Perhaps one of the most idiotic and ill-conceived attempts to stifle criticism of the establishment has been the “fake news” craze. In a unified pushback against independent media sources that helped to crush Hillary Clinton, it has become gospel for big media and piggishly obstinate liberal sore losers to tarnish truth tellers by denouncing their reporting.

The war on so-called fake news has been merged with the unproven official conspiracy theory that the hated Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered the hacking of Democrat emails as payback against Hillary. While initially effective, the narrative is backfiring spectacularly as conservatives and independent media are going on the attack against the real fakesters and they are beginning to worry.

The damned liberal New York Times in particular is in panic mode with a major article bellyaching how easily that the meme has been turned against them.

According to the NYT piece entitled “Wielding Claims of ‘Fake News,’ Conservatives Take Aim at Mainstream Media”:

The C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the White House may all agree that Russia was behind the hacking that interfered with the election. But that was of no import to the website Breitbart News, which dismissed reports on the intelligence assessment as “left-wing fake news.”

Rush Limbaugh has diagnosed a more fundamental problem. “The fake news is the everyday news” in the mainstream media, he said on his radio show recently. “They just make it up.”

Some supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump have also taken up the call. As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts of “Fake news!”

Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.

In defining “fake news” so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country’s increasing political polarization. And conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream media, a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper.

The pro-Clinton paper’s flaming liberal bias is only further illuminated due to the authoritative sources cited in the piece including the George Soros-David Brock propaganda shop Media Matters as well as discredited Never Trump blowhard Erick Erickson. The now obligatory reference to libertarian talk radio firebrand Alex Jones as a key offender is also included.

In addition to it’s inherent dishonesty and journalistic sloth, the NYT piece serves as a textbook illustration of why an ever increasing number of Americans are coming to Hate and distrust the mainstream press.

People might recall that it was the New York Times which spent months assuring readers that Donald Trump had zero chance at being elected president and that Hillary would win in a landslide. We all know how that one worked out.

Originally published at Downtrend.com