Where’s “A Friend” when you need him? The Ethics Alarms self-banned NYT defender who keeps trying to sneak into the comments anyway would have to get especially creative with this despicable headline in the print edition. I’d love to read how he would try to spin this one, but that would mean I’d have to read his unauthorized comment before spamming it, and I won’t.
This one is even worse than the typical “fake news” Times headlines, as the jury’s verdict in the Daniel Penny case makes the official facts of the case that Penny was not “choking a rider” but was restraining a dangerous and menacing lunatic in order to protect other riders. The headline is misleading, deceitful and an obvious attempt to cover for Manhattan’s unethical District Attorney, Alvin Bragg.
And this is the “best” newspaper in the United States. One of the main reasons I was rooting for a Trump win is that it would represent a rebuke of the biased mainstream media, which has debased itself, politics, and civic literacy with its complete commitment to progressive propaganda. The headline is a perfect example of what voters were symbolically spitting on with their votes for Donald Trump.
______________
Pointer: John Podhoretz
Ethics Alarms 
Austere religious scholar
In the print, they note that this deceased rider has a “history of mental illness” but no mention of a history of assaulting other passengers.
I don’t know if it was done in this trial, but can generally agree with court procedures that hide prior criminal history of a killed party from the jury because 1–it’s prejudicial, and 2–the jury shouldn’t judge the actions of someone accused under a reasonable man doctrine having more information than the accused did at the time…
…but if accusations from anonymous sources and political rival smear artists is fit to print, than a criminal conviction history certainly is information that’s fit to print at the conclusion of trial!
And don’t forget that Neely was just “yelling at passengers”, conveniently omitting that he threatened passengers and said he wasn’t afraid of prison and was ready to die.
One issue that I see is a false belief that the norm within the press has been, until recently, providing accurate, unbiased information. The reality is that the press providing accurate, unbiased information was not the norm, but rather an aspiration that few in the press have ever tried to meet. The main difference between now and the past is social media. Social media has allowed more voices to be heard and like-minded voices to join into choruses. Mainstream media (MSM) is still relying on their legacy where people trusted them.
Of course, the MSM will likely maintain a certain base of true believers and non-player characters (NPCs). True believers will defend MSM like the NY Times to the death. NPCs on the other hand won’t defend much of anything, but will just repeat what is convenient and pushed in front of them.
This situation begs the question, is ethics even applicable in religious type sermons?
When people express a desire for the media to return to its golden era of unbiased journalism, I always ask them if they’ve ever seen “Citizen Kane” or run across the term “yellow journalism.” I’ve come to suspect the likes of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were little more than blinkered hacks feeding us the government-approved version of “the way things were.” We just didn’t realize it at the time.
“Social media has allowed more voices to be heard and like-minded voices to join into choruses. Mainstream media (MSM) is still relying on their legacy where people trusted them”
And I firmly believe it was the left’s ignoring the former and believing the latter that cost them the election.
I’m going to assume the Babylon Bee will be using this headline for a laugh.
Great Heather Mac Donald summary of the case (and Neely’s violent history):
New York’s Government Is the Real Villain in the Daniel Penny Trial | City Journal
“The Penny proceeding was more than a travesty of justice, however. It exemplified two intertwined traits of our time: government’s abandonment of law-abiding citizens in favor of the dysfunctional and antisocial, and the hatred of values associated with white males and the Western civilization that they created.”
That hit the spot.
Love HM. Love her.