This morning a newsletter from a right wing media landed in my inbox. Usually I don't waste time on them. But something caught my eyes today. Something about "Trump Responds to Junk Intel Report". I followed a link to read further. It was an interesting trip to the right wing media land. It should make quite a bit of interest to people interested in journalism and social media. The keywords you are going to see - complete BS complete joke ridiculous this nonsense.
It was a short article. But I couldn't quite make out what it was trying to say. I noticed this wasn't an original article. It was only a cut and paste from another report. I followed the link to the original.
The article was written by Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit. He was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award and the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism, according to his bio. The article is rather hard to follow. Much of it is interspersed with pictures, Twitter screenshots and videos. I decided to clean it up so that I can see the content. An excellent tool I used is Instapaper. Instapaper is an article clipping tool. The side effect is it strips away distracting ads and images, keeping only clean text. This is just what I need.
Don't worry if you cannot read the text. I will reproduce the entire content below verbatim.
The Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center Bill Evanina on Friday revealed information on threats from foreign countries in the 2020 election.
According to Director Bill Evanina Russia wants Joe Biden to lose!
What complete BS.
Bill Evanina is a complete joke.
Then Director Evanina added this:
The ODNI report was released in an official statement:
On Friday night President Trump was asked about this ridiculous government official’s report.
Trump respectfully SHREDDED this nonsense.
That's all. Jim Hoft has written only 76 words in this article. There are 45 other words in the title and subheading, and 245 words in quotes. Out of the 76 words, 24 words is a factual statement in the opening sentence. It leaves 52 words in the main content. A disproportionately large amount of them are emphatic expressions - complete BS, complete joke, ridiculous, this nonsense. There is really no space left to elaborate why. No word was written at all to explain why it is considered complete BS.
There are more words in the quotation that the article itself. A rebuke of the intelligence report is from a transcript of Trump's interview. He himself said, and you have certainly heard this before, nobody’s been tougher on Russia than I have ever. Be careful with the quotation though. Many of them are not quoted from source but quoted from other quotes. The article said "the ONDI report was released in an official statement, colon". But the official statement did not follow after the colon. Instead, it links to another right wing journalist' tweet, which includes a screenshot of the official statement from his smart phone. Right wing media quote from other right wing media a lot, with typos and grammatical mistakes all included. Indeed, I was led to this article from another right wing article that was a cut and paste of this article.
Perhaps these kind of writing are not entirely new. When you are in the supermarket's checkout line, your attention will be captured by tabloids on display. It is all about big picture, shocking headline and perhaps no real content. Now that these style evolved to right wing media festering in public policy space, when people utter "complete BS" throughout and make no effort and see no need to explain themselves, the resulting conversation can be scary.
Link to the article - https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/devastating-trump-responds-junk-intel-report-nobody-common-sense-say-russia-wants-donald-trump-win-video/
2020.08.08 comments