I do my best to avoid getting trapped in a media bubble.
Left or Right, establishment or "conspiracy theorist," American or European. I can neither ignore the media--something that would be good for anybody's mental health--nor restrict myself to only reading what appeals to me. My inclinations and my job require me to seek out both news and opinions from diverse viewpoints and be skeptical of all claims, no matter from whom they come.
Everybody suffers from confirmation bias, and every news source tends to focus on issues and facts that confirm their priors. And, of course, people tend to pick and choose what they report in order to buttress a Narrative™ that suits them. It's human nature, and when you are in power, the impulse is strong indeed, since what other people believe can either increase or diminish your livelihood.
Pope Leo XIV spurned JD Vance on Sunday, offering him a quick greeting after his inaugural mass while holding extensive private meetings with other world leaders. https://t.co/C38vP8Do8R
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) May 19, 2025
But there is a difference--and a big one--between spinning and perpetrating hoaxes. Hoaxes are the creation of self-conscious lies. A reporter could plausibly see Trump's hyperbole as "lies" and Biden's lies as "mistakes"--I doubt they do, but confirmation bias can be strong--but clipping videos to strip important context or repeating "facts" you know to be lies to create a false narrative is a hoax. It is a con job.
People who told the world Biden was a fit as a fiddle and sharp as a tack weren't spinning; They were lies. The "fine people" hoax was a lie. We know that because the people who lied went to great lengths to manipulate evidence to perpetrate it.
Jake Tapper was one of the biggest spreaders of the Fine People Hoax. He spread that lie dozens of times.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) April 6, 2025
Tapper says that he's not "on the left." Guess he's just one of the worst journalists alive.pic.twitter.com/DnCyEKADYr
The hoaxes continue unabated. The latest one is that the Pope spurned J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio after his inauguration.
The left has suddenly gotten religion, as they always do when it suits their ideology. They alternate between laughing at Christians for believing in a "Sky Daddy" and solemnly intoning that if you believed in Jesus, you would be an open borders socialist. They deride Catholics when family life and gender are being discussed, and embrace Catholic leaders when immigration or the death penalty are.
Rubio and Vance are Catholics and were invited to the Papal Inauguration. They then met with the Pope, as world leaders do.
The Daily Beast is pure garbage. They literally just make stuff up pic.twitter.com/Pi8tK2HvRk
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 19, 2025
This is inconvenient for the Left because they are busy making the case that Pope Leo XIV despises the current administration because he disagrees on migration. He, in fact, disagrees on these matters.
The Daily Beast says Pope Leo “snubbed” Vice President JD Vance. Since when does snubbed mean posing for multiple photos with someone?!
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 19, 2025
Why does the media insist on massively face planting when JD travels to the Vatican 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/8JEzb7Vyji
But these are the same people who bent over backward marinating us in stories about Joe Biden's and Nancy Pelosi's solemn adherence to Catholicism as they ripped apart Catholic doctrine on family, gender, and life issues. Pope Benedict made numerous statements disagreeing with their stances on these issues, and I can't seem to recall breathless stories about how the Pope hated them.
Pope Leo XIV met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday. Details of the papal meeting were not released, but the Americans later spoke with a top Vatican diplomat about U.S. and international issues. https://t.co/8V9ggt2qFj
— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) May 19, 2025
I certainly don't recall reading entirely concocted stories about how the Pope refused to meet with them, as happened here. Despite the photographic evidence to the contrary, we are being force-fed these lies.
Which gets me back to bubbles. Most of the people who read and trust the Daily Beast will never see those photos, because they exist in a bubble that will simply not print them. The contrary evidence exists, but if you never see it, it is as if it doesn't exist.
Is it possible that a Daily Beast reporter doesn't know that? It seems unlikely, and if that claim is made in order to exonerate them, it would merely be an admission of gross negligence, which is just as disqualifying as being a perpetrator of a hoax.
"I didn't lie; I am merely a lazy moron" is hardly a good excuse for somebody whose job it is to inform others.
But we all know that this was a lie, and that the liars can be confident of getting away with it because they control the bubble in which liberals live.
