I get tired of hearing CNN and liberal outlets reframing the issue and claiming that people cry "fake news" because they see something that they don't agree with.
Here's a good example from Mollie Hemmingway's dismantling of the Nunes hatchet job from the Times:
http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/29/new-york-times-hatchet-job-devin-nunes-riddled-errors/
The Farm Story That Wasn’t
Another example of Nunes’ supposed conspiracy-mongering was also dramatically false. Zengerle wrote that Nunes “began his political career, appropriately enough, because he believed he had uncovered a sinister plot.” He was “utterly convinced that his alma mater was secretly planning to close its campus farm.” The College of the Sequoias announced it was selling 160 acres on which its campus farm sat, and Nunes decided to run for the school’s board of trustees to save the farm.
Zengerle then writes:
There was just one problem: The farm didn’t need saving. ‘We were selling off the old farm, and we were putting the money in a fund to buy a bigger piece of land to build a new farm,’ says John Zumwalt, who was then on the board. ‘Of course we weren’t going to get rid of it.’ (Agriculture has long been one of the college’s largest departments.) But in a community like the Central Valley, Nunes’s theory about a plot to close the farm resonated with voters, and he unseated the incumbent.
There is just one problem: Zengerle’s story was wrong and he deliberately omitted key facts that upend it. I spoke with Zumwalt, who said Zengerle and
The New York Times“did a good job of being accurate without being truthful.” He said the
Times called him three times and by the second call, he could see what they were after.
“You could tell they wanted me to say that Devin Nunes, when he first got elected, was trying to chase windmills and save a farm that didn’t need saving,” Zumwalt said. While he says he spoke the words above, he also told
The New York Times that the other trustees had never publicized their plans for replacing the farm. He said they intended to buy a new farm, but a whole lot of people were skeptical about their future plans.
“We knew what was in our heart but, generally speaking, citizens are wise for distrusting government,” Zumwalt told me. He added, “We didn’t do a very good PR job. Before we started selling off the farm, we should have had a new one. [
The New York Times] left that part out.”
Nunes said his campaign focus wasn’t even on saving the farm, although it was an issue of concern to constituents, focusing instead on how he’d bring a “new vision” to the board of trustees. Zumwalt also found it interesting that the paper includes a complimentary quote from him praising Nunes’ work as trustee. “They weren’t trying to make the case that he was a lousy trustee, but that he jumps to conclusions,” he said.
