A few people in my office listen to NPR and they think that it’s an unbiased news source. So I think it is important to analyze how NPR lies about the news, and how they respond when other journalists from conservative sources catch them in a lie. The story in question is about Donald Trump Jr.’s Senate testimony.
Molly Hemingway, who writes for the The Federalist, was the first to notice NPR’s deception. The title of her article at The Federalist us “NPR Blatantly Lies About Donald Trump Jr.’s 2017 Senate Testimony“.
She writes:
NPR falsely claimed that Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 conflicted with an account given by a former attorney for President Donald Trump.
Here is NPR’s false write-up of that testimony:
Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that although there had been negotiations surrounding a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow, they concluded without result ‘at the end’ of 2014.
‘But not in 2015 or 2016?’ Trump Jr. was asked.
‘Certainly not ’16,’ he said. ‘There was never a definitive end to it. It just died of deal fatigue.’
Trump’s account contrasts with the new version of events given by Cohen on Thursday in a guilty plea in federal court. In that new version, Cohen says the discussions with at least one Russian government official and others in Moscow continued through June 2016, well into Trump’s presidential campaign.
In fact, Senate investigators were asking Trump Jr. about a series of efforts to develop property in Russia, going back several years. Reporter Phil Ewing (reporter Tim Mak contributed to the story) conflates one of those efforts with another separate effort. That conflation results in the false news report.
That’s from her article on the day the false story was posted. NPR did not issue a correction to the story for 5 hours. But a lot was going on to save the story during that 5 hours, because NPR wanted to spread the story around. Then later they could admit it was a lie, the better for the Democrat party.
The original article from NPR is here.
The original title is “Trump Jr.’s 2017 Testimony Conflicts With Cohen’s Account Of Russian Talks”.
The original story said this:
Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony to Congress about his family’s real estate negotiations with powerful Russians does not comport with the new version laid out by Donald Trump’s ex-attorney Michael Cohen, official transcripts show.
After the lie was discovered, that title changed into “Cohen’s Account Of Russia Talks Raises Questions About Trump Jr. 2017 Testimony”.
And the paragraph claiming that there is a conflict disappeared.
In situations like this, the false story is shared and re-tweeted thousands of times. The correction is shared and re-tweeted a tiny fraction of that. The effect is that the public is deceived by the original story, and never sees the correction. NPR knows this is how social media works. If they wanted to really reverse the damage, then they would have retracted the story, fired all the reporters involved, and posted a correction on their front page. You have to judge their intent by how far they go to fix the damage they caused.
It’s time to cut off all taxpayer funding of NPR and PBS. I’m fine with them being stupid and deluded, but I don’t see why I should have to pay them to do it.
WINTERY KNIGHT 