It should be no surprise as 2020 comes to an end that corporate media covered a horrific year as horrifically as expected. From its laudatory coverage of the presidential impeachment it encouraged to the blatant gaslighting about this year’s riotous protests, the nation’s least accountable institution performed as usual, only escalating its protection of Democrats and leftism, and shameless manipulation of the facts while demanding total power to determine them.
Here are 20 top mortifying moments of the media in 2020.
20: Iranian Terrorist Was A War Hero
The Trump administration rang in the pre-pandemic new year with the execution of Iranian Revolutionary Guard terrorist leader Qasem Soleimani, or, as legacy media described him, a “war hero.”
Soleimani had recently orchestrated attacks on U.S. military bases in Iraq, killing at least one American contractor in December. The Iranian terrorist had also been behind bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to administration officials who said this played no small role in the decision to take Soleimani out.
American media however, infected by Trump Derangement Syndrome in a debilitating condition that only grew worse as the following months marked this year among most challenging of the 21st century, refrained from celebrating Soleimani’s demise. Instead, the media lionized the Iranian general as a Middle Eastern hero while spiking fears of World War III begun by a mad man in the White House.
19: Media Celebrates Impeachment
While the novel Wuhan coronavirus brewed in China preceding a global pandemic that would bring the world to its knees, Democrats and the media entered the new year on the cusp of achieving the top item on their policy agenda since 2016: the impeachment of President Donald Trump, for any reason at all.
When the final vote was held in February, exonerating the president following the four-year stunt, corporate outlets nevertheless fawned over the process they promoted that distracted the federal government from preparing for the disease in overseas later crippling the nation.
“There’s a sacramental quality to this. There’s a ritual,” MSNBC’s Chris Matthews lamented. “There’s also something sort of this excommunication aspect to this thing.”
18: Fake Math Meets Fake News
In March, MSNBC’s Brian Williams, safe from the Army helicopter shot down that he never flew in, brought New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay on air to affirm a wildly inaccurate tweet flying around on social media.
“Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over,” the post on Twitter wrote, which Williams promoted on the national network unironically while interviewing a New York Times editor who called it accurate.
“It’s an incredible way of putting it,” Williams said.
“It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true, it’s disturbing,” Gay responded.
17: Downplays COVID Before Attacking President For Doing It
Just before legacy outlets spent the rest of the election whipping hysteria over President Trump’s comments downplaying the severity of the novel Chinese coronavirus, corporate media elites were doing the same thing.
“Coronavirus is not going to cause a major issue in the United States,” one guest said on CBS.
Meanwhile, commentators on CNN frequently compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu.
Yet, at the launch of the general election season after Labor Day, legacy outlets reported on Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s book release. The book revealed statements from the president downplaying the viral threat, which media then treated as the biggest scandal to plague the Trump White House in the final weeks to November. The “bombshell” reporting book published in September, however, revealed no sentiments the president not already issued directly to reporters in the White House press briefing room.
But the headlines didn’t follow until September, when it all of a sudden became a media-manufactured scandal.
“Trump Admits Downplaying the Virus Knowing It Was “Deadly Stuff,'” titled a front-page piece in the New York Times. “Trump Acknowledges He Intentionally Downplayed Coronavirus Threat,” followed the Washington Post cover.
16: Flip Flop On COVID, Raise Hysteria to Promote Lockdowns
Almost right on cue, the media changed its tune on COVID once the president did. As Trump pulled the levers of the federal government to encourage states to reopen and get kids back in school, outlets escalated their hysterics over the coronavirus as promising to wipe out the entire country.
When Trump encouraged Americans not to let COVID “dominate your life,” as he recovered from his own infection, the media was triggered into a frenzy.
“This is so disrespectful, I’m not even sure I can speak about this,” CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta said.
By the year’s end, hundreds of thousands of more children have dropped out of school than have died from COVID as teachers unions and Democrats target school closures with made-up science.
15: Lockdown Protests Are Violent
In the past nine months, legacy media has condemned lockdown protestors, whose lives have been upended because the government deemed their lives’ work non-essential. They’ve been described by corporate media as reckless, selfish, dangerous, suicidal, racist because they could spread the virus to black people, and undeserving of medical attention.
As Americans took to the streets to demand their freedom, elite on-air media personalities sitting comfortably in their offices raking in generous paychecks derided the protestors as “ugly,” “extreme,” and “dangerous.”
“I don’t understand what is wrong with people,” CNN’s Don Lemon said in prime time. “Stay at home.”
Of course it’s hard to understand protests over losing employment when your celebrity-estimated net worth stands at $12 million.
14: Violent Protests As Peaceful
After vilifying protestors advocating for a cause they didn’t like, the woke media began righteously lionizing militant riots for social justice as “peaceful” demonstrations for progress.
MSNBC’s Ali Velshi’s May episode standing in front of grand inferno calling the surrounding riot “mostly a protest” is emblematic of the entire corporate coverage afforded to the explosion of political violence sweeping the nation this summer.
In August, CNN aired an early-morning chryon featuring their correspondent in Kenosha, Wisconsin unironically spelling out a phrase that had become a meme to define the network’s riot coverage.
There are practically endless examples of media malfeasance on the summer social justice riots to choose from, but CNN’s Chris Cuomo’s entire dismissal of Velshi in front of a burning building and calling the events a “protest” may best sum up the media’s attitude towards the epidemic of unrest.
13: Bubba Wallace Hoax
In June, controversy ensued following news of a “noose” hanging from NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s garage. Wallace is credited as one of the most successful black racers in the sport’s history and the only black driver currently in the league’s top tier.
A subsequent FBI investigation featuring 15 agents concluded the “hate crime noose” had actually been a garage pull rope. Further, the FBI found the rope had been there since October 2019, and Wallace’s team was only assigned to the garage just days before this summer’s race.
Mere allegations of a hate crime didn’t stop the media from amplifying a hoax hate crime to promote their narrative, though, while characterizing NASCAR as a relic sport of white supremacy. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell declared the unsubstantiated “noose” a “horrifyingly, racist incident,” which it would have been if it were actually a noose.
Former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, who now writes for The Atlantic, called the “noose” a “disgusting reminder of who this sport is for.” Considering last year’s stories about the Covington high school kids and actor Jussie Smollett, this kind of media conduct is becoming a routine trend.
12: Kobe Bryant Gaffe
MSNBC Sunday anchor Alison Morris mixed up the words “Los Angeles Lakers” with “knicks” before correcting herself from what could have sounded like the N-word when reporting on basketball legend Kobe Bryant’s early and unfortunate death. Morris later apologized, claiming that she stuttered on air.
11: Media Claims Trump Preparing To Enact Martial Law
The same entities charging Trump with amplifying conspiracies saw no end in manufacturing their own claiming the president was preparing to enact martial law to secure the November election.
“Is there anybody, having watched Donald Trump over the past three and a half years, who doesn’t think that Donald Trump would try to employ martial law?” asked one MSNBC guest.
10: Blow Up Mount Rushmore
As left-wing media led the 21st century woke revolution redefining the nation as an irredeemably racist society built by white supremacists for white supremacists on “stolen land,” the national monument at Mount Rushmore became a target.
The assault on the monument and the nation’s history provoked a presidential visit over Independence Day weekend. Trump’s trip heightened scrutiny of the American masterpiece. Leftist reporters derided the visit as paying homage to “slave holders” because two of the men enshrined on the South Dakota memorial owned slaves.
Despite Trump’s speech celebrating the country’s civil rights heroes, The New York Times still declared the patriotic address “dark” and “divisive.” Other outlets followed suit.
9: Chris Matthews Can't Tell Black Men Apart
In February, then-MSNBC prime-time host of “Hardball” Chris Matthews mistook Republican Sen. Tim Scott for Jaime Harrison, another South Carolina African-American politician running to oust Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.
“Jaime, I see you standing next to the guy you’re gonna beat right there, maybe,” Matthews said.
8: Everything Chris Cuomo
From staging a fake re-emergence from his basement following his infection with the novel Wuhan virus to promoting his New York governor brother in prime time with silly gimmicks and indignantly demanding someone just show him the First Amendment, CNN’s Chris Cuomo became the poster child for CNN bias in 2020.
7: Mika Throws Temper Tantrum
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski underwent an on-air meltdown in August after President Trump mocked his Democratic opponent’s proposal for a federal mask mandate.
Brzezinski alluded to the idea Trump might kill her at one point.
“You can be sure that you will never see me on Fifth Avenue, ever ever, because he has said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. I believe him,” Brzezinski said in an apparent audition for Bravo programming following queens with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
6: Trump Weaponizing Postal Service to Steal Election
In August, Democrats spun a new conspiracy following the failure of the Russia hoax to indict President Trump. This time, he was baselessly accused of manipulating the U.S. Postal Service to secure re-election.
Former President Barack Obama said Trump was “undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to the election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump was out to “sabotage the election” through the Postal Service to “disenfranchise voters.”
The media characteristically followed the party line.
“Trump: Clearly I’m Screwing With The Post Office To Sabotage The Election,” headlined Vanity Fair. Vice and New York Magazine issued similar headlines.
Of course none of what Democrats and their allies in the media alleged actually happened. No voters were denied their right to vote because of sweeping last-minute changes implemented to curb Democratic turnout. To the contrary, it was Democrats in key swing states who initiated last-minute rule changes that increased voting error margins, to their own benefit in November.
5: Pack The Court
After President Trump cemented his legacy with the appointment and confirmation of three conservative Supreme Court justices with Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s successful admission in October, Democrats and their allies in the media followed suit.
“The only way that we restore fairness is for Congress to pass an act expanding the court,” said the Huffington Post’s Jill Filipovic.
4: Biden Bus
In the final days of the election, videos surfaced of vehicles decked out in Trump memorabilia apparently harassing a Biden campaign bus in Texas. Corporate outlets were quick condemn an altercation that occurred between two opposing vehicles as an “ambush,” only for local police to clarify the at-fault vehicle belonged to a Biden-Harris staffer.
MSNBC continued to peddle the lie anyway.
“I guess I wonder where all of the voices are to condemn taking political partisanship and political speech to 70 miles an hour on the highways,” said MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace.
3: Media Gushes Over Biden
Former Vice President Joe Biden went through the entire election as the least scrutinized presidential candidate of a major party in decades, answering less than half as many questions as President Donald Trump by Axios’ count in October. Many of the questions the Democratic nominee did get, however, were thinly disguised attacks on Trump.
“President Trump says offensive things, he never apologizes for it. Is there a double-standard here?” asked CNN’s Dana Bash.
“When you hear these remarks, ‘suckers,’ ‘losers,’ what does it tell you about President Trump’s soul?” one reporter asked in reference to an anonymously sourced story alleging the comments published by The Atlantic in September.
2: Media Dismiss Hunter Biden Stories
Among the most consequential follies of the 2020 Trump-era media was its dismissal of credible reporting on President-elect Joe Biden’s potentially criminal family business ventures.
After spending years seeking to indict President Trump as an agent of the Kremlin government, the media went silent on stories implicating Joe Biden in his son’s overseas business dealings while exposing a laundry list of lies peddled by the Democratic candidate on the campaign trail.
Taxpayer-funded NPR said it wasn’t worth the editors’ time.
CBS’s Lesley Stahl denied to nearly 17 million viewers on “60 Minutes” that Joe Biden was under any scandal at all.
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour self-righteously declared herself a journalist while gasping in astonishment at the idea that she conduct journalism.
Read a run-down of the most embarrassing Hunter Biden coverups here.
1: Media Weeps Over Biden Victory
To the media, Trump had been the unhinged comic book villain on a course of destruction. It’s no surprise, then, that following Biden’s triumphant victory with their collective support, on-air commentators began to weep at Biden’s claims of victory.
Government-funded PBS reporter Yamiche Alcindor offered a preview of the kind of hard-hitting journalism to look forward to under the next four years of a Biden-Harris administration by comparing Biden’s cabinet picks to “The Avengers.”