You know who has had a pretty good last couple of days? The “old school”, “fake news”, “mainstream media”. You know, the type of reporting that has come under constant attack for the last few years–and who is always going to be “replaced” by the “new media”.
Consider the story that broke yesterday that a group of political operatives tried to plant a fake news story about Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore in the Washington Post. A woman claiming that she was impregnated by Moore years ago contacted the Post and “wanted to tell her story”. She met with a reporter, in an encounter secretly filmed by the woman–and recorded by the reporter. When the Post did the usual follow-up reporting–contacting others that could corroborate her claims and verifying her whereabouts to match the timeline of her story–the tall tale fell apart.
Further investigation conducted by Post reporters found that not only was the woman’s story fake–but that she was working for the political group Project Veritas–and the goal of the operation was to put a false story into publication in the same newspaper that first reported on allegations of sexual improprieties by Moore–thereby “discrediting” all of their previous reporting, and the claims of the original victims.
If Project Veritas sounds familiar, it’s the same group that sent a young operative with a hidden video camera on him into a bar to record then-State Senate Majority Leader Mike Ellis of Neenah making disparaging comments about Green Bay Preble High School. The subsequent release of the video effectively ended Ellis’s long career in Madison. Project Veritas targeted Ellis because he was not voting in lock-step with Governor Scott Walker’s agenda.
The credibility of so-called “social media reporters” also took a big hit this week with the unbelievable mess that has been created in the University of Tennessee’s search for a new head football coach. The school announced on Sunday that it had offered the job to Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano. Unhappy with that selection was self-described “college sports insider and blogger” Clay Travis–who posted a story with a link to a Washington Post report about the Penn State child molestation scandal where Schiano is mentioned off-handedly by a witness in the case as having told someone else that he saw Jerry Sandusky in the shower with a boy once.
Never mind that the deposition cited by Travis is hearsay evidence and would never be admissible in a court of law–or that Schiano is not mentioned anywhere else in the 800-page investigation into the Penn State scandal–or that Schiano was never accused, charged or convicted of taking part in the university’s cover up of the child molestation at Penn State. Clay’s thousands of social media followers (many of whom are under the delusional belief that another internet rumor–John Gruden is leaving Monday Night Football to coach the Vols–is true) re-posted the story, which was reposted by their friends which eventually led to accusations that Schiano was complicit in the coverup and could not possibly be hired by Tennessee.
When a couple of Tennessee state lawmakers added their voices to the internet mob, UT Athletic officials rescinded their job offer to Schiano–making it look like the “stain of Penn State” really was on him and that he was no longer fit for the job. Now, the Vols will have no choice but to hire someone with previous ties to the school–as no qualified “outsider” is going to ever want to be part of a program where the uninformed masses drive the decision making process.
So the next time you hear someone talking about “fake news” or how “social media makes everyone a reporter” remember the past few days.
