1. The former reliably progressive, Democrat-supporting Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi nicely exposed the Washington Post’s astoundingly flagrant Democratic operative Phillip Bump (EA dossier here) on Taibbi’s substack. (I have been temped to subscribe, but…)
In “Note to Philip Bump: The Washington Post columnist speaks on CNN; a brief reply” he writes:
“The thing about censorship, which is total nonsense — he’s referring to this Twitter Files stuff, which has been debunked a thousand times over…”
— Philip Bump, Washington Post columnist, commenting on Robert F. Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump
Dear Philip,
On February 13, 2018, you wrote an article called “When we talk about Russian meddling, what do we actually mean?” It cited a website called Hamilton 68 as a source highlighting “Russian” efforts to “influence U.S. politics”:
The piece became one of eight Washington Post articles to which corrections would be added because of the Twitter Files. Twitter internal correspondence showed the Hamilton 68 was a fraud, a “dashboard” of 600+ accounts that were “neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots” but “real people” who’d been falsely “labeled Russian stooges.” This was, Twitter executives says, part of a scheme “to assert that any right-leaning content is propagated by Russian bots.” Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth concluded: “We need to call this out on the bullshit it is.”
Your own editors agreed, which is why there’s now a correction notice at the bottom of your article:
And here’s the notice:
Media operations like the Post that continue to employ and give platforms to pure lying leftist hacks like Bump cannot be and should not be trusted themselves. An example like this, where Bump appears on another Democratic propaganda outlet and emits outright falsehoods in service of their mutual Orwellian master, should result in immediate dismissal and would, if the Post had any integrity at all.
It doesn’t. Presumably you already know that.
2. Arguably even worse was ABC’s longtime correspondent Jonathan Karl essentially morphing into a Kamala Harris surrogate while interviewing GOP Senator Tom Cotton:
COTTON: And President Trump is going to draw a sharp contrast with Kamala Harris, who has supported things like decriminalizing illegal immigration, or giving taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal aliens, or taking away health insurance on the job for 170 million Americans, banning gas cars, confiscating firearms.
KARL: What do you mean taking away health insurance? What are you talking about?
COTTON: She said when she ran for president that she wants to eliminate private health insurance on the job for 170 million Americans, Jon.
KARL: Yeah, I mean, that is not her position now, she has…
COTTON: How do you know that’s not her position? How do you know that’s not her position?
KARL: I mean, she says she no longer supports Medicare for all.
COTTON: She has not said that. She has not said that. Maybe anonymous aides on a Friday night have said that, but the last thing that she said…
KARL: This was not a radical convention. I mean, she, she, she, as you heard me go through with Bernie Sanders, she is not taking positions of the far-left of her party. She is clearly making an effort to move to the middle.
COTTON: I did hear what you said to Sen. Sanders, and I thought it was clear that he was very disappointed that she’s taking these efforts not to change her positions, but to hide her positions, Jon. The American people are totally justified to conclude that Kamala Harris is a dangerous San Francisco liberal based on what she campaigned on the last time she ran for president and what this administration has done in the last four years.
Again, you would have thought watching the Democratic convention last week that the Democrats are not in office. That they’re not in power. That they’re campaigning against an incumbent Republican when in reality, she’s been part of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration for four years, and when she campaigned for president in her rite [sic], she did in fact promise things like decriminalizing illegal immigration and taking away health insurance.
KARL: That’s a position she’s clearly changed on, and she said she has changed…
COTTON: No, she hasn’t
KARL: Yes, yes, she has.
COTTON: No, Jon, she has not said that.
Bravo to Cotton for reducing Democratic operative Karl to pathetic “huminahumina…” denials in defense of his favorite Presidential candidate. Cotton was correct and Karl was lying: Harris hasn’t officially “clearly changed” on any of her alternately radical, irresponsible or bonkers positions, because the news media’s anti-Trump hacks like Karl are allowing the Democratic nominee to pursue a “we’ll have to elect her to find out what’s in her policies” campaign to deceive voters.
In related news, Trump is hinting that he may not go through with the September 10 debate with Harris on ABC. That disgusting exchange above is sufficient reason. ABC, like the Post, is not a serious, trustworthy journalistic entity. Trump was sabotaged by partisan moderators in several of his previous debates, and the news media’s determination to defeat him is far more open and intense now.
The Democrats are the ones desperate for debates: the side that is behind always is. (This is one way you know that the polls showing Harris tied or slightly ahead of Trump are cooked.) Trump should make Harris having at least one unscripted press conference or legitimate interview with a relatively neutral reporter (I have no idea who that might be: Piers Morgan” Joe Rogan? Me?) a condition precedent of going through with the September 10 debate.
[Incidentally, I am pretty much ready to add “insisting that there is no mainstream media bias toward Democrats and progressive agenda items” to the Comment Policies as justification for an Ethics Alarms commenter ban. It is no longer defensible as an honest position, and anyone who makes that argument honestly is too dumb and gullible to participate productively here.]
Ethics Alarms 
I saw that Snopes finally did a WaPo and clarified that Trump did not actually say what the Democrats and their allies in the news media have been saying for years that he said.
Nope, he didn’t tell people to inject or ingest bleach.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-inject-bleach-covid/
“Trump should make Harris having at least one unscripted press conference or legitimate interview with a relatively neutral reporter (I have no idea who that might be: Piers Morgan” Joe Rogan? Me?) a condition precedent of going through with the September 10 debate.”
I am not sure I agree. Trump should simply say, “Any debate, any time, any where, no preconditions.” It would put Harris on her proverbial heels.
Trump in any debate, though, should act like he did with Biden in June. He should answer directly, even ask at the beginning of every comment, “are you better now than your were 4 years ago?” He should show the stark differences between his and the Biden/Harris foreign and domestic policies, and keep the “I am the greatest, ever” to a minimum.
He can’t attack her for being a woman or half black/Indian. He simply has to say, “what did she do as AG/DA in California? Did she seek/push criminal justice reform? Nope. She incarcerated people for the very weed she jokes about smoking.” And, “she claims she intends to fix the border. Well, I had it under control but the ‘Don’t come’ message must not have been translated properly into Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Urdu, or a host of other languages because the border is virtually nonexistent.” Maybe, “she ran on eliminating private health insurance. Now, she does not want to eliminate private health insurance. Why? What changed? I suspect that it did poll well for focus groups.” Or, well, . . . you get the picture.
jvb
In that debate, the two CNN moderators were being careful not to justify later claims of bias. I wouldn’t trust ABC to do the same—not after what I’ve seen from Chris Wallace, Candy Crowley, Martha Raddatz and others in past debates.
Absolutely justified, but also very sad. I don’t want an echo chamber, but those on the American left are making it impossible to avoid. They’re so far detached from reality. Trump derangement has completely addled their brains. I don’t know when they will break out of it.
He should demand equity with respect to the forum. CNN conducted the first debate so Fox should host the next one. If a third debate is requested then another network should be chosen via a lottery.
Yes, Trump should insist that at this point, the debate needs to be on non-state media. He should not specify Fox. Fox is actually fairly balanced compared to ABC/MSNBC, etc. As a negotiating tactic, he should specify NewsMax. I think NewsMax is a closer conservative comparison to ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN etc than Fox. I don’t think NewsMax is even as bad as the mainstream media because it doesn’t pretend to be unbiased news. It is current events from a conservative viewpoint, not unbiased news. I think NewsMax commentators would be more analogous to ABC commentators than Fox ones. Then, Trump can negotiate down to Fox.
Hi Jack.
Your war on Substack seems a bit Quixotic to me. Substack is a platform. Anybody can set up an account and publish there. I could publish there if I was of a mind to. That the first two authors you subscribed to there acted unethically shouldn’t necessarily put you off from all authors there. You know better that anybody there is no area of life where everyone acts ethically, and there is no person, maybe not even you, who is capable of always doing the ethical thing. If you blacklist every platform, field, or industry once you find a couple of unethical actors there, you’ll find yourself interacting with precisely nobody in short order. (For disclosure, I subscribe to Tiabbi’s Substack.)
I think this is similar to our brief exchange regarding credit reporting companies. This may not be the place, but since we’re here I’ll expand on it a bit. I hope you don’t mind.
You were frustrated that the score a lender used for you varied considerably from the score you had been shown on your reporting company subscription account. I pointed out that there are various scores based on data from 3 different reporting bureaus used by various lenders for various types of loans, and that these can vary widely. You had said you would post on it later. Your post, however, didn’t deal with how they were, in your view, misrepresenting your score, but instead with the difficulty you encountered trying to cancel your account. (I agree with you on this 100%, by the way. It should be easy to cancel an account and it’s unethical, and should be illegal, for companies to make it difficult.)
Since you didn’t expand on why you thought it was misleading in that post, let me just add something I found (pretty close to front and center) on the Experian website in answer to the question, “Why do we use FICO scores?” They say, “Lenders can use several different scoring models to calculate creditworthiness. Some lenders even create their own custom credit scoring programs. We use FICO® Scores, because they’re used by 90% of top lenders.” And on the Experian website you can fairly easily find many of the scoring models used.
I’ll agree it’s confusing. Maybe that makes it unethical. But maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for it. Start off with the fact that there are 3 different bureaus. Each one will have a different score, even when using the same scoring model. That’s because some creditors report to all three bureaus, while some only report to one or two. Then, different creditors are looking at different things to determine credit worthiness. What makes you a good candidate for a mortgage probably varies somewhat from what makes you a good candidate for a car loan or a credit card. So there are different models for different types of credit. Finally, new models are developed that some think are better for whatever they’re trying to evaluate, while some prefer the older model.
When I’m applying for a mortgage, I always ask which scoring model they’re using. Often they don’t know themselves, but when they do it helps me to get a better idea how I’m scoring for their particular purposes and if I need to do anything to improve things.
I’m curious to know your thoughts, and in particular in what ways you think they’re misleading you.
The whole system is misleading and designed to confuse and confound. I have been misled and given bad information by too many companies and lenders to list since my wife died in February. I assume everything you say is true. Fine: I paid money to monitor a score that I was told 90% of top lenders used and relied on. Funny, my luck must defy the odds, because even with a score I meticulously pulled up from the toilet (after the lockdown) and that Experian said was finally in the “good” range, I wasted over an hour with a lender who told me that their score for me was 70 points lower.
Experian did not say that the mystery scores they didn’t cover might have no relationship to their score, because then I would have said, “Well, then what good are you?” That is not what I call fair and full disclosure. This would be: “The score we use may be completely irrelevant to some major lenders when you try to get a home equity loan. What we say is good, their score may say sucks. Sorry, the system is rigged to make it difficult for consumers.”
Moreover, that lender who dropped me like a hot potato was flagged by Experian as perfect for my needs given my newly improved FICO score. Well, it wasn’t.
As for substack, it’s this simple: the participants in any system or organization represent that system or organization. Apparently substack has no rules or business practice requirements for those who use their platform as an income source. OK, then I don’t trust substack. How hard is it to make users sign an agreement that they must deliver on the services they ask subscribers to pay for? I know substack has kicked people off the platform for other reasons. Apparently defaulting on a commitment is OK. Now that I know any substack newsletter I pay for can just stop sending me what I subscribed for.
Nice. They can bite me.
Regarding Substack, fair enough. It might be worth reaching out to them to let them know of your complaints. They’re a relatively new company, (started in 2017), and I think didn’t really start to gain traction until all the Covid related censorship started. There are undoubtedly issues to be worked out, and they might be receptive to suggestions.
As to credit scores, I still think it’s a case of Old Man Yells at Cloud. (That’s meant to be lighthearted. I myself suffer from Grumpy Old Man Syndrome, as my wife will enthusiastically testify.) In the lending industry, there’s a tremendous amount at stake. How much is loaned to individuals in the US annually? High billions? Low trillions? I have no idea, but it’s a really big number. With many different lenders, loaning for many different things, to many different individuals, at a variety of different interest rates, it is inevitable that it will be an incredibly complex system, and unrealistic to the point of naivete to expect otherwise.
How do you give consumers an idea of where they fall on the credit worthiness scale without overwhelming them with information? Most people don’t have the intelligence, time, or patience to even scratch the surface. I know you have the intelligence, but I bet you’re short on time and patience. I don’t see how they can do anything else but give you a number that’s an approximation of what you’re most likely to see in the real world and then give you access to more in depth information if you’re inclined to dig deeper. I imagine it’s the same in legal profession. When a client comes in with a case, you don’t send him to law school and then have him practice law for several years so he’ll have a clear picture of every possible permutation that might occur. You give him a brief rundown of the most likely possibilities, tell him there are no guarantees and that anything might happen, and then accept his retainer check.
Regarding the 70 point discrepancy, I’m sure that seems like a lot. You’re probably a standard deviation or two from the typical discrepancy, for whatever reason. I checked my scores on the Experian site and they vary by as much as 50 points between scoring models. Fico scores range from 300 to 850, a 550 point spread. 70 is 12.7% of that. High, maybe, but not alternate universe different.
If the model they present to you is used 90% of the time, that means that 10% of the time a different model is used. That might seem unlikely to occur, but in this context 10% is a lot. If there are, just to pull a number out of my derriere, 100 million credit applications annually, 10% of that is 10 million applications every year that don’t use the most common scoring model. So yes, you did defy the odds, but that’s going to happen a lot.
In any case, good luck to you with the credit application and loan. I know it can be an incredibly time consuming and frustrating experience.