The liberal media continues to prove that its more about shaping events than reporting on events, which explains why President Donald Trump’s “fake news” characterization resonates so well with the American people.
But it’s rare that a news outlet will regurgitate old news, as if it just happened.
Case in point, NBC News pushed a “BREAKING” news report on Wednesday that centered on an interview with Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, saying Russia successfully penetrated voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to 2016 presidential election.
“We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated,” Manfra said in the interview, insisting she had “no doubt” it was the Russian government.
BREAKING: U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking tells NBC News that Russians successfully penetrated voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to 2016 presidential election. https://t.co/QXnaa0zdBd
More tonight on @NBCNightlyNews.
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 7, 2018
With NBC News establishing the narrative, it was picked up by a number of other news outlets — like the New York Daily News, which declared in its headline that “U.S. official confirms for first time” that Russians hackers had penetrated voter systems.
Social media also ran with the narrative but the problem is, this is all old news.
The fact that Russian hackers had penetrated four states was first reported back in September 2016, as seen below in a story from ABC News.
The opening paragraph of the story read: “Nearly half of the states in the U.S. have recently had their voter registration systems targeted by foreign hackers, and four of those systems have successfully been breached, sources tell ABC News.”
As others have pointed out, I'm not sure this is actually new information. ABC reported IN SEPTEMBER 2016 that Russians penetrated 4 states' systems: https://t.co/Lo80oxSblk https://t.co/YUYjpoHz1g
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) February 7, 2018
Which is more or less exactly what Manfra said in the NBC interview.
In fact, the network acknowledged in Wednesday’s story that it had “reported in Sept. 2016 that more than 20 states had been targeted by the Russians.”
The only difference in their report over ABC was instead of reporting four states, NBC said “only two successful breaches have been disclosed.”
But the fact that it was old news didn’t stop MSNBC from running with the story as if it were a major bombshell.
Host Chris “Thrill Up My Leg” Matthews covered it, as did progressive princess Rachel Maddow, who suggested the Trump administration wanted to hide the news that “Russia hacked the voter rolls.”
"And where it was coming from was the Russian government?"
"Correct."
"No doubt?"
"No doubt." https://t.co/kg1lDkYNtH— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 7, 2018
“[W]e have no idea why the Homeland Security Department didn’t notify these states before today, since they’ve known at least since June which states were attacked,” she said.
Fake news indeed.
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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