Why Corporate-Owned News Is ‘the Biggest Fake News That Helped Elect Trump’

In a new segment on The Real News Network, host Paul Jay speaks with journalist Abby Martin about the consequences of Donald Trump’s election and current political turmoil.

First, the two discuss Trump’s Cabinet appointments. “It is a fire sale right now in the White House of people who are the craziest outliers of the GOP that hitched their wagons on [Trump],” Martin says. “[People] that have been completely castigated and ostracized from mainstream establishment. They’ve hitched their wagons to Trump, and they are getting lavishly rewarded as we speak.”

Jay also brings up Trump’s foreign policy positions, noting that he is likely to be extremely tough in the Middle East. “What no one is talking about is the insane fear-mongering and war-mongering against Iran,” Martin says.

“And while there might be some short-term accommodation with Russia — and I think it will be in order to advance the targeting of Iran — the people that are around Trump that are really going to run the foreign policy are every bit as aggressive in their rhetoric about Russia as Clinton, and then some,” Jay adds.

The two then move on to talk about Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount effort. Martin notes that while she doesn’t understand Stein’s motives, she does support a recount. “I agree with Greg Palast where he’s saying there were millions of people not that voted illegally … but he’s saying, yes, millions of people weren’t counted. Millions of provisional ballots, millions of absentee ballots, millions of people who were purged from the GOP scam Crosscheck,” she says. “That is a fact. That happened.”

For the remainder of the interview, Jay and Martin discuss The Washington Post piece on “Russian propaganda” that relied on the organization PropOrNot as a source.

“You have establishment media like The Washington Post and you have this anonymous propaganda finder account called PropOrNot, which is publishing this hit list — it’s essentially McCarthyism, right? — in the new era,” Martin explains. “It’s including very credible sites like Truthdig, Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Naked Capitalism, conflating it with fake news sites that you can say are legitimately fake or skewed or biased extremely, right? Like INROWARS or Breitbart.”

“And if you want to talk about why Trump won, and then you want to connect that to fake news, you need look no further than all — almost all — of the corporate-owned news, which is the biggest fake news that helped elect Trump,” Jay adds. “So, yeah, of course, they can point to some small sites that supposedly are manipulated by the Russians, [for] most of whom that accusation’s ridiculous. But it’s corporate news elected Donald Trump.”

“I understand why people are completely shutting out all of the establishment press and going to these sites. The problem is these establishment press is blaming the only solution, which is the credible, independent, grassroots journalism that is telling the truth, that isn’t fake news,” Martin concludes. “So it’s a really, really dangerous conflation on behalf of the establishment media, instead, of course, look in the mirror, having some introspection. Why did we lose? Why don’t people trust us? Instead, they have to punch down to the people who are doing the real work.”

Watch the full interview below. The portion of the interview focused on “fake news” and corporate media begins at the 15:20 mark.

—Posted by Emma Niles