![]() Right-wing TV and radio shows regularly hype Durham as a hero who is trying to right the perceived wrongs of “Russiagate.” Key word: Perceived. They were incentivized to do the opposite.Īmong Trump loyalists, Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe is a shot at vindication. The second was that the initial stories never actually went beyond the technical language to explain what purportedly happened.īut the ideological outlets that blew the filing way out of proportion weren’t incentivized to apply journalistic analysis to the filing. The fact that this supposed “bombshell” had been buried in a motion related to claims about attorneys having a conflict of interest, and not an indictment, was the first sign that the story was not what right-wing outlets said. But pro-Trump media outlets noticed the filing and started to share it on Saturday. It was not accompanied by any indictments or other prosecutorial steps. The accusation was couched in what Polantz and Perez described as “vague, technical language” in a court filing. ![]() The talking points all stem from this: On Friday night, as CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez explained in a Monday article, special counsel John Durham “accused a lawyer for the Democrats of sharing with the CIA in 2017 internet data purported to show Russian-made phones being used in the vicinity of the White House complex, as part of a broader effort to raise the intelligence community’s suspicions of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia shortly after he took office.” The anatomy of a right-wing talking point That’s why it is worth examining this as a media phenomenon and an example of how talking points are spread by a massive media apparatus and shared by millions of consumers. That should have been the end of it - but instead the careful reporting became fodder for commentators to allege a media cover-up. Reporters who went down the rabbit hole to examine the evidence found something very different from what Trump and his media allies said. The actual court filing at issue is much less newsworthy than the explosion of false claims that have ricocheted from it. Tuesday’s cover of the New York Post portrayed “HILLARY THE SPY.” The Wall Street Journal editorial page said “Trump really was spied on.” Fox hosts have called it a “bombshell” dozens of times. Trump’s statement made no sense – except to the Fox audience base that badly wants it to be true.įour days later, Trump-aligned media outlets are still amplifying his bogus message far and wide and ranting about the circumstances of his 2016 election win over Hillary Clinton. ![]() He called for criminal prosecutions and “reparations.” He said “in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.” On Saturday night former President Donald Trump declared that he was the victim of a scandal “far greater” than Watergate. ![]()
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