When I was a kid, I was always under the impression that the news was just the news; reporting on facts, with no bias or leanings. Maybe a little bit of personality from the anchors, and on snow days, waiting for the weather people, otherwise, waiting until the last 5-7 minutes of the show for sports, so I can see which team was the latest to fall to the Chicago Bulls or what Cal Ripken, Jr’s consecutive game streak was at. But that the FOX5 10 o’clock news was just news, the same as all other news outlets, and really nothing more.
I don’t think it was until the 2000 Presidential election did I realize that news outlets were far more capable of things other than just, the news. Regardless of what one feels about FOX News, there’s no denying their involvement in the 2000 election, about how they declared a victor a little too precariously early and their overwhelming support for the Republican party.
This experience opened my eyes that news sources were not as neutral and unbiased as I had grown up thinking they were, and that there were most definitely rosters of various sources taking difference sides and positions in political spectrum.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that I lean left when it comes to most facets of life, and I like to believe I’m a pretty liberal thinker, open-minded to lots of logical things. That being said, I used to often read the Huffington Post, because I appreciated their want to broadcast positive and uplifting stories, especially in a media-driven world hell-bent on reporting all the stories of violence, hatred, gunfire and war; if it bleeds, it leads, and there’s really only so much of it I can tolerate on a daily basis without feeling like I’m losing my humanity.
But after the completely arrogant and misguided manner in which the Huffington Post anticipated the last Presidential election, I pretty much soured on them outright. I mean seriously, how could they forecast like a 97% chance of victory for Hilary Clinton and then have the audacity to show up to work the following day when they were proven wrong? Although I would blame several parties for the disagreeable result of the last election, I always felt that HuffPo carried a larger part of blame, due to the arrogance in which they predicted it, and nowadays I don’t really look at them at all anymore.
CNN was always an outlet that I felt was fairly neutral; that is until the last election. Perhaps it’s a changing of the times, or maybe it’s always been like it and I’ve just been blissfully ignorant of it. Or maybe the leaning went extreme with the rise of mein fuhrer, but CNN stopped looking like such a neutral outlet to me after last November. I still went mostly out of habit, the ease in which I remember they’re an outlet for news, and the fact that I like several of their contributors, but I tended to glaze over anything they had to say about politics, because I couldn’t not see just how biased their network was, and when things are biased, they’re unreliable in my opinion.
So it’s especially ironic to me, that among all of the unpleasant happenings, developments and movements that have occurred as direct result of the elected guy, that CNN would stoop down to his level and do something as fucked up as doxing an individual because they posted something on the internet that they didn’t like.
I mean really, CNN tracked a guy down like Jay and Silent Bob, and basically dangled the anonymity of his identity over his head until he went on Reddit to apologize for having a little bit of harmless fun on the internet. There’s really no way to sugarcoat that this was the narrative based on CNN’s choice of words and their repeated statements that they were voluntarily withholding the individual’s identity from public release.
In other words, blackmail.
I 100% believe that elected guy would do this himself, but he hasn’t, despite the fact that he probably has more justification to do so, considering all the veiled threats and inflammatory things said about him. And it’s especially sad that what ultimately triggered CNN was a crudely generated GIF of their logo superimposed onto Vince McMahon’s head getting clotheslined by Bozo the Prez.
But seriously, of all the fucked up things to happen involving the disagreement in leadership, it’s ironic that this story one, it didn’t come from the presidential side, and that two, it’s a tactic more associated by being used by more nefarious parties, often as blackmail, regardless of if it’s white-hat or black-hat motivated.
In spite of outlets like CNN crying out that elected guy is often conducting himself unprofessionally and making choices that are unconstitutional, it’s hypocritical for CNN to personally attack and target one person’s First Amendment rights.
Ironically, by the logic of the source material, there’s no actual violence being promoted against the media, but instead scripted, rehearsed and premeditated violence. But now having typed that out, how fucking meta would it be if that’s exactly what this whole debacle actually was? That HanAssholeSolo was perhaps a CNN employee already, and that this whole fucking thing was a stunt?? Not sure what CNN would gain by making everyone think that they were hypocritical assholes, but maybe they’re tired of just being a news outlet, and they’re out to become the BAD BOYS of NEWS, and not look like such squares next to FOX News and their parade of hot reporters.
But either way, I do not like what CNN has done. They sank to the level of the guy they’re trying to denounce on a daily basis, losing sight of what they exist to provide, which is news, and are employing deplorable tactics in the name of journalistic integrity. I’ve already reduced how often I go to CNN, going to outlets like USA Today and Reuters, which feel not nearly as biased, and if I really want facts, then I can simply seek out AP articles directly.
