MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: The Real Reasons Why Legacy Media Are Freaking Out Over Trump’s Successful Baghdadi Mission.
Corporate media have moved from at least projecting concern for reporting the actual news into unembarrassed political actors. That enables them to flamboyantly spin — as opposed to their previous method of subtly spinning — even major news with indisputable facts.
The 2016 campaign was a humiliating defeat for Hillary Clinton, but also for political media. Media outlets never understood the electorate they were paid big dollars to write and broadcast news about. They confidently asserted Trump had no chance to win, and convinced themselves that casting off journalistic standards was defensible because of the certain ruin Trump would bring.
Instead, President Trump’s administration has been marked by success in the domestic and foreign spheres. The economy is humming, including job and wage growth the media had previously said was unlikely to impossible to achieve. This is due to tax cuts, tax reform, and unprecedented deregulation. No new wars have been launched, much less the apocalyptic nuclear wars the media predicted. A long overdue recalibration with China is taking place.
What is good news for the country is bad news for the media and their political allies.
The Washington Post was forced to issue a correction after columnist Max Boot said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was not a coward because he evaded capture by committing suicide.
Boot initially stated in his Monday column that, “The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was, in any case, contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up.”
After backlash from people accusing Boot of praising Baghdadi in an attempt to make a dig at President Trump, the Washington Post deleted the line and issued a correction.
“An earlier version of this column included a sentence questioning whether Trump was right to call Baghdadi a coward because he blew himself up,” the paper said. “The line was removed because it unintentionally conveyed the impression that I considered Baghdadi courageous.”
WaPo: Headline Calling ISIS Leader ‘Austere Religious Scholar’ Was ‘Written in Haste’
‘Unfortunately, a headline written in haste to portray the origins of al-Baghdadi and ISIS didn’t communicate that brutality’
The Washington Post expressed regret Sunday after running a headline that described ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as a “religious scholar.”
The White House announced Sunday that al-Baghdadi killed himself by detonating a suicide vest as U.S. forces raided his Syrian compound.
The Post originally described him in a headline as the “Islamic State’s ‘terrorist-in-chief,'” but the headline was changed after publication to “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48.”
h/t SG