Mike Bloomberg speaks to the media, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2019 in Phoenix. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a late entrant in the already crowded race for the Democratic presidential nomination, was set Tuesday to file to run in Arizona’s presidential primary. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
There’s plenty for which to go after Mike Bloomberg.
But media is all atwitter today going after him for a video which they’ve termed “disinformation.”
The video shows a point in the debate where Bloomberg asks if anyone else there has started a business (like he has). Of course no one could respond because no one did. Now, in reality it lasted a mere beat before Bloomberg moved on. In Bloomberg’s ad, he adds in all their blank stares plus crickets during a longer period of silence.
The essence of the ad, that the other candidates couldn’t respond, was true. And it was obviously not reflective of the debate since there were no crickets at the debate as anyone with a brain would know.
But apparently the media thought that the audience couldn’t discern it was an ad.
Here’s MSNBC talking about the “doctored video” saying it looks really bad for everyone else but “it’s not true.”
NBC’s Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) on Bloomberg’s “doctored video”: Twitter’s new policy flagging “disinformation” will include videos like this.
“If nobody will stop [disinfo], it can change narratives or change the outcome of the election.” pic.twitter.com/4aINQNjWxH
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 21, 2020
They said they had reached out to Twitter and Twitter said that’s the type of ad they would flag. Do they really think that people are so stupid that they don’t know that there’s some editing? That there were no crickets at the debate?
NBC’s Ben Collins says, “That’s how disinformation sort of steamrolls. If nobody will stop [disinfo], it can change narratives, it can change the outcome of the election. We’ve been there before.”
CNN, the NY Times and other outlets also called it out, with CNN’s Dana Bash calling it deceptively edited.
What utter gall. They’re so concerned about minute details of an obvious ad, yet not at all concerned about putting out stories about a hoax for three years? That was aided by disinformation from the Democrats? And even knowing that, they still continued to push the hoax. Where was there concern about how they’ve changed the political landscape with false information for years? There are thousands of people who think that President Donald Trump is a Russian asset because of the information spoon-fed from folks on MSNBC for years.
And what does Collins mean “we’ve been there before?” One assumes he’s talking about Russian interference. There’s been no indication that the results of the election were effected in anyway because of that.
Doctoring videos in this manner would be career-ending in journalism. https://t.co/K7FyWC1Hhh
— Pedro da Costa (@pdacosta) February 20, 2020
Except no, they wouldn’t. Because we’ve seen false information again and again and yet it’s still happening and perpetrators are still there.
of the three mentioned in the above, llamas, who aired footage from a Ky. gun range & claimed it showed a White-House enabled war crime in Syria, is the only one who can reasonably claim ignorance. Ross and Couric, on the other hand, absolutely intended to lie to their audiences.
— ????’???? ???? ???????????????????????????? ???????????????? (@BecketAdams) February 21, 2020
But according to Collins this stuff is helpful because the “bad guys” are afraid of it.
Ben on Twitter’s new policy: “I can tell you what: Not a lot of things make me feel like there’s some hope. But the bad guys hated this stuff, the InfoWars types, the QAnon people, they are very afraid of this thing, so there’s a little hope here.”
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 21, 2020
No, Ben, all people who don’t like censorship are afraid of it. Yet at the same time, media doesn’t police itself and stop spreading fake news.
HT: Twitchy