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CNN went apesnit Friday night on the news that Facebook had tapped Breitbart as one of the sources for its new “news tab.” National Review was also tapped, indicating that Facebook is making an effort to be inclusive in its understanding of what news is. Perhaps Facebook has noticed that a declared ideological agenda, as opposed to an undeclared one, is insufficient cause for disregarding a media outlet.

CNN’s Brian Stelter used a chunk of his Friday-night newsletter to waste everyone’s time reporting that various like-minded individuals were of like mind; literally all of the “experts” he contacted for comment about the inclusion of Breitbart were established anti-Breitbarters who he knew would provide him with anti-Breitbart comments. Why reporters continue to launder their opinions through cherry-picked experts, professors, wonks, and fellow journos is a mystery. Why not just tell us what you, Brian Stelter, obviously think, which is that Breitbart is beyond the pale and ought not be admitted in polite company? Make the case, Brian Stelter! Don’t hide behind your friends’ opinions. The case can very easily be made. Except . . . not by you.

The argument I present is not an ad hominem one. It’s a question of the proper credentials for membership in an exclusive club. Breitbart’s willingness to slant the facts in service of its narratives about immigration, crime, and Islam is comparable to CNN’s disregard for balance on these subjects and others.

Both outlets are tendentious, partisan, biased, and relentlessly propagandistic for their own side.

Almost everything Breitbart presents is the truth, or at least arguably the truth. The problem with Breitbart is that it is tendentious, partisan, and biased, relentlessly propagandistic for its side and less interested in the pursuit of truth than in scoring points.

So is CNN.

Breitbart plays up true information that advances its worldview while downplaying or pushing back against true information it sees as damaging to its cause.

So does CNN.

Breitbart regularly resorts to name-calling, exaggeration, and even outright hysteria.

So does CNN.

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It was just a few days ago that Jake Tapper outrageously tarred Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri as an anti-Semite. “In which @HawleyMO calls a Jewish journalist a ‘smug, rich liberal elitist,’” Tapper said in a tweet that went out to 2 million followers. Tapper is one of the few CNN journalists I respect. If even he is caught up in silly partisan hackery it’s a very bad sign. Hawley had not said or implied anything remotely anti-Semitic, and this was a cheap shot, totally unbecoming of anyone who hopes to be seen as a nonpartisan reporter. It’s Breitbart-ish.

Does Breitbart occasionally report things that turn out not to be true? Yes, on very rare occasions.
But so does CNN.

It reported in August that the CIA had recalled a top spy from Russia because President Trump had “repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source.” The New York Times clarified that the decision to extract the spy was made in “late 2016” — during the Obama administration. CNN falsely reported in 2017 that Anthony Scaramucci was being investigated by Congress for ties to a Russian investment fund. CNN falsely reported that Donald Trump Jr. was tipped off in advance about the Russia-backed DNC Wikileaks dump of 2016, when in fact he was told about it after the dump. CNN repeatedly bends facts to exaggerate the prevalence of school shootings. In the service of its anti-gun crusade, which has the feel of Breitbart’s anti-immigration campaign, Don Lemon said, “I was able to go and buy an automatic weapon. . . . Most people can go out and buy an automatic weapon.” No, he didn’t. No, they can’t.

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CNN entertained a panelist — on Stelter’s show, called “Reliable Sources,” no less — who said President Trump “is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.”

Anderson Cooper Breitbart-ishly characterized tea-party members as conducting a “War on Obama” and derided them as engaging in “tea bagging,” which is not only partisan and nasty but actually obscene.
Cooper descends to schoolyard mockery when “reporting” on Trump-adjacent figures in a way he didn’t for Obama appointees.
It is simply not possible that Cooper can look in the mirror and see a judicious, evenhanded, nonpartisan reporter when he does this kind of thing:



Journalism? No, this is just tedious, witless, predictable, undisguised oppositionism. Obama could do no right with Breitbart just as Trump can do no right with CNN. The latter is nothing more than a billion-dollar version of the former.

Quote (excellence @ Oct 28 2019 10:22pm)

breitbart is blatant in their slant
cnn masquerades as being politically neutral but is chock-full of examples like above

never forget only cnn gave credence to buzzfeed’s massive #fakenews disaster that mueller himself had to issue a stern “this is bullshit” rebuke to

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On October 22, 2014, CNN Newsroom host Carol Costello reported on the audio release of Bristol Palin being assaulted by a man at a get-together in Alaska. Costello laughed and called it "quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we've ever come across"

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On June 13, 2015, while discussing the 2015 attack on the Dallas police headquarters, host Fredricka Whitfield referred to the gunman, James Boulware, as "courageous and brave, if not crazy"

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During live coverage of the 2016 elections, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo said that downloading the hacked and stolen Podesta emails from the WikiLeaks website was a violation of law and that only the media could legally do so. The statement drew criticism to the network for being false.

Quote (ofthevoid @ 29 Oct 2019 04:23)

Breitbart is more extreme in their bias but i agree that both are deeply biased.


You want decent journalism? look at some of the financials/business type platforms

I found those guys rarely give af about playing politics instead they report things much closer to objectivity.

WSJ & the Economist are really good but you have to pay for them.

Reuters is decent but still biased compared to the above two.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 28 2019 10:44pm)

I think the news outlet with the least amount of bias, apart from pure news agencies like Reuters, is Politico. Their articles and reporting usually contain no partisan and ideological bias, or only very small and forgivable amounts of it. They do, however, have somewhat of a pro-DC-bubble or pro-establishment bias at times. But for an outlet whose focus are the everyday developments inside this very D.C. bubble, a small degree of such a pro-establishment bias seems inevitable.