CBS 60 Minutes produced a hilarious and very contradictory news report about fake news and it’s widespread implications. Scott Pelley began the piece by saying fake news existed on the right and on the left as a way to make it appear to be non-partisan. But in reality, the story was a thinly veiled hit-piece on Donald Trump and conservatism in general. Near the beginning of the 13 minute story, Pelley says that Trump uses the term “fake news” to speak out against stories that he does not like. How does Scott Pelley know why he uses the term? Hillary Clinton was the one who actually coined the phrase during and/or shortly after the campaign, but she was not mentioned as a fake news peddler at all in the piece.
Scott Pelley then interviewed Mike Cernovich, a well-known center-right leaning blogger. Cernovich has the type of appearance and voice that would be distrusting to the average leftist. Scott Pelley asked him fair questions, but the way contrast between Pelley and Cernovich in addition to the setting made it easy to write off Cernovich. As the story continued, 60 Minutes showed a few “fake news” websites. Websites with “fake” news from the left and right were both shown, but there was bias in the websites shown. The more conservative-leaning websites featuring “fake” stories about the left seemed much more professional and believable than the liberal-leaning websites featuring “fake” news stories about the right. It seems as if the point was to downplay the severity of “fake news” on the left.
Pizza-gate was mentioned towards the beginning as a “fake news” story that had real world and dangerous implications but, again, nothing was mentioned of “fake news” stories from the left that had real world and dangerous implications. Many people were assaulted and harassed at Trump rallies by leftists due to salacious headlines from the left. Stories of racism and hate about the right are routinely overblown then presented to the masses as real by the mainstream media and people ingest that information as gospel. No mention of public retractions and apologies from the mainstream media were mentioned in this story. Only very small websites with a decent following were talked about and it was a left-leaning production. It seems like the “fake news” story was “fake news” itself.
