ARE RUSSIA, ‘Anonymous Sources’ and the Media Working Together to Distort America’s Political Process?
There sure are a lot of anonymous sources out and about these days. One recent media item cited about thirty of them. How many of these anonymous sources are really, truly sources though?
Media Make-Believe
Think about it. If you’re a mainstream media hack and you need to get something out there, wouldn’t it be really easy to just throw in the details you need to make your story work and attribute it to “anonymous sources”?
Of course it would. The media after all operates from the same preconceived notion that drives Democrats these days. Their stories are already written. They just need to glue the pieces together and if they have to create fictional sources to make it work – the way Obama created fictional people to make his two autobiographies work – then that’s what the left will do.
Russians
The media’s invention of sources when there are none is the good news in all this. The not so good news is this very real possibility: what if a Russian misinformation campaign is behind those anonymous sources?
Forget for a second that it would be extraordinarily hypocritical of the left to at once accuse Trump of collusion with Russia during the 2016 election while using Russian information to support those accusations.
Trump is accused of doing the impossible: giving classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. (As President, Trump is allowed to declassify information as he deems necessary.) The media tells us this because anonymous sources told the media. There weren’t that many people in the room when the President met with the Russian Foreign Minister.
Is it possible Russian sources then are passing along doctored transcripts of the meeting so that the media will report, as they have, that Trump leaked classified information to the Russian government?
Isn’t That the Core of the Allegation?
Take a step back from the allegation that Trump conspired with Russia to win the 2016 election, and the broader theory is that Russia endeavored to try and negatively influence our political process. Take a look at where our political process stands today – juxtaposed somewhere between emerging calls for impeachment and a special prosecutor appointed to investigate things no one to date seems to be able to articulate.
Our political process isn’t in a good place.
It would be interesting to poll liberals and note how many of them think a Trump impeachment would a) require he leave office (it wouldn’t); and b) would require a re-do of the 2016 election (it wouldn’t). Civic ignorance, which runs rampant and obvious across America these days, contributes to degradation of our political process.
Russia Must Be Pleased
Imagine you are a Russian intelligence agent working in whatever office Maxine Waters thinks created “lock her up” and “crooked Hillary”. Life must be good.
You just clicked send on your latest email headed to the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, MSNBC, and all the rest. The American reporters receiving your email have no idea you are a Russian agent – the email domain you are using looks totally legit.
You know that within twenty-four hours you, the anonymous source, will be quoted in American media reports. And you’ll know that if your information isn’t enough to make the pieces all come together, those same media types will create additional anonymous sources from thin air to make the necessary news stories work.
If those stories convince Americans to stage riots in the streets and shut down college campuses, terrific.
If those stories stir the pot marked impeachment and prod Hillary to emerge as she does sometimes from the woods, great.
Terrific and great because without a shot, Russia has successfully and negatively affected the political process of the United States.
photo credit: Art Dũng _DA_96999 via photopin (license)