Ethics Alarms just added “Unethical Journalist” to its categories. I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier, but the furious “It isn’t what it is” caterwauling from so many mainstream media voices that it is absurd–absurd, I tell you!—for anyone to think that Joe Biden isn’t ready to win “Jeopardy” and recite the Constitution from memory sealed the deal. The spectacle has been as depressing for the public as it is embarrassing for the rotting profession of journalism.
Some sectors managed to barely turn around and accept reality, sort of: the New York Times, after publishing ridiculous denials from Paul Krugman and others, issued an editorial Sunday expressing alarm at the combined effect of the Biden DOJ’s Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 388 page report stating that the President had “diminished faculties” and was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” But even that cry in the dark concluded that Biden “needs to do more to show the public that he is fully capable of holding office until age 86,” a statement that disingenuously implies that Biden has done anything that indicates he can do his job now, much less in five years.” How can he do “more” to show something is true when it is so obvious that it isn’t true? It’s like complaining that public schools need to do more to show that they are unbiased and competent.
And naturally, the Times’ only stated impetus for its alarm was not that having a mentally deficient President is a peril to the nation, but that “the stakes in this presidential election are too high for Mr. Biden to hope that he can skate through a campaign with the help of teleprompters and aides and somehow defeat as manifestly unfit an opponent as Donald Trump.” (Don Surber, a newspaper journalist turned Substack pundit, notes that his old employers, which have seen their circulation more than halved in the last 20 years and opines that newspapers have destroyed their credibility by dropping all pretense of credibility and are doomed. “It is not that the media gets the story wrong; it is that the media seldom admits it was wrong,” he writes.)
Which brings me to “journalist” Jason Sattler.
He is described as a journalist all over the web and describes himself as one. His guest essay for something called Framelab, coming when it does especially, is stunning even for today’s standards of rotten journalism. He doesn’t even pretend to be objective; Sattler is a Democratic operative (as Glenn Reynolds calls today’s mainstream media journalists)whose handle on Twitter/X is “LOLGOP.” But mostly one has to marvel that anyone would bother to read or pay attention to anyone, never mind an alleged journalist, who issues something as right out of Cloud Cuckoo Land as Sattler’s amazing, “Is the press trying to help elect Trump?”
Yes, that’s really the headline, and Sattler is serious. Here is how he sees last week’s events:
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“Biden did an impromptu press conference, handled Fox News’ Steve Doocey better than most standup comics would, and made one verbal slip. This fed the frenzy of the New York Times, sensing a scandal nearing the magnitude of a woman using home email at work. This is how Republicans destroy Democrats….”
- “You don’t have to pretend that the press actually believes that Biden’s age, memory or trustworthiness with classified documents are actual issues — especially compared to Trump, who is basically the same age, whose speech is so littered with lies and errors you can’t even parse which is which, and who stole a trove national secrets, some of which he probably still hasn’t returned”
- “Biden is a standard 20th century American public servant imbued with all the imperfections that come with that. Trump is the worst president in American history. A demagogue with dictatorial aspirations. A fraud whose greatest accomplishment in life was avoiding any indictments for his first 76 years.”
Its horrifying to think that substantial numbers of Americans would read this deranged swill and think, “Hmmmm, this man makes a good point!” Having rapidly progressing dementia is a normal “imperfection” for a public servant in a crucial job: Oh, tell us another, Jason! And he does: “Trump is the worst president in American history.” A minimal knowledge of American history is one of the bare necessities for a political reporter, and that statement is not merely untrue, but not even close to true, as Sattlet himself immediately demonstrates by citing as his evidence not what President Trump did, but what (Sattler believes) he is.
This is how far journalism has fallen. Read it and weep.
Ethics Alarms 
I kept journals throughout high school as an Honors English project. I also did so as part of several college writing courses. In my career, I journaled about major cases that I handled and significant incidents that I managed. Back in the 90s I had articles published in the field of community policing. On that basis, I suppose I could “identify” as a journalist, but to preserve my reputation for honesty and integrity I will defer association with that occupation.
Sorry, the media doesn’t ‘get it wrong’, they lie and cover up the truth on purpose. I am glad Surber points out they dropped their pretense of credibility. They were never credible, they just claimed to be and no one ever showed us otherwise.
They should all be grateful that Hur gave SloJo the “Get Out of jail, Senile” card.
I still don’t get it. As a non-lawyer, I always thought that the standard was whether a defendant was not insane, and could understand why he was being tried and/or what was going on in his trial (whether he agreed or not), not whether his memory was perfect. Don’t a lot of defendants say “I don’t recall”, when on the stand?
This is the federal government. Remember Hillary Clinton wasn’t prosecuted because you couldn’t prove she did it on purpose? If they can’t prove you meant to do it, they can’t prosecute you, right? Of course, this standard only applies to Hillary Clinton. The standard Hur uses only applies to Joe Biden.
When Joe Biden was excused from the charges, but the DOJ explicitly stated that the law applies to everyone equally and that the charges would continue against Donald Trump, this was a typical Communist propaganda tactic. You are supposed to realize that there are definitely two standards here and realize by the statements that there is nothing you can do about it. It is supposed to demoralize you. However, too many people in this country are too brainwashed at this point to even realize this. They see the obvious contradiction and believe it unquestioningly.
Yeah, my first thought on hearing DOJ’s refusal to prosecute President Biden for illegal acts committed as Vice President was that it was going to be pretty hard to continue to pursue charges against President Trump for what is a less egregious crime. Turns out I was wrong, and it presents some very curious optics for DOJ.
No one with two brains cells to rub together – to quote our host – should think “justice is blind” is this country. It may be somewhat so in flyover country, but where the Left controls things, justice is tiered, it is applied unevenly, and it discriminates heavily.
A lot of defendants fall back on “I don’t recall” on the stand. Hur’s point was that, with Biden, a jury would believe it. It’s not about Biden being mentally incompetent as a matter of law, but about his being a sympathetic figure to the jury – A Washington DC jury, to be precise.
Yeah, I get it :-( It just seems that if they’re going to skip the process, maybe they could find a supplier of balanced crystal balls to occasionally use in their divinations of how a trial will progress and what verdict a jury will deliver. They don’t even care about trying to set up an appearance of equal justice any more. Every jack-leg democrat AG or local DA can declare years in advance they’re going to get a Republican (i.e., Trump, for the most part) for something, and proceed with a cobbled together case that would never be applied to anyone else. Democrats skate with a reading of some tea leaves.
My understanding is the Hur included the issues of mental acuity only to rationalize away the fact that Biden, who did not have authority to declassify materials, will not be prosecuted and perhaps even insulate Biden from prosecution for any allegations of selling influence through Hunter.
There was no other reason to include that information except to provide a rationale for the two systems of justice executed by the DOJ and to help the deep state usher Biden out the door with as little damage as possible.
Exactly. And yet the mainstream media refuses to explain that, instead claiming that the report “exonerated” Biden and characterizing it as a partisan hit justifying the firing of Merrick Garland.