Michael Brown’s Aug. 29 WorldNetDailiy column is basically a rant against the “mainstream media” for being too critical of President Trump, insisting that “It’s not just an undisciplined president getting unruly crowds upset about ‘fake news.’ It’s that your anti-Trump animus is often so loud it drowns out the report you are giving, especially in the context of TV news.” As his column is headlined “My appeal to MSM: Own up to fake news,” Brown ends with that demand: “It’s just that our nation is so terribly divided today that the last thing we need is fake news. Please help put a stop to it.”
Brown does inject some of his faux reasonableness, conceding that “1) I believe there is bias on the right as well as on the left; 2) I believe that the great majority of you take your profession quite seriously and are trying to report accurately; 3) I don’t agree with all of the president’s rhetoric and I regret some of the charges he has brought against you; and 4) I believe the president himself is often the author of inaccurate information.” He also admits that “there’s always been some degree of personal bias in the news. And again, I believe the right-wing media are guilty of this as well.”
But Brown never insists that the right-wing media “own up to fake news” — that message is reserved solely for the “mainstream media.” Why? Brown depends on the right-wing media to promote his message.
Which is why you will never hear Brown demand that WND — the publisher of his column — “own up” to its legacy of publishing fake news. Brown knows what side his bread is buttered on, and he will never be so gauche as to jeopardize his exposure on a key media outlet by telling the truth and holding it to the same standards he holds the “mainstream media.”
In other words, Brown is no different that WND itself, which refuses to acknowledge that its shoddy conspiracy theories and fake news are a key reason why it’s circling the drain (again).