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Published On: Fri, Feb 16th, 2018

Lee Smith: Russian collusion coverage has stopped because the media ‘helped’ from their ‘echo chamber’

In a damning new article by Lee Smith at The Federalist, the press is called out for more than their silence on Russian collusion, but their involvement: “The press has played an active role in the Trump-Russia collusion story since its inception. It helped birth it.”

photo/ donkeyhotey

Smith chronicles a long and complicated conspiracy against President Trump and his 2016 campaign to aid Hillary Clinton.

“The Fourth Amendment rights of an American citizen were violated to allow one political party to spy on another,” writes Smith.

So where is the press?

They are hoping you ignore their silence because they are guilty co-conspirators in this mess.

Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the fake Trump Dossier (also called the Steele Dossier) “briefed the New York TimesWashington Post, Yahoo! News, The New Yorker, and CNN. In October, he talked to Mother Jones reporter David Corn by Skype. It was Corn’s October 31 article anonymously sourced to Steele that alerted the FBI their informant was speaking to the press. ”

This is where BuzzFeed put themselves into the crosshairs and attacked by Trump as “fake news” when it went public months later. But most of the big outlets were already part of the information circle, rallying to bring down Trump with this scandal. Smith points out how brilliantly the bait was set and the other outlets let BuzzFeed take the fall: “This completed the echo chamber, binding one American institution chartered to steal and keep secrets to another embodying our right to free speech. We know which ethic prevailed.”

From the Senate investigation, the Grassley-Graham letter reads, “reports of some of the dossier allegations began circulating among reporters and people involved in Russian issues.”

Smith names names:

  • Reuters “national security reporter Mark Hosenball became an advocate of the dossier’s findings after November 2016.”
  • BBC’s Paul Wood wrote in January 2017 that he was briefed on the dossier a week before the election.
  • Planting the Carter Page story: New Yorker editor David Remnick, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, former New Republic editor Franklin Foer, and Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. (Foer’s piece in the Slate is also mentioned.)

Smith outlines the growth of the “echo chamber” that suggested Trump would be a tool for the Russian regime. He cites Obama policies on Russia, repeated by Trump, but spun to look sympathetic or “in cahoots,” to borrow from southern vernacular.

“This brings us to the fundamental question: Is it possible that these top national security and foreign policy journalists were focused on something else during Obama’s two terms in office, something that had nothing to do with foreign policy or national security?” Smith writes.

Smith lists interviews and books being authored about Obama without a peep of Russian collusion. Smith then calls out the media’s lack of shame:

All’s Fair in War and Politics

Of course not. They enlisted their bylines in a political campaign on behalf of the Democratic candidate for president and rehearsed the talking points Steele later documented. But weren’t the authors of these articles, big-name journalists, embarrassed to be seen reading from a single script and publishing the same article with similar titles within the space of two weeks? Weren’t they worried it would look like they were taking opposition research, from the same source?

No, not really. In a sense, these stories weren’t actually meant to be read. They existed for the purpose of validating the ensuing social media messaging. The stories were written around the headlines, which were written for Twitter: “Putin’s Puppet”; “It’s Official: Hillary Clinton is Running Against Vladimir Putin”; “Trump and Putin: A Love Story”; “The Kremlin’s Candidate.” The stories were vessels built only to launch thousands of 140-character salvos to then sink into the memory hole.

Got that?

The grand Russian manipulation of social media, memes on Facebook etc…also has ties to this grand echo chamber and Russian collusion nonsense.

Since everyone took Clinton’s victory for granted, journalists assumed extravagant claims alleging an American presidential candidate’s illicit ties to an adversarial power would fade just as the fireworks punctuating Hillary’s acceptance speech would vanish in the cool November evening. And the sooner the stories were forgotten the better, since they frankly sounded kooky, conspiratorial, as if the heirs to the Algonquin round table sported tin-foil hats while tossing back martinis and trading saucy limericks.

The media ignored (and continues to do so) the allegations of Uranium One ties to the Clinton Foundation,  conspiriedthe DNC to bury Bernie Sanders success during the Democratic Primary, sabotaging and mocking the Vermont Senator behind closed doors – where is the media?

Each media group could and would report on each other’s stories as though they were/are true:

Now Russiagate was no longer part of a political campaign directed at Trump, it was a disinformation operation pointed at the American public, as the pre-election media offensive resonated more fully with the dossier now in the open. You see, said the press: everything we published about Trump and Putin is really true—there’s a document proving it. What the press corps neglected to add is that they’d been reporting talking points from the same opposition research since before the election, and were now showcasing “evidence” to prove it was all true.

The reason the media will not report on the scandal now unfolding before the country, how the Obama administration and Clinton campaign used the resources of the federal government to spy on the party out of power, is not because the press is partisan. No, it is because the press has played an active role in the Trump-Russia collusion story since its inception. It helped birth it. (Emphasis added, The Dispatch)

….the first vehicles of the Russiagate campaign were not bloggers or recent J-school grads lacking wisdom or guidance to wave off a piece of patent nonsense. They were journalists at the top of their profession—editors-in-chief, columnists, specialists in precisely the subjects that the dossier alleges to treat: foreign policy and national security. They didn’t get fooled. They volunteered their reputations to perpetrate a hoax on the American public. (Emphasis added, The Dispatch)

And that folks, is how this fake news was formed, packaged and sold to the American people.

Read the full article HERE

photo/ Gordon Johnson

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About the Author

- Writer and Co-Founder of The Global Dispatch, Brandon has been covering news, offering commentary for years, beginning professionally in 2003 on Crazed Fanboy before expanding into other blogs and sites. Appearing on several radio shows, Brandon has hosted Dispatch Radio, written his first novel (The Rise of the Templar) and completed the three years Global University program in Ministerial Studies to be a pastor. To Contact Brandon email [email protected] ATTN: BRANDON

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    […] Lee Smith: Russian collusion coverage has stopped because the media ‘helped’ from their …  The Global Dispatch […]

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