Category: media and media people

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initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people

The Hill as Hallucinogen

The Hill, citizen voting, illegal immigration, democracy, fake news

Americans for Citizen Voting had a super successful Election Day. I swear!

But you wouldn’t know it for the news coverage. 

Throughout 2023 and 2024, we worked to place constitutional amendments on the ballot in eight states, which, if passed, would specifically ban noncitizens from voting in state and local elections. Then, this November, every one of the measures swept to victory. By roughly a 2-1 margin in Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, and Wisconsin; 3-1 in Iowa and North Carolina; 4-1 in Oklahoma; and by a whopping 6-1 margin in South Carolina. 

Of course, don’t be shocked if folks dispute my claims of victory. Especially if they read The Hill, which published two articles the day after the election declaring that Citizen Only Voting Amendments were defeated — in South Carolina and in Wisconsin.  

“Voters in Wisconsin have rejected a ballot measure amending the state’s constitution to explicitly prohibit foreign nationals from voting in any election in the state,” The Hill informed its audience. 

Even though 71 percent of Badger State voters actually pulled the lever for the constitutional amendment, not against it. 

“South Carolina defeats noncitizen voting ban,” boasted the headline on another Hill article. Since an incredible 86 percent of Palmetto State voters said yes to the amendment, how did The Hill manage to report that the referendum failed? The very opposite of the truth. 

Oh, The Hill was kind enough to take down their false news stories once alerted to them. But the paper refused to do what I asked: place a note on the corrected story acknowledging their mistake.

Readers who had seen the erroneous articles should be notified that they had been misinformed — and not left thinking they had been hallucinating.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people partisanship

Not Now

Legacy Media, democracy, Trump

“Reconsider Any Belief In Innate American Goodness,” Ken White advises at the Popehat Report. “A country that votes for Trump is broken in very complicated and daunting ways,” informs the attorney and podcaster.

“Fuck Civility,” he declares, and for good measure, “Stay Tuned For Violence.”

They do sorta go together, eh?

“Debate is preferable,” he notes for the record, “[b]ut most Americans would agree with what Thomas Jefferson said about the blood of patriots and tyrants. At some point violence is morally justified and even necessary. Americans will disagree on when.”

Though, let’s all agree, not now.

My thinking the day after takes a different route. 

First, the lawfare unleashed on Mr. Trump helped him more than it hurt. A majority of the public did not suddenly become enamored with the idea of 34 felony convictions but stuck by the former president, now president-elect, because of their contempt for the New York Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice, seen as rogue players in partisan politics. 

America had come to look like Egypt.

Second, the establishment media’s years-long campaign against Trump, hyperbolic and often dishonest (see Charlottesville narrative) failed miserably. Arguably, like lawfare, it was counterproductive.

“Americans don’t trust the news media,” asserted Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, explaining his paper’s 2024 A.D. non-endorsement for president. 

In the aftermath of Mr. Trump being declared the winner, Matt Walsh offered on X: “Legacy media is officially dead.”

Not dead. Just in need of rebirth. Like Democratic Party leaders, news media professionals face a choice, either (a) blame the public for not being more appreciative or (b) reflect upon its own principles and performance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Down the River

Washington Post, endorsement, journalism, objectivity

The Washington Post joined The Los Angeles Times, last week, in not making an editorial page endorsement for president — the first pass for The Post in 36 years; in two decades for The Times.

“Recent episodes involving major U.S. news organizations have stoked fears that outlets are preemptively self-censoring coverage that could offend former President Donald Trump,” National Public Radio began its report. 

“Two Billionaires, Two Newspapers, Two Acts of Self-Sabotage,” headlined Nancy Gibbs’ New York Times essay, which bemoaned that “one more bulwark against autocracy erodes.”

Are these billionaires — Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos and LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, the American and South African businessman and transplant surgeon — really shaking in their expensive boots about possible political retaliation from a future Trump presidency?

Hardly. 

Do they really think so — the folks hyping that media’s now caving under authoritarian pressure?

Real journalist Glenn Greenwald noted that Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh), his former colleague at Salon, writing now for The Nation, tweeted “I just canceled my subscription to @washingtonpost. You should too.”

Deano (@dshav2), an art director, graphic designer and dad from Minnesota, offered, “A more effective protest would be for everyone to stop shopping on Amazon.”

“Much harder,” responded Ms. Walsh, “but considering. . . .” 

“So, in other words,” Greenwald mockingly summed up on his podcast, System Update, “‘Look, I want to do everything possible to stop fascism and the new Adolf Hitler from taking power, so I’ll cancel my Washington Post subscription’ and then when someone said to her, ‘Hey maybe you should also boycott Amazon,’ she’s like, “I’m not going to miss my shows on Amazon Prime!”

Having principles is hard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people partisanship Voting

Spilt Ink

Iowa, voting, elections, illegal immigration, newspaper, ink

“Iowans should vote no,” argues a Des Moines Register editorial, because defeating the Citizen Only Voting Amendment on the statewide ballot would “send a message — to legislators, to our neighbors at home and to the rest of the nation and world — that Iowans reject exclusion and suspicion and instead put a premium on inclusion and trust.”

Let’s unpack.

Ballotpedia summarizes Amendment 1 as prohibiting “state and local governments from allowing noncitizens to vote and allow 17-year-olds who will be 18 by the general election to vote in primary elections.”

Nothing suspicious there. But there is an exclusion, of course. The measure would exclude noncitizens from voting in state and local elections.

“The context,” or what the TDS-afflicted newspaper has apoplectically convinced themselves is the context, “is repeated assertions by President Donald Trump” and other Republicans “that immigrants without citizenship frequently register to vote and vote (more often for Democrats).”

The actual context is simply whether the state constitution should proclaim that only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote. A policy that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are unsuspiciously excluded from voting on, but which would have prevented the 19 U.S. cities now allowing noncitizens to vote, including in most cases those here illegally, from doing so.

The Register nonetheless declares that “a higher standard is called for when the enduring language of the state Constitution is involved. That document should emphasize what unites Iowans.”

Yet nothing has united legislators more than this Citizen Only Voting Amendment, which passed each chamber of the Legislature twice without a single dissenting vote. 

Bemoaning that “seven states have already, in the past six years, made identical or similar changes in their state constitutions,” The Register further complains that “this fall, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin join Iowa in voting on similar amendments.” 

The objection? “That’s a lot of ink spilt to enshrine imaginary protections against imaginary problems.”

These imaginative editors acknowledged, in the same piece, that “[e]xperts say it ties lawmakers’ hands from ever passing laws to permit residents without citizenship to vote in certain local or state elections, such as for school boards.”

Passing Amendment 1 means politicians at the capitol in Des Moines will have to go back to Iowa voters if they want to allow noncitizen voting.

No crying here over spilt ink.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies partisanship

Something Pathological

Kamala Harris, Fox, interview, Bret Baier

Fox News’s interview with Kamala Harris itself made news. The betting markets had Ms. Harris tanking; we await post-interview polls. Bret Baier did more than a competent job, pressing the Democratic candidate like Sam Donaldson used to press President Ronald Reagan. 

Harris came to the interview “fashionably” (strategically?) late, which added some frisson to the affair. But what stuck out to me was a repeated evasion, which to Kamala no doubt felt natural, but to this onlooker, anyway, seemed bizarre.

Trump.

When challenged about Biden Administration failures of policy, leadership, or efficacy, candidate Harris — in addition to insisting that she will lead in a totally new direction, mostly unspecified — kept on blaming, somehow, Donald Trump.

Republican Vice Presidential candidate J. D. Vance noted this, saying “something pathological is going on.”

That pathology is TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome.

“You’ve been in office for three-and-a-half years,” Baier challenged in the interview’s most memorable exchange, eliciting from the Democrat an immediate response: “And Donald Trump has been running for office since . . .” A stunned, incredulous Baier watched Harris rant on against Trump, declaring that “he is unfit to serve, that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances, and it being about him instead of the American people.”

This is her appeal to the middle, to non-partisan voters: not for her or her policies, but against Trump.

Democrats need their devil. Without him could they win a national election?

And we should inquire whether the reverse is also true.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Watch the entire interview is here.

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media and media people social media

TikTok Astroturf

Tik Tok, propaganda, payment

According to sociologist Jacques Ellul, propaganda is not rhetoric; it’s not you and me expressing our opinions and trying to persuade others; it’s not our letters to editors of newspapers or the “memes” we share online. Propaganda is the coordination of many forms of social influence, of many media. States are usually involved, or political parties (wannabe states) or huge interest groups (which can be bigger than many states).

If, however, you secretly get paid to push a message in a specific way, you may be a propagandist.

Take TikTok.

This is the video-sharing social media site so popular with young people. It’s been controversial; I’ve discussed it before. But I’m no expert. Still, I was not surprised to learn that Democrats have been paying “social influencers” on that platform to serve up the Democratic Party line.

A TikToker named Madeline Pendleton made a video about how the Democrats offered “nearly $15,000” to talk about “how awesome the Democratic Party is.” She found the idea ridiculous, characterizing the offer as a way to distract attention from the party’s “genocide.” But she recognizes that it can be effective. Many of her “mutuals” on TikTok are indeed spouting the same lines that she was “pitched” by Democrats, and they did so within 48 hours of her receiving the offer.

She went on to say that she received two offers: one to make ongoing videos up to the election, and the other to scarify Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which she is no fan of, but thinks is not that big a deal.

“You guys should be aware that that when you see videos like that, the Democrats are actively paying people to talk about how awesome the Democrats are.”

Awesome propagandists, anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Hurricane Algebra

hurricane, climate change, global warming, weather, panic, big government, regulations

Helene is x times worse than Katrina, but receives y less coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.

When we finally plug in the numbers, we will likely discover that the coverage difference is best explained by two factors: there are fewer reporters yet more “journalists” than ever before, and (you guessed it) politics.

You see, Katrina coverage helped besmirch George W. Bush and the Republicans.

Covering Helene in the same way, or to similar extent, could hurt the incumbents (FEMA has been especially lame), and the presidential race is too close for the Democrats’ lackeys in the media to do that.

So let’s blame Helene on Trump.

Or, the low coverage on Trump. Trump’s the why of the y!

It’s just as sensible as blaming Helene on man-made climate change. Nearly every newsperson intones the plausible-sounding theory that the warmer the climate the more damaging the storms. It’s a great hypothesis. But pre-Helene studies have shown scant evidence for it.

Further, the oft-repeated line that “never before” has a hurricane reached so far inland is also untrue. Asheville, North Carolina, was destroyed by a similarly horrific hurricane in July 1916.

These are rare events. Or, perhaps, cyclical, on repeat by century. 

The pity with all this theory and conjecture and political nonsense is: less coverage means less knowledge outside the hurricane zone of how horrible Helene is, and thus less sympathy elicited from the general population of generous Americans. Thus, less aid.

Making major media complicit — with the U.S. Government (FEMA, etc.) — in not helping relieve the suffering. 

So maybe we should thank the climate change agenda. Without that devil to fight, we might get no coverage of Helene at all. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fourth Amendment rights media and media people property rights

The Realism of ‘Rebel Ridge’

Rebel Ridge, Civil Asset Forfeiture, law, police, abuse, corruption

Some viewers of the popular Netflix film Rebel Ridge say that it’s unrealistic. But a certain crucial assumption of the story is very realistic indeed.

The movie assumes that some cops are bad cops. More specifically, it assumes that bad cops often have arbitrary legal authority to do bad things. In the movie, what gets the ball rolling is the arbitrary authority conferred by America’s civil forfeiture laws.

These laws permit officers to confiscate cash on your person if they merely have a suspicion, or pretend to, that the cash is ill-gotten. They needn’t have evidence that it’s drug money or bank-robbery proceeds. 

The suspicion is enough.

And even if you can show that the money was acquired by your own hard work and withdrawn from your bank account in pursuit of a legitimate end — buying a truck, bailing a cousin out of jail (the reason that the protagonist carries cash in Rebel Ridge) — that’s typically not the end of it. It’s rare that the law-empowered thugs who violated your property rights just say “Oops!” and hand your property right back.

J. Justin Wilson of the Institute for Justice observes another realistic portrayal of injustice in the movie, “over-detaining defendants to keep them quiet.” In real life, though, such over-detention may have as much to do with bureaucratic sloth as with malice directed toward a particular prisoner.

The solution, says Wilson, is not revenge, but the kinds of legal reform IJ fights for. The movie, on the other hand, leaned more on revenge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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DEI Box Office Drubbing

Matt Walsh, racism, DEI

It “came out of nowhere,” declared The Hollywood Reporter, and as “one major Hollywood studio exec” put it off the record: “The picture has clearly hit a nerve.”

This is the second hit by the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and director-producer Justin Folk: they made the movie What Is a Woman? in 2022, and now Am I Racist? is at No. 4 on the movie charts having “gross[ed] $4.5 million in its nationwide box office debut,” THR reports, “a huge sum for a nonfiction feature.”

In the film, Matt Walsh sits down with “some of the biggest people in the anti-racism movement,” including Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, founders of Race2Dinner, and Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

For $5,000, Rao and Jackson will come over for dinner to make as many as eight white women confront their inherent racism. Who would know better? Rao and Jackson actually wrote the book, White Women.

“This country is not worth saving,” Rao declares at one dinner. “This country’s a piece of sh*t.”

It cost $15,000 to get the meeting to film DiAngelo for the documentary. Well, only $14,970 if you consider the $30 in reparations that DiAngelo was shamed into giving a black member of Walsh’s documentary crew.

“The mind-blowing part,” explains Savannah Edwards of Savvy Film Reviews “is that he was able to get them to say what they said on camera.” She adds, “The fact of the matter is all Matt Walsh does in this movie is let these people talk.”

Go see the movie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people political challengers social media

The Ignorance of Censorship

Covid, censorship, surveillance, PSYOP, mind control

Why is Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, governor of Minnesota right now?

Perhaps because government censors — functioning through agents like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook — made it harder to hear his opponent, Dr. Scott Jensen, during Walz’s 2022 re-election campaign.

A shift in a few percentage points would have tilted things in the challenger’s favor. But Jensen had made the government’s response to the pandemic — including the tyrannical policies of Walz’s state government — a central theme of his campaign.

And in those days (as in these), all-out censorship of various deviations from the government line was de rigueur. Disagreement about COVID-19, both the nature of the infection and the wisdom of the government’s response, was among the targets.

Jeffrey Tucker asks “Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess” to the fact that Facebook had done so little, in Zuckerberg’s words, to resist repeated pressure “from the Biden administration, including the White House . . . to censor certain COVID-19 content”?

The answer to the uninteresting question “why now?” is standard CYApolitical calculus. In any case, the confession isn’t quite exhaustive; Zuckerberg doesn’t acknowledge the extent of the censorship. As Tucker notes, “every single opponent of the terrible policies was deplatformed at all levels.”

The single COVID-contrarian piece by Tucker himself that slipped through the social-media censorship net “by mistake” got an atypical tsunami of response. So what if Dr. Jensen’s message and arguments had not been perpetually smothered by government-pressured social-media companies?

Jensen may still have lost (Walz got 52 percent) but the point of elections goes further than a horse race. Where there is free speech, voters can learn something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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