Michael Goodwin: The left-wing media created their own crisis and now have to pay the price for repeatedly attacking Donald Trump
Even as defeated Democrats try to decide who they are and what they believe in, their media handmaidens face a crisis of their own.The comeuppance against their politically driven bias has arrived — and it’s proving to be expensive in more ways than one.Recent days have reconfirmed that their war against Donald Trump is their most egregious assault on truth and fairness, but it was hardly the first or only.CNN was caught this week boasting it helped free a desperate Syrian prisoner from a government slaughterhouse in Damascus.Problem is, the man was quickly unmasked as an intelligence officer for the hated Assad regime, which the embarrassed outlet now acknowledges.Reporter Clarissa Ward and her crew fell for the ruse because they ignored a cardinal rule of caution: A story that is too good to be true usually isn’t true.ABC News and its chief Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos fell into another trap.
They put their agenda of defeating Trump ahead of the facts and the law, and, faced with depositions that likely would have supported his claim of defamation, ABC caved.In a settlement, the network forked over $16 million for a Trump library and his legal fees, and had to publicly say they “regret” Stephanopoulos’ false claims that Trump had been found liable for rape in a civil case.Ouch — the apology surely stung much more than the money.A third case is from the past, but it is instructive in its own way.Now that a North Carolina woman finally admitted the charges of rape she leveled against three Duke lacrosse players in 2006 were fabricated, the media pile-on during that era looks even more outlandish.Day after day, the feeding frenzy pitted white male privilege against the poor black dancer they hired — and supposedly raped.
The facts were murky and disputed from the start, but that didn’t stop the hysteria.Once again, the charges fit a preconceived narrative, and any facts that didn’t align were damned, along with presumptions of inno...