Top 10 misreported or under reported stories of 2015

2015-12-30-rightsidenews-top-10-misreported-or-under-reported-stories-of-2015

Top 10 Misreported or Under-reported Stories of 2015
AIM SPECIAL REPORT by Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media Right Side News, 2015-12-30

As the year draws to a close, we like to highlight some of the American media’s worst abuses that occurred during the past year. We have picked 10 stories for which there were general narratives presented by the mainstream media—narratives that ignored the larger truths to be gleaned from these stories. In other cases, the media missed the story altogether. We easily could have picked many more that meet those criteria, but arbitrarily chose to look at 10, in no particular order.

The Fake Iran Agreement
Global Warming Deal
Obamacare’s Ongoing Failures
Ignoring Benghazi Revelations
Blame Gun Control Laws or the Attacker?
The Islamic State
Obama’s Cybersecurity Failures
Vetting Hillary Clinton
Skewed GOP Primaries
Securing our Skies

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Obama’s Cybersecurity Failures

In an outrageous and unacceptable breach of trust,
the Obama administration failed to maintain adequate cybersecurity
at 17 of the 24 major federal agencies,
with the GAO finding that in 2014
17 agencies demonstrated “material weaknesses or significant deficiencies.”
Not surprisingly, in twin hacks which together compose
“one of the most devastating breaches of U.S. government data in history,”
the Chinese gained access to American citizens’ private identifiable information
such as social security numbers, health insurance, military service and fingerprints.

“The Obama administration initially downplayed the cyber hack of the [Office of Personnel Management] OPM,
which centrally manages records for current and former federal employees,” we reported.
“It did so even though it had missed the hack for at least four months, if not more,
until a company, CyTech Services, which was conducting a sales demonstration,
found malware in OPM’s system that could have been there for a year or more.”

Not only did the Chinese gain access to data on current and former government employees, it also gained access to background check data.
Now, the U.S. government has offered just three years of identity protection to the 21.5 million people whose data were stolen,
while a foreign country gets to take its time to parse through the details.
Where is the mainstream media’s outrage on behalf of the millions of victims of President Obama’s ongoing incompetence?

[I think this reports outrage is misplaced.
What is most worrisome to the average American
is not the possibility that the Chinese hackers will use this information for their individual pecuniary gain,
but that the Chinese state will use the information to suborn, intimidate, and influence anyone in the U.S. that they think can assist China.
I.e., it is an espionage problem, not a financial one.]

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Vetting Hillary Clinton

No matter how shameful her falsehoods or accompanying excuses,
the mainstream media continue to give Hillary Clinton a free pass
on virtually anything she alleges.
She has been caught in lie, after lie, after lie.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in particular,
brought Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer on his show
in order to undermine the author’s investigation of the Clintons and their foundation.
“But the ABC host, formerly a Senior Advisor on Policy and Strategy,
and unofficial hatchet-man for President Bill Clinton,
treated his broadcast as more of an interrogation than an interview
in an effort to discredit Schweizer and defend, in turn, the Clintons,”
we reported at the time.
It turned out that Stephanopoulos had himself contributed to the Clinton Foundation [!!!]
without telling his employer, his guest, or his viewers—
highlighting once again the ongoing incestuous relationships between the media and the Clintons.

Hillary Clinton’s email scandal has also turned into
a campaign season debacle of drip, drip, drip.
She deleted half of her emails as Secretary of State—
which were stored on a private email server—
and then sent the remaining half to the State Department,
claiming that those messages she deleted were personal.
It turns out that she deleted portions of the emails she sent on to the State Department,
and also failed to provide a number of emails that were sent
between her and confidante Sydney Blumenthal.

And, Mrs. Clinton falsely maintained
that she never emailed classified information using her email server.
The intelligence community Inspector General has since declared
at least two of her emails Top Secret.
“The sources…[said] that while the emails were indeed ‘top secret’ when they hit Clinton’s server,
one of them remains ‘top secret’ to this day—
and must be handled at the highest security level,” reports Fox News.

Besides, it doesn’t really matter if she knew or not.
In her position, it was her responsibility to know.
And the idea that she could operate for four years as Secretary of State,
with all of her emails sent and received on an unauthorized, private server,
and never handle classified material, is absurd on its face.
Plus, the likelihood that her server was hacked by foes such as China or Russia is very high,
even with Secret Service officers standing guard outside the room where the server sat,
which she ridiculously claimed was a measure of security
that protected her emails from people who would want to see them.

Mrs. Clinton’s email server remains under FBI investigation
while the mainstream media continue to look the other way.
After the treatment given to Gen. David Petraeus and others by the Obama Justice Department
for far less egregious mishandling of classified material,
the question must be asked:
Is Hillary Clinton above the law?
Reporters continue to violate their mandate to vet this presidential candidate,
just as they failed to do so with Barack Obama.

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