Former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson in an interview last week said mainstream media’s shift from investigative journalism toward a corporate-sponsored, “fact check” mindset originated with left-wing activists seeking to discredit conservative news outlets — and it’s had a major impact on coverage of the pandemic.
Former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson in an interview last week said mainstream media’s shift from investigative journalism toward a corporate-sponsored, “fact check” mindset originated with left-wing activists seeking to discredit conservative news outlets.
That shift has had a major impact on news coverage of the pandemic, Attkisson said.
Attkisson, winner of five Emmys for investigative journalism, told viewers of Epoch Times TV’s “America’s Thought Leaders,” the term “fake news” used by the media in the run-up to Donald Trump’s election likely originated with First Draft, an online fact-checking organization created with funds from Eric Schmidt, then-CEO of Google and an active supporter of Hilary Clinton.
“First Draft thought of ‘fake news’ as only a problem in the conservative media,” Attkisson said. “There was no liberal version of ‘fake news.’”
Attkisson said prior to 2015 – 2016, there was no public movement “begging for Big Tech, social media or other third parties to set themselves between us and open information online or in the news.”
But that changed, she said.
“Many people embraced the notion that some know-nothing third party that quite frankly was having its strings pulled by some corporate or political interest could insert themselves and say what we can and can’t see and read, and what we should believe,” Attkisson explained.
