Thread by @mattsheffield

Thread: Republicans' willingness to brazenly repeat obvious falsehoods is almost never called out in the access-obsessed mainstream media like @jaketapper does in this segment about "made up convoluted crap."

Some GOP reactions in my next tweets... cnn.com/videos/politic…

Keys point from Tapper: "The incentive structure in the Republican Party and its media, does not punish those who spread bad medical advice or lies. In fact, quite the opposite. Telling the truth as a Republican official can be hazardous to your political health."

Instead of trying to show how mis-informers on the right are punished, the right-wing media reaction has been defensive and laughable.

Here's BizPacReview citing congenital liar Donald Trump as proof that Tapper was wrong and saying CNN was mean to the former guy:

LifeZette wrote in its headline that Tapper's assertions were "outrageous" but did not offer any argument against him: web.archive.org/web/2021050401…

Breitbart didn't defend conservative media either: breitbart.com/clips/2021/05/…

Daily Caller had nothing to add either: dailycaller.com/2021/05/02/mad…

The silence is quite revealing. You simply can't defend false claims that Joe Biden wants to ban meat or that Kamala Harris wants to sell books to children in shelters.

This was my former reality in right media though. People constantly asked me to "report" things that were lies

At least several times weekly, I used to get emails from readers asking "How come you guys haven't talked about Obama doing X?"

And the answer was, because he wasn't doing X.

In the pre-Tea Party GOP, elected officials did not usually believe the nonsense. Now they do.

Or, if they don't believe it, they know how many of their voters do, and so they'll repeat the nonsense because it's useful. Because debating made-up stories about Democrats is a lot easier than defending unpopular conservative economic policies.

One conservative rejoinder to accurate statements about how falsehoods easily propagate in right media has been to reference the fact that Trump was not indicted for "colluding" with Russia.

But it's a misunderstanding of the law since Mueller believed he couldn't indict Trump.

I do believe that several media outlets made mistakes in pursuit of stories related to Trump and Russia, but to claim there was *nothing* there between Kilimnik, Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Kushner, and Stone is just misleading.

It is true that there are some conservative writers who are fact-based. But they are constantly berated by their readers for it. Just have a look at the comments section of HotAir.com.

Sadly, the incentive is to believe lies or to make them up. /end

PS: I should add that there are a lot of people who currently work in the mainstream media who, like me, got their start in conservative media.

I'm going to be writing about our journeys in the future, so if that describes you or someone you know, please DM me.