The media is out of touch with the real news about the impeachment probe

Joel Pollock:

The media seem not to have watched the impeachment hearings: they stopped paying attention the moment the witnesses’ prepared statements were leaked and the Democrats’ talking points were posted.
Nor did many journalists bother to read the transcripts of the witnesses’ depositions in the earlier, closed-door hearings.

Partly that was because Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) rushed the public hearings before some of the most important transcripts were ready. Partly that was because the sheer length of the transcripts — hundreds of pages each — was daunting for journalists working on deadline.

But partly it was because some journalists are simply lazy, and others share the Democrats’ goal of bringing down President Donald Trump by any means necessary.

That’s why the media reports of the hearings were so inaccurate. When Ambassador Gordon Sondland led off with a statement — leaked everywhere — that there had been a “quid pro quo” for a White House meeting, the media ran with that story and ignored the rest of his testimony. They hardly bothered to report that he said later he had no direct knowledge of a “quid pro quo,” and that in fact President Trump told him explicitly: “I want nothing” and “no quid pro quo.” His testimony was, in fact, exculpatory. But the media treated it as if he had proved Democrats’ case.

Or take Dr. Fiona Hill. She came into her hearing last Thursday guns blazing, declaring that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were guilty of denying Russian interference in the 2016 election and backing a “fictitious narrative” about Ukrainian intervention.

The media reported that — and continued reporting that even after she had been forced to back away from her position.

Republicans held up the physical evidence: a giant report on Russian interference that they themselves had approved. They also cited the mainstream media’s own reporting on Ukrainian efforts to “sabotage” Trump in 2016.

Midway through the hearing, Dr. Hill was testifying about how it seemed the Ukrainians had “bet on the wrong horse” in 2016 and that Trump’s feelings about it were understandable. But the media ignored that story, even reporting the “fictitious narrative” headline after the hearing ended. It was as if they hadn’t been watching at all.

And many weren’t.
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You can see the results in the shoddy analysis that has appeared in the days since the hearings ended. Philip Rucker of the Post, for example, wrote a story Saturday about how Republicans were still unified behind the president despite “damning” evidence.

But Rucker did not cite any of the “damning” evidence, because there wasn’t any. He cited Dr. Hill’s view on Ukraine — without noting that she later walked it back or that it was not “evidence” of anything at all.

Rucker, who seems unfamiliar with what actually happened in the depositions and the hearings, never once considered that the reason Republicans are not breaking ranks was that the Democrats’ case was so poor. Instead, he imagined that they could only be acting on political motives — or, as one anti-Trumper quoted in the article said, because they have become a “cult.”

The real “cult” are the media themselves, who have been sticking pins into Trump for more than three years, convinced that this time their fantasies will come true and he will disappear. They live in a bubble they keep re-creating for each other, completely and willfully ignorant of reality.
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To read the Washington Post stories about the proceeding is to ignore in whole the holes in the Democrat case against President Trump.  The same goes for the other lazy stories from the mainstream media.  You get the impression that the reporters stuck their fingers in their ears and shouted "Nah, Nah Nah I can't hear you" rather than listen to the other side of the story.