The left-wing media learned a lot in 2022, even if it was all stuff the rest of us already knew.
Two years after local officials closed schools, grieving family members weren’t allowed to say goodbye to their loved ones at in-person funerals, businesses were forced to temporarily close their doors — many of them for good — and Americans were generally forbidden from congregating outside of large groups, the press in recent weeks has come to an unexpected conclusion: Fighting each other over COVID is probably counter-productive.
“<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty</a>” exhorted an October 31 headline in The Atlantic, a call whose temerity was only matched by the gall of its flipside from 2020. Back then, of course, the prevailing line from the mainstream media was that Dr. Fauci’s COVID pronouncements were to be followed to the letter and that there was no legitimate alternative path — until, that is, the doctor decides to change his mind, and woe betide the man or woman who asks to see the receipts.
It should come as no surprise that 2022, all things considered, was as chock-a-block as each year always is with examples of The Fourth Estate beclowning itself. Few if any of the year’s media fails, though, arguably came with a greater lack of self-awareness than that one from The Atlantic, calling on us all to basically hug out the COVID fights.
“Dwelling on the mistakes of history can lead to a repetitive doom loop,” the writer of the piece declared. “Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty.”
Yes, of course: The mistakes of history. Deep uncertainty, and complicated choices — like the choice to use one’s position as a public health professional to declare on CNN that the unvaccinated <a href="http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2107/08/cnr.10.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">should not be allowed to leave their homes</a>. The idea of pandemic amnesty sounds straightforward enough, until you stop to remind yourself that “complicated choices” are one thing — but you unilaterally declaring my livelihood and personal liberty subservient to your real-time experiment amid all that uncertainty is something else entirely.
That kind of years-late turnabout, long after the damage has already been done, was just one in what’s been a lengthy series of gaffes, errors, and outright fails that characterize 2022’s Year in Media.
We also saw that same phenomenon, by the way, manifest itself in more than just coverage of the pandemic. Like in the way the mainstream media was glaringly late to the party regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop — long after widespread coverage of the story might have made a difference in the 2020 election.
Just ahead of the 2020 election, remember, Facebook throttled any and all mention of the laptop story across its social media empire. Outlets like CNN and The Washington Post either refused to cover the news or played it down, while Twitter went even farther — taking the extraordinary step of refusing to let users share any links to news coverage about the laptop at all, even within the confines of private messages from one user to another. Twitter also temporarily locked <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/kayleigh-mcenany-locked-out-of-twitter-for-sharing-posts-hunter-biden-story/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the then-White House press secretary</a> out of her account for trying to disseminate a news article about the laptop.
Fast-forward to 2022, with a brash and anti-woke new owner now in charge of Twitter — and Twitter’s former head of safety Yoel Roth was now (surprise!) feeling compelled to declare Twitter’s ban on the laptop story <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/yoel-roth-twitter-censor-hunter-biden-laptop-story-was-mistake-2022-11" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a mistake</a>. Indeed, what CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter panned at the time as a “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/10/18/new-york-post-hunter-biden-stelter-rs-sot-vpx-biz-dupe.cnn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">manufactured crisis</a>” somehow — two years later, long after it mattered most — became “<a href="https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/cnns-brian-stelter-admits-hunter-biden-laptop-not-just-a-right-wing-media-story" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not just a right-wing media story</a>” anymore. Outlets like CBS News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times likewise, at various times this year, also finally <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/04/01/new-york-times-finally-admit-hunters-laptop-is-real-but-only-to-protect-joe-biden/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">agreed on the legitimacy</a> of the so-called &#8216;laptop from hell.&#8217;
2022, it seems, has also been the year of national legacy media deciding to declare the Hunter Biden laptop story amnesty, too.
To put it simply, this has been not only a year of the news media getting things wrong, as usual. When it comes to some of the biggest stories of our time, the profession also has an increasingly frequent habit of fighting alternatives that don’t fit the master narrative by plugging its ears, waiting an extended period of time, and then begrudgingly acknowledging the obvious after a consequence-free pivot.
Of course, there were plenty of other clear-cut and outright fails, too. Among the most egregious of 2022:
1) Headline: <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/senior-us-intelligence-official-russian-missiles-crossed-nato-93346632" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people</a>
What really happened: For many experts, this has been the nightmare scenario of the Ukraine war — A provocation against a third-party nation that requires a response from allies and pulls other nations around the world into the conflict. In this case, the truth was that an errant Ukrainian missile landed in Poland, the AP’s “anonymous sources” notwithstanding. WWIII averted, and the guilty reporter fired.
2) Headline: <a style="font-weight: 400;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/26/business/media/cnn-plus-streaming-news.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Can CNN’s Hiring Spree Get People to Pay for Streaming News?</a>
What really happened: CNN’s delusion that a critical mass of subscribers would pay for its content in a standalone app a la Netflix went up in flames — and much faster than even the most negative critics anticipated. Moreover, the question in that NYT headline is premised on a fundamental misunderstanding about cable news audiences. They already are paying to get an extra fix of news and lifestyle content … from Fox, via its Fox Nation app. CNN’s troubles, meanwhile, are a formidable combination of secular decline and audiences not keen on buying what they’re selling. Go woke, and your streaming service goes broke.
3) Headline: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/12/03/musks-twitter-files-internal-hunter-biden-debate-revealed-with-much-hype-but-no-bombshells/?sh=2d63ff587ea6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’: Internal Hunter Biden Debate Revealed With Much Hype But No Bombshells</a>
What really happened: Are you kidding me? No bombshell revelations in the Twitter files? How about the then-head of Trust and Safety at Twitter meeting weekly with the FBI, DHS, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — as if Twitter was a subsidiary of the national security state? Or Twitter being paid millions of dollars by the FBI to suppress tweets and accounts at the bureau’s request? This is a company that espoused democratizing speech while policing it, that shadow-banned and suppressed conservatives — and straight-up kicked people off the service during the early days of COVID over statements that eventually become conventional wisdom. But, sure — no bombshells.
4) Headline: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/10/crime-rate-justice-republicans-2022-elections/671800/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What’s Really Going On With the Crime Rate?</a>
What really happened: There’s always been an obsession within the mainstream media to report on crime patterns with all the binary nuance of a sports match — the numbers are up, then they’re down. At the moment, the picture is especially dire out of cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, though the post-midterm coverage engaged in a bit of chest-thumping over it all: See? Republicans tried to make you think we’re in the midst of a crime wave, but they still lost — so they were obviously wrong!
The fact of the matter, though, is that the reality of crime has much less to do with statistics than the mainstream media would have you believe. If city leaders in Los Angeles took a victory lap over there being just one murder in the city over the course of the year, but that murder victim happened to be your grandmother, what do you care that crime is “down”?
This obsession over statistics to fit a narrative completely misses the reality that normal people live with in the country’s biggest crime-ridden cities. We all understand that crime will always be a part of life, but there is an increasing sense that leaders in a position to do something about it are exacerbating the evil that threatens lives and livelihoods.

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Media Fails Of 2022: A Look Back At A Year’s Worth Of Gaffes And Flubs

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MEMPHIS &#8211; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/what-the-world-lost-heart-wrenching-video-of-liza-fletcher-singing-to-her-students-revealed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Eliza Fletcher’s</a> final run started off one week ago like so many before.
Before the 34-year-old pre-kindergarten teacher, marathon runner, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/body-of-memphis-kindergarten-teacher-heiress-to-billion-dollar-fortune-found-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">heiress to a wholesale hardware fortune</a> stepped onto the sidewalk in front of her Memphis home in the predawn darkness of Friday, September 2, she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and grabbed her cellphone and a water bottle. It was 4 a.m., and most of the homes along Carr Avenue — a quiet street in the city’s Central Gardens neighborhood — were still dark. The only sounds were the rustle of leaves, gentle gusts of wind, and the low hum of distant traffic.
The woman known to friends as Liza — and as “Mrs. Fletcher” to the students she taught at the all-girls St. Mary’s Episcopal School — loved to run. Three years ago, she ran the St. Jude marathon, which doubles as a fundraising event for the local St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and placed 22nd among women.
Closing the American flag-emblazoned front door to the picturesque home she shared with her husband Richie and two sons, Fletcher, wearing purple Lululemon shorts and a pink athletic top, passed the porch swing and two shade trees in the front yard as she made her way to the sidewalk. She set off toward the University of Memphis campus, some four miles away.
The route would take her from her tree-lined and tidy street east toward the school, and it was at the intersection of Central Avenue and Zach H Curlin Street, near the university where, according to police, a 38-year-old career criminal kidnapped her.
The predawn darkness, combined with an abundance of trees and signage, offered her killer the opportunity to stalk her quickly and stealthily. Depending on which direction Eliza was running and whether or not she paused at the intersection, she may not have seen him approaching her until he pounced.
She was reported missing at around 7:45 a.m. when police received two calls, one from Richie and one from the University of Memphis.
Grainy surveillance video would show Fletcher being grabbed and shoved into a dark SUV, and the crime scene, with the water bottle, smashed cell phone, and, oddly, a pair of the suspect&#8217;s shoes, told more of the horrifying story.
Other pieces would come together over the ensuing days, as family and friends hoped and prayed Fletcher could somehow still be alive. Police arrested Cleotha Abston, who has since identified himself in court as Cleotha Henderson, the next day. His GMC Terrain had been on the surveillance video, the shoes at the scene bore his DNA, and witnesses saw him cleaning the SUV and his clothes shortly after Fletcher vanished.
Just what Fletcher endured in her final moments may never be known, and may be too awful for her loved ones to imagine. After Henderson&#8217;s arrest, and as a city on tenterhooks prayed for a miracle, the news only got grimmer. Police hauled away a dumpster near his brother&#8217;s home. The picture that emerged of Henderson, who had previously served time for kidnapping, and was described by a female neighbor as a “creepy pervert,” offered little in the way of hope.
Late Monday, police announced they had found a body decomposing in the summer heat on the front steps of a dilapidated, abandoned home in South Memphis, about eight miles from the crime scene, and near Henderson&#8217;s brother&#8217;s home. By Tuesday morning, they confirmed the city&#8217;s worst fears: It was Liza.
<div id="attachment_435204" style="width: 848px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-435204" class="wp-image-435204 size-full" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-09-at-8.17.42-AM.png" alt="The body of Eliza Fletcher, the Memphis teacher and heiress to a billion-dollar fortune, was found outside this abandoned home in South Memphis." width="838" height="426" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-09-at-8.17.42-AM.png 838w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-09-at-8.17.42-AM-300x153.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/09/Screen-Shot-2022-09-09-at-8.17.42-AM-768x390.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 838px) 100vw, 838px" />This is the abandoned house in South Memphis where Eliza Fletcher&#8217;s body was found. (Google Street Images)</div>
Court documents reveal how police likely knew early on they were dealing with a murder and how they were able to quickly zero in on the suspect and the body. An affidavit alleges Henderson was captured on video cruising slowly past his quarry, then stopping to wait for her to pass. The same document describes what happened next as a “violent” struggle. Another police affidavit revealed that investigators found a trash bag containing Fletcher&#8217;s shorts less than half a mile away from where her body was found.
Henderson had been sentenced to a 24-year jail term for abducting a Memphis attorney in 2000. But he was free to cruise the desolate, early morning streets of Memphis on the day Fletcher was grabbed because he’d been let out of jail early in November 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic.
Just a few months before Henderson had been freed, Fletcher was living through her own changing circumstances brought on by the pandemic. In a video she posted to her YouTube channel, she’s seen at home during what appears to be a virtual learning session and addressing students off camera.
That video, of Fletcher holding up one finger and softly singing “This Little Light of Mine,” has since gone viral in the wake of her murder, a symbol of Fletcher&#8217;s warmth and dedication to her young students.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/51Wapqywdfs" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
“We are heartbroken and devastated by this senseless loss,” her family said in a statement to the media. “Liza was such a joy to so many — her family, friends, colleagues, students, parents, members of her Second Presbyterian Church congregation, and everyone who knew her.”
Fletcher&#8217;s paternal grandfather was a federal judge and her mother&#8217;s father was Memphis philanthropist Joseph Orgill III, founder of Orgill Inc., a wholesale hardware company that does $3 billion in annual revenues. Her 2015 marriage to Richie was a <a href="https://memphismagazine.com/style/a-memorable-memphis-wedding/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lavish affair</a> at the city&#8217;s picturesque Dixon Gallery and Gardens.
Despite her familial pedigree and wealth, the emerging legacy of Fletcher is of a dedicated teacher, devout Christian, and selfless mother. Her church family at Second Presbyterian in Memphis, for example, remembered her as a beloved congregant. The girls at St. Mary’s will in time, as they come to fully understand the brutality of what happened, remember how they often saw “Mrs. Fletcher” outside on the school grounds, overseeing the carpool line. And then there was Eliza the runner, the wife and mother who finished every run in life but her final one.
“She truly walked and modeled the Christian life and trusted in her unwavering faith,” reads Eliza’s <a href="https://www.canalefuneraldirectors.com/obituaries/Eliza-Liza-Fletcher/#!/Obituary" target="_blank" rel="noopener">obituary</a>, posted online ahead of her funeral in Memphis on Saturday, September 10. “Liza was a light to all who knew her. Her contagious smile and laughter could brighten any room. Liza was pure of heart and innocent in ways that made her see the very best in everyone 
she met.”
A day after Fletcher&#8217;s body was found, the beleaguered city was rocked by another monstrous crime when a 19-year-old man <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/memphis-maniac-who-live-streamed-killing-spree-served-just-11-months-after-attempted-murder-arrest-mayor-reveals" target="_blank" rel="noopener">killed four and wounded three</a> in an hours-long shooting rampage. Residents were told to stay inside their homes as police hunted the suspect, whose dead victims included his reported friend <a href="https://wreg.com/news/local/memphis-shooting-sept-7/first-victim-in-kellys-shooting-rampage-identified/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dewayne Tunstall</a>, 24; an unidentified man shot dead in his car; <a href="https://www.localmemphis.com/video/news/local/memphis-shooting-spree-victim-corteria-wright/522-7f00b936-a61b-46d9-ac5c-6816bf709e85" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Corteria Wright</a>, 17; and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11197073/Daughter-nurse-killed-grinning-Memphis-gunman-rages-violence-troubled-city.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Allison Parker</a>, a 38-year-old nurse who was carjacked and killed in front of her daughter. The suspect, who was captured late Wednesday night, is not being named by The Daily Wire as part of a policy to deprive mass shooters of the notoriety they crave.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;Memphis is tired right now.&quot; 💔
Reporting the news is tough sometimes. But it&#39;s worth it if we can help keep the Mid-South safe. Thank you for your strength <a href="https://twitter.com/MemphoNewsLady?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MemphoNewsLady</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZEo9DLHE1Q">pic.twitter.com/ZEo9DLHE1Q</a>
&mdash; Action News 5 (@WMCActionNews5) <a href="https://twitter.com/WMCActionNews5/status/1567722156393373697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2022</a></blockquote>
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The commonality with Eliza’s presumed killer? Like Abston, the suspect behind the murder spree had been released from prison early. He’d been arrested for attempted first-degree murder and reckless endangerment in 2020. He pleaded guilty to lesser charges and was sentenced to three years in prison, but was freed on March 16 after serving just 11 months.
A bleary-eyed Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis summed up the angst of the city&#8217;s 650,000 residents at a news conference Wednesday night.
“This has been a horrific week for the city of Memphis,” Davis said.

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Liza’s Last Run: Retracing The Tragic Final Hour Of The Heiress Whose Murder Rocked Memphis

Liza's Last Run: Retracing The Tragic Final Hour Of The Heiress Whose Murder Rocked Memphis

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Media Fails Of 2022: A Look Back At A Year’s Worth Of Gaffes And Flubs

Liza’s Last Run: Retracing The Tragic Final Hour Of The Heiress Whose Murder Rocked Memphis