It doesn’t get any more ironic than this.
Christiane Amanpour and CNN are celebrating her 40th Anniversary as a “journalist” at the network by selling a commemorative sweater, the proceeds of which will go to a nonprofit for journalists.
LOL, $380.
— Annyka (@AnnykaV) September 12, 2023
The $380 sweater is emblazoned with a typically on-brand message for today’s journalists: “Be truthful, not neutral.” The “not neutral,” I should say, is the on-brand part of that slogan.
Both the price for an ugly sweater ($380) and the slogan itself tell you much about the world in which modern journalism exists.
Most of us wouldn’t think of spending $380 on a piece of “message” clothing, even if it is made of “sustainably sourced” cashmere. Even the description of the sweater is predictably precious.
In honor of Christiane Amanpour’s 40 years at CNN, 10% of each sweater purchased goes to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide.
Our classic cashmere crewneck sweater with “be truthful not neutral” embroidered across the front. Offered on Cream, Navy and Red.
100% sustainably sourced, ethically produced cashmere. Hand-stitched in NYC.
Want it in another color? Don’t see your size? Customize your sweater here!
Amanpour makes a cool $5 million a year, so I suppose she can afford this sweater in all the colors of the rainbow. It pays well to not be neutral when spewing the talking points of the Elite.
By now we all know how carefully curated is the “truth” that CNN and all the MSM deliver to us every day. Not only is it not neutral, it isn’t truthful either. Or, rather, they believe that what counts as truthful is that which supports the Narrative that they work assiduously to promote.
Now I will freely admit that CNN and most outlets in the MSM try to avoid telling outright falsehoods–rather, they frame their stories in such a way that the readers and viewers are led to assemble the falsehood they want you to believe in their own heads, or they bring guests on to spew the outright lies they wouldn’t themselves say.
Sure, they will then quote the “experts” as if they were speaking the truth. They will leave out important facts. They will quote people they know to be lying or spinning. I remember when journalists who knew for a fact that “Anonymous,” the author of an Op/Ed in the New York Times was Miles Taylor, allowed him to deny many times on the record that he was.
They didn’t lie. They simply repeated somebody else’s lie as if it were true. Here is a great example of how this works.
“The economic data have been just surreally good. Even optimists are just stunned,” says Nobel Prize-winning economist @paulkrugman. So why do polls show most Americans don’t think the economy is doing well? “There’s a really profound and peculiar disconnect going on.” pic.twitter.com/MNFhzZ2hh3
— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) September 12, 2023
How many times have you seen an anonymous source’s story be shown to be false, yet the reporters still protect them? In any reasonable world a reporter who was lied to shouldn’t respect a deal based on fraud. Except they likely knew the story to be a fraud.
This is the new definition of “being truthful, not neutral” in today’s journalism. Massage reality until it creates a mirage that is utterly false.
For the greater good, of course.
Then you can sell that image for big bucks. Everybody wins!
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