The Big Talk on 1037.7FM after 7:11am weekday mornings with Pat Ryan, Michele Jansen and Attorney Clint Barkdoll.
February 15 – Following the acquittal of President Donald Trump in the Senate impeachment trial, a reporter questioned Michal Van der veen, Trump’s attorney, about details of the evidence and he, in turn, blasted the media bias.
Lana Zak, a reporter for CBSN, the digital network of CBS, asked Van der veen about the legitimacy of some of the evidence that was called into question, including a check mark on a twitter account, a wrong date and selective editing of the tapes.
Audio from the encounter detailed Van der veen letting her have it: “The media has to start telling the right story in this country. The media is trying to divide this country. You are blood thirsty for ratings and as such you’re asking questions now that are already set up with a fact pattern. I can’t believe you would ask me a question indicating that it’s alright just to doctor a little bit of evidence. There’s more stuff that we uncovered that they doctored to be frank with you.”
Attorney Clint Barkdoll noted that any misinformation in a trial is a real problem and to have the media minimize it is worrisome.
Michele Jansen added that “when you take something out of context and make it look like something, that’s propaganda, not evidence.”
Van der veen continued in a second audio clip, “They switched the date of a twitter a year to try to connect it to this case. That’s not a small thing ma’am. The other thing they did they put a check mark on something to make it look like a validated account and when they were caught, they didn’t say anything about it. They didn’t even try to come up with an excuse about it and that’s not the way our prosecutors or our government officials should be conducting ourselves. And the media shouldn’t be letting them get away with it either. I’m tired of the biased media on both sides, left and right.
Barkdoll pointed out that it’s true, both sides of the media have been known to put out only information that serves the idea of “confirmation bias.”
“People need to diversity their news bias,” Barkdoll suggested. “Because if they get it all from one source, they may not be getting the full story.”
He went on to note that had this been a criminal case, these mistakes could have gotten the evidence excluded and may have even been grounds for a mistrial.
“He’s spot-on to call out these things to say these are really important,” Barkdoll said of Van der veen. “The media shouldn’t just overlook them.”
Pat Ryan added that media really does need Trump.
“They need Trump to continue their narrative,” Ryan said. “They need Trump to continue selling newspapers. What is this? Week three of the Biden presidency and all we’re hearing is trump this, fourteenth amendment that, impeachment trial here. And what are they covering with Biden? Strawberries or something or hearts on the front lawn of the White House? That’s the big story? You’ve got to have the bad guy and they’re never going to let him (Trump) go away. If they do they don’t have a story anymore.”
There’s talk of invoking the fourteenth amendment, which would be a vote to preclude Trump from running for office again.
“But I think Democrats and certainly the media don’t really want him out of the picture,” Barkdoll noted. “The idea that he could reemerge here, form a third party and run again, it would be great for selling newspapers and TV ratings.”
Michele Jansen added that in her opinion, there’s a rather nefarious slant to all of this.
“It’s a way to keep people off kilter, to get us emotionally embroiled,” Jansen said. “To spark anger and resentment, and keep it focused on this ‘boogie man’ that then you don’t pay attention to what they’re doing and you allow them to do more authoritarian things. There’s something really disturbing about the way this affects the psyche of everybody in society. We’re not going to find peace we’re not going to find positive solutions as long as we allow this to happen.”
