The infrastructure-pork bill is in the rearview mirror, Democrats have finished off the champagne, and they have turned their focus to the President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, with $1.75 trillion to be added to the existing $30 trillion national debt.
Americans can expect the corporate news media to shamelessly promote this spending package, and media has every reason to do so – there’s pork galore in it for newspapers and news broadcasters.
Under the BBB Act, the federal government will pay for one half of journalists who cover local news. All news companies have to do is show they cover “local” news, at least some of the time.
Here’s how it works: The BBB gives a tax credit of up to $25,000 per “local” news journalist for the first year, and then $15,000 for each subsequent year for four years.
That’s 50 percent of a $50,000 reporter for year one and 30 percent for three years, giving news organizations the ability to use existing revenues to pay for political reporters on news that is not strictly local — more political reporting from Washington and more reporting with spoon-fed conclusions from D.C. think tanks that prop up the liberal narrative.
The legislation also provides a tax deduction of up to $150,000 for the cost of producing sound recordings, which includes television, movies, live theatrical production, and podcasts.
The corporate media bailout can’t come at a worse time for the credibility of journalism.
In a Gallup poll this year, just 36% of all Americans have a great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media; 89% of Republican-aligned voters do not trust the media.
Exhibit A is the Steele Dossier, also known as the Trump-Russia investigation.
To review, it was political opposition research apparently funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016-17 to tie Donald Trump to a conspiracy with Russia. In an effort to win the presidency, Clinton it seems damaged the republic.
Former FBI director Robert Mueller was brought on as special counsel to investigate the origins of the dossier.
In a 448-page report, he officially debunked the entire Steele Dossier and other non-dossier conspiracy charges that Democrats and the corporate media had spun against Trump in 2016.
This month, Department of Justice special counsel John Durham won an indictment against one of the main actors for allegedly lying to the FBI about sources he used in the conspiracy dossier.
According to the indictment, on July 31, 2016, the FBI, using the Steele Dossier as its shield, opened up an investigation it called “Crossfire Hurricane” to determine if the Trump campaign was coordinating with the Russian government.
The investigation was mostly, if not exclusively, based on the now-discredited opposition research produced by Clinton’s campaign law firm and a research group called Fusion GPS, all funded with millions of dollars from both the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
The indictment against Russian operative Igor Danchenko describes that Clinton’s campaign was fully responsible for the ginned-up lies against Trump:
“Earlier that year, a U.S.-based international law firm (“Law Firm-1”) acting as counsel to the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign (the “Clinton Campaign” ), had retained a U.S.-based investigative firm (U.S. Investigative Firm – 1”) to conduct research on Trump and his associates. In or about June 2016 , (“U.S. Investigative Firm – 1)”, in turn , retained U.K. Person-1, a former officer in a friendly foreign intelligence service (“Foreign Intelligence Service – 1 ), and his U.K-.based firm to investigate Trump’s purported ties to Russia,” the grand jury has charged.
“During the U.S. presidential election season and afterwards, U.K. Person-1 and employees of U.S. Investigative Firm -1 provided the Company Reports to multiple media outlets and to U.S. government personnel,” the grand jury indictment says.
In 2017, the Trump-hating mainstream media bit down hard and published the dossier. Local papers parroted the reports from the big boys — the Washington Post. Last week, the Washington Post pulled it down off of its website and admitted that “parts “of the report have been discredited.
No kidding.
All of it is discredited, according to both Mueller and Durham.
The real villain here is Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton campaign, which likely committed treason against a duly elected president. Clinton, and most of her surrogates, including the collaborating media, will never face charges.
Axios, an independent digital news agency, calls the Steele Dossier reporting “one of the most egregious errors in modern journalistic history, and the media’s response to its own mistakes has so far been tepid.”
The Steele Dossier was quite simply a plot to overthrow the president, and the mainstream media got caught helping the attempted coup.
This is the same media that is now going to pimp the Build Back Better Act on behalf of Democrats in Congress and get tax credits as their reward.
The House may vote on the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act this week, with its rich rewards for the lying, scheming, and treasonous corporate media.
Suzanne Downing is the publisher of Must Read Alaska and Must Read America. Read Suzanne Downing's Reports — More Here.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.