Category: media and media people

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Discussion versus Intimidation

newspaper, New York Times, dogma, propaganda

“My boss got fired for running an op-ed by a sitting U.S. senator,” says Bari Weiss, former opinion editor for The New York Times, in a recent TV interview.

Cotton argued for sending troops to quell rioters who “have plunged many American cities into anarchy.” Unnerved by furious criticism not only of the op-ed but of the paper’s temerity in publishing it, The Times now prefaces Cotton’s piece with an abject and silly apology.

In her public letter of resignation, Weiss reports being hired in 2016 “with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives. . . .”

By the time she quit, “intellectual curiosity — let alone risk-taking” had become “a liability at The Times. . . . If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. . . . Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril.”

Weiss says the country is becoming “retribalized,” with politics amounting to undebatable religious dogma, revelation rather than ratiocination. The sort of government that becomes possible when politics is a religion is total government. Totalitarianism.

Old-timers like me can recall a Times editorial page that featured plenty of horrific opinions (not very diligently vetted, one suspects) but that also had room for the William Safires of the day.

Does the current dread of reasoned debate at The New York Times represents a mere temporary spasm of appeasement?

The signs (of the Times) aren’t good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Authority Derangement Syndrome

Atlantic Magazine, propaganda, media, journalism

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has taken a huge toll on America. One doesn’t need to be a Trump supporter to see it. 

One only needs to read The Atlantic.

There are days when nearly every article ballyhooed in the rag’s promotional email is about how awful the president is.

There is a lot of awful in Washington, though, not just Trump. Where’s the rest of the news? 

Of course, this isn’t just about Trump. The Atlantic was once a liberal journal. No more. Now it is relentlessly progressive.

Take a recent article on Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

“The governor has demonstrated a willingness to defer to the president instead of his own constituents,” writes Amanda Mull, in “America’s Authoritarian Governor,” begging the question of which constituents.

They are, last I checked, not in total agreement. 

Ms. Mull contends that Kemp’s deference to Trump (TDS Alert) sacrifices — yes, she uses the word “sacrifice” — “Georgians’ safety to snipe at his political foes, and shore up his own power at the expense of democracy. In short, Kemp is a wannabe authoritarian, and millions of Georgians have suffered as a result, with no end in sight.”

No end — er, except the 2022 election. 

And how is Kemp an “authoritarian”? Mull objects to the governor not shutting down commerce quickly enough, hard enough, thoroughly enough, according to the scientists she selects.

Though epidemiologists are not of one mind on how to deal with the current contagion, somehow politicians who reject the advice of her “authorities” — well, they are “the authoritarians.”

The fact that shutting down commerce is itself something we expect from the most authoritarian of regimes . . . did it not cross the reporter’s mind?

Worse than mere TDS.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Violence Against Objective Reporting

violence, journalism, reporting, news, facts

Facts matter. As do their honest expression. But given the “reporting” in recent months about “mostly peaceful protests,” you may wonder whether reporters agree.

Some do. Here’s the Charleston Post and Courier: “Brooms and dustpans replaced rocks and spray paint Sunday as an army of volunteers descended on Charleston to clean up the demoralizing mess left by an angry mob that smashed, burned and pillaged much of the city’s central business district.”

“Hundreds of New York City Businesses Were Damaged, Looted in Recent Unrest,” according to a Wall Street Journal headline. An article in the Minneapolis StarTribune tells us: “Buildings damaged in Minneapolis, St. Paul after riots.” Riots. There’s a word.

Reporters have reported (i.e., done their jobs) on rioters destroying small businesses around the country, and even killing people.

But too many supposed news-hounds shy away from honest reporting. Recently, U.S. Attorney Bill Williams of Oregon chastised a TV reporter for refusing to name openly criminal behavior . . . in this case, that of Portland rioters trying to destroy a courthouse.

The newsperson sought to blandify the thuggery as “late-night demonstrations” or “late-night activity.” Williams stressed the difference between “lawful, constitutionally protected protest” and criminal conduct. “This is just mindless violence, and anyone who defends the violence is enabling this to continue.”

The reporter wasn’t swayed. “I’m not a police officer, I don’t get to distinguish that. . . .”

The assumption being that such determinations are up to . . . police and courts? 

But legal culpability is not at issue. 

What is? Facts: a window was broken; a fire started; property vandalized; person assaulted.

If you feel disallowed from imparting evident facts to the public, a profession requiring you to do so all the time isn’t for you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability media and media people

Democracy Thrives in Out-of-Court Settlement

Nick Sandmann, MAGA, Washington Post

Nick Sandmann has won again. The Washington “Where Democracy Dies in Darkness” Post has agreed to settle out of court with young Mr. Sandmann — for an undisclosed amount. We learned this from Sandmann himself, on Twitter:

On 2/19/19, I filed $250M defamation lawsuit against Washington Post. Today, I turned 18 & WaPo settled my lawsuit. Thanks to @ToddMcMurtry & @LLinWood for their advocacy. Thanks to my family & millions of you who have stood your ground by supporting me. I still have more to do.

CNN settled in January. Suits against ABC, CBS, The Guardian, The Hill and NBC are still pending.

At issue?

“The Washington Post falsely reported in 2019 that a group of Covington Catholic High School students, including Sandmann, harassed a man named Nathan Phillips with taunts and racial slurs,” explains Beckett Adams in The Washington Examiner. “The students did no such thing, as video evidence available at the time made clear. In fact, footage of the incident shows the teens were accosted not only by Phillips, who clearly sought out a confrontation, but they were also being harassed by a nearby gathering of members of the racist, anti-Semitic Black Hebrew Israelites. The Washington Post chose to give glossy, glowing news coverage to the Black Hebrew Israelites, a known hate group, all while portraying the Covington Catholic students (some of whom were black) as racists.”

Enflamed by the Post and CNN and other outlets, a self-righteously woke online mob jumped on Sandmann and other students — included were many calls for violence, and much harping on the fact the kids wore MAGA hats.

If ever a lawsuit of this kind made sense, this one did.

But will these media outfits learn their lesson?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people U.S. Constitution

The Mobs Attacked and Defended

Portland, riots, protests, Ted Wheeler

It’s “mobocracy” — the riots in major cities around the nation, but especially in Portland, Oregon, where the president sent federal agents. Local police had stood back for weeks as Democratic politicians — such as Joe Biden — referred to the rioters as “peaceful protesters.” Even as the mobs lit fires in the streets, defaced property, and attempted to break into government buildings.

Buck Sexton, writing at The Hill, makes the obvious linkage between the “anarchists” and the “Democratic” Party. 

But Sexton doesn’t really answer the key questions: “Why are anarchists terrorizing Portland? What was the real purpose of the Seattle ‘Capital Hill Autonomous Zone’? Why were ‘Occupy City Hall’ protesters allowed to fight with police in lower Manhattan for a month, until officers cleared out their encampment on Wednesday?” Sexton rejects the official reasons give by the movements’ apparent leaders, but doesn’t go very far beyond Democratic Party attempts to leverage the riots.

Which may at least offer amusement. “The reason I am here tonight is to stand with you,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler assured the mob as he put on goggles. “So if they’re launching the tear gas against you, they’re launching the tear gas against me.” But that same night, his security detail “scuffled” with “protesters” and his own police department threatened to use tear gas and impact weapons on the incendiary horde.

Is this really about legitimate protest, as Biden insists?

Fighting federal fascism, as Democrats and many others insist?

Americans are all-in for criminal justice reform and the right to protest. Many, me included, have peacefully taken to the streets in recent weeks.

But there is nothing peaceful about assault, arson, property destruction.

And Democrats who aim to use the fracas to beat Trump in November may find that ‘playing with fire’ . . . burns. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom media and media people

The Four Froms

freedom, positive, negative, undefined

Liberty was a straightforward concept.

Once. 

Then The New York Times got ahold of it back in April with a featured editorial: “The America We Need.” 

“Our society was especially vulnerable to this pandemic,” the paper alleges, “because so many Americans lack the essential liberty to protect their own lives and the lives of their families.”

The fight against the Wuhan virus has been deficient due to a deficit of . . . “essential liberty”? 

This isn’t the Merriam-Webster definition of “liberty,” i.e. the “quality or state of being free” or “freedom from physical restraint.” Dump that retro “narrow and negative definition,” advises the editorial; it represents an “impoverished view of freedom” that “has perpetuated the nation’s defining racial inequalities and kept the poor trapped in poverty.”

Freedom of speech, religion, the press, etc., are all negative. Trade them in for a “broad and muscular conception of liberty: that government should provide all Americans with the freedom that comes from a stable and prosperous life.”

Prosperity for all! For free! Come on down!

Noting the “extraordinary nature of the crisis,” the editorial calls for “permanent changes in the social contract” to take the nation “beyond the threadbare nature of the American safety net.”

Free stuff from the government, housing, healthcare — all very positive ideas of liberty. 

But what about these positives’ negatives?

“A government big enough to give you everything you want,” former President Gerald Ford once explained to Congress, “is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

The cost of “positive freedom” is our freedom from dependence, from interference, from coercive control, from . . . oppression.

Positively negative, if you ask me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration adapted from Liberty Leading the People (La liberté guidant le people) by Eugène Delacroix (1830)

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Indecent Exposure

Joy Reid, MSNBC, homophobia,

Next week, when Joy Reid begins hosting her new primetime MSNBC program, “The ReidOut,” I will not be watching.

But not because of her progressivism.

You see, those progressive bona fides “were called into question in 2017,” a New York Times feature on Reid’s promotion to cable TV’s evening lineup notes, “when homophobic posts and comments from ‘The Reid Report,’ a blog she wrote in the mid- to late 2000s, resurfaced on social media.”

When those writings were discovered, Reid publicly claimed her blog’s archive must have been hacked. 

“We have received confirmation the FBI has opened an investigation into potential criminal activities surrounding several online . . . blog accounts, belonging to Joy-Ann Reid,” her attorney told CNN in 2018.

But the offending posts were captured by the Wayback Machine, an internet archive, and were obviously not the result of a hack. 

No one bought her dodge. 

“Later,” as The Times puts it, “she acknowledged that there was little evidence that the posts had been faked.” 

“Little” . . . meaning zero.

The Times also refers to Reid’s “lengthy apology” to viewers. “The person I am now is not the person I was then,” she offered. But she never owned up to writing the “hateful” posts. 

“I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things,” she argued, “because they are completely alien to me.” 

But she did write them. And lied to the FBI, apparently, to hide the truth.

In a time of unbridled shaming and social-media-mob recriminations for any lack of keeping up with the dominant wokeness, how is Reid able to insult gays and (to top it off) everyone’s intelligence with such bald-faced lies?

And to be rewarded with a primetime cable TV gig. Lying works!

That’s indecent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
international affairs media and media people

Bolsonaro’s Little Flu

CNN, Covid, Coronavirus, Bolsonaro,

“I know that nobody can recover from dying, but the economy not working leads to other causes of death and suicide,” said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro regarding his reopening of his country’s economy. “We have suffered very harsh criticism in this regard, but today it shows that we are right. The fact that I am infected shows that I am a human being like any other.”

Some of that strikes this reader as not well put, but there are two important points: shutting down commerce does lead to horrendous consequences, especially for the poor, and . . . President Bolsonaro — who is often characterized as a Brazilian Trump-like figure — has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and has COVID-19, if in mild form.

He has taken hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, the much-disputed treatment. 

The news report from CNN mentions his diagnosis and immediately follows it up with “after months of downplaying the virus.”

Now, downplaying threats is one way of handling them, for psychological reasons: sometimes the worst thing to fear is, as FDR said, “fear itself.” In the beginning, Bolsonaro called the virus a “little flu.”

“More than 65,000 people have now died of the virus in Brazil, according to figures released by the country’s health ministry on Monday,” CNN explains. “So far, 1,623,284 cases have been confirmed.”

That’s a 4 percent lethality rate — but that rests upon an under-tested population, and CNN admits that “some local experts say the real number of people infected could be 12 to 16 times higher.”

Like so many major news reports, CNN does not describe the curve of coronavirus deaths, just says they’re up.

Apparently, good reporting has a high lethality rate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom media and media people U.S. Constitution

The Rates that Matter

fear, Covid, Coronavirus, epidemic, pandemic, propaganda,

Millions more Americans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 than are considered “confirmed cases,”* at rates ranging from 6/1 (Connecticut, early May) to 24/1 (Missouri, late April), making the fatality rate of COVID-19 much lower than feared.

Unfortunately, we cannot trust our news sources to be forthright about this.

The “death count” had been the pandemic’s repeated headline for months, Dr. Ron Paul noted yesterday, “all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about ‘cases’ and has always been all about ‘cases.’ Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant.”

There’s a reason for this re-focus. Since peaking in April, deaths, you see, “had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash. That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.”

And the case number increases do look ominous, despite being almost innocuous: “This is not rocket science: the more people you test the more ‘cases’ you discover.”

And that is not the only change of spin regarding the pandemic, as Jeffrey Tucker dramatized on Twitter:

“Flatten the curve!”
“What does that do?”
“Pushes infections to the future”
3 months later
“There are new infections!”
“What should we do?”
“Flatten the curve!”

At Mr. Tucker’s stomping grounds, the American Institute for Economic Research, Gregory van Kipnis wrote last month that the “most frightening aspect of the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) epidemic in the US is that it brought about exaggeratedly heightened fear of death.”

We have something to fear from the virus and its attack upon the respiratory system, but we have more to fear from fear itself.

That staple of propagandistic media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*  A confirmed case is of a patient who has seen a doctor for symptoms of the disease and has tested positive with the diagnosis seconded and logged by scientists associated with a national health agency.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies

Q & A & Q & A

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, debate,

Trevor Noah, interviewing presidential candidate Joe Biden a while back, had a juicy question near the end of his “Daily Social Distancing Show” with the Democrat pol. “Have you ever considered what would happen if the election result came out as you being the winner and Trump refused to leave?”

“Yes I have,” Biden confidently stated.

Then there is an obvious cut, and the video switches from side-by-side video-chat panels to the comedian in a Picture-in-Picture box with a full-screen Biden saying all the sudden:

And I was so damned proud. Here you have four chiefs of staff coming out and ripping the skin off of Trump. You have so many rank-and-file military personnel saying ‘whoa, we’re not a military state, this is not who we are.’ I promise you — I am absolutely convinced — that they will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.

This is hacky. Not stand-up comedian hacky — political hacky.  

Its function is transparent, being primarily a self-programing technique, which — in recent times — partisans use to convince themselves that their enemies, in this case the Evil Republicans, will stoop to anything. 

Allowing them to stoop to anything.

The crowning case of this idiocy came in 2016, when Democrats worked themselves into a frenzy over Trump’s flip answer to the debate question whether he would ‘absolutely accept the results of this election.’ 

Hillary Clinton grinned triumphantly when Trump gave his non-canned, iffily defiant response. Very Trumpian. 

But after Election Day, Clinton’s followers spent months and then years not accepting the results of the election. 

Clinton’s lingering Cheshire Cat smile rebukes her party.

And persistent questions like Trevor Noah’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts