Media Dances on Shinzo Abe's Freshly Dug Grave, Declaring Him a Near-Fascist, Then Wonders Why People Don't Trust Them Any Longer

The media decided to fact-check a silly meme that conservatives have fun with:

CLAIM: A screenshot shows that Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan who was assassinated on Friday, tweeted: "I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton."

AP'S ASSESSMENT: False. Abe did not tweet this statement, which is a reference to a long-running internet meme. A screenshot purporting to show the tweet has been fabricated. Abe's verified Twitter account uses a different username and profile picture than the ones shown in the altered image. The Japanese text in the altered image does not mention Clinton, either.

Via Twitchy:

They did not, however, feel like fact checking themselves, as it turned out.

America's state media, NPR, took the opportunity to absolutely savage the highly-popular former PM of one of America's most important allies as an a "divisive arch-conservative" and "ultra-nationalist" -- as his body was being examined post-mortem.

The shocking news of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe being shot dead on Friday was matched by the shock that oh-so-civil National Public Radio would tweet out in the aftermath that Abe was a "divisive arch-conservative." It drew enough criticism that NPR deleted the tweet.

Then they "fixed" it with a second tweet that labeled Abe an "ultra-nationalist." This word came because the communists in China and North Korea didn't like him.

Fidel Castro won warmer treatment from taxpayer-funded NPR. Their obit then merely called him a "Former Cuban Leader." Not a dictator. He wasn't "divisive" or "ultra-"anything. They found a man to praise Castro as "very promising, courageous, dedicated, intelligent" -- enough to make you puke.

"Real News Organizations" CBS and AP also rushed to demonize a dead man for not being Communist enough for their liking.

CBS Mornings offered a similarly critical assessment of Abe's life on the day of his passing, calling him a "right-wing nationalist" and a "polarizing figure" whose political decisions were "controversial."

The Associated Press, which in the past was known for neutral, swift-breaking news, released an article with a headline that declared Abe left a "divided legacy."

AP previously came under fire when social media users compared headlines of the site breaking news of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro's deaths. Chavez, a socialist dictator, was labeled a "fiery Venezuelan leader" by the AP. Meanwhile, the media site announced the death of communist dictator Fidel Castro with this headline: "Fidel Castro, who defied the US for 50 years, dies at 90 in Cuba."

Instances of liberal media outlets including critical remarks about conservative voices in the moments after their deaths have cropped up in several instances over the past few years.

The sad news of conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh's passing after a battle with lung cancer led to this colorful headline by The New York Times: "Rush Limbaugh, Who Built Talk Radio Into Right-Wing Attack Machine, Dies."

Meanwhile, the article's headline description read, "Mr. Limbaugh, 70, who helped transform the G.O.P., pushed talk radio to the right with misogynistic and racist language and conspiracy theories."

In the real world, and especially in Japan -- which really should be the measure of what is considered "divisive" as far as Japanese politics -- Shinzo Abe and his party are very popular and are expected to absolutely romp in this weekend's elections, reports John Solomon at JustTheNews.

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, which Shinzo Abe led until he stepped down as prime minister in 2020, is on track for a big win in Sunday's election, with the LDP and its conservative coalition partner expected to win up to two-thirds of contested races.

Abe was assassinated on Friday while he was giving a campaign speech.

With its junior partner party Komeito, the LDP's coalition won 87 of the 125 contested seats in the less-powerful Upper House of parliament, The New York Times reported. This gives the conservative coalition a supermajority with more than 70% of the Upper House.

"It's significant we were able to pull this election together at a time violence was shaking the foundations of the election," said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the leader of the LDP.

Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, had still had a significant influence on politics in the Asian nation.

"I have the responsibility to take over the ideas of former Prime Minister Abe," Kishida said at a rally Saturday.

Final results are due on Monday.

In total, the LDP are on track to win at least 143 seats in the 248-member Upper House, The Associated Press reported.

The AP, which apparently believes that Woke Pinkhair Noserings with more pronouns than intact family relationships are better judges of what is "divisive" in Japanese politics that Japanese voters, recently lamented the lack of trust in the eminent news professionals at outlets such as the AP, and decried people turning to alternate sources of information, like conspiracy theorists and "dark" channels.

Gee I wonder what is causing people to turn away from the divisive, ultra-leftwing ultra-non-mainstream media?

Wilson, a 41-year-old from London, Ontario, has doubts about free elections, vaccines and the Jan. 6 insurrection, too. He accepts little of what has happened in the past 20 years and cheerfully predicts that someday, the internet will make everyone as distrustful as he is.

"It's the age of information, and the hidden government, the people who control everything, they know they can't win," Wilson told The Associated Press. "They're all lying to us. But we're going to break through this. It will be a good change for everyone."

They are all lying to us.

See, it's not paranoid if it's true.

Rejecting what they hear from scientists, journalists or public officials, these people instead embrace tales of dark plots and secret explanations. And their beliefs, say experts who study misinformation and extremism, reflect a widespread loss of faith in institutions like government and media.

I enjoy how the media keeps putting themselves on the same plane as scientists.

They're Scientists of Truth, you know.

They keep telling themselves the same thing: The public doesn't trust us anymore because the public has changed, not because we in the media have changed our practices to become ultra-ideological and opinion-driven and non-fact-based.

Only 16% of Americans have "a great deal of trust" in newspapers, and only 11% have a great deal of trust in television news.

They continue to insist that the public has changed, and not the media itself, despite the media itself having declared that they had to change, because it was no longer possible to remain "objective" in the age of Trump; objectivity was now too dangerous and a handmaiden to fascism.

They admitted this, they called for a complete abandonment of objectivity -- but then deny they abandoned objectivity, and claim that the public has just gone crazy when the public decides that the media is not objective and can therefore no longer be trusted.

We are into our nth year of catastrophic collapse of trust in the media and the media still refuses any kind of critical self-examination to assess their own responsibility for this, preferring, as they have preferred for a decade, their own conspiracy theory that they're doing everything absolutely 100% right and it's just "Dark Mysteries of Power" that have bewitched the public into convincing them that they're liars.

Shinzo Abe was turning his life around.

Posted by: ...

posted by Ace at 04:16 PM

| Access Comments