Is it all fake?

Francis Menton writes at Manhattan Contrarian,

I'm old enough to remember when the New York Times used to have long articles filled with facts and figures, data and statistics on one issue or another. Well, that was then -- before they had to lay off half the staff. Now they produce articles just as long, but the formula has changed. Instead of doing difficult leg work and collecting the real facts and figures, the new formula is to utter some obviously false statement as if it were a fact, and then fill in the rest of some multi-thousand-word article with standard-issue progressive talking points all dependent on acceptance of the false fact as the starting point.

Friday's example of the phenomenon was an endless "climate change" article which blamed the West African refugee exodus on global warming, backed up with ridiculous and obviously false statements about the African Sahel region, like "droughts [have become] more frequent and more fierce," and it has become "impossible to grow enough food" -- when everybody who follows the actual data knows that the Sahel region has become both wetter and more agriculturally productive in recent years.

Today's Times contains multiple more examples of the same phenomenon.

Read much more here.