New example of why discerning Americans distrust mainstream news

In October of last year, a Gallup poll found just 32% of Americans have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in news media. 39% of respondents had "no confidence" in the Fourth estate. That was pronounced a "new high," as just 27% of 2016 poll respondents had answered similarly.

Legacy media brought that sorry appraisal on itself through routine dissembling. Here is the latest instance: 

On March 6, Huffington Post ran an article titled "Mark Robinson's Bizarre Ramble: 'I Absolutely Want To Go Back To the America Where Women Couldn't Vote.'" It related North Carolina's lieutenant governor Mark Robinson once enthused he'd "absolutely" desire to live in such a repressive era. 

While Robinson did in fact voice preference for that time, he did so for a pivotal reason. He explained that it was because Republicans of that era had agitated for women's electoral rights. "And they are the reason women can vote today," he accurately concluded.

The piece's author, Jennifer Bendery, scissored out that important sentence. And she compounded her wrongdoing by reusing the misrepresentative snippet in a subsequent X message. 

Other left-loyal venues quickly circulated Huffington Post's dishonest slant, also not conveying the entire quote - including the last sentence, in which Robinson explained justification. These included MSNBC, Vanity Fair, New Republic, and Vox. 

Surprisingly, usually liberal Snopes noted the quote had been "stripped of its context."

A classic example of ripping apart a full quote, that the remaining  fragment can be waved as sufficiently representative, is widespread mischaracterization of Trump's 2017 post-Charlottesille Unite the Right rally "very fine people" line. 

Viewers of that speech, and readers of its transcript, understand the then-president was referring to protesters on opposite sides of the Robert E. Lee statue debate. And that he specifically denounced hate groups. In fact, he also condemned them before that event and since then.

But for liberal agenda-pushing scribes, facts are irrelevant. They isolated just three of Trump's words - "very fine people" - and strove to palm them off on the gullible as honestly representative. One still reads and hears that false rendering regurgitated, including from conniving Democrats like Joe Biden.

The scurrilous tactic of cropping quotes to deceive news readers and channel them toward conclusions favorable to partisan fortunes joins other arrows of deception in the Fake News quiver. 

Included in that reprehensible number are skewed source selection, ladling subjective opinion phrases like "pro-choice," "gender-affirming care,' and "reproductive rights" into ostensibly straight-news articles, misrepresentative headlines, pro/con citation ratios, and photo choices.

It is also routine for supposedly objective ink-spillers to frame entire pieces acording to their personal progressive mindsets, or even abuse their situations to shovel partisan garbage.

For some three years, remember, allegedly reputable outlets peddled the "Trump-Russia Collusion" hoax. Scores of industry-ensconced donkey shills posing as journalists deceitfully assured America of its verity. 

Astoundingly, some uncritical sorts may yet believe that soundly discredited fiction and persist in patronizing sources that lied to them.

Persons so unwise as to rely upon mainstream news deserve their resultant ignorance.