USA Dot Com is a blog covering politics and government from a conservative Christian perspective. Verne Strickland is a 50-year veteran of investigative journalism. This blog offers a take-no-prisoners style with a modicum of biting satire. Verne and his wife of 55 years, Durrene, live in Wilmington, NC.
The painkiller itself, which poppy plants already supply cheaply and with great virtuosity, isn't always the prize; one of its precursors, an alkaloid called (S)-reticuline, can produce about twenty-five hundred other compounds, some of which are thought to have anticancer, antispasmodic, or antibiotic effects.
Humans have been farmers for thousands of years, and as a result we have been drinkers of alcohol, the product of yeast and sugar fermentation.
Wild yeast was the first microorganism that we domesticated, more than ten millennia ago.
But archaeologists believe that we have been harvesting the gum of opium poppies for even longer.
Across a broad swath of the Middle East and Asia, our ancestors tapped, dried, boiled, and consumed the poppy pod’s sticky secretions.
The flower provided one of the first medicinal substances known to humanity, as well as a potent high.
But not even the Romantic poets, ensconced in their stately pleasure-domes and out of their minds on "smack" heroin, could have imagined what a paper published today in the journal Nature Chemical Biology describes: turning yeast, a simple fungus, into a narcotics lab to rival the poppy.
Genetically modified yeast can synthesise morphine and semisynthetic opioid pharmaceuticals, researchers in the US have shown today.
This could obviate the need to grow opium poppies, reducing security concerns and the resulting regulatory hurdles, as well as the costs of chemically synthesising some of the synthetic opioids.
To produce opiates, the poppy relies on a complicated fifteen-step metabolic pathway that first evolved in the plant’s wild ancestors and has been refined over centuries by drug-hungry gardeners.
For a decade, laboratories around the world have been adapting poppy DNA for use in yeast, designing their own strains of the fungus with the ability to turn sugar, its preferred food, into the chemical precursors to morphine.
(The painkiller itself, which poppy plants already supply cheaply and with great virtuosity, isn't always the prize; one of its precursors, an alkaloid called (S)-reticuline, can produce about twenty-five hundred other compounds, some of which are thought to have anticancer, antispasmodic, or antibiotic effects.)
Last summer, the Stanford University scientist Christina Smolke caused a stir by announcing that she and her colleagues had created an engineered yeast that could perform the final few steps in the long process of making morphine.
Today’s paper, a collaboration between two labs—one at Concordia University, in Quebec, led by Vincent Martin, and the other at the University of California, Berkeley, led by John Dueber—fills in some earlier steps.
For the first time, a single yeast cell can be used to cook up bespoke morphine from scratch.
Despite the seeming complexity of the task, the science moved quickly—“much more quickly than our average paper,” Dueber said.
What he had imagined would take several years took a matter of weeks, and with that speed came a growing sense of alarm.
“We were like, ‘Oh wow, this is really happening,’ ” he said.
“And I don’t think people are ready for it yet.” In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration monitors the movement of controlled substances in and out of labs, but no provision exists for the organisms that are capable of making those substances.
Meanwhile, the federal government’s policy around what is called dual-use research of concern—scientific advances that could be exploited for ill—applies only to viruses and other pathogens.
Already aware of this regulatory vacuum, and of the possibility that their work could be misused, both Dueber and Martin sought outside consultation, Dueber from Kenneth Oye, the director of M.I.T.’s Program on Emerging Technologies, and Martin from the bioethicist Tania Bubela.
As the scientists prepared their paper for print, Oye, Bubela, and one of Oye’s colleagues, the political scientist Chappell Lawson, wrote one of their own, to be published at the same time.
In their comment, which appears today in the journal Nature, Oye, Bubela, and Lawson point out that the risk of yeast-based morphine is not that it will destroy the legal opium-poppy industry, which is overseen by the International Narcotics Control Board, but that it could put illicit opiate production into the hands of many more people, at a much smaller scale.
Whereas you have to be an Afghan warlord to grow fields of opium poppies and an organic chemist to refine their sap, with a designer yeast strain in hand, Dueber said, “you just have to be able to brew beer to synthesize morphine.”
Bubela speculates that mom-and-pop morphine shops could undercut the Mexican drug cartels that currently dominate the wholesale illegal heroin market.
(Heroin is synthesized from morphine, though it is usually several times more potent.)
“It’s possible the cartels might be more upset about this new technology than law enforcement,” Oye, an economist by training, told me, only half joking.
But he and Bubela agree that such increased access would inevitably result in a greater number of addicts.
For that reason, their paper contains a strong call for regulation, including increased lab security and new legislation that targets drug-secreting organisms.
They also recommend that their colleagues in the lab engineer wimpier strains of yeast, or ones with unusual nutritional needs that make them harder to raise at home.
Oye and Dueber, both cognizant of the fine line between voicing concern and crying wolf, are at pains to point out that at least two years’ worth of hard science lies between the aspiring drug lord and his closet bioreactor.
(Dueber also noted that, without the accompanying commentary, a paper titled “(S)-Reticuline Production in Yeast from Glucose” would have been unlikely to create much of a buzz.)
Neither man believes, however, that the Nature commentary’s recommendations will be enacted in full, or even that they are enough to prevent someone misusing the technology.
“Eventually, this will happen,” Duebner said. “I just think we want to be prepared for that eventuality.”
The value that this strain of yeast offers as a platform for drug discovery is worth the risk, he argues—as long as scientists are smart about it.
Last November, at the iGEM Giant Jamboree, an annual competition in genetic engineering, Edward You, an agent with the F.B.I.’s Biological Countermeasures Unit, used a scenario involving morphine-producing yeast—he called it “baking bad”—to argue that the field of biology must make an attitude shift, from “Do no harm” to “Not on my watch.”
At the time, You’s story line was speculative; seven months later, it isn’t.
“The technology is moving pretty freaking quickly,” Oye told me.
“You end up pulling your hair out, frankly.” The F.B.I. agent agreed. “I don't think we can keep up, which is why scientists have to be empowered to regulate themselves,” he said.
With advances in our ability to redesign living organisms occurring at a pace that leaves policymakers trailing far behind, it seems that the best we can hope for is a head start on our future anxieties.
The American mainstream media is filled to the brim with liars, frauds, partisans, cheats, plagiarists, and those who tolerate, defend and enable all of them. There is no American institution — not the NFL, not the tobacco companies, not any corporation or enterprise regularly targeted by the media — that engages in anywhere near the amount of fraud and dishonesty that serially oozes from Our Media Overlords.
Forget bias for a moment. Forget mistakes and misstatements and stupid or nasty things said during live telecasts. There isn’t enough Internet to begin to list the countless instances of left-wing bias and politicking and idiocy the media engage in. What I’ve accumulated below is the scripted, planned and intentional.
Although I’m sure that more than a few examples have been overlooked (let me know which ones in the comments), this list is still a mind-blowing reminder of just how shamelessly corrupt the American media is. For these are the intentional lies, the intentional violations of ethics, the intentional manipulations, the intentional attempts to hurt the political right by employing the kind of tactics used by Third World propagandists.
And here is the most striking part…
All of these scandals involve an attempt by a media that advertises itself as non-partisan (MSNBC excepted) to aid and abet the Democrat Party, or undermine Republicans, or advance the media’s primary cause, which is to increase the size and scope of America’s central federal government.
As you read the list below, ask yourselves which American company or institution could survive a rap sheet even half as long as this one — decades of lies, cover ups, dictator-coddling, outright fraud, theft, and the fabrication of evidence.
The Watchman don’t need to be watched.
The Watchman are a disease that need to be cut completely out of our society.
NBC News: ‘Dateline’ Stages General Motors Explosion – 1992
In an episode of “Dateline NBC,” NBC News rigged a pick-up truck so it would explode on impact with another vehicle.
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Viewers were not told the explosion was rigged and therefore fraudulently led to believe GM trucks were unsafe.
“Dateline” is still on the air.
Newsweek: Clinton’s Lewinsky Scandal Buried — January 1998
To protect then-President Clinton, Newsweek sat on and buried the story of the decade: A sitting and married president was having a sexual affair with a 22 year old White House intern.
Internet upstart Matt Drudge ended up breaking the story wide open. Clinton was eventually impeached for committing perjury. He also has his Arkansas law license suspended.
New Republic: Stephen Glass Blisters Republicans with Lies – May 1998
For nearly three years at the left-wing New Republic, Stephen Glass fabricated numerous stories, many of which mocked and belittled Republicans.
CNN: In Exchange for Access, Saddam Hussein’s Human Rights Atrocities Covered Up – April 2003
In an April of 2003 New York Times op-ed, CNN’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan, admitted that, in exchange for keeping its Baghdad Bureau open, CNN regularly lied to its viewers, and did so for a full decade.
CNN systematically suppressed and outright covered up numerous stories involving the Iraqi government’s involvement in assassinations, torture, and other human rights atrocities:
I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.
New York Times: Maureen Dowd Intentionally Misquotes George W. Bush – May 2003
In one of her more desperate and sleazy anti-Bush attacks, left-wing New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd falsely reported that then-President Bush claimed al Qaeda was no longer a problem.
What Dowd wrote:
”Al Qaeda is on the run,” President Bush said last week. ”That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated … They’re not a problem anymore.”
Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore.
No disciplinary action was taken against Dowd.
New York Times: Jayson Blair’s Serial Lies and Plagiarism – May 2003
Because he was liberal and black and knew how to schmooze, The New York Times handed Jayson Blair the keys to the kingdom without caring all that much about his experience or character.
Blair stole and fabricated quotes, and lifted stories from others that, among other things, attempted to damage the prosecution’s case against John Muhammad, the Beltway Sniper.
LA Times: Timed Hit On Schwarzenegge, Opponent’s History Buried – October 2003
Just before the 2003 California recall election, the Los Angeles Times reported allegations that gubernatorial candidate and “Terminator” star Arnold Schwarzenegger had groped six women between 1975 and 2000. But the Times drew fire for the timing of article, which had apparently been ready to go for weeks. And while four of the six alleged victims were not named, it turned out the Times had nixed a story alleging that then-Gov. Gray Davis had verbally and physically abused women, because it relied too heavily on anonymous sources. Schwarzenegger denied some of the allegations, but admitted he had “behaved badly” at times during his acting career.
Boston Globe: Fake Photos of U.S. Troops Gang Raping Iraqi Women – May 2004
In the summer of 2004, the re-election campaign for Republican incumbent George W. Bush was on everyone’s minds, especially a mainstream media desperate to depose him.
In May of 2004, the Boston Globe, which was still owned by The New York Times, published photos that claimed to depict American servicemen gang-raping Iraqi women.
CBS News: Anchor Dan Rather Pushes Forged Anti-Bush Documents – September 2004
In September of 2004, the presidential election between George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry was in full swing and tighter than tight. To break the tie, the top newsman at CBS News — “Evening News” anchor and “60 Minutes” correspondent Dan Rather, dropped a bombshell on the race.
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Rather claimed to have obtained documents proving that as a young man during the Vietnam War, Bush had shirked his duty and received preferential treatment while serving in the Texas Air National Guard.
The only problem is that the documents were obvious forgeries. Rather and CBS News had never bothered to properly authenticate their bombshell.
NBC News: Brian Williams’ Faked Tales from Katrina – August 2005
In February of 2015, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams admitted to lying about being shot down by enemy fire while riding in a helicopter over Iraq.
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As the Internet unraveled Williams entire sorry career, it was discovered that many of his harrowing 2005 tales from Hurricane Katrina could not be verified. Many were disputed by eyewitnesses. These stories of floating dead bodies, roving gangs of marauders, and desperate suicides became an important part of the Katrina mythology used by the media to effectively end George W. Bush’s capacity to govern.
LA Times Buries Barack Obama’s ‘Khalidi Tapes’ – 2008
The Khalidi tape shows Obama at a 2003 farewell party for radical Palestinian academic and activist Rashid Khalidi, and reportedly features vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric.
Reporter Peter Wallsten–now with the Wall Street Journal–revealed the existence of the tape in an article on Obama’s pro-Palestinian background. Obama’s participation in the Khalidi event, Wallsten wrote, had led Palestinian-Americans to believe “that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.”
The article was not aimed at vetting Obama’s past; rather, the tape was likely shared with the Times as a means of pressuring Obama by reminding him of his past commitment to the Palestinian cause as he courted pro-Israel voters and donors.
The LA Times still refuses to release the tape.
NBC News: Anchors Edits Inconvenient Black Man Out of Tea Party Photo – August 2009
In an attempt to prove the Tea Party is racist and violent, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer broadcast a photo of a Tea Partier legally carrying a holstered pistol.
“A man at a pro-health care reform rally…wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip….there are questions about whether this has racial overtones….white people showing up with guns,” Brewer breathlessly reported.
What MSNBC did not tell the viewers is that the man in the photograph was black.
Ezra Klein’s JournoList Exposed – July 2010
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein created a JournoList email club that when exposedfinally confirmed what many of us already knew: That across numerous platforms and publications, journalists were coordinating attacks against Republicans, especially in service to Barack Obama. This frenzy of coordination appeared to hit its zenith during the 2008 presidential election.
Journalists involved in JournoList including reporters and columnists from the Washington Post, Politico, Bloomberg, The New Yorker, The Economist, Time, Harpers, The Guardian, Newsweek, and others.
Entire MSM: Sarah Palin Blamed for Shooting Congresswoman – January 2011
After a horrific mass-shooting in Arizona left many dead, and congresswoman Gabby Giffords horribly injured from a gunshot wound to the head, the entire mainstream media coordinated an attack to blame a mother of five who was thousands of miles away in Alaska at the time of the shooting.
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Sarah Palin had as much to do with the shooting as the man on the moon. Nevertheless, in a furious hate campaign against Palin, for two full weeks all of the media blamed her. Their only evidence was a mailer Palin’s campaign team created that placed targets over a map of vulnerable incumbents — including Giffords’ district. This is a standard graphic still used by both Democrats and Republicans.
We learned later that the shooter was a madman who never saw the map.
CNN: Anchor Blames Sarah Palin for Giffords’ Shooting – January 2011
Immediately after the horrific shooting in Arizona (details above), CNN anchor Piers Morgan falsely blamed Sarah Palin over the standard use of graphics on a campaign map.
To the end of his CNN career, Morgan would use the CNN airwaves to slander Palin over this.
Washington Post: Tea Party Falsely Blamed for Gabby Giffords Shooting – January 2011
Writing for The Washington Post, Sandhya Somashekhar blamed the Tea Party for the Gabby Giffords’ shooting.
Atlantic: Tea Party Falsely Blamed for Gabby Giffords’ Shooting- January 2011
Writing for The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan blamed the Tea Party for the Gabby Giffords’ shooting.
New York Times: Republicans Falsely Blamed for Gabby Giffords’ Shooting – January 2011
Writing for the New York Times, Paul Krugman blamed Republicans for the Gabby Giffords’ shooting.
NBC News: MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Calls Laura Ingraham a ‘Slut’ – May 2011
During his primetime MSNBC show, anchor Ed Schultz called conservative radio star Laura Ingraham a “slut.”
Schultz was suspended for a short time. He remains a primetime anchor.
NBC News: MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Smears Rick Perry as Racist with Deceptive Edit – August 2011
To make Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry look like a racist, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz maliciously edited video tape to make it look as though Perry had referred to President Obama as a “big black cloud.”
After the Miami Herald thoroughly dismantled the Post’s false reporting, rather than issue a correction, the Post secretly edited the hit-piece as though it had always been correct.
Entire MSM: Tea Party Falsely Accused of Hurling N-Word During ObamaCare Protest – March 2010
Two black Democrat congressman lied to the media about being called the N-word as they passed through (and taunted) a group of Tea Partiers gathered at the Capitol to protest ObamaCare.
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Andrew Breitbart’s tireless genius would eventually prove this a lie.
CNN: Evidence Fabricated Against George Zimmerman – March 2012
With Obama’s re-election campaign on the line, a ginned up racial controversy in the crucial swing state of Florida could only help the president. To aid and abet this fraud, almost all of the major news outlets coordinated a herculean (but failed ) effort to frame George Zimmerman, a Hispanic man .who shot a black man in self defense.
CNN went so far as to fabricate a claim that during his 9-1-1 call, Zimmerman called Martin a “coon.”
Like many other outlets, CNN regularly identified the Hispanic Zimmerman as white.
NBC News: Evidence Fabricated Against George Zimmerman – March 2012
NBC News went almost as far as CNN in fabricating evidence against George Zimmerman. To make Zimmerman look racist the network broadcast an edited 9-1-1 tape to make it sound as though Zimmerman volunteered to the operator that Trayvon Martin was black.
ABC News: Evidence Fabricated Against George Zimmerman – March 2012
To frame Zimmerman and smear local police, ABC News released a photo of Zimmerman’s scalp just after his arrest. The photo showed no injuries, which perfectly fit the media’s (and Obama’s) desired narrative that claimed the police let Zimmerman get away with assassinating a black kid.
ABC News chose to release the photo before having it properly enhanced. Once it was, the injuries to Zimmerman’s scalp were revealed.
Washington Post: Mitt Romney Falsely Accused of Being Homophobic Bully – May 2012
Obviously timed to drop at the same time Barack Obama announced his support for same sex marriage, the Washington Post published a story that accused Mitt Romney of being a homophobic bully some 50 years earlier while in high school.
The story quickly came apart as witnesses (even some quoted by the Post) disputed the Post’s reporting. To cover up its dishonest reporting, the Post secretly edited the article.
NBC News: Andrea Mitchell Fabricates a Romney Gaffe – June 2012
In the heat of the 2012 presidential race, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell fabricated a Mitt Romney gaffe using a deceptive video edit. Naturally, the gaffe was meant to further the Obama campaign’s attack on Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat.
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Mitchell faced no disciplinary action.
Politico: Reporter Claims Mitt Romney Only Comfortable Around Whites – June 2012
While appearing on MSNBC, Politico reporter Joseph Williams told the world that then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney was only comfortable around white people.
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This was a libel. Williams had no reporting to back that up.
ABC News: Stephanopoulos, Brian Ross Blame Tea Partier for Mass Shooting – July 2012
Just hours after a horrific mass shooting in a Aurora. Colorado, movie theatre, “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos hosted reporter Brian Ross who, based on nothing more than the fairly common name Jim Holmes, reported that the shooter might have been a member of the Tea Party.
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The report turned out to be false. Neither Stephanopoulos nor Ross faced any disciplinary action.
Yahoo News: Reporter Claims Romney Likes to See Black People Drown – August 2012
During a ABC News/Yahoo News webcast David Chalian, then a reporter for Yahoo News, was caught on a hot mic cackling with delight after he accused Mitt Romney and the GOP of being “happy to have a party with black people drowning.”
CNN: Candy Crowley Violates Debate Rules to Lie for Barack Obama – October 2012
During a close 2012 presidential election, CNN’s Candy Crowley made no secret of the fact that as moderator she intended to violate the rules of the second presidential debate, and violate them she did.
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Going into the debate, a recent terror attack on our consulate in Libya that cost four Americans lives was a very hot topic. President Obama and his administration had repeatedly lied about a anti-Islam YouTube video motivating the deadly attack. The truth, however, was that the attack was organized and carried out by al Qaeda affiliates against a poorly defended American compound.
Obama lied again during the debate with the claim, that on the day after, he had described the Benghgazi attack as an act of terrorism. Just as Republican nominee Mitt Romney went in for the kill, violating the rules, Crowley jumped in with the claim that the president’s lie was true.
CNN: Fareed Zakaria’s Serial Plagiarism – 2013 to 2014
Two anonymous online plagiarism investigators at a site called Our Bad Media rustled up countless examples of plagiarism involving Fareed Zakaria.
Zakaria, an elder statesman in mong the media elite, who has Barack Obama’s ear on foreign policy (which explain a lot), had been previously suspended for plagiarism and was now caught again in numerous instances, many of which included his weekend CNN foreign affairs show.
No disciplinary action was ever taken against Zakaria.
NBC News: Gun Rights Advocates Falsely Accused of Heckling Grieving Father – January 2013
NBC News deceptively edited video of a mourning father to make it look as though gun rights advocates had heckled a man still mourning the death of his son. The truth is that Mr. Heslin was not heckled. He had asked a question of the gathered crowd, who had remained respectfully quiet for 15 minutes.
The crowd remained respectfully silent.
Mr. Helsin then repeated his question. This time someone answered and the serial liars at NBC News were off to the races.
CNN: Memo Reveals Open Push for More Gun Control – April 2013
In a foretelling of the Jeff Zucker-era that would see CNN move to the left of MSNBC, CNN released a memo to the rest of the media reassuring them that the cable news network would devote a full day’s programming to pushing for federal action on gun control.
CNN: Nancy Grace Taunts Hispanic George Zimmerman with ‘Taco Bell’ Attack – July 2013
To further a phony black vs. white narrative, the media went to great lengths to cover up the fact George Zimmerman is Hispanic. The media either ignored his race or falsely labeled him as white, or desperately labeled him a “White Hispanic.”
CNN: Jeff Zucker’s 15 Year-Old Son Sits On Top-Dem’s Board of Directors – August 2013
Democrat Senator
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)
6%
is a rising star in the Democrat Party and the owner of an Internet start-up company. Until the news was made public, one of the individuals sitting on the board of this company, which included stock options, was none other than the 15 year-old son of CNN chief Jeff Zucker.
NBC News: MSNBC’s Martin Bashir Wants Someone to ‘Sh*t’ in Sarah Palin’s Mouth – November 2013
During a scripted portion of his MSNBC show, anchor Martin Bashir suggested that someone should “shit and piss” in Governor Sarah Palin’s mouth.
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NBC News: David Gregory Violates DC Gun Laws to Demagogue Gun Control – December 2013
“Meet the Press” host David Gregory eagerly joined the rest of the mainstream media to shamelessly demagogue the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Across all of the media, the goal was to further restrict the Second Amendment civil rights of law-abiding Americans — no matter that none of the laws proposed by Democrats or the media would have stopped Sandy Hook.
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When he sanctimoniously brandished a high-capacity ammunition magazine on the air while interviewing NRA spokesman Wayne LaPierre, Gregory went so far as to violate gun laws in Washington DC
Washington Post: Conservatives Falsely Accused of Bullying Muslim Woman – June 2014
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was exposed as a liar after video of an event proved no one bullied a Muslim woman at a conservative event.
Entire MSM: Premised On a Media Lie, Riots Burn Out Black Neighborhood – August 2014
The media stormed into the small working class community of Ferguson, Missouri, and based all of their reporting on what turned out to be a lie. Michael Brown was no black “gentle giant” shot in cold blood by a white police officer. Brown was an unrepentant thug killed by a good cop protecting himself in self defense.
Before the truth was revealed by eye witness testimony and forensics, the media’s wake of destruction had victimized only a predominantly working class black community.
CNN: Audio of Michael Brown Shooting Aired Without Authentication – August 2014
Just as Ferguson was finally cooling down, in desperate need of the ratings that come with riots, CNN produced what it claimed was audio tape of the Michael Brown shooting. Before it was authenticated, CNN serially-aired and examined the incendiary audio thatmany of CNN’s own experts believe is a hoax.
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CNN has never authenticated the audio recording, or fully explained why one of the gunshots is missing from the audio.
CNN: Carol Costello Asks Viewers to Enjoy Audio of Bristol Palin’s Assault – October 2014
In one of the sickest moments in media history, CNN anchor Carol Costello used her morning anchor slot to air disturbing audiotape of Bristol Plain reporting a physical assault at the hands of a man to the police. In her introduction of the audio, Costello said, ““This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across. Well, come across in a long time anyway.” Just before rolling the audio clip, Costello advised viewers to “Sit back and enjoy.”
NBC News: Dr. Nancy Snyderman Violates Ebola Quarantine – October 2014
Dr. Nancy Snyderman, no less than the chief medical correspondent for NBC News, was caught violating a Ebola quarantine. After returning from an Ebola-ravaged part of Africa, for obvious reasons, Snyderman and her crew agreed to a two-week quarantine. Before the quarantine ended, she drove to a restaurant to get some soup and was photographed sitting in a car outside the restaurant.
Snyderman eventually returned to her cushy NBC News gig. She just recently resigned.
Rolling Stone: Gang Rape Hoax Fabricated Against University of Virginia Fraternity – November 2014
In pursuit of a story and political narrative instead of the truth, Rolling Stone published aphony story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia.
AP Photo/The Daily Progress, Ryan M. Kelly
No one was fired or disciplined.
45. NBC News: Brian Williams Exposed as Serial Fabricator
For years, Brian Williams, no less than the face of NBC News and the anchor of the “NBC Nightly News,” got away with telling so many admitted and suspected fabrications…
46.CNN: Brian Stelter’s Fraudulent Attempt to Rescue Brian Williams – February 2015
CNN’s left-wing media reporter Brian Stelter attempted to save Brian Williams (a close friend of Stelter’s boss Jeff Zucker) with the news that Williams had indeed been shot at in a helicopter over Iraq.
47.NBC News: Four MSNBC Anchors Don’t Pay Their Taxes – April 2015
To its credit, MSNBC is openly left-wing. This gives the ratings failure a lot of leeway when it comes to pushing a political agenda. A large part of that agenda, obviously has to do with increasing taxes, especially against the rich.
What a thing it was to learn, then, that four of MSNBC’s elite wealthy stars do not pay their own taxes.
This is worse than hypocrisy, it is duplicity — an elite world in which rules are for little people.
48.ABC News: George Stephanopoulos Lies About Clinton Foundation Investment – May 2015
In May of 2015, George Stephanopoulos, the chief anchor and chief political reporter at ABC News, was caught lying about his involvement with the Clinton Foundation While using his status at ABC News to defend and report on the Clinton Foundation scandal, Stephanopoulos chose not to disclose to his viewers his substantial $75,000 investment in the Foundation.
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Although Stephanopoulos lied to viewers and his employers, ABC News took no disciplinary against the former Clinton White House employee.
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Note how the number of scandals increase as New Media becomes more and more powerful. Now imagine what these lying degenerates got away with when no one was watching or had the ability to re-report and fact check.
The flower provided one of the first medicinal substances known to humanity, as well as a potent high.
