How the right-wing media manufactures phony scandals to distract, inflame
The right-wing media is offering folks a fantasy-land nostalgia tour of debunked, fake “scandals” to distract from the harsh reality of Chris Christie’s #Bridgegate.
On Monday, we talked about how voices in the right-wing media circuit –including the WSJ, Fox and Glenn Beck’s the Blaze — have been pulling phony discredited “scandals” out of their hats to distract from the very reality-based mess New Jersey Governor Chris Christie finds himself in with the Bridgegate affair.
When the right-wing media rushes to rework reality with sensationalized, agenda-driven storylines, it takes time for truth-seeking journalists to catch up with the facts.
Unfortunately, by that time the media has often moved on to the next shiny object leaving massive mis-information predominant in the public mind. Even when the truth comes out, it gets nowhere near the attention the initial front page reports received and is often buried back behind the horoscope.
The Christie scandal was not driven by a massive political message machine, rather it was uncovered by alert and persistent local reporters and the revelation of smoking gun internal e-mails of Christie staff members.
The trifecta of phony scandals being used as distraction right now (Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS) are all examples of how blanket repetition by the right-wing media machine and the complicit coverage given by more legitimate sources, push false narratives that take hold in the public mind and become “common (if false) knowledge” for millions of media consumers.
When talking about a phony scandal created by the right-wing media, I do not mean to suggest that there is not some issue involved, often tragic or dangerous, that requires attention and responsive action. The right-wing media disinformation strategy, however, makes proper analysis and responsive action to important issues next to impossible.
The right-wing media machine spins false narratives around complex issues and events that make it more difficult for the core issues to be addressed. They pursue this irresponsible strategy because they place a greater value on advancing their agenda than they do on truth and the common good.
The most effective way to spread a lie is by starting with a kernel of truth and spinning your web of deceit out from that kernel.
The right-wing media loves repeating the catchy phrase “Fast & Furious” over and over, but in reality, they were Fast & Loose with the truth.
On Monday’s show, we started a discussion about the phony scandal that arose from the federal Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco Federal law enforcement agency’s operation in Phoenix called “Fast & Furious” — so called for the suspects’ fondness for street racing. We ran out of time before fully covering the subject. That’s the thing about these fake scandals… they exploit the fact that a story takes some time and explanation if you want to get the full picture and that is used as an opportunity to paste their juicy false narrative over the more mundane facts of the matter.
An important point here is the value of dedicated journalists to stick to a story and deliver fact-based reports as they work to uncover the truth.
That’s why we wanted to focus on this case. It’s ironically named because what was fast and furious about it was the gush of lies that rushed out and were stuck on repeat until virtually everyone had an incorrect picture of the actual facts.
But jounalist Katherine Eban produced a report for Fortune magazine getting principal players on record for the first time. Her piece was 6 months in the making and it showed that what everyone thought they knew was wrong. One of the folks she interviewed was ATF Phoenix supervisor, Dave Voth. Now why in the world would no one have talked to him before? The supervisor of the Fast and Furious case itself. How would you expect to have a complete picture without getting his story?
Even the DOJ and the Obama administration gave up on trying to get the facts out because the prevailing belief became so strongly set in the media, they focused instead on countering the political nature of the attack. The first casualty of war, including political war, is the truth.
The tragic event that set off the firestorm of attention on the case was the murder of border patrol agent Bryan Terry in a remote part of Arizona. Two recovered weapons’ were traced back to Fast and Furious suspect straw purchases from gun shops in Phoenix.
The right-wing media pushed multiple, increasingly conspiratorial narratives:
- The ATF allowed gun walking, that is, allowed weapons to be straw purchased in Arizona and then to be transported to criminals in Mexico as part of an intentional strategy to “build a larger case.”
- The ATF supplied and/or purchased the weapons themselves, and engineered their transfer to criminals across the border.
- The ATF getting weapons into the hands of dangerous criminals in Mexico was a conspiracy to produce violence and mayhem to create a rationale for a big government gun grab in the U.S.
But what did Katherine Eban uncover in her intensive 6 mos investigation? Click here to listen and find out.
When you read Eban’s painstakingly researched account garnered from the testimony of five law enforcement officers involved in the case but previously unheard from, you see a story turned 180 degrees from the conspiracy notions repeated by media sources. A story is revealed of dedicated professionals trying to stop the flow of guns across the border, but who are stymied in their efforts time and again by prosecutors who consistently insist to them that toothless and gutted gun laws would make prosecution impossible and who call for degrees of evidence that are largely infeasible.
In one instance agents tracked a man receiving food stamps who dropped more than $300,000 for 476 weapons but the prosecutors refused to give go ahead for an arrest. Agents are, of course, tasked to work within existing law and can be sued if they go against prosecutors’ assessment of legality and seize guns.
How did the story get so twisted???
Reporter Eban details how a far-right anti-ATF, fringe-gun-group, called the Sipsey Street Irregulars, picked up an item about the F&F case and the death of Agent Terry from a website run by a disgruntled ATF former employee. The SSI is run by a one-time militia member who supports armed revolt against the government. From the anti-ATF site, the SSI passed on allegations directly to Republican lawmakers who ran with them.
Then, John Dodson, a disgruntled Phoenix ATF employee with an axe to grind, was interviewed by CBS. The CBS interview contained cherry picked segments of e-mails ripped from their original context, to present a wildly distorted picture of what was going on in the Phoenix ATF office. A message from Voth to the staff was twisted to make it seem as if it referred to gun walking when it was really about a schism in office morale pertaining to working a wire tap. The full e-mail can be read in Eban’s report.
Recently, we’ve seen the same CBS called on to correct a story on green energy wherein the interviewee complained his words were presented in a cherry picked fashion, giving a twisted impression of what he actually said. And of course just weeks before that 60 Mins host, Lara Logan was suspended for presenting a completely bogus story on Benghazi which featured an interview with a totally fraudulent eye-witness who actually wasn’t an eye-witness at all. CBS has become, going back to F&F, an increasingly reliable amplifier of right-wing media hoax, misinformation and conspiracy.
And of course, joining with GOP politicians and CBS, the right-wing media bully chorus was loudly pushing the fraudulent “gun walking” Fast and Furious narrative.
The insanity here is that right-wing forces that have targeted the ATF with Fast and Furious conspiracy theories are the same voices that have insisted that there can be no restrictions whatsoever on gun purchases, including no restrictions on the very kinds of straw purchases that were the focus of the ATF operation in Phoenix.
So the right-wing voices that have successfully weakened gun laws which led to the prosecutorial barriers the ATF in Phoenix faced, then turned that very situation into an opportunity to run a smear campaign against the ATF for being legally hamstrung from stopping the guns from moving.
The heated scapegoating of the ATF also served as a way of shielding right-wing media voices from their culpability in the ensuing violence caused by lax gun buying laws they support.
Just days after the Sandy Hook school shooting tragedy in Newtown, Rush Limbaugh repeated on his show in unhinged detail the full Fast and Furious hoax, insisting that it was an outright big government conspiracy to take your guns. This was a convenient diversion for his listeners and it fed into the sick strain of Newtown conspiracy theories that had begun to slither up from the feverish and fetid swamp of the right-wing blogosphere.
It’s high time to drain the swamps of baseless conspiracy and to take a stand against right-wing media mind pollution.