BRETT: No doubt you saw the coverage in the last couple of days of the Washington Post’s “massive correction.” That’s right. “The Washington Post made a massive correction Monday to a January report about a phone call between then-President Donald Trump and a Georgia elections investigator, as the liberal paper admitted multiple quotes attributed to Trump based on an anonymous source were inaccurate.
“The corrected story was a hot topic on cable news and talk shows that helped spread the Post’s flawed report and media watchdogs feel it points to larger problems with agenda-driven anonymous sources and liberal outlets that rush to ‘confirm’ them.” We’ve seen a ton of these stories over the years. You can probably think of 10 or 15 off the top of your head.
We remember what happened during the entirety of the Russia collusion media effort to push all those anonymous sources, none of which turned out to be accurate or even close to accurate. I’m reminded so many times that Rush made a terrific point when it came to the media and the press. You, as a consumer — you consume the news media.
You look at the newspapers, you read what they have to say, and you take it at your own risk, obviously. But Rush was always wise to point out that the media, the press, it’s the only business in the world where the customer is always wrong. Not just wrong, totally wrong, dead wrong. “Don’t you even complain about it! We know. We are journalists.”
So it’s interesting to watching the fallout taking place at the WaPo, at the Washington Post. Now, remember, the Washington Post “initially reported Trump had told an official working in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to ‘find the fraud’ in the state, which he lost narrowly to Joe Biden, and that she would be a ‘national hero’ if she did.”
That was the quote. It was put up by the Washington Post. Well, “a newly emerged recording of the December 23 call found he didn’t use those words. Instead, Trump said she would be ‘praised’ when the ‘right answer comes out’ and encouraged her to closely examine mail-in ballots in heavily blue Fulton County.” That’s a big difference.
They had a quote that didn’t exist and a position that didn’t exist. It’s not surprising to see what’s happening here. It was a “bombshell story,” and it was hardly news. What we’ve seen the mainstream media do in this country countless times before is shocking but not surprising. Rush pointed out regularly, they are constantly focusing on advocacy and not journalism. Let’s take a trip back.
RUSH: I got a quick question for CNN and all the rest of you Drive-By Media types. You’re telling us these mistakes you’re making are honest. Yeah, you’re just trying so hard to be good journalists. Let me ask you: How many totally lying, erroneous, false, damaging, defamatory stories about Barack Obama ran in eight years? Hmm?
How many times in your quest to be over-the-top fair and to get it right did you run defamatory stories that did damage to Barack Obama? Answer: Zero. How many erroneous, lying-through-your-teeth, defamatory, damaging stories have you run on Trump in under two years? The answer is too many to count on two hands. If you’re looking for a reason to explain why news organizations could be this bad, it’s purposeful.
They aren’t this bad, in terms of lack of talent, ability, or — they know exactly what they’re doing. And they don’t care. They know full well that it’s a success if they get a lie out there all over the world for seven hours before they correct it, because the agenda is to get Trump. And so anything that is done to further that agenda is justified. But I believe that they have been swallowed whole by the entire effort here.
It’s been going on for so long now. They are unable to separate fact from fiction. They have become the fiction. And they are embarked now on a course, a task to convert fiction into reality. It consumes them. Yet these people get up — I’m sorry to repeat myself, but it’s necessary. They get up every day. It’s what gets them out of bed. It’s what gets their adrenaline going.
It’s what keeps them going throughout the day. The incontrovertible proof that we have is that the United States media is suffering embarrassing debacle after embarrassing debacle after embarrassing debacle. That’s the evidence we have. The evidence we have is that the Drive-By Media is lying, is making it up, is reporting indeed fake news. Folks, they so desperately want all their lies to be true. That’s what’s driving it all.
BRETT: And you’ve seen the complete change in the way they do news programs. Go on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, Telemundo, any of those channels and look at how they do the coverage of these stories. The way they do the coverage of these stories is they assert something, then they bring on a reporter to talk about the thing they’re asserting. They forecast what’s going to happen next, rinse and repeat, and on to another segment.
They’re not giving you information. They’re not giving up to date with quotes or certifiable information. No. They’re saying, “We believe that Donald Trump colluded with Russians. I have four sources, anonymous sources who say that they have spoken to people who say that the president colluded with Vladimir Putin, and this is terrible — and if so, what does that mean for the Mueller report?”
“Well, it means that Mueller is really gonna get him in trouble, and he’s gonna potentially get impeached and removed from office. Do you think that’s true? Do you think it’s possible to get him impeached from office?” What they do is they build the predicate, and then they build the arguments off the ensuing predicates but not the original quotes. Nobody goes back and says, “What were you doing? What did that mean?”
There’s no scorecard. You know more about your favorite or least favorite sports teams based on performance on the field or the ice or on the court at a given point because you can look at a scorecard. What’s the scorecard for the media? Let’s see. Wow. Yeah, CNN. You were wrong 37% of the time. What about that? I mean this is unacceptable. You would accept it in no other part of your life.
We demand better. We need better. Our very constitutional republic is dependent upon this. And yet just look back in time. Go back to the 1980s. You had the Sunday chat shows, the interviews and those sorts of things and some analysis of what to expect in the coming week. Now you are hard pressed to find accurate, up-to-date information. It’s why talk radio, and especially Rush Limbaugh, is so vital.
Because you are actually getting the information the Washington Post, the New York Times, LA Times — all of those outlets — will purposely suppress to keep it away from you because it didn’t fit the favorite the narrative. It’s frustrating, and it’s wrong, and it does a tremendous disservice to the average person who’s attempting to find out what’s going on in the world.
If all they’re selling you is spin, they’re not giving you the truth. And if they don’t go back and correct the incorrect stuff they put out there, they’re co-signing it again and again and again. It’s scandalous. And it’s protected by the First Amendment. But it’s scandalous, and we all kind of know what it is that’s going on out there.