I have said on many occasions I don’t use the phrase “liberal media” because it invokes conspiracies about the media being in cahoots with each other to slant coverage. Reporters allow their biases to come out in their reporting no matter how much they deny it but the biggest problem with the media is not bias – it’s laziness. They are a lazy bunch as a whole. The better reporters don’t do enough to call out their colleagues on this, and they all suffer as a result.

Take the phrase, “Hacking the election” or “Hacked the election.” Nothing of the sort happened. Not a single law enforcement agency or intelligence agency said Russia was involved with hacking our voting mechanisms, but the media kept repeating it. How often? Newsbusters has the answer:

From December 8 to January 8, MRC analysts found that journalists on ABC, CBS, and NBC repeated this loaded phrase at least 49 times in their morning and evening broadcasts. After blaming the electoral college for Clinton’s loss didn’t work, the media moved on to blur the release of Democratic e-mails with the idea that Russia “hacked the election.”

In fact, the declassified version of the report, released January 6, flatly stated that “DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.” In other words, while embarrassing e-mails from Democratic political operatives were publicized, America’s election machinery was not hacked. Nevertheless, the media has been relentless in attempting to legitimize this “fake news” story.

49 times. This doesn’t include all the times it appeared in print or on the internet.

They put together a video of the tv journos repeating the phrase:

People may chalk it up to the reporters not fully understanding what hacking means, but part of their job is to gather information, so they do know what they’re talking about when they report on it. There’s no excuse for this kind of sloppiness.