Don's Tuesday Column

        THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   1/22/2019

Hype first takes or wait for truth

The pace of events, initial coverage, follow-up analysis and assigning of blame and veracity—is a challenge to keep up with for those watching controversial news. When you add in the “tribal” aspect (knee-jerk defense of “our side”; condemnation of “their side”), it makes for a maelstrom of flung anathema, narratives and character assassination unbecoming civil discourse.

Social media, which I never signed up for nor use, has become the vehicle of choice for perhaps the worst of this trend (“trending” being the buzz word for what unspecified others deem important regardless of reality). We then have less of the studied, verified, balanced, “whole truth” versions—leaving the “lie that goes halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” (Mark Twain). We can hope that within days or weeks the truth will emerge; those of us patiently waiting may not be on the leading edge of it all, even risking no one caring after the “circus” of controversy moves on.

The ubiquitous presence of hand-held cameras brings not only the ability to record the sights and sounds as they happen, but also the initial spin of those events slanted to one party, side or group’s agenda. Such patterns can both create as well as undermine “reality.”

You may recall the attempt to portray the Tea Party in a negative, even racist, light at numerous rallies and protests. Most notable was when Tea Party and other opponents of Obamacare—misnamed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—lined the way as the Congressional Black Caucus walked to the House of Representatives to vote (2010).

Immediate charges of racial epithets issued forth, forming the initial narrative of bigoted Tea Party protesters calling CBC members the “n-word” repeatedly. Who was to dispute such a serious accusation? Then it turned out that, of the hundreds of hand-held devices that provided a seamless recording, not one such word was heard and no one intentionally spat on a CBC congressman.

The late Andrew Breitbart famously offered $100,000 to anyone who could produce a recording of such racist taunts; his money was safe as it never happened. The actual hate turned out to reside in the Obamacare-supporting Democrat left and their media adjuncts, who were loath to give up their phony narrative. They learned not the lesson that it was a “fake news” event, but rather that they needed to more convincingly stage what they wanted to be taken as evidence of conservative intolerance.

Lo and behold, the pattern repeated itself when a pro-life, “Make America Great Again” hat-wearing group of boys from a Kentucky Catholic high school became a ready target for shameless Native American activists and so-called “Black Israelites” that just happened to be near where the boys awaited a bus. The initial clip of the drumming elderly tribal member facing off with a smiling Trump-hat-wearing kid took off as evidence of aggressive, white male Trump-ian intolerance. Au contraire!

Commenters, advocates and media mouthpieces left and right leaped to conclusions without waiting a virtual nanosecond for additional recording showing what led to the face-off. The reality turned out to be the opposite of initial reports: The “Black Israelites” used their space near the Catholic boys to scream at the top of their lungs, even recording their own homophobic epithets hurled the boys’ way.

The kids, simply waiting for a bus, were approached by the drumming Native American, who literally invaded the young man’s space, chanting and drumming in his face. His reaction, a calm demeanor with a wry smile was an otherwise reasonable reaction to the aggression from the tribal drummer. Why, pray tell, was it on the high school boy to surrender his spot on the sidewalk?

I saw his reaction as commendable forbearance in the situation; I’ve seen the nearly-universal condemnation as knee-jerk “social justice,” leftist-scripted piling on to the only demographic group still allowed to be condemned sans evidence: white men. Don’t expect any serious media self-examination over the conclusion-jumping hate-fest; I saw a mild “further recordings show a mixed event with inexact culpability” take on ABC but no retractions on NBC. Did other outlets withdraw their first, false take?

You can see similar initial reactions that turned out to be off-the-mark in other recent news reports: 1) The New York Times breathlessly broke the news that some in the FBI launched an investigation, in reaction to President Trump firing Director Comey, to seriously (seriously?!) determine if Trump was a literal Russian agent or asset. On its face, it was a laughable charge (local leftist letter-writing loons aside), that was a “rogue,” unauthorized, unsubstantiated violation of agency protocol. It further revealed—based on reporting—the existence of “coup de tat”-minded agents looking to remove Trump, reversing the election.

2) Then came the hair-on-fire, Trump-is-toast, impeachment-is-a-certainty Buzzfeed “bombshell” that Trump instructed his then-attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow. Was it ever illegal to build it? No. Has there been anything emerge beyond a proposal within Trump’s organization that rose and fell during the summer of 2016? No. Does Cohen have any objective credibility? No.

Did Buzzfeed reporters verify the documents? No. Is anyone within the Mueller team on record confirming the news? No. Adding insult, refutation and embarrassment (if Buzzfeed was capable of it) to the story, Mueller categorically called it “not accurate.” “Sources say” is Greek for “fake news.” What liars! One of the Buzzfeed reporters, Jason Leopold, has a history of bad, retracted, even plagiarized reporting.

Finally, consider the slanted, inaccurate portrayals of the “Women’s March” vs. the “March for Life.” Media were more inclined to call it an “anti-abortion” march and report it having “thousands”; it had over 100,000 attending. The Women’s March was described as having “tens of thousands,” but I saw groups in photos amounting to several thousands. Only the narrative counts to the press—progressive propagandists all.