February 16, 2017

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough began his show this morning by attacking the Wall Street Journal for "bending over backwards" to support the administration.

Scarborough was responding to a story in the WSJ that had a headline which said, "Spies Keep Intelligence From Trump," that many have felt has no substance to it.

He noted that during the 2016 campaign, many felt the Journal was "the most hostile conservative voice towards Donald Trump." Now Scar is shocked how the editorial page had changed: "...An editorial board that was hypercritical of Donald Trump during the campaign, yesterday, they used their editorial page to say, 'oh, there is nothing to see here other than leaks coming from intel agencies.'"

David Ignatius, former reporter at the Journal, said that the news and editorial divisions were always kept separate, and wasn't as upset by their changing stances as long as it didn't color their news reporting, which is what Scarborough was intimating.

Joe responded by hammering the lead story in the WSJ again, and said, "We look at media...that's a screaming headline. You dig down into the story and you actually find out that they don't have one single instance of where important intelligence was kept from the President of the United States."

Ignatius replied, "They have a pretty good quote from Adam Shiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. The story is thin beyond that quote, so I didn't think it was a blockbuster."

Putting the story on page one made it a blockbuster, David.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon