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<\/h1>\nSo the corporate media have gone and done it again. As they have, repeatedly, for the last two and half years, they shook the earth with\u00a0a \u201cbombshell\u201d story<\/a>\u00a0proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, or at least committed an impeachable felony in connection with something to do with the Russians, or Ukrainians, or other Slavic persons \u2026 which story turned out to be inaccurate, or not entirely accurate, or a bunch of horseshit.<\/span><\/p>\n This time it was BuzzFeed\u2019s Jason Leopold, \u201ca reporter with a checkered past<\/a>\u201d (i.e.,\u00a0a history of inventing his sources<\/a>) who broke the \u201cbombshell\u201d Russiagate story that turned out to be a bunch of horseshit. Leopold, and his colleague Anthony Cormier, reported that Trump had directed his attorney, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about plans to construct a Trump Tower in Moscow, thus suborning perjury and obstructing justice. Their sources for this \u201cbombshell\u201d story were allegedly \u201ctwo federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Approximately twenty-four hours later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s office (i.e., the office \u201cinvolved in an investigation of the matter\u201d) stated that the BuzzFeed story was \u201cnot accurate,\u201d which is a legal term meaning \u201ca bunch of horseshit.\u201d\u00a0BuzzFeed is standing by its story<\/a>, and is working to determine what, exactly, Mueller\u2019s office meant by \u201cnot accurate.\u201d Ben Smith, BuzzFeed\u2019s Editor-in-Chief, has called on Mueller \u201cto make clear what he\u2019s disputing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Liberals and other Trump-obsessives have joined in the effort to interpret the Special Counsel\u2019s office\u2019s cryptic utterance. French hermeneuticists have been reportedly called in to deconstruct the meaning of \u201caccurate.\u201d\u00a0Professional Twitter semioticians<\/a>\u00a0are explaining that \u201cnot accurate\u201d doesn\u2019t mean \u201cwrong,\u201d but, rather, refers to something that is \u201caccurate,\u201d but which the user of the word doesn\u2019t want to disclose publicly, or that legal terms don\u2019t mean what they mean \u2026 or something more or less along those lines.<\/span><\/p>\n Glenn Greenwald, in August 2018,\u00a0reporting on another \u201cbombshell\u201d story that turned out to be a bunch of horseshit<\/a>, compiled a partial list of Russiagate stories that the corporate media had published and promoted over the course of the previous eighteen months which turned out to be a bunch of horseshit (i.e., the stories did, not Greenwald\u2019s list). In the wake of this latest horseshit story, Greenwald revised and renamed this list \u201cThe 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump\/Russia Story.<\/a>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But Greenwald\u2019s list is just a small sample of the Russiagate stories that have turned out to be horseshit. For the record, here are several more:<\/span><\/p>\n My personal favorite remains the one about how\u00a0Hillary Clinton may have been poisoned by Putinist operatives<\/a>\u00a0back in 2016. And then there\u2019s the pot-smoking, prostitute-banging,\u00a0incompetent Novichok perfume assassins<\/a>, the\u00a0African American-brainwashing memes<\/a>, the\u00a0Putin-orchestrated Yellow Vest rebellion<\/a>, the\u00a0brain-eating Russian-Cubano crickets<\/a>, and various other bunches of horseshit.<\/span><\/p>\n I am using the terms \u201chorseshit\u201d and \u201ca bunch of horseshit\u201d (as opposed to terms like \u201cfailures\u201d and \u201cerrors\u201d), not just to be gratuitously vulgar, but, also, to try to make a point. One is not supposed to use these terms in connection with \u201cserious,\u201d \u201crespected\u201d news outlets. Which is why journalists like Greenwald and Aaron Mat\u00e9 (who have extensively reported on the corporate media\u2019s ongoing production and dissemination of horseshit) do not use such terms in the course of their reporting, and instead use less inflammatory terms like \u201cfalse,\u201d \u201cinaccurate,\u201d \u201cmistake,\u201d and \u201cerror.\u201d Principled journalists like Greenwald and Mat\u00e9 are constrained by (a) their journalistic ethics, (b) their integrity, and (c) their belief in the idea of a \u201cfree and independent press,\u201d which is one of the pillars of Western democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n Being neither a respected journalist nor a believer in the existence of an \u201cindependent press,\u201d I am under no such constraints. Because I\u2019m not trying to get or keep a job, or maintain a \u201crespectable\u201d reputation, I\u2019m free to call a spade a spade and a bunch of horseshit a bunch of horseshit. I am also free to describe \u201cjournalists\u201d like Leopold,\u00a0Luke Harding<\/a>,\u00a0Craig Timberg<\/a>,\u00a0Franklin Foer<\/a>, and many of their corporate media colleagues (not to mention\u00a0TV clowns like Rachel Maddow<\/a>) as the liars and rank propagandists they are. I don\u2019t need to pretend their fabricated stories are simply the result of \u201cshoddy journalism,\u201d or \u201cover-reliance on official sources,\u201d or any other type of \u201cerror\u201d or \u201cfailure.\u201d These people know exactly what they are doing, and are being extremely well paid to do it. They went to school to learn how to do it. Then they butt-sucked and back-stabbed their way up the ladder of establishment power to be able to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, of course, there are still principled journalists working for the corporate media, but they are doing so by walking a very fine line. No one has to tell them where it is. Every professional journalist knows precisely where it is, and what it is there for. Though they are permitted to walk right up to it, occasionally (to keep them from feeling like abject whores), one step over it and they will be cast into the Outer Darkness of the Blogosphere and excommunicated from the Church of Respectable Journalism. If you don\u2019t believe me, just ask Seymour Hersh, or John Pilger, or any other journalistic heretic.<\/span><\/p>\n If Russiagate serves no other useful purpose, it is at least exposing the corporate media as the propaganda factories that they are. Given the amount of obviously fabricated horseshit they have disseminated during the last two years, you\u2019d have to be a total moron or a diehard neoliberal cultist not to recognize the function they perform within the global capitalist ruling establishment (which is essentially no different than the function the establishment media perform in any other society, namely, to disseminate, maintain, and reify the official narrative of its ruling classes).<\/span><\/p>\n Sadly, there\u2019s no shortage of morons and cultists. I don\u2019t blame the morons, because \u2026 well, they\u2019re morons. The cultists are another species entirely. These are people who, no matter how often the corporate media feed them another \u201cexplosive,\u201d \u201cbombshell\u201d Russiagate story that turns out to be a bunch of horseshit, will defend the concept of the \u201cindependent media\u201d like head-shaven, bug-eyed Manson followers. Confront them with facts contradicting their beliefs and they close their eyes and start chanting and humming and repetitiously babbling banishing spells. The notion that the Western corporate media may serve the interests of the ruling establishment (just like the media in every other society serve that society\u2019s ruling classes) is unimaginable and tantamount to heresy.<\/span><\/p>\n This fetishization of \u201cthe independent press\u201d is a phenomenon unique to Western capitalism. Basically, it\u2019s a childish fairy tale, like believing that Santa Claus is an actual person or that voting in elections in a corporate oligarchy has anything to do with actual democracy. Think about it dispassionately for a minute. Why would any ruling establishment permit a genuinely \u201cindependent\u201d press to disseminate ideas and information willy-nilly throughout society? If it did, it wouldn\u2019t last very long.<\/span><\/p>\n Most people understand this intuitively, which is why the corporate media relentlessly repeat the mantra-like phrase, \u201cfree and independent press,\u201d over, and over, and over again. Seriously, switch on NPR, or have a look at The Guardian or the Washington Post, or any of the other corporate media repeatedly reminding you how \u201cindependent,\u201d \u201cfree\u201d and \u201cdemocratic\u201d they are. It\u2019s essentially Neuro-linguistic programming.<\/span><\/p>\n So let\u2019s not be shocked when the corporate media continue to bombard us with \u201cbombshell\u201d stories about Trump and Russia that turn out to be horseshit. Personally, I welcome these stories. The more corporate media horseshit the better! Who knows, if they dish out enough blatant horseshit, more people might lose their \u201ctrust in the media,\u201d and begin to investigate matters themselves. I know, that makes me a Nazi, right? Or at least a Russian propagandist? I mean, encouraging folks to distrust the corporate media? Isn\u2019t there some kind of law against that? Or have they not quite gotten around to that yet?<\/span><\/p>\n C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel,\u00a0ZONE 23<\/a>, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at\u00a0cjhopkins.com<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0consentfactory.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n