by Mark Crispin Miller, News from Underground:

Tucker Carlson tells Russell Brand exactly how it all went down, while CNN’s Abby Phillip flips out in defense of the official story, which she thinks is true, because “we watched what happened”

Although their function is to put across Big Lies, and then maintain them, “our free press” (by and large) don’t think they’re telling lies. What makes them such dogged champions of those lies, no matter what the counter-evidence, is the intense—that is, fanatical—conviction that the lies are true. Thus “our free press” is a sort of cult, its members’ faith in the Official Story bolstered by their salaries, their status and the fact that everyone around them “thinks” the same. (Nor are they only “liberals” in that cult; Fox News bought “January 6” along with all the other media, as Carlson notes—and so it was with 9/11, and COVID-19.)

TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

Moreover, as that parenthetical aside suggests, the Big Lies that work best, sweeping (nearly) everyone away, are those that play on fear and anger, often due to trauma—e.g., the assassinations of the Kennedys and King, the “terrorist attacks” on 9/11, the (fake) spread of “the coronavirus.” Since they’re the ones who “tell the story” in the first place, “our free press” somehow see it as their moral obligation to defend that story against anyone who dares to contradict it—which (they think) is just wrong, considering how much “we’ve” suffered! This may be what we see in Abby Phillip’s fierce reaffirmation of the “January 6” scenario, and in the media’s insane hostility to Bobby Kennedy, whose willingness to contradict, or complicate, Official Stories obviously strikes them as pure evil.

If journalists are going to work as journalists again, and not as propagandists, they’re going to have to understand how propaganda works, and how real journalism works against its influence.

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1677371891961548800

Abby Phillip Spars With Attorney For Convicted Jan. 6 Rioter Over Whether the Day Was Violent: ‘I Know This Stuff Better Than You’

July 7, 2023

CNN anchor Abby Phillip conducted a heated interview on Thursday with an attorney who has represented dozens of January 6 defendants, with the two arguing over whether the storming of the Capitol was an inherently violent event.

Phillip’s interview with attorney John Pierce became tense from the first question after he took issue with the way that Phillip had worded her introduction.

“I would actually take some issue with the language in some of your lead up about, you know, folks storming the Capitol,” he protested. “January 6 was a very complex event. There were a lot of people who engaged in various kinds of conduct.”

Asked if his most recent client, who was convicted on several charges including physical assault, was “remorseful about his actions on January 6,” Pierce said:

I think there are certain things that he wish had happened differently, but you know, the trial laid out very clearly that he was there to have his voice be heard, he was there to protect other people. There is very clear evidence that there was excessive force by police officers and he was trying to assist an elderly person who was being beaten by batons when he was on the ground.

Phillip cut in:

Look, I have to stop you there because, honestly, we watched what happened on January 6, okay? And you can make sort of legalistic arguments about what exactly your client was convicted of and what he was not, [but] there’s no question that there was violence at the Capitol, that officers were assaulted on that day. There’s no question about that. There’s also no question that your client was participated [sic] in pushing back against law enforcement officers who were doing their jobs.

Pierce took issue with Phillip’s words, responding, “The narrative that, with all due respect to your network, sometimes has been pushed, that this was a, you know, just a violent event that—there was violence on both sides.”

“No, no, no. It was a violent event. Look, it was a violent event. Police officers were there doing their jobs,” said Phillip, to which Pierce replied, “Trust me Abby, some of the police officers were not doing their jobs. Some of the police officers were going way beyond doing their jobs, including unjustified lethal force, okay? January 6 is not as simple…”

Read More @ markcrispinmiller.substack.com