We fully expected congressional Democrats to be dismissive and pissy during yesterday’s House Oversight Committee hearings on Twitter and the FBI/DOJ colluding to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story. And they were. Very much so.
We also fully expected the usual MSM suspects to take a similar approach and run with it. And they did. Very much so.
Check out CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter’s spin on the proceedings:
I try not to give oxygen to CNN's media newsletter, which is now run by the JV squad and has lost any semblance of relevance it once had.
But this framing of the Hunter Biden Twitter story is outrageous gaslighting that shows just how far the anti-speech activists have fallen. pic.twitter.com/bh7vxMy8vD
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) February 9, 2023
That is … really something.
‘No real evidence.’ Reading isn’t hard. I realize you need people to believe your lies, but the emails were uncovered.
— Coachbuz (@coachbuss2) February 9, 2023
It’s as if @elonmusk never opened the #TwitterFiles and exposed the collusion between the company HE BOUGHT and the federal government. https://t.co/7bkcJhVDNw
— Hammerjack 🐊🇺🇸 (@Hammerjack90) February 9, 2023
And in case you were wondering, yes, it was indeed written by Oliver Darcy. You can read the CNN.com-worthy version of it, too, if you’re feeling particularly masochistic today:
Right-wing media outlets and personalities are happy to amplify these claims and spread them to millions of viewers who turn to them for their news. Fox News, for instance, hyped the GOP claims from the hearing on Wednesday, portraying the nonsense coming out of the hearing as if it were a serious affair uncovering considerable wrongdoing.
The facts — reality — simply do not matter. It didn’t move one Republican when the Twitter executives they had subpoenaed before the committee refuted their claims. And it didn’t matter much to the right-wing media apparatus that blindly repeated them to their audiences.
“I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” James Baker, Twitter’s former deputy counsel, told the committee while under oath.
The irony of Oliver blindly repeating James Baker’s denial to his audience — despite the evidence presented in The Twitter Files — is apparently lost on him.
As is the notion of what it means to be a legitimate journalist.
I mean CNN’s JV squad media guy might as well just delete this whole rant and say “I support censorship of legitimate journalism.”
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) February 9, 2023
At least that would be honest.
Liars gonna lie.
— Jeff Vee (@Acuda4me) February 9, 2023
Whatever that is, it's not journalism.
— JWF (@JammieWF) February 9, 2023
It’s not journalism. This … is CNN.
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