By Stephen Dietrich, Managing Editor

I can think of no better example of how terrible the mainstream media has gotten in the United States than the shoddy reporting surrounding the strong armed robbery of Ryan Lochte and the three U.S. Olympic swimmers that were held in Brazil.

“Vandals, not victims,” blasts CNN’s headline.

“Ryan Lochte: A champion swimmer caught in a riptide of self-absorption,” says The Washington Post.

“Rio Robbery Ruse!” says Slate.

I have a reality check for the liberal media back here in America – you clearly don’t understand how the world works.

This was a robbery. Now it’s extortion.

Our Olympians are being forced to bribe their way back home after being strong-armed by corrupt cops. They were being held hostage in Brazil.

It’s outrageous. And the American media is practically giddy about it.

The four swimmers quietly told family members back home that they were robbed by police — and their family made the mistake of blabbing about it to the mainsteam media.

As a result, Americans were dragged from their planes and interrogated, and forced to confess to the notoriously corrupt (and now publicly embarrassed) Rio authorities that they weren’t actually robbed?

One of the swimmers, Jack Feigen, has announced through his attorney that he’s making a $10,800 “donation” payment on Friday to be allowed to leave?

Read between the lines here.

How far have we fallen when journalists simply accept the word of the notoriously corrupt Brazilian police force – and then turn around and make outrageous headlines like Madame Norte’s, “The Ryan Lochte Robbery Drama Isn’t About A Little White Lie, But Rather, Big White Privilege”.

Someone at “Madame Norte” left their critical thinking skills at the door – or needs to travel outside of America more.

Ryan Lochte may have acted reprehensible. It is clear that he and Feigen and their friends were acting foolish and drunk. They broke a door at a gas station.

But they made a mistake in Rio, and they ran face-to-face with real, honest-to-God corrupt cops.

The same American journalists that write article over article bashing the U.S. police are so oblivious, they can’t wrap their heads around what REAL corruption looks like.

Gas station security guards don’t point guns at people and hold them until they cough up their wallets… unless they’re being robbed.

Then, when the story went international, they were strong-armed into confessions so they wouldn’t embarrass the corrupt authorities any further — and forced to make huge bribe payments to leave.

And the media here in America couldn’t be more blind.

Why am I not surprised?

— Stephen Dietrich is the Managing Editor of The Horn News