There was a time in modern American — and I use the word loosely here — journalism that single-sourced stories like this were practically nonexistent:
Military chiefs have concerns about the politicization of President Trump's Fourth of July event, with reservations about putting tanks or other armored vehicles on display, a source with direct knowledge tells CNN https://t.co/fpyCUyd7zs pic.twitter.com/cO0ZbSC6gN
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 3, 2019
That time was from January 2009 to January 2017, when political reporters did little more than pen the occasional love letter to President Obama.
Sadly, the single anonymous source is the norm as long as the White House is occupied by a man the press isn’t allowed to like.
As with all of the single-source nonsense, the post that accompanies that tweet is filled with a lot of qualifying words and filler that don’t have much at all to do with the headline.
Well, more than half of the post, in fact, isn’t about this poorly-sourced concern that the military brass allegedly have. The guest list is covered in two separate sections, and there are a couple of meaningless paragraphs about who won’t be there, and what the protocol is for sending subordinates.
A good chunk of the post is devoted to complaining about the cost. I pointed out in an earlier post just how laughable it is that the Democrat-loving media are suddenly concerned about the American taxpayer.
None of this is to say that an anonymous source is never right. It’s just that so many of them haven’t been proven to be so in the Trump era. The single shadow source is usually used as it is here: get a clickbait headline out of it, then work out whatever issues one has with the president that day.
This week they’re focused on being really, really mad that the president of the United States wants to throw a yuuuuuge (couldn’t resist) Fourth of July party.
That should really help them win back the Heartland voters they drove away in 2016.
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