Media Matters

You know that HUGE BREAKING STORY that was all over right wing media — and a lot of more mainstream media as well — that it was 99% certain Hillary Clinton’s email server was hacked by at least FIVE foreign sources, and the investigations into this and the Clinton Foundation were leading to an indictment?

Nope. Fake.

And now even Bret Baier, who “broke” these stories, is abandoning the fakery and apologizing for his “mistake.”

Well, sort of.

I explained a couple of times yesterday the phrasing of one of my answers to Brit Hume on Wednesday night, saying it was inartful, the way I answered the last question about whether the investigations would continue after the election. And I answered that, yes, our sources said it would. They would continue to likely to an indictment. Well, that just wasn’t inartful, it was a mistake, and for that I’m sorry. I should have said, they will continue to build their case. Indictment obviously is a very loaded word, Jon, especially in this atmosphere and no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment no matter how strong investigators feel their evidence is. It is obviously a prosecutor who has to agree to take the case and make that case to a grand jury. We stand by the sourcing, on the ongoing active Clinton Foundation investigation and are working to get sources with knowledge of the details on the record, and on camera. Hopefully today.

As usual, getting the fake story out there is the prime goal of right wing media and punditry, because they know that even if they have to walk it back and apologize later, the damage will already be done. This has always been a dishonest conservative tactic, but it’s absolutely rampant this year.