I first noticed something wrong a day or two after the attack on the consulate in Benghazi. Reports from reliable sources with first or second-hand knowledge of the events completely contradicted the official report from the State Department, yet most the major news organizations continued to only report the official story while ignoring information from those who actually knew what happened. Of course, the media had a duty to report the official story, but they also had a duty to let the public know about the obvious, documented, contradictions in the official story. As the days and months went by, the State Department and the news media had ample opportunity to verify those sources and correct their story but failed to do so.
Since that time verifiable gaps between U.S. government agency reports and reliable facts have expanded to an extent that approaches that of the former Soviet Union. Most of the traditional news media as well as much of the new media seem determined to prop up official narratives and protect Americans from the truth.
Did this official lying start in 2012 with the Benghazi attack? That seems unlikely. The thing that made Benghazi different was that the internet gave Americans access to reliable news sources from around the world. For the first time, Americans could compare the official stories and American media reports with reports from the international media.
From here, I cannot be sure if the lying has gotten worse or if it was always this bad. It does seem to me, however, there has been a change in the nature of the lies. The 1990s were the decade of so-called “spin,” when officials selectively reported factual information out of context, choosing words carefully to mislead the voters. By 2010 it had become common to hear of top officials making verifiably untrue statements with no attempt to support them with facts; but they were still lying about true situations. By 2016, officials were making up fantasy fiction stories out of whole cloth, with no bearing on reality, and reporting them as facts. It hasn’t gotten much better since then, and the funny thing is, the officials no longer seem to mind if the public knows they are lying.
Posted 2023/02/03
I stopped getting a newspaper and listening to TV news back in the middle 2000. They would get so focused on one subject and never talk about anything else. Now that local news is owned by large corporations the newsreaders are just saying the same words verbatim all over the county. I don’t really trust any news sources right now. I swing right, but they lie too.
There is a phenomenon called Gell-Mann Amnesia. Physicist Murray Gell-Mann once commented that he always found errors in articles about things he was personally familiar with, but assumed all other articles were correct.