How to Make up a Headline

It’s not for nothing that the very first of my Three Laws of the Media is: Never believe a headline. Stuff (big surprise!) just provided a masterclass exercise in just why you should never believe a legacy media headline (or indeed, pretty much anything the legacy media says).

US Capitol riot: January 6 panel is told that Trump indicated support for hanging Pence.

Wait, what? Just to make sure their readers got the message drilled in before their lips got tired, Stuff repeats the sensational claim in their first paragraph.

The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol collected testimony that then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows remarked to others that then-President Donald Trump indicated his support for hanging then-Vice President Mike Pence after rioters who stormed the Capitol on that day started chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

This is a truly extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims, as the rule goes, require extraordinary evidence. So, what evidence does Stuff provide for their astonishing claim?

Well, someone heard that someone else said that they totally reckon that Trump, uh, said something mean about Pence. Except that, even what they say they heard someone else say they heard Trump say falls well short of “support for hanging Pence”.

And just in case all that isn’t a dodgy enough game of Chinese whispers for you, they also won’t tell you who says they heard someone say what they heard Trump say. Nor can they “describe the tone with which the comment was made”. Well, of course not – because they weren’t there.

At 2:24 pm, the same moment the vice president and his family were endangered by the pro-Trump mob and forced to flee the Senate chamber, Trump tweeted that Pence lacked “courage”. “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump’s tweet said. “USA demands the truth!”

Okay, so where’s this “support for hanging Pence” that was their headline claim?

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Meadows, was asked by the committee about the account and confirmed it, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Hutchinson sat for multiple interviews with the committee and provided detailed information about the lead-up to and happenings on January 6, 2021, according to these people and testimony released in court filings by the committee.

People familiar with the committee’s work said they view Hutchinson, a longtime Meadows aide, as a key witness.

Stuff

So, their key witness wasn’t there, is repeating second-hand hearsay, and there’s still not a single word that could possibly be construed as “support for hanging Pence”.

Don’t believe a single thing the legacy media tell you.