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There were many, many stories that the mainstream media twisted in favor of the narrative they support. They pushed liberal political figures like Andrew Cuomo, while unreasonably attacking conservatives like Ron DeSantis. Dr. Anthony Fauci was presented as a scientific eminence, but today he is on the brink because of his disclosed emails.
They also actively worked against former U.S. President Donald Trump in an unprecedented campaign that ended with a remarkable public cancel that turned out to be a conspiracy against him. Likewise, the mainstream media rose up like a steamroller of “conspiracy theories” and decided to bury everything that did not favor their narrative, among them, the possible origin of COVID-19 in a Chinese laboratory.
Not to be forgotten is Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, whose shady business dealings have been nipping at his heels. However, the mainstream media decided not to give him a fair news treatment.
Without further ado, here are the 5 big mainstream media scams of the last year:
Andrew Cuomo, the award-winning governor who covered up the deaths of seniors
The first big mainstream media scam could be none other than a Democratic politician: Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, who strolled through the liberal media doing colorful interviews and reporting on COVID-19 becoming practically a TV star.
His brother, CNN’s Chris Cuomo, interviewed him repeatedly and both became a television trend.
Andrew Cuomo even received an Emmy Award for his communications efforts to inform New Yorkers about the coronavirus.
However, far from the familiar questions, Cuomo’s leadership and his ability to deal with the pandemic, there was an undeniable reality in New York for a whole year: economic and health crisis.
New York is one of the states that suffered the most from the pandemic, both economically and in terms of health. The draconian closures, in addition to lowering the rate of infection and deaths, only served to devastate the hospitality industry and ruin the economy of one of the most important states in the U.S..
If New York is compared to Florida, Florida not only has much better economic and employment rates but also controlled the pandemic better without the need to implement very long confinements.
Nevertheless, the media decided to attack the strategy of Ron DeSantis and not that of Andrew Cuomo.
The New York governor remained popular in the mainstream media until the unthinkable happened: the concealment of COVID-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes.
Cuomo, who rewarded himself for supposedly being a communicational “ace” in the pandemic, “forgot” to communicate the actual number of elderly deaths in nursing homes due to the coronavirus. The administration’s underreporting, according to the New York Attorney General, was about 50%.
Hunter Biden and the mainstream media blindness
3 weeks before the November presidential election, the New York Post released a major exclusive: Hunter Biden, according to emails found on the laptop computer abandoned in Delaware, introduced then-Vice President Joe Biden to a top executive of the troubled Ukrainian energy company Burisma, a year after Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma for corruption.
On several occasions, the now President Biden denied that he was aware of the business dealings of his son, who received juicy salaries from Burisma for serving on its board of directors. The president’s son was paid almost a million dollars a year to work for the Ukrainian firm involved in corruption schemes.
However, most of the mainstream media -with the exception of Fox News– did not pick up the story from the New York Post, the longest-running newspaper in the United States.
The Post, as a result of the story, suffered one of the most emblematic cases of censorship in the history of the American press at the hands of Big Tech, since Facebook and Twitter decided to suspend the dissemination of Hunter’s story alleging that the journalistic work could violate internal hacking rules and that the fact-checkers could not verify the veracity of the story.
This scandal was buried by the mainstream media in the pre-election process, but after the presidential election, more exclusives were revealed regarding Hunter’s shady business dealings. In fact, it was revealed that the FBI was (and still is) investigating the president’s son and his associates for money laundering.
Mainstream media “saving” democracy from Donald Trump
The presidential campaign between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was savage, especially in the media, where the mainstream media persistently told distorted stories against then-President Trump.
The journalistic media campaign against Trump was huge, and much of this can be explained from the revelation of TIME magazine, interestingly enough, which is also part of the elephantiasic mainstream media.
TIME published “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election,” revealing that both progressive and conservative activist groups, put together a conspiracy against Trump to “save the election.
The magazine comments that this conspiracy was necessary because American democracy had to be saved from Trump How did they do it? This is how the magazine sums it up, “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”
It was a legal effort, of course. Political activists have the right to implement strategies. However, the mainstream media also played a preponderant role in the conspiracy, being the promoters of positioning Trump as an autocrat. A questionable claim.
Fake news also came and went like a boomerang. The coverage was biased and that, ethically, goes against any respectable journalistic manual.
No conspiracy that includes perversion of laws and institutions can be plausible. However, the mainstream media not only applauded it but surgically orchestrated it.
The Wuhan lab: from conspiracy to “plausible” theory
One of the many topics manipulated by the mainstream media was the possible origin of COVID-19 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Since last year, the mainstream American media decided to label the lab conspiracy theory based on the opinions of potentially biased or conflicted scientists and experts. Conservative politicians who argued that the lab theory should not be dismissed were called “racists pushing unsubstantiated theories.”
However, a year later, various reports, scientific analyses, and journalistic investigations revealed details of coronavirus experiments and research at WIV.
There were always details to take this theory seriously. According to American diplomatic cables, the WIV conducted experiments with dangerous coronaviruses, such as gain of function, and according to experts, the laboratory did not have the necessary levels of biosecurity.
The Wall Street Journal also revealed that WIV scientists were infected in November 2019 with a flu-like illness with symptoms very similar to COVID-19. They even required hospitalization.
The secrecy of the Chinese regime was also not helpful in determining, through an independent investigation, where the virus originated. WIV was one of the most difficult points to investigate. The World Health Organization (WHO) investigated the laboratory, but Chinese interference was relentless and WHO Director Tedros Adhanom had to declare that the laboratory was still to be investigated.
Despite all these details, the mainstream media decided not to dive into the plausible theory of laboratory leakage. Instead, they preferred to turn a blind eye and endorse the unproven theory of interspecies jumping as the origin of the virus. Today, after all the evidence against China and WIV has been revealed, the media is silently backtracking.
Fauci, from scientific eminence to questionable figure
The last great mainstream media product to fall was Dr. Anthony Fauci. The leading expert in infectious diseases in the United States -and probably in the world- was exalted by the media as an unquestionable figure.
His position regarding masks began to generate doubts, because while the vaccination process was advancing successfully in the U.S., Fauci went out publicly wearing masks despite being 100% vaccinated. Something inconsistent considering what scientific evidence dictates: the possibility of becoming infected when fully vaccinated is quite low.
However, the most serious aspect was the recently revealed e-mails, which left Dr. Fauci in a bad light, especially because of the expert’s knowledge of the research carried out.
Fauci knew many details about the Wuhan lab leak theory, or the possibility that the virus could have been man-made, however, he decided to keep quiet for more than a year. The expert, although he continues to say that the theory of the jump between species is probable, also admits that there is a possibility that the virus could have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The mainstream media spread an infinite number of questionable stories, however, these 5 topics are, without a doubt, their biggest scams of the last year.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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