The media has a new strategy

Ace of Spades has noticed that the media has a new strategy:

Sometimes, as with the NYT Flynn transcripts story, they write a scarifying headline, but then, in the body of the piece, they admit there’s no there there.

But they rely on the headline to convey the opposite impression — and they rely on the Blue Checkmark Mafia to retweet the shit out of headline only, with the implication our explicit claim that the article says what it simply does not say.

Ace links to a story by Becket Adams in the Washington Examiner:

The Associated Press dropped the ball Friday with a supposed scoop alleging President Trump is considering deploying approximately 100,000 National Guard units to round up illegal immigrants.

The Department of Homeland Security is considering no such thing, an agency spokeswoman said following the story’s publication.

The leaked DHS memo on which the entire AP report hinges was only an early, pre-decision draft, and it wasn’t written by the agency’s secretary, John F. Kelly, according to federal officials.

The draft memo didn’t specifically suggest nationalizing the National Guard. The draft memo also never used the 100,000 figure cited by the AP, though it’s possible the news group came to that number by tallying the number of troops currently stationed in the 11 states where the National Guard would supposedly be used to crack down on illegal immigration. The report doesn’t explain this.

Also, to be clear, the word “deportation” is never used in the memo. As far as National Guard units are concerned, the memo only floats the idea of giving them the authority to assist in the “investigation, apprehension and detention” of criminal aliens.

Further, there is nothing in the AP report to indicate the president was ever aware of any such proposal.

Read more here.