What Does “Going to the Source” Even Mean?

Want to hear something that made me laugh this week? Have a look at this, on RightWingWatch:

On yesterday’s episode of “The NutriMedical Report Show,” host Bill Deagle declared the President Trump should shut down critical media outlets and insisted that Muslims should be banned from holding public office, while his guest, right-wing commentator Josh Bernstein, labeled Right Wing Watch a “Nazi organization.”

Okay, that’s not the part that made me laugh. It’s the next part. But it’s worth noting that it was the Nazis who censored and shut down critical press, not the reverse.

This was the part that made me laugh:

“Trump should actually de-license the Washington Post and [Jeff] Bezos should be spending time in jail,” Deagle said. “CNN and MSNBC, especially after the Mueller report came out, they should be de-licensed. There shouldn’t be a cable network called CNN anymore, it should be gone.”

“I totally agree,” replied Bernstein. “You have these organizations, these Nazi organizations like Right Wing Watch that just report on B.S. They never go to the source, they never go to the truth, and they don’t use common sense. It’s always sensationalism.”

I’m sorry, what?

RightWingWatch never goes to the source?! Really?

Literally all RightWingWatch does is go to the source. That is literally how the website operates: it prints quotes from an interview or show (usually radio or TV) and then embeds the original audio or video. That is called going to the source. 

I’m curious what Bernstein thinks “going to the source” means. Genuinely curious. If quoting someone’s words—and providing the original audio and video for people to view themselves—isn’t going to the source, what is?

Going to the source, I suspect, means buying conservatives’ explanations and accepting their view of the world. Quoting their actual words? Pfft.

There is something maddening about all of this.

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