Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily published an April 11 article by Johnathan Jones of the Western Journal:
For a few minutes Thursday, a number of establishment media outlets reported the truth by accurately noting that Senate Democrats had blocked a Republican proposal to offer further assistance to small businesses during the coronavirus shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to pass a White House-backed $250 billion relief package aimed at helping small businesses Thursday by unanimous consent -- as most lawmakers are currently not in Washington.
Republicans sought to increase funding for the Paycheck Protection Program from $350 billion to $600 billion.
Democrats, seeking to add an additional $250 billion for pet projects and double the amount Republicans were seeking, made sure nothing got done.
[...]
Sadly, that all changed when, one by one, four news outlets updated their headlines to portray the failure in helping American workers as a bipartisan one -- thus absolving the Democrats of being held accountable for their obstructionism.
CNN covered the congressional news and published a story headlined "Democrats block GOP-led funding boost for small business aid program" at 10:36 a.m. Thursday.
By 11:15 am, the headline on the story was adjusted to read, "Senate at stalemate over more COVID-19 aid after Republicans and Democrats block competing proposals.”
[...]
Sadly, for a country in need of the truth, CNN wasn’t the only outlet that quickly reverted to reporting fake news after initially reporting the facts.
Bloomberg, NBC News and Politico all quickly followed CNN’s lead by updating their headlines regarding the Senate story in ways that portrayed Democrats in a better light.
[...]
For all of their blatant lies and sensational headlines meant to paint Republicans as the bad guys, CNN and the others couldn’t surrender to the truth for a single day.
Jones is so eager to dunk on the "liberal media" that he won't tell youthat the reason all these media outlets changed their headlines is that the story was updated. As CNN noted, after Democrats blocked the effort to boost Paycheck Protection Program funding, "Republicans blocked an alternative proposal put forward by Democrats" to create "additional funding for hospitals and state and local governments."
It's not "fake news" to acknowledge this development; it's reporting facts in context. Jones is the one who's the blatant liar here, and WND -- which puports to report news -- happily perpetrated his blatant lie.
Publishing such blatant lies isn't helping WND's continuing credibility issues.
