Pravda became an official publication, or “organ”, of the ruling Soviet Communist Party. Pravda became the conduit for announcing official policy and policy changes and would remain so until 1991.
— Wikipedia

Throw out the First Amendment’s protection for journalists who were tasked with being government watchdogs. They’re now mostly utilized as lapdogs eagerly drooling to stay part of the privileged in-crowd and benefit from the generous salaries that come with such exposure. We’ve seen them often commit the worse of journalism violations (bias-by-omission) and they’re expected to do it yet again.

Normally, these kind of Democrat courtesy requests aren’t made public….

“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, according to a draft copy obtained by CNN.

The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” will be sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.
— CNN, 9/12/23

Now THIS is quite the dossier of cut-and-pastable talking points.

We all know today’s media needs to be spoon-fed with tips other than what they find, sitting on their asses, from social media or other news sites.

The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.
— Ben Rhodes, Obama deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, 5/8/16

That said, many of the usual suspects are dutifully obeying in lockstep.

Since gaining the House majority in January, House Republicans have aggressively investigated Biden and his son, claiming without evidence that they engaged in an influence-peddling scheme. The allegations echo those that former President Donald Trump has made for years against Biden and his family.
— Associated Press, 9/12/23

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins and New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman repeatedly noted there’s “no evidence” to support claims made by ex-President Donald Trump and Republicans to justify impeaching President Joe Biden.
— Mediaite, 9/13/23

Republicans claim they have unearthed evidence of wrongdoing by the president and his family that could rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. In fact, there’s little to back up their allegations.
— New York Times, 9/12/23

Months of Republican allegations and investigations into President Biden have led to the GOP-controlled House of Representatives launching an impeachment inquiry. Republicans have lobbed unsubstantiated allegations against Biden since taking over the House, but have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing so far.
— PBS, 9/12/23

‘Hi, this is Kevin McCarthy and you have reached the House Republicans. We can’t come to the phone right now because we’ve launched an evidence-free impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden!’
— USA Today, 9/12/23

The House has voted to impeach just three Presidents: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. But even the launch of an impeachment inquiry against a President has only happened a handful of times. Two impeachment experts tell TIME that there is less evidence implicating Biden of wrongdoing than in any of those previous inquiries.
— TIME, 9/12/23

Republicans, who now narrowly control the House, have accused Biden of profiting while he served as vice president from 2009 to 2017 from his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures. But a 2020 Senate investigation and several months of digging by House Republicans this year have failed to turn up evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.
— Reuters, 9/12/23

Thanks in part to official revelations from the Durham Report, most of the informed electorate knows many of the allegations that dogged President Donald Trump were fictitious, malevolent, and the media dutifully repeated those allegations despite a lack of direct evidence that Trump and those in his orbit did anything wrong, let alone anything treasonous. But the media did the job and a large portion of Americans still believe Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2020 election from Hillary Clinton just because Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow said so. To this day, millions of Americans still don’t know what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop and believe it’s irrelevant because mostly “right-wing” media is talking about it.

This appears to be the strategy of White House warroomers like Sams who want those who watch the Today Show and The View to get from any impeachment inquiries.

It will be an interesting exercise in human behavior to watch if those who are told to do something will actually obey and if there are those who’ll behave like petulant teenagers who do the opposite of what they’re told because that’s how the wiring works….

Just before the 2020 election, Joe Biden and his campaign said his son Hunter hadn’t made money from China — and that Biden hadn’t met one of Hunter’s Ukrainian business associates while he was vice president, except for maybe a brief hello.

Both of those claims were false, according to recent sworn testimony by Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer.
— Axios, 9/13/23

It’s not clear if Sam’s memo is in reaction to this Axios piece, but if the media has finally grown tired of lying for the Biden administration, it could make for some interesting viewing once the inquiry starts rolling. The media may have to explain to their consumers why they didn’t report on these facts years ago and why the “there’s no evidence” excuse will be regarded, going forward, as the bullshit lie it always was.

Asked about the conflicting accounts of Biden’s comments in 2020, an aide said: “As the president said at the time when he was defending himself against Donald Trump’s torrent of lies — and as he’s said since — he didn’t discuss Hunter’s business dealings with him and wasn’t in business with his son.”
— CNN, 9/12/23

Again, the Durham Report mostly concluded that almost everyone involved with election interference and subsequent cover-up have gone unpunished, “intelligence officials” certified lies to protect Biden in 2020, and the media near-effectively censored information that kept a good portion of the nation from casting an informed vote.

A vote that has had severe repercussions financially and security-wise for the nation.

In its letter Wednesday, the White House will ask news organizations to be more clear-eyed in their coverage of the impeachment inquiry, and not to fall prey to the traps of false equivalency in reporting.

“Covering impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” Sams wrote.

“And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth,” Sams added.
— CNN, 9/12/23

Rush Limbaugh often aired montages of media people using the same words and/or “action lines” after clearly coordinated directives coming from a Democrat West Wing were heeded. Sams’ directives are nothing really earthshattering or new. But after years of being told “the border is secure” or “inflation is transitory” or Biden’s staff has a hard time keeping up with him, it will be a tall task to expect all of the media to obey and look the other way.

Stating the obvious, impeachment is serious shit and millions of people will start to pay attention. When they do, some will begin to see what’s been hidden from them because the Democrats and their media believed them to be stupid enough to fall for the spin. Liberals can tend to turn when what little intelligence they do have is insulted.

There are still the ol’ reliables.

The Republican House-led investigations into Biden have yet to provide any direct evidence that the president financially benefited from Hunter Biden’s career overseas.
— CNN, 9/12/23

CNN ended with that little “Okay, massah. I’z do what I’z told”.

That “direct evidence” caveat was gleefully blown off when it came to “Russian Collusion” or the “improper phone call” based on hearsay regarding Ukraine, or even now when states are trying to remove Donald Trump from state ballots because they claim he violated the 25th Amendment for staging an insurrection while NOT ONE of the charges against him is for… wait for it… insurrection.

Trump’s not been charged with insurrection because all who’ve seen the unedited portion of his January 6 rally speech know he never suggested violence or insurrection. And now the Biden White House is obviously worried that Biden’s constant string of lies will be revealed to the world over the coming weeks and months at the same time partisan district attorneys will be trying Donald Trump during the heat of the campaign season.

Even should Joe Biden not be the 2024 Democrat standard bearer, his successor will have to answer for whatever aid and comfort he or she gave those lies; ignorance will be a lame excuse and should be a disqualifier.

Unfortunately for the media, Americans do understand enough about basic business to know in order to receive payment for goods, you have to have goods to sell. Aside from the “brand”, the Bidens haven’t done much to have millions sent to their multiple “businesses” and bank accounts, and it’s even laughable for even a loyal Chris Hayes viewer to assume all that money came in and “The Big Guy” didn’t get a taste.

The pushback will be well-deserved and brutal.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., called out U.K. Channel 4 Washington correspondent Siobhan Kennedy on Tuesday for claiming that Americans “can’t see” evidence that President Biden has committed wrongdoing worthy of impeachment.
— Fox News, 9/12/23

The desperation from the Biden administration comes from an obvious reaction of guilt. We’ll see how further down the media’s credibility will sink to cover for a corrupt president and his family of leeches.

I contend we do. Should I screw up, there are several thousand readers out there at any time that will promptly remind me, or any of us, that a piece of information is incorrect, and will bug us mercilessly until we make the proper correction.

The New York Times can just refuse to answer their readers.

I further contend, that if it weren’t for the blogsphere playing watchdog on an arrogant and biased media, Monica Lewinsky may possibly be running for re-election to the Congress with Clinton-thank-you-soft-hush-money, and Dan Rather and Mary Mapes would’ve received Pulitzer Prizes for securing President Kerry’s election with those “forged but accurate” National Guard documents outing George W. Bush.

As the mainstream media is so arrogant that they feel they can pull anything over anyone’s eyes because they are in agreement that the public is so intellectually beneath them, it was only a matter of time before they tried to pull another fast one.

And it wasn’t long before they got busted….

“Reuters withdraws photograph of Beirut after Air Force attack after US blogs, photographers point out ‘blatant evidence of manipulation.’ Reuters’ head of PR says in response, ‘Reuters has suspended photographer until investigations are completed into changes made to photograph.’ Photographer who sent altered image is same Reuters photographer behind many of images from Qana, which have also been subject of suspicions for being staged.”
— Yaakov Lappin, August 6, 2006 Ynetnews

As a professional graphic artist of 30+ years I found this attempt, by whoever was responsible, sloppy at best, an insult to the intelligence of the readers at the worst.

Here is the photograph in question….

According to the Jerusalem Post, “The photograph, as initially published, showed an aerial view of Beirut after an IAF attack, with two large pillars of smoke rising over the city. The caption read: ‘Smoke billows from burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs.’”

This could be a Jayson Blair I-was-there-when-I-wasn’t moment attempted by Reuters photographer Adnan Hajj. He may not just be guilty of manipulating a photograph, but one could conceivably toss in plagiarism to his growing list of offenses.

Photoshop is a graphic art program that enables a trained person to create imagery to order. It has many tools that enable one to cut, paste, resize, reshape, hue, tint, and add effects to images. One can change the color of someone’s eyes, remove blemishes from a face, and such techniques have been used going back to the early Penthouse Magazine days.

However, such doctoring was supposedly taboo when it came to “news” photos. Time Magazine broke that rule with the infamous O.J. Simpson darkened mug shot cover photo, and more recently, USA Today with the zombie-like whitening of Condoleezza Rice’s eyes.

In a side-by-side the public didn’t get the initial opportunity to view, the manipulation is quite evident. The Photoshop cloning tool was used in a most careless, amateurish fashion. Either the “artist” was new to the program or not very good, but to honestly think this could be passed off without being caught is laughable.

The problem is, had it not been for unprofessional eyes and a means of alerting the general public, this fraud would be a part of the public record.

Clearly, this is another example of the real filters out there. Filters that protect the public from arrogance run amok by the traditional news media, full of journalists who “want to make a difference” instead of just reporting the news as it happens; not as they want it to be.

We should all be comforted by the fact that Reuters is conducting an investigation. I maintain all the evidence has been laid out and unless there’s a bloodstained glove somewhere, the verdict is guilty.

UPDATE

“Reuters, the global news and information agency, told a freelance Lebanese photographer on Sunday it would not use any more of his pictures after he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut.”

“The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under. This represents a serious breach of Reuters’ standards and we shall not be accepting or using pictures taken by him.”
— Moira Whittle, head of public relations for Reuters in a statement issued in London

Bad lighting on a computer screen and dust marks on a digital photograph…? Maybe Moira should take a Photoshop class before she attempts to pass that BS.