CNN’s Fake London Terror Stunt Was a New Low for the Liberal Left
By Martin Daubney
If there were Oscars for fake news, CNN would have swept the board on Sunday.
But ‘Best Live Action Short Film’ would go to Londoner Mark Antro, who filmed a CNN camera crew cynically stage-managing a small crowd of around 11 mostly female Muslims into a postcard-perfect #StandTogether peace protest after the London Bridge terrorist attack.
Hours earlier, seven Londoners had been mown down and butchered by Islamist terrorists as they partied in pubs I’ve frequented for years. Yet CNN decided to focus on the softer side of Islam.
Corralled by CNN hacks into an impromptu love-in, as if by magic, these women in hijabs defiantly held up A3 sheets of paper marked #TurnToLove and #ForLondon, while anchor Becky Anderson breathed, “What I want to show you now, viewers, is a wonderful scene…”
Antro added: “Note the white police officers leaving before the CNN shot & the Asian officers coming in. They then left after they went off air! #fakenews”.
There can be no ambiguity here: this is the MSM caught with its fingers in the truth till.
The footage was enthusiastically tweeted by libertarian heavyweights the Drudge Report, Paul Joseph Watson, Mike Cernovich and Katie Hopkins.
Faced with PR kryptonite, naturally CNN went into full-on denial mode, dismissing the claims as “nonsense”. But the damage was done.
The liberal MSM finds itself at Ground Zero. But it’s a disaster long of its own making.
I’ve been a journalist for 23 years, and I’ve seen with my own eyes, many times, how the media manipulates truth to get the picture it needs.
From the small to the big, nothing gets in the way of an agenda.
The small: when Protein World launched its “fat shaming” are you beach body ready campaign, 72,000 signed a petition calling for the ads to be banned, the Guardian covered a “naked protest in Hyde Park”. “Thousands were expected” they trumpeted. On the day, I counted that 31 people had turned up. There were – literally – more photographers than protestors, who, like CNN’s protestors, were herded together to amplify the message.
The medium: on the day Article 50 was triggered to commence Britain leaving the EU, I was reporting in Parliament Square and tweeted there were more photographers than Brexit protestors.
At Parliament Square there are currently more photographers taking pictures of #BrexitDay protestors than there are actual protesters
But CNN takes the biscuit. This organization crossed the boundary from news reporting to generating propaganda. It was a new low not only for the liberal Left, but for all journalism.
Thanks to social media, we’ve all begun to question the story behind the story – and the MSM is in crisis.
The problem for the MSM is threefold. Firstly, anybody can fact-check anything they say within a nano second. Secondly, largely freed from the threat of expensive lawsuits, a vociferous, anti-establishment, anti-MSM new media wants to obliterate the old guard, for both intellectual and commercial gain.
Thirdly – and most importantly – every MSM journalist is now having their every move watched by citizen journalists like Mark Antro. For the first time, the hacks behind the lenses, microphones and pens are under the microscope, and this will only escalate as names and cash can be made exposing fake news (Antro was given $3500 for his work)
Live on air I awarded $1,000 and @RealAlexJones awarded $2,500 to citizen journalist @markantro! Congratulations, Mark!https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/871490252765921280 …
Yet CNN wasn’t the only media organization which took flak for its reporting of the London Bridge terror attack.
On Saturday night, minutes after the atrocity, one could almost hear liberal news editors gasping when a BBC reporter interviewed an eye-witness who claimed one of the terrorists shouted “this is for Allah!” as he brutally stabbed a woman 10-15 times.
This crucial footage – the first direct proof this was an Islamist attack – was conspicuous by its absence from Sunday’s news roster, drawing widespread claims of “cowardice”.
Witness on @BBCWorld says, one of the #LondonBridge attackers shouted, “This is for Allah” before the BBC interviewer cut him off. Cowards.
FAKE media.
BBC refuses to air tape of terrorists saying “this if for Allah”.
CNN stages Muslim anti-ISIS protest.
We are being conned.
What the BBC did major on, however, were pictures, and a further interview, from CNN’s impromptu protest, where Muslim woman Samyna Motalib said: “I can speak as a Muslim and say this is not our religion”.
So an eyewitness who heard cries of “this is for Allah!” was deemed less newsworthy than a Muslim woman (who wasn’t at the attack) claiming the attack had nothing to do with Allah.
Fake news – or at least, heavily scripted and agenda-driven news –trumped real news, which was downgraded.
For his simple exposé, Mark Antro should win a journalistic award. If I were still an editor, I’d offer him a job.
Because the fact is that as the MSM splits into ever more liberal/conservative echo-chambers, the only moderator left is the public.
And today, journalism needs the public more than ever. At times, they seem to be the only truth we have left.
TLB finds other timely articles at HeatStreet.com
More about the writer Martin Daubney
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