Media Hypocrisy Collapses Under Its Own Weight
The media has been long overdue for a massive overhaul. The public has grown overwhelmingly fatigued by tuning into the spectacle of the media having to swallow the lies that Americans were fed with such an authoritative and egotistical tone.
A key part of the social contract between media and the public is trust. This breakdown of trust has become a pitiful display of cognitive dissonance among the true believers and informed pushback from those that question the narrative. The hypocrisy has become claustrophobic. Most people don’t have the time to sort out the details. But over time many have had to set their work and personal lives aside as the lies from the media upended their livelihoods in one way shape or form.
Whether it was Rathergate when trusted icon CBS News, via Dan Rather, aired a report claiming George W. Bush dodged Vietnam service using forged documents about his National Guard record. The docs were quickly exposed as fakes or the 2006: Duke Lacrosse Case when outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC ran hard with a story of Duke lacrosse players raping a stripper, framing it as a racial and class scandal. It was only in December of 2024 that the accuser, currently serving time for murder, admitted that she made the whole thing up destroying people’s lives. Or George Zimmerman’s 911 Call NBC News edited Zimmerman’s 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case to make him sound racist, cutting audio to suggest he volunteered Martin’s race unprompted. The full tape showed he was responding to a dispatcher’s question. NBC apologized after the edit was exposed, but it had already fueled outrage. Or the 2016-2019: Russia Collusion Narrative. Or the 2017: Charlottesville "Very Fine People" Hoax or the 2019: Covington Catholic Incident when outlets like CNN, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed portrayed a viral video of a Covington Catholic student, Nick Sandmann, as harassing a Native American elder at a D.C. march. Longer footage showed the teen was approached and didn’t instigate. Lawsuits followed, and some settled, but the initial pile-on was relentless. To the 2020: Hunter Biden Laptop cover up. The 2021: the media mocking the COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory debacle which even the CIA has now admitted was true.And who can forget the pinnacle of gaslighting as Biden’s Mental Decline was described as "Cheap Fakes" Clips of Biden stumbling or wandering off went viral, but outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and The Atlantic called them “cheap fakes” or insisted he was sharp behind closed doors. The media later admitting towards the end of 2024 after Trump’s victory that Biden was indeed mentally incompetent.
The average newsroom itself is a breeding ground of hypocrisy. Just go to any local television newsroom and you will witness the spectacle. Video editors, photojournalists, producers, and crew toil away with skills they painstakingly worked long hours to acquire meeting deadlines under unyielding stressful conditions that rival air traffic controllers. Only to be paid a meager wage, while the anchors blissfully unaware, return from lunch in their Mercedes and expensive wardrobes preparing their makeup so that they can read convincingly off of a teleprompter. The difference in pay between the crew and the TV Twinkies ranges from $50,000 annually in smaller markets to millions in larger ones. It is a High School popularity contest on steroids. And at its core a hotbed of hypocrisy.
I personally experienced this as a TV News Editor and videographer. Putting in overtime hours, meeting deadlines in impossible situations, yet still advancing my skills. Earning an Avid Certification and a promotion to lead editor. Only to be sexually harassed by pseudo celebrity on air personnel making a half a million a year as I returned back home to my wife and child with less money than I would have made delivering pizzas.
And then there is the content. A centralized feed from a biased media narrative. After Manchurian Candidate Barack Obama unleashed the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, tucked into the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, the Act flipped a decades-old switch, letting U.S. government-funded content flow freely to domestic audiences. Originally, the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act banned such material at home to shield Americans from state propaganda, but the update argued it’s impractical in a borderless digital age.
This paired with a ballooning CIA influence over modern media, became a recipe for mind control manipulation on a scale we have never experienced as a Country. And the CIA loves their mind control. But the mkUltra is a whole other bag of fish. The CIA’s historical ties to media go way back, Operation Mockingbird in the Cold War for instance, fueled suspicions that they were still pulling the strings. And lo and behold for over 25 years, it becomes abundantly clear that they were. And not just in Magazines, Newspapers, and Television but Hollywood too. Total control.
But now, the recent USAID scandal has peeled back the curtain on a troubling web of media control, exposing how U.S. taxpayer dollars funneled through the agency were used to shape narratives and silence dissent. Reports have surfaced that USAID, historically tasked with foreign aid, poured millions into organizations like Internews, which trained thousands of journalists and backed censorship initiatives globally, while also funding advertiser boycotts against platforms like X to choke dissenting voices.
Major outlets, Politico, The New York Times, even the BBC’s charity arm were caught receiving federal funds, not just for subscriptions but in ways that blurred lines between independent journalism and state influence. Proof of a government-backed propaganda machine, with USAID’s “disinformation primers” and fact-checking weaponization revealing a deliberate push to erase opposing views under the guise of fighting misinformation. Donald Trump isn’t simply being a grumpy President when he says that the media is crooked. Now we know its worse than we ever imagined. His 2019 remark during a Presidential Social Media Summit, where he said, “… free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad.” comes from someone who deals with it everyday of the week.
Donald Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris has morphed into a high-stakes brawl, with the former president now demanding $20 billion in damages as of February 2025. Filed in October 2024 in a Texas federal court, Trump alleges the network deceptively edited Harris’s October 7 interview, swapping a rambling response about Israel for a sharper one to prop up her campaign and mislead voters, costing his Truth Social platform viewership and cash. CBS counters that the edits were standard time-crunched journalism, not fraud, and the First Amendment shields their choices. Sounds like 60 minutes needs a better editor. But of course theirs are the best in the business. A judge denied CBS’s dismissal motion in February, and with Trump’s FCC pick Brendan Carr pushing an inquiry, settlement talks swirl—potentially netting Trump millions and leaving 60 Minutes reeling.
And now here we are on this February 26, 2025 day surveilling the wreckage. The CIA’s media stall of race baiters being washed out like the Augean Stables. Several MSNBC anchors have been fired or had their shows canceled in recent years, with a notable wave occurring in early 2025. Joy Reid: Fired in February 2025, Tiffany Cross: Let go in November 2022, when MSNBC cut ties with her weekend show The Cross Connection. Mehdi Hasan: Departed in January 2024 Katie Phang: The Katie Phang Show was axed in 2025
This isn’t about every typo or slant it’s about the lies that shaped public perception and later came back to haunt them. Some lies are deliberate, some are sloppy, and some are just herd mentality. Proving intent is tricky, but the pattern is clear. Sensationalism often trumps skepticism until the truth catches up.
And now we are slowly turning to a new chapter, we can only hope. In a gutsy email to WAPO employees, Jeff Bezos laid down the law, the opinion page is now laser-focused on two rock-solid pillars, personal liberties and free markets. That’s right, no more wishy-washy nonsense, if you wanna cry about big government or socialism, take it somewhere else.
David Shipley, the paper’s opinion editor, couldn’t handle the heat and bailed faster than a rat off a sinking ship. Bezos, proud as ever, doubled down, declaring he’s “of America” and ready to hoist the flag for the red-blooded values that built this nation, namely innovation and prosperity. And as expensive, horrible and woke as Amazon’s adaptation of the Silmarrilion was, Bezos is damn right these ideas are starved for air in the suffocating swamp of today’s media.
Over at the Country Club of vapid talking heads at CNN, Jake Tapper was caught red-handed in a defamation lawsuit that cost CNN a cool $5 million after smearing a Navy vet, Zachary Young, with wild claims tied to the Afghanistan withdrawal chaos in 2021.
And Anderson Cooper, the man interned at the CIA during his Yale days, a fact he doesn’t exactly shout from the rooftops on *Anderson Cooper 360°*. Nowadays grilling guests like Cornel West about war morality while conveniently glossing over the CIA’s laundry list of regime changes and dirty ops. And if you really want to go down a rabbit hole take a look at the occultic social life of Cooper’s Mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. But I digress.
Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper, once the attack dogs of the Zucker era, now sit speechless as CNN scrambles to rebrand. This isn’t redemption, it’s survival. Jake Tapper’s upcoming book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, co-authored with Axios’ Alex Thompson and set for release in May 2025, has ignited a firestorm of accusations about hypocrisy.
The CNN anchor, promises an exposé on Joe Biden’s mental decline and the alleged cover-up by his inner circle. The very narrative Tapper himself helped suppress for years. How shameless can you be to pivot and cash in from the very story Tapper is accused of downplaying during the 2024 election cycle. Its as if Jake Tapper has taken media trust out back behind the newsroom and clobbered it to death behind the dumpster.
Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who switched to the Republican Party in 2024, was confirmed as the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on February 12, 2025. In this role, she oversees the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
Recently, Gabbard has made waves by publicly criticizing CNN, calling it a “propaganda arm of the intelligence community.” where she reacted to a CNN report. The report, authored by journalists like Katie Bo Lillis, suggested that intelligence insiders were wary of Gabbard’s leadership, hinting at potential resistance or even threats from within the community she now heads. Gabbard interpreted this as evidence of entrenched interests within the intelligence agencies using CNN to push their narrative and undermine her efforts to reform the system. She argued that this reflects a broader issue of self-serving loyalty within these agencies, rather than a commitment to the American public, and vowed to “root out” such elements.
Furthermore, this propaganda arm has empowered politicians to outright lie. Knowing that their BS will be backed by a goliath of media spin. Texas Representative Casar just claimed today that millions and millions of people will starve to death over Elon Musk’s scaling down of the bloated bureaucracy gorging on our fiat tax dollars. These people can’t cross over from the dark side and they never will. More has to be done. Its that imperative.
So next time you see these CIA clowns pontificating on your screen, remember, the hypocrisy’s baked in, its all fueled by sweetheart back door deals in Congress and the CIA’s shadow looms large. I implore President Trump and Congress to return Smith-Mundt back to its original state as President Eisenhower intended and give it more teeth so future American generations don’t have to navigate through a wall of hypocrisy and propaganda just to enjoy their lives.
Please subscribe to the Bowne Report on substack and/or engage with me on X @NewsBowne. Jon Bowne reporting.
