absolutely shameless

By now, you've doubtless seen the "crying girl" flap, instigated by TIME Magazine which, in a recent issue, showed a doctored cover photo with a sobbing female toddler, and with Donald Trump standing next to her, staring down at her in a coldly contemplative way. The message of the cover was clear: this girl was an example of the many children supposedly being ripped away from their families at the US border in accordance with an inhumane immigration policy (which I discussed here).

As it turns out, the girl wasn't being ripped away from her family at all: her parents were receiving a pat-down, during which time the little girl began crying, as toddlers are wont to do. When confronted with the fact that it was pushing fake news, TIME apparently decided to double down (here and here), unrepentant about its employment of journalistic taqiyya:

The combination of erroneous reporting, missing context and lack of due diligence in the reporting process from TIME here are stunning. What was supposed to be a story highlighting the plight of families who are torn apart as they flee violence turned out instead to highlight exactly the kind of case that conservatives say makes the situation at the border complex. Some families are falsely claiming asylum to game the system, knowingly putting their children in danger, and drug traffickers and smugglers are taking advantage of the situation. It’s not as simple as the media class has made it out to be.

TIME defended its cover and its reporting Friday, essentially claiming the facts are irrelevant because of the propaganda value of the piece. The photo and story “capture the stakes of this moment,” the editor in chief told reporter Hadas Gold.

“The June 12 photograph of the 2-year-old Honduran girl became the most visible symbol of the ongoing immigration debate in America for a reason,” the EIC told reporter Hadas Gold. “Under the policy enforced by the administration, prior to its reversal this week, those who crossed the border illegally were criminally prosecuted, which in turn resulted in the separation of children and parents. Our cover and our reporting capture the stakes of this moment.”

If reporters were honest and unmotivated by agendas, I'd take a more respectful view of them. But this sort of egregious fakery is far, far beyond the pale, and I'm getting to the point where I no longer care when I hear horror stories about journalists who get captured, tortured, and killed. People in service to the corporate media are drones pushing an ideology, and it's a real shame to see. While the alt-media are far from perfect, I think you're more likely to get an actual dose of reality from those folks than you are from the endless sea of infernal, over-coiffed teleprompter readers. This is what a zombie apocalypse looks like.

Styx on the crying girl:


[NB: Styx mislabels the girl as Guatemalan. She's actually Honduran.]

Here's Styx on the detention-center hypocrisy: if Trump is a Nazi, Obama is a Supernazi!