, is that Big Pharma buys something like a third of all the advertising avails on network and cable TV. They aren’t buying those avails to sell drugs, you know. Perhaps the best example of this is that ads for Descovy, which is an HIV prep drug marketed to the LGBTQ community as a vehicle for having unprotected, promiscuous sex without the risk of getting the AIDS virus, appear frequently on college football broadcasts — quite possibly the most unfriendly TV audience for such ads imaginable.
No, those ads serve a much different purpose. They buy the silence — the negligence, in fact — from the news organs owned by the media companies Big Pharma spends with about the pharmaceutical industry’s various practices and pricing strategies.
This is inherently corrupt, and it’s a reason only the U.S. and New Zealand allow pharmaceutical ads on TV. It should end.
And while we’re making reforms to the media industry, perhaps we ought to re-examine whether these mega-conglomerates dominating broadcast and cable TV, not to mention what’s left of the newspaper industry, aren’t in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act or its satellite laws.
If nothing else, re-democratizing the media industry might have the effect of creating some real diversity of viewpoints among those news organs with the resources to serve the public at scale. After all, a healthy media would never have peddled the above falsehoods in such volume for so long.
And with the public having soundly rejected them, the time is right for reform.
READ MORE from Scott McKay:
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The Spectacle Ep. 175: What Trump’s Return Means For The World
