Fake News Media on Parade

By Brent E. Zepke, Esq.

As an investor I learned that major societal trends always spur movements in the financial markets. Consider how the trend for the mainstream media was reflected in the Rasmussen Report conclusion that in the 2024 Presidential race the mainstream media provided 85% negative coverage for Donald Trump, 78% positive coverage for Kamala Harris, and helped hide Joe Biden’s decline. All of which was reflected in the changes in the financial conditions and ownership of those media.

For example:

• MSNBC is being packaged with CNBC as a “spin off” by Comcast, which is retaining NBC

• CNN’s owner Warner Media was sold to Discovery, which merged it into Warner Brothers Discovery

• CBS’s owner Paramount Global has merged with Viacom

• ABC is being financially carried by Disney’s theme parks

• National Public Radio (NPR) is downsizing, as are multiple other public media

• Axios was sold in 2022

• Owners of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post are all following the example of the owner of the dearly departed Santa Barbara News-Press in exercising more control over editorials

• Axel Springer, the German company that owns the Business Insider and Politico, is under investigation.

This will surprise long-time investors who remember when the news was the big “income generator” for media.

I fondly remember my grandfather exiting the dinner table for his chair and the newspaper, and my father watching Walter Cronkite on our tiny, black and white television. My first involvement with news was delivering the all-too-heavy Philadelphia Inquirer and Bulletin, followed by my scanning a morning newspaper. It was while traveling that I began to see the creeping of editorial opinions onto the front page of USA Today.

I now begin my days on the internet, as do my children.

Ted Turner, who created CNN to deliver the news 24-hours a day started a trend. However, as the former news anchor Sander Vanocur commented, “There is not enough news to fill twenty-four hours a day.” I relate the news readers trying to fill the 24 hours to baseball announcers trying to fill in the time during a rain delay, which may be at least part of the reason for the trend of news commentators believing their opinions were part of the news.

Consider, for example, The Tonight Show where Johnny Carson emphasized humor and avoided politics, transitioning into the cast of characters today featuring their political views that has resulted in FOX’s Gutfeld! dominating the ratings.

The White House Correspondence Association’s (WHCA) annual dinner illustrated its approach to the news about the presidency.

The WHCA’s stated mission is promote the interests of journalists who cover the White House and advocating for the importance of a free and independent press as the fourth estate. This includes ensuring robust news coverage of the president and the presidency, encouraging the next generation of White House correspondents, and promoting excellence in journalism and journalism education.

Coverage of the President

WHCA president Eugene Daniels and MSNBC correspondent, selected Amber Ruffin as the comedian for the dinner with the words “Amber’s unique talents are the ideal fit for this current political and cultural climate.”

Ms. Ruffin’s talents include her referring to the Trump administration as “kind of a bunch of murderers” who “feel like (they are) human beings, but…shouldn’t get to feel that way, because (they are) not.”

Ms. Ruffin unique talents demonstrate how far the WHCA has drifted from its stated mission.

The WHCA forced Daniels to announce that it would “do without” a comedian, which apparently is a euphemistic way of saying “we canceled her act.”

At the dinner, Daniels began his speech with “We are not the enemy of the state”; It made me wonder if he “doth protest too much” (Shakespeare’s Hamlet).

Daniels continued: “Our responsibility is not to align with any one party or gender, but to serve the people of the country with integrity and dedication. We care deeply about accuracy and take seriously the heavy responsibility of being stewards of the public’s trust. What we are not is the opposition.”

Hmmm, this from the lips of the man who chose Amber Ruffin to entertain?

The NBC reporter Kristen Walker White announced that Axios’ Alex Thompson was receiving the Aldo Beckman Award for Journalistic Excellence for his “aggressive reporting on President Biden,” revealing that “the president’s cognitive decline was impacting his ability to do his job.”

Thompson said “The decay of President Biden and the cover-up by those around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception. We carry part of the responsibility for the low trust in the media. Acknowledging mistakes builds trust; being defensive only erodes it further. We, myself included, missed a lot of the story…”

What a great speech.

He downplayed the deceit involved in the Democrats hiding the “decay of President Biden and the cover-up” by including “every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception.”

He continued “acknowledging mistakes builds trust” while not acknowledging that his failure to cover other stories, such as Hunter’s laptop, destroys trust.

Thompson announced that he is slated to release his book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” with Jake Tapper of CNN.

Thompson’s splitting the cause of the deception between the White House and the media was disputed by Chuck Todd.

Chuck Todd, former NBC employee who hosted Meet the Press for about ten years, insisted on former CNN Chris Cillizza’s podcast that the media is not to blame for the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental decline. Instead, it was the Democrat party and various high-ranking members of it, including Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Jill Biden, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and every elected member of Congress.

The reality is it was the Democrat party that dominated the White House, the WACA and it was the mainstream media that provided the fake news about Biden’s “stamina” and his multiple other deceptions such as “the border is closed.”

The election of Donald Trump indicated that a majority of the public no longer believed the mainstream media or the WHCA.

The financial markets are indicating that investors have also transitioned away from mainstream media and the WHCA to FOX, podcasts, and hopefully sources such as SBCurrent.

Take a look at COLAB’s latest video, “The Great Fee Heist”