Family Life's Latest News Farce

I caught a few minutes of the Family Life Network's (FLN) news segment the other day and I was struck by how fuzzy the line gets between mis- and disinformation. It's also noteworthy how much the network has shifted to the Right in recent years - though it's nowhere near American Family Radio (AFR) or even local stations like WDCX out of Buffalo, New York - other stations I pick up at times when I'm out and about.

Robby Price the host (how he loves his cutesy little nicknames) reported on Trump's Oval Office encounter with the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa - who is incidentally a corporate shill for the mining and energy industry, a criminal, and even a butcher - he was a key player in a massacre of miners back in 2012. Rather than bother to mention the various angles of the story, Price simply repeated Trump's claims regarding White Genocide and didn't even bother to explain how these claims are contested and the specifics of the video shown by Trump have been thoroughly rebutted. It was quite literally fake news.

In response to the murder of Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC, Price followed the Newsmax play-book and immediately (without warrant) tied in campus protests to the Gaza Genocide to this specific act of violence. The logic of Price and the Right is that all opposition to Israel is Anti-Semitic and therefore the campus protests are also Anti-Semitic - even though many of the protesters are in fact Jewish.

We don't even know if Elias Rodriguez the murder suspect is in fact Anti-Semitic. The Right and the Israel Lobby are determined to equate the two. Anyone who is opposed to Israel and its genocide in Gaza is Anti-Semitic. We saw the same thing in the phoney Labour scandal in the UK that led to the unseating of Jeremy Corbyn. Keir Starmer led the charge and despite his rhetoric and Netanyahu's denunciation of Starmer, Macron, and Carney - all three states, the UK, France, and Canada, continue to support Israel's genocide. Netanyahu and some of the most extreme of his allies within the American Right equate all criticism of Israel with being pro-Hamas - an absurd claim.

And while the violence of Rodriguez is rightly denounced, I noticed Price did not bother to report on Florida congressman Randy Fine's calls to effectively 'nuke' Gaza - drawing an analogy with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Apparently such degenerate and sick rhetoric from a member of congress is not newsworthy.

Price, FLN, and the Right want to lump all these elements together and therefore the campus protester is basically equated with this deranged murderer on the streets of Washington DC. It's called spin.

In the meantime, the radical settlers engage in such murders on a regular basis in places like the West Bank. When this is even reported in Western media, these same Right-wing elements are quick to come to their defense and justify their slaughter.

We also might note that virtually all US media outlets (but especially those like FLN) have deliberately ignored the abundant evidence of Israeli assassination of children, the deliberate targeting of hospitals, double-tap tactics meant to kill rescue workers, and torture and concentration camps. Given the US also regularly has employed such tactics which are also generally ignored by the media, it shouldn't surprise us.

Finally, Robby Price ran a story about Biden's decline and the recent accusations made by Jake Tapper and others. It is certainly disgraceful and there's no doubt Biden like all US presidents was given over to a form of megalomania.

But then we were barraged with quotes from Kentucky's James Comer and others about how the US had no president for two years and how this is the 'biggest scandal in American history'.

It is a scandal that both so-called journalists like Price and government officials like Comer are able to find employment in these fields when they so wantonly flaunt their ignorance.

In now way do I mean to justify Biden or those who helped cover up his decline (and it is a scandal) but it would seem these men have forgotten (or more likely have never learned) about Reagan and his decline, and the fact that his Alzheimer's was evident while he still held office - or at the very least some serious episodes of dementia. There are numerous reports of him struggling to retain basic facts and information leading up to summit meetings - leading his staffers to nearly panic. There was talk of the 25th Amendment being invoked and actually Iran-Contra was one of the biggest scandals in American political history but it resulted in a whitewash and cover-up.

It would seem we've also forgotten about Nixon and the fact that once Watergate exploded into a full scandal he was largely disengaged and completely so for extensive periods of time. He would lock himself away with his tapes and notepads working the various angles of his case. He was at times so intoxicated that he could not take phone calls. He acted deranged, leading staffers to intervene and pre-countermand his orders vis-a-vis the Pentagon out of fears we would do something reckless. During the crisis of 1973 and the Yom Kipper War, it was Haig and Kissinger that were running the government - even raising the DefCon up a notch to level 3, without the order or approval of Nixon. He was completely incapacitated and in his drunkenness there was at least one occasion he beat his wife, sending her to the hospital. These incidents antedate his drunken stupors of 1973-74, with one taking place not long after his August, 1974 resignation.

And finally, there is example of Woodrow Wilson who suffered a stroke in October 1919. For the rest of his presidency (until March 2021), he was incapacitated, his wife and personal physician conspiring to hide this from not only the public but the congress. There were occasions in which they propped him up in bed with papers to allow brief meetings - in order to give the impression he was still engaged in day to day affairs of state. His wife even connived to have cabinet members removed.

James Comer may be somewhat justified in his disapproval of Biden's actions, but it's hardly the biggest scandal in American history. It is but another dark chapter in the history of the American presidency and its legacy of deceit and criminality.

FLN purports to report the news from a 'Christian worldview'. Price in making such a claim brings judgment on himself as he uses the platform to mislead people and promote not the interests of Christ and His Kingdom but his political allies and mentors. It literally makes me sick when I think of the numerous people who look to FLN as a solid source of news. They are being misled.

These occasions demonstrate how stories can be reported in a partly true fashion and yet due to framing and spin can be completely distorted and become part of a disinformation and manipulation campaign. This is not Christian news but anti-Christian reporting. Christian are not paid liars - working in the interest of liars. FLN further brings down judgment on itself by using the platform to not only promote its many errors and heresies but to fleece God's people.