TV News LIES

The White House launched a personal attack against a CNN reporter on Monday with a social media post that mentioned her children and accused her of asking a “disgusting and inhumane question”.

A White House post targeted Kristen Holmes, a senior White House correspondent for the network, after she asked Donald Trump to respond to a widely shared comment by Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in a speech on Sunday.

The Georgia senator told a crowd that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” and instead “wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar”.

The comment was an apparent reference to Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant, fueling scrutiny of her perceived closeness to Trump.

When Holmes asked Trump in the Oval Office to respond to Ossoff’s remark, the president dismissed her, calling the senator a “Pee-wee Herman lookalike”.

More...

Conservative US commentator Tucker Carlson said Israeli "agents" close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed him to falsely report that Hunter Biden’s leaked laptop material showed him abusing minors.

"The claim that there was material involving the abuse of minors on the computer came from the Israelis," Carlson said in an interview aired on Monday with Hunter, former US President Joe Biden's son. "I'm just telling you that they came to me with it, and that's how I know it.”

Carlson’s claim dates back to 2020 when he was a presenter at the right-wing cable news network Fox and pushed allegations that Hunter was involved in corrupt business dealings with Ukraine when his father was vice president.

The younger Biden’s laptop story emerged in the weeks before the 2020 US election, which President Biden went on to win against President Donald Trump.

More...

How many people do you need to kill before you’ve violated a ceasefire?

One, surely. But what about two? 10? 100?

Or how about more than 1,200? That’s how many Palestinians Israel has killed in Gaza since agreeing to an ostensible ceasefire with Hamas in October. 

Israel has also continued to pummel southern Lebanon, despite a “ceasefire” there. But the western media appears to see no violations at all. Instead, it sees ceasefires that are “fragile”, “tested”, “strained” or “shaky”.

Given that news reporting is supposed to rely on precision and accuracy, you’d imagine organisations such as the BBC, Reuters, the Associated Press and CNN have read the terms of the deal that was signed between Israel and Hamas in Egypt. It’s unequivocal, and there really isn’t much room for interpretation.

There were conditions that needed to be fulfilled within the first 72 hours before the truce could take effect, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces to agreed lines within Gaza, and the return by Hamas of all remaining Israeli hostages, living or dead.

Once the prerequisites were met, which they were, the text said that “all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment and targeting operations will be suspended”.

More...

Senate Democrats introduced a new bill on Thursday to roll back Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s news media restrictions at the Pentagon, stating that those are suppressing independent reporting at the department.

The legislation, called the Protecting Pentagon Press Access Act, was introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) that would restore journalists’ access within the Pentagon that was available before the new measures imposed by Hegseth, including the “Correspondents’ Corridor,” a decades-old workspace inside the building that national security reporters utilized.

The bill, which will have a hard time getting traction in the GOP-controlled Senate, would also restore unescorted access to reporters to areas of the department that were accessible without an escort before the late 2025 Trump administration restriction went into effect.

“At a time of war, transparency and independent, accurate reporting matter more than ever,” Schatz said in a statement. “Our bill will reverse the Pentagon’s effort to shut out the free press and make sure the public gets the information it deserves.”

More...

One of the nation’s largest broadcasters is accusing the Trump administration of retaliation, alleging the Federal Communications Commission is unfairly policing ABC and ABC-owned stations by conducting an unprecedented early review of its broadcast licenses because the president personally dislikes its programming.

“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” lawyers for the network said in a Wednesday filing.

Disney-owned ABC has found itself a target of the administration’s attacks on the press as President Donald Trump tests his power to weaponize government agencies in an effort to intimidate and deter the media from covering him in a negative light.

During his second term, the president has repeatedly demanded the network have its licenses revoked and called for the firing of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over political remarks he made. The FCC announced the early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses earlier this year, along with a number of other investigations into the network.

Most recently, the president demanded ABC — and any other network that refused to air his July 16 primetime speech — have its licenses revoked.

More...

The Atlantic is asking a judge to toss a lawsuit brought by FBI Director Kash Patel against the outlet over its reporting alleging excessive drinking and questioning his performance in the job.

The lawsuit, filed by Patel in April, alleges the magazine defamed him and relied on sources who were “not in a position to know the facts” and were part of an orchestrated smear campaign against him.

The Atlantic, in a statement on Monday, called Patel’s suit “meritless” and said it was asking the court to permit it to begin seeking factual discovery from the FBI and the Department of Justice — including documents and depositions of key individuals, which it called “appropriate given the allegations in this matter.”

“If Director Patel did not want to face this process, he should not have filed this suit,” the outlet’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, said. “These legal filings are consistent with the promise I made to our staff and to our readers in May: we will defend The Atlantic and its staff vigorously.”

More...