As the year comes to a close, here are a dozen of the top stories the media majorly messed up.
January: Covington Catholic
The media ripped apart a 16-year-old student seen in a video smirking at a Native American activist on the National Mall during a school trip with Covington Catholic High School to Washington D.C. for the March for Life.
The release of added context however, reveals that Nick Sandmann, a junior at the school who is depicted in the viral image was being harassed along with his peers by members of the Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI).
That didn’t stop the media however, from vilifying Sandmann who has since launched legal challenges to media outlets who falsely reported the story.
February: Jussie Smollett
Television star of the popular series “Empire” was offered a plethora of sympathetic media coverage throughout February after suffering from an alleged racist and homophobic Jan. 29 attack.
It was later revealed however that Smollett faked the crime and faced 16 charges for lying to police. The Chicago Cook County prosecutor’s office however, dropped the charges while maintaining it did “exonerate him.”
As Jonathan Tobin points out for The Federalist, the episode illustrates the societal double-standard that it’s okay to lie if it’s in the name of left-wing social justice.
March: The Mueller Report
In perhaps one of the media’s most magnificent mistakes this year, special counsel Robert Mueller unveiled his findings from a two-year unlimited resource investigation completely exonerating President Donald Trump of being a Russian agent after years of the media’s peddling of the Russia hoax.
Mueller found not one person from the Trump campaign, let alone Trump himself, colluded with the Russian government in 2016 to defeat Hillary Clinton. Mueller’s report also acquitted Trump of any obstruction of justice charges for firing one of the most corrupt directors of the FBI, James Comey.
“He has no idea that he’s going down,” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough declared on Morning Joe as a result of the report.
April: White House Correspondents Dinner
The White House Correspondents Dinner in April this year opted to forgo a comedian this year to instead just attack Trump openly, complaining that the president might start rounding up journalists and putting them in jail.
Read The Federalist’s single editorial position on Washington’s “NerdProm” here.
May: Media Defends Biden’s Manhandling Of Young Girls
While the #MeToo era has brought down powerful men for alleged inappropriate conduct in recent years, the media exposed its double-standard when it comes to men they want to protect.
Former Vice President Joe Biden sparked criticism this year for his interactions with young girls earning the Democratic frontrunner the nickname “Creepy Uncle Joe.”
While the media will eviscerate any man the progressive movement attempts to bring down with allegations of sexual harassment, most notably Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, the media when to bat to defend Biden who has been leading the Democratic primary field ever since.
June: Media Standing Up For Antifa
Antifa, a left-wing movement to counter the fascist “alt-right” by conducting acts of domestic terrorism has been defended by the media as principled individuals united in their common valor to resist the anti-Trump forces threatening to destroy the country.
Exactly how Antifa is pursuing their mission? By destroying the country. Throughout the year the left-wing militant group has interrupted events and viciously attacked journalists covering their hate resulting in one reporter suffering a brain injury.
“It says it right in the name. ‘Antifa,’ which means ‘anti-fascism,’ which is what they were there fighting. Listen, no organization is perfect, there is some violence,” CNN’s Don Lemon said.
“They have taken a principled stand to stand against white supremacists and white nationalists wherever they may show up,” said a guest on MSNBC.
July: 50th Anniversary Of Moon Landing Celebrates Inequality
While America celebrated one of human civilization’s greatest accomplishments of world history by landing a man on the moon in 1969, the media condemned the event as a mostly white male dominated event… Ok.
August: Cuomo Goes Berserk After Being Called ‘Fredo’
In a viral moment caught on a phone camera, a man began berating CNN’s Chris Cuomo and called the primetime anchor “Fredo.”
“Don’t f***ing insult me like that… It’s like I call you punk b***h, you like that?” Cuomo scolded.
While Cuomo took great offense to the word as an Italian slur, the word is actually a reference to a character in “The Godfather.”
Cuomo even once referred to himself as Fredo in a radio interview.
September: Media Makes A Puppet Of Greta Thunberg
It’s a true tragedy, really. A 16-year-old climate activist on the autism spectrum kicked off a campaign to save the world from climate change, sailing across the Atlantic and lecturing the world at the United Nations of its imminent threat to humanity.
“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” Thunberg declared to world leaders.
What’s sad is the left’s puppeteering of Thunberg as their principle activist to prop up their efforts to enact radical climate legislation, using Thunberg as their flag-bearer to avoid criticism of their proposals labeling anyone who might dare question her demands as bigoted and cruel.
Time Magazine even picked Thunberg as their person of the year.
The Federalist has chosen the Hong Kong protestors instead.
October: WaPo Pens Glowing Obituary For ISIS Leader
While Grabien lists media coverage condemning a violent meme video shown at a Trump resort as October’s most mortifying moment, media reaction to the video wasn’t entirely unjustified given the nature of the video depicting Trump of murdering his opponents and members of the press. Instead, the media’s coverage of the president’s successful war on ISIS is far more worthy of condemnation.
After Trump announced the successful execution of the world’s most dangerous terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Washington Post published an astonishing obituary for the ISIS leader, branding the dead anti-American warmonger as an “austere religious scholar” in the headline.
Further, the Post spent the first half of the article chronicling al-Baghdadi’s rise in academia, waiting until the 40th paragraph to mention al-Baghdadi was also a serial rapist.
While the Post ultimately reframed story on the same day, the Post’s glaring mistake is illustrative of the wider media coverage on Trump’s battle with ISIS.
November: ABC Buried The Jeffrey Epstein Story
A leaked recording obtained by Project Veritas shows ABC anchor Amy Robach complaining that the network refused to run with her story on Jeffrey Epstein before the revelations surfaced of the hedge fund manager’s vast sex trafficking network.
“I’ve had the story for three years…We would not put it on the air. Um, first of all, I was told, who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story,” Robach said. “It was unbelievable what we had, Clinton, we had everything. Now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations and I freaking had it.”
ABC has since declared war on the whistleblower who leaked the recording instead of coming down on the executives who buried the story.
December: IG Blows Up Steele Dossier Upheld By The Media
Earlier this month, the Justice Department inspector general released a long-anticipated report on the FBI’s FISA abuses of four warrants used to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign.
One of the major revelations to emerge from the report was the confirmation that the sources from the discredited Steele Dossier were relied upon to re-issue the warrants from the FISA courts to continue its deep-state operations. FBI officials knew as early as January of 2017 that the sources were providing junk intelligence and did not include that information in their warrant applications.
The media however, spent years defending the credibility of the Steele Dossier in peddling the Russia hoax.