Who dat Quickie?
Early on, these Quickies covered the various forms of Argument from Authority.
There's a problematic version from the news media.
Let's call it, Argument from Anonymous.
News outlets get information from an anonymous source, and then confirm it from each other—
when they're all likely getting it from the SAME bogus source.
Remember the story about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction?
That was from anonymous sources that were passing on propaganda from the Bush Administration,
which ended up being completely false.
On another occasion, a story claiming that C-SPAN had been hacked by RT
was reported by several outlets saying they'd confirmed it from C-SPAN—
and then C-SPAN themselves said it wasn't true!
A story about Russia hacking the US electric grid was confirmed by multiple outlets,
until it came out that it was really a single laptop not even connected to the grid
that got infected with malware which had nothing to do with Russia OR the power grid.
Multiple outlets confirmed that Officer Brian Sicknick died on January 6, 2021
when rioters attacked him with a fire extinguisher,
when he really died on the 7th of natural causes and had no blunt force trauma.
Multiple outlets confirmed that hundreds of websites from the Drudge Report to Antiwar.com
were secretly operated by Russian disinformation agents.
FALSE!
Multiple outlets confirmed that the Pulse night club shooter did it because he hated gays,
FALSE, and he used an AR-15, FALSE.
Multiple outlets confirmed that Russia attacked US diplomats in Cuba
using a sonic microwave weapon.
There's NO SUCH THING as a sonic microwave weapon!
The sounds in the source videos were crickets.
Several confirmed reports about assorted nefarious characters
visiting Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy
are IMPOSSIBLE because embassy visitors are strictly monitored and recorded.
Then there's all the "confirmed" stories about Michael Flynn that completely fell apart in court.
Of course, the biggest one is probably the false information tying Donald Trump and Wikileaks
to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
That led to an incredible three-year-long waste-of-our-money investigation that turned
up no confirmation of the story whatsoever—
and yet, NO politician or news outlet that reported the story as confirmed has retracted it.
One piece of reporting from CNN was that of a smoking gun email
received by Donald Trump, Jr. on September 4th, 2016,
ten days prior to the Wikileaks DNC email leak, proving he had advanced notice.
The problem was, the ACTUAL date on the email was September 14th, AFTER the leaks were published.
Why is that relevant?
Because MSNBC had said they'd confirmed the story from two sources with direct knowledge—
even though there wasn't the first bit of truth to it!
They "confirmed" a FALSE STORY!
This isn't news reporting! It's a propaganda machine!
Trump making disparaging comments about the troops.
Giuliani being investigated by the FBI,
TONS of bogus rape stories and statistics,
The Killian memo, Michael Cohen, Benghazi, the Swift Boat veterans, PissGate, the Covington Kids,
ALL of them confirmed by multiple news outlets,
ALL OF THEM FALSE.
No wonder public trust in the media is plummeting!
Apparently, multiple news outlets confirming a story from anonymous sources
is just another way of saying "spreading idle gossip."