Fake News of the Year: Honorable Mentions

by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
February 3, 2018

As you'll no doubt have seen by now, The Corbett Report issued its REAL Fake News Awards to some of the worst fake news offenders of 2017 yesterday. And if you haven't seen it by now, here it is.

But as you can imagine, it's impossible to cram in all the lowlights from the year in fake news into one measly podcast. There were plenty of other media outlets that deserve recognition for their terrible "reporting" over the past year. So, without further ado, let's look at some of the honorable mentions from the fake news awards.

The Ever-Changing Story of Jesus Campos, Vegas Victim(?)

The official story of the Vegas shooting is a phantasmagoric kaleidoscope of changing timelines, contradictory evidence and deliberate confusion. But of all the parts of that story that just don't make sense, perhaps none is quite as bizarre as the story of Jesus Campos.

Campos, we were told in the direct aftermath of the shooting, was an unarmed security guard in Mandalay Bay the night of the shooting who valiantly confronted Stephen Paddock after he began shooting on the crowd. The story went that Paddock began firing, Campos went to his room to confront him, was shot in the leg, and managed to hold on until help arrived, distracting Paddock from firing on the crowd and valiantly assisting in clearing rooms on the 32nd floor until he was told to stand down because of his injuries.

But that story only lasted a day or two before it was revealed to be a total pack of lies. By October 10th, the story had utterly changed. Now Campos had arrived on the scene and was shot by Paddock before any firing took place on the crowd. Even the LA Times was mystified by this new story, pointing out that since Campos had been there six minutes before the shooting started it raised "new questions about why police weren’t able to pinpoint the gunman’s location sooner."

Then, to make matters even weirder, Campos simply vanished before a series of scheduled television appearances. As Fox News reported, Campos had reportedly been taken to a UMC Quick Care facility, but none of the Vegas-area facilities had heard of him or knew anything about his whereabouts. Then, after a four hour meeting with MGM officials and right before a series of television interviews, Campos simply disappeared...

...and turned up days later on Ellen for the one and only interview he would give about his experience.

To say that the interview was odd is an understatement. Watch it for yourself:

He's accompanied by "Stephen Schuck," a building engineer who was clearly acting as some sort of handler for Campos, and being "questioned" by the least hard-hitting interviewer in the history of television. In the end, he ended up providing no information of substance and left many many more questions than he answered.

So why Ellen? Why on earth would this (supposed) material witness to the (supposed) mayhem of Vegas make his one and only media stop a show that is better known for wacky dancing and fluffy celebrity interviews? Well as it turns out Ellen has her own business arrangements with MGM and the casino industry and MGM was confirmed to have dictated every aspect of the Campos "interview."

And then just when you thought the fake news story of Campos the Hero couldn't get any faker...it gets faker. New reports from several different sources all purport to show that Campos was not listed as an employee of Mandalay Bay at the time of the shooting and that no one of the tight-knit 20-man security detail at the hotel know either Campos or Schmuck.

We know next to nothing about what actually did or didn't happen in Vegas on October 1st of last year, but we do know that just about every aspect of the official narrative has been flat out contradicted since it was first reported. But of all the aspects of this fake news story, the Campos story is perhaps the most brazenly fake.

PropOrNot

I'm not sure if this really qualifies for a 2017 Fake News Award since the story started in 2016 and concluded just days ago here in 2018, but I don't think anyone can deny that it is the quintessence of fake news. I'm referring to the PropOrNot website which sprang out of nowhere in late 2016 labeling a large number of websites (including The Corbett Report) as Russian-supported fake news sites.

The only thing that the websites identified by PropOrNot seemed to have in common was a willingness to challenge the mainstream narrative about the Russian boogeyman and its threat to the world. From mainstream news aggregators like Drudge Report to outside-the-beltway think tanks like the Ron Paul Institute to alternative news sites like The Corbett Report, dozens and dozens of websites made the PropOrNot "List" of "Sites That Reliably Echo Russian Propaganda."

The website itself most assuredly would not have been noticed by anyone at all if it was not immediately cited by the Washington (Bezos/CIA) Post in a lengthy article that respected the anonymity of the group and unquestioningly parroted its assertions about the Russian propaganda nature of these sites. Such was the near-universal condemnation of the Post's "journalism" on this piece that they eventually added an update saying they do not vouch for PropOrNot or its conclusions(...they only promote them?).

If you need more info on the story you should see the video I made at the time addressing the "honor" of being included in such a prestigious list.

So that was where they story sat for over a year. No one was able to unmask the people behind the PropOrNot website or link their juvenile antics to any serious journalistic enterprise...Until now. Just days ago a reporter named George Eliason published an expose purporting to show a link between PropOrNot and The Interpreter, a daily online journal of Russian news in English that, in January 2016, was absorbed by RFE/RL, the US government-funded propaganda service that broadcasts in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. The link comes in the form of a screenshot of the PropOrNot administrator panel which seems to confirm that all uploads to the website go through InterpreterMag.com, the website of The Interpreter. From there, the web branches out to the Broadcasting Board of Governors and The Atlantic Council.

The full article is well worth your time, but suffice it to say: PropOrNot is the very worst form of fake news. It is propaganda designed to cast doubt on well-meaning alternative and non-mainstream news sources, and it is being funded covertly through US government propaganda money.

Meet Brian Ross, Deep State Fake News Stooge

One of the stories to make Trump's Fake News 2017 list was the erroneous report about Michael Flynn made by ABC's Brian Ross. As you may or may not remember, Ross reported that Flynn (Trump's first short-lived National Security Advisor) was prepared to testify that Trump had directed him to make contact with Russian officials when he was still a candidate on the campaign trail. The implications of this report were stunning: If true, it would mean that there was credible information proving actual Russian collusion on the part of the Trump campaign, information that was about to come out in dramatic fashion.

Reaction to the story was immediate and severe. All of the major Wall Street indexes plummeted on the news, with the Dow down 350 points at one point during the day, the S&P down 0.2%, and the Nasdaq down 0.4%. The VIX, a measure of market instability, rocketed 29% to its highest levels in half a year. In short, investors were bracing for a major shake-up and the potential for impeachment of a sitting President...

...until the report was shown to be a total crock. Originally based on a single, anonymous source, Ross backtracked his own report later that day when he "clarified" that "It was shortly after the election that President-elect Trump directed Flynn to contact Russian officials on topics that included working jointly against ISIS (so-called Islamic State)." Yes, after, not before. Oops. Minor detail.

Of course, this completely changed the nature and importance of the original report. Now instead of clear evidence of collusion with a foreign power on the campaign trail the story was that an incumbent president had ordered his National Security Advisor to engage in normal diplomatic dialogue with a foreign power. There was absolutely no there there.

Ross, for his part, tried to play this off as a mere "clarification" of the original story, but after intense backlash ABC was finally forced to formally correct their earlier (erroneous) story and suspend Ross for his sloppy reporting.

This is indeed an egregious example of fake news and worthy of special mention as one of the Fake News Stories of 2017, but it's even more outrageous in the context of Ross' reporting record. Keep in mind this is the man who was responsible for the false reports that the anthrax letters in 2001 were laced with bentonite, an additive that was uniquely tied to (wait for it....) Iraq's anthrax program. That's right, Ross was the one who helped cement the completely false information in the public consciousness that there was some Iraqi correction to the anthrax attacks at perhaps the most psychologically vulnerable time in the nation's history. It's impossible to know how much Ross' initial fake news reporting on the anthrax scare was ultimately responsible for whipping the nation into the war hysteria that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but he does bear at least some part of that responsibility.

In 2012 Ross was also responsible for falsely reporting that the Auroro, Colorado theater shooter had tea party ties that likely motivated his actions. His big scoop? Someone by the same name appeared on a Colorado Tea Party website. There was no other information whatsoever provided, just a name. And Ross went with that as possible explanation for the shooting. It didn't take long before he was widely condemned for his sloppy "reporting."

And yet, despite all of this, Ross still enjoys a prestigious position as a chief investigative reporter for ABC News. In any other profession if you repeatedly made serious errors that completely undermined your work, you would be demoted, reprimanded and, eventually, fired. But not in the hallowed halls of MSM journalism. There, you get chance after chance and a slap on the wrist for repeatedly getting things wrong...as long as you're reporting what the deep state wants you to report, that is.

This is the essence of fake news in a nutshell. And it's why I have a feeling we'll be dishonoring a fresh crop of "Fake News Stories of the Year" this time next year.

But if you're still hankering for more fake news exposes from 2017, you'll definitely want to check out "2017 Top Ten Conspiracies" from 21st Century Wire and "Top Ten Conspiracy Theories That Turned FACT in 2017" from The Free Thought Project. Happy reading!