Commentary: A news digest that far-right media fans may have missed

I’ve always been a newshound. As a teen, I read the newspaper every evening. As an adult, I wrote for several reputable news publications over two decades. Even now, I regularly see a dozen national and local media outlets daily, including the Associated Press, with its history of fair-minded reporting.

Occasionally I’ll check out one of the right-wing media like Fox News. What I frequently find is an alternative reality sprinkled with oddball conspiracies, or race-baiting, or creative twisting of facts aimed at demeaning Democrats. In alternative-reality news, insurrectionists become patriots, vigilantes become heroes, and anyone seeking to save the planet is a spendthrift socialist who hates the USA.

It got me wondering what folks who get their news mostly from far-right sources may have missed because the news was distorted, downplayed or ignored. Here are five recent news items they may have missed.

● Following the 2020 presidential election, a Republican businessman in Las Vegas claimed someone voted using his dead wife’s ballot. Republicans and right-wing media pounced on the claim to illustrate the voter fraud that former President Donald Trump was trumpeting. But last week, the man, Donald “Kirk” Hartle, admitted he was the one who cast his wife’s ballot and pleaded guilty to voting twice, The Associated Press reported. Calling Hartle’s actions “a cheap political stunt,” a district court judge fined him $2,000.

● A federal judge in Colorado last week ordered two Trump-supporting lawyers, Gary Fielder and Ernest Walker, to pay more than $180,000 in attorneys’ fees to defendants they wrongly sued for election fraud. The lawsuit, now dismissed, used baseless conspiracy theories spread by Trump and his supporters, the AP reported. The fees are to go to Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook and others. The judge said the lawsuit’s intention was to manipulate “gullible members of the public” and helped support the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection.

● Two veteran conservative Fox News commentators, Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg, said last week they quit Fox News to protest a three-part series on the Capitol insurrection by Fox host Tucker Carlson. The series was the last straw for the men who cited a pattern of incendiary and fabricated claims by Fox hosts in support of Trump, according to National Public Radio. Carlson’s series relied on fabrications and conspiracy theories to exonerate Trump supporters who participated in the insurrection, NPR reported.

● A federal jury in Charlottesville, Va., last week found 17 white nationalist leaders and organizations liable for violence during a deadly rally in that city in 2017 and ordered them to pay $26 million in damages, the AP reported. More than half of that total was for claims filed against James Fields Jr., who is serving life in prison for intentionally driving into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19. The verdict was considered a rebuke of the white nationalist movement, the AP stated.

● Eager to bash President Joe Biden for pandemic-related shortages, in October Newsmax and Fox News ran stories that included outdated and out-of-context photos of empty grocery store shelves and suggested Biden was responsible, according to PolitiFact. Photos used by Newsmax, for example, included bare shelves in London and Los Angeles from March 2020 when Trump was president. Another photo was from Japan in September 2020. The empty shelves were due to a coming typhoon.

These five items are good examples of why reputable, reliable, politically independent news outlets are so crucial to our nation. They are crucial because they strive to tell the truth and to provide all the news, good and bad. Without them, we are doomed to ignorance and our democracy is ultimately doomed to fail.

McCann is a contributing columnist for the Advertiser. He is a retired journalist and may be reached at Easywriter12345@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: A news rundown that far-right media consumers may have missed