Article by Brian C. Joondeph in The American Thinker
Fake News Still Gaslighting America with Phony Polls
Opinion polls, particularly in the buildup to a presidential election, are not designed to reflect public opinion, but instead to shape it. For the media, objectivity is only of historic interest, a journalistic tenet from a bygone era. Now most of the media is embedded within the Democrat party, serving as an advocacy arm or political action committee to influence elections and agendas.
A CNN staffer, who bragged that he was “one step down” from a director, admitted to an undercover Tinder date, actually a real journalist working for James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, that CNN was “creating a story” that “we didn’t know anything about,” calling it “propaganda” to help remove President Trump from office. The epitome of fake news.
Fake news media have many gaslighting tools at their disposal. Some outlets doctor audio or video tapes to make their “bad guy” appear racist or doing something illegal. Or, they make their “good guy” look like Mother Teresa. Recipients of this treatment range from law enforcement and Ferguson’s Gentle Giant Michael Brown, to George Zimmerman, and even President Donald Trump.
Many cable news channels, or newspapers simply say or print falsehoods, as in Trump-Russia collusion, Russian bounties on American soldiers, or the cause of death of a Capitol Police officer. The error or correction, if acknowledged at all, is relegated to a couple of lines buried in back of the newspaper several days or more later.
Opinion polls are a well-known and effective method of shaping opinion. These methods have been well described and include sampling whoever answers the phone versus likely voters, the latter being a practice of Rasmussen Reports in their high accurate presidential opinion polls. Oversampling Democrats is another fraudulent way to produce a poll result favoring the DNC media agenda.
President Biden last week addressed Congress, at least those select few members invited to listen to Sleepy Joe propose new spending in excess of $4 trillion, an amount larger than what the federal government takes in annually through already-confiscatory taxes.
Despite most or all members of Congress, as well as the president and vice president, already being vaccinated, the sparse audience was wearing masks and sitting at least six feet apart. If fully vaccinated, why were the attendees acting as though they were not? If the government message is that the vaccine works and everyone should take it, why are the top government leaders sending the opposite message?
Cable news anchors from CNN and MSNBC, joined by Fox News’s Chris Wallace, were gushing over Biden’s speech, some nearly in tears, a far cry from any Trump speech reaction over the past four years. CNN commissioned a poll to support their lovefest over Biden’s spendfest speech.
Their headline on the day after Biden’s speech was “7 in 10 who watched say Biden’s speech left them feeling optimistic.”
Start with the bit about “who watched.” How many Americans gave up an hour of their evening to watch what the media thought was a speech on par with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech? Not too many.
Charlie Kirk tweeted out TV ratings for presidential addresses.
Trump 17—48,000,000
Trump 18—46,000,000
Trump 19—46,800,000
Trump 20—37,200,000
Biden 21—11,600,000
The last figure was the sum total of the three main legacy television networks - CBS, ABC, and NBC, plus Fox News. Nielsen reports the audience from more sources at 26.9 million. Either way, Biden drew considerably less of the audience that Trump did in his first congressional address and far less than in Trump’s final address, even when cable media are included. As the Last Refuge noted,
That’s over a 60% decrease in viewership. No crowds ever attended his rallies. There was no crowd at his installation. There are no views for his on-line speeches. The audience for his regular speeches are non-existent. Virtually no viewers at home. An empty chamber for his speech,… and yet we are to believe he received 81 million votes.
At least China Joe beat the Oscars, which had only 9.85 million viewers, down 58 percent from last year’s all-time low. Perhaps the woke leftists in Hollywood and the White House are not as popular as CNN believes they are.
Back to the poll, commissioned by CNN, conducted by SSRS Opinion Panel: The sample was 589 respondents, only slightly more than the size of the U.S. Congress. Of those surveyed, 45 percent identified as Democrat compared to 23 percent as Republican, a two-fold difference.
Is it any wonder that seven out of 10 gave the speech a thumbs up? They should have saved money and just surveyed the CNN newsroom, getting the same or an even more favorable result.
Did they survey anyone living on the Southern border? Or in cities ravaged by a year of protests and riots, encouraged by Biden’s Democrat party? Or those minding their own business yet accused of being racist white supremacists by the woke-stasi?
Let’s not just pick on CNN. CBS pushed its own gaslighting poll, carried out by YouGov. Their headline, post speech, was, “Most viewers approve of Biden’s speech.” CBS reported 85 percent of speech watchers approved of Biden’s speech. Who were those speech watchers, aside from the CBS newsroom?
CBS’s sample was even more skewed than CNN’s with 54 percent Democrats and only 18 percent Republicans, a three-fold difference. Why not just poll speech attendees, mostly Democrats with a handful of stealth Democrats like Sen. Mitt Romney or Chief Justice John Roberts? The result would be the same.
Even left-wing Snopes called out the media, rating as “false” the assertion that 85 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s speech. When the gaslighting media loses Snopes, you know they have crossed the Rubicon of credibility.
To paraphrase George Orwell, all opinions are equal, but some are more equal than others. It’s the “more equal” opinions that the media will gaslight the public with, that everyone loves Biden and is so relieved that Trump is out of office. Trump and his supporters must not only be defeated, but also erased, relegated to a four-year blip in history, an anomaly, temporarily interrupting the ruling class’s 16-year plan for the great reset.
Expect this to continue, for as long as Biden remains in the White House, with the only pushback being lawsuits by Project Veritas and declining ratings for left-wing cable news shows. Elected Republicans wring their hands, but are incapable of pushing back.
Turn off the news, award shows, and professional sports. These no longer entertain. They just preach virtue-signaling propaganda, and are as appealing as a nagging mother-in-law. If you love America and the Constitution, if you supported President Trump, or if you are simply minding your own business as a conservative, the ruling class loathes you.
Don’t give them TV ratings or even the time of day. Let them gaslight only themselves and those in their left-wing bubble.
