This is the season of holiday wishes, reflections and aspirations. Do you know what my Ethics Alarms wish is? I wish that at least one reader, ideally one of our five commenters, would finally write in saying something like,
“I have to confess, I’ve been denying your regular, almost annoyingly repetitious assertions that the mainstream media is biased, that it is a member of what you call the Axis of Unethical Conduct, that the major legacy media sources now practice progressive, Democratic Party propaganda to the exclusion of balanced and fair (that is, ethical) journalism, that this results in a profound warping of the Democratic process, that the news media is in fact dedicated to promoting the power of the Democratic Party and its anti-American policy agenda, and that Donald Trump was correct when he pronounced the news media the ‘enemy of the people.’ But I can’t in good conscience deny this any more. You are right, and have been right all along.”
Actually there is one kamikaze commenter who should write this but who is banned and I still won’t let his comment stay up even if he does. With that single obnoxious exception, however, yes, that admission would make my year…not that the conclusion shouldn’t have been screamingly obvious to everyone for years.
I was thinking about this as I observed the current unethical news media self-indicting efforts to pretend that the unfolding Minnesota fraud scandal in the Somali community and elsewhere is a footnote to the “real” news. The Times did a relatively thorough report a full month ago; it has been fairly silent since, however, as the full expanse of the fraud scandal has unfolded. Network news has largely ignored the story too. Incredibly, the Minnesota Star-Tribune did not include the scandal in its 2025 list of top news stories. Today in CNN’s list of “Five things” readers should know about, developments in the Minnesota story is nowhere to be seen.
According to Axios, the Somali 9 billion dollar scamming wasn’t one of the top search topics, unlike Bad Bunny and Stephen Colbert (See, you have to know about a topic in order to search for it…well played, “journalists”!) The Hill gives us another classic example today of the oft-mentioned phenomenon that when Democrats have been caught in scandals or misconduct, it is the Republican/MAGA reaction that is the news: “MAGA World zeroes in on Minnesota over fraud scandal.” Other examples this month: The Guardian: “The right wing has seized on fraud cases in the state” and ABC News: “Trump has seized on the ballooning controversy in recent days …”
Other diversionary framing include the panic in the Somali community as ICE cracks down on Minnesota’s large unassimilated community consisting of people whose native culture regards cheating the government as a good thing. “ICE pounces!” is that theme. This is CNN: Anxiety grips Minneapolis’s Somali community as immigration agents zero in on the Twin Cities.
It isn’t only the Somalis: Minnesota, under the watchful eye of knuckleheaded Governor Tim Walz, has a fraud problem throughout its social welfare system. Why is an amateur Youtuber, Nick Shirley, making headlines with his Boy Scout merit badge-level investigative reporting? Where are the pros? Why wasn’t “60 Minutes” on this story like bees on a honeypot? CBS news reported the Somali scandal on December 11, but it’s been crickets since. But Shirley uncovered another Minnesota fraud, a hilarious one, last week: a Somali-owned daycare center with no children and a sign reading “Quality Learing Center.” The Quality Learing Center received $4,000,000 from Minnesota taxpayers.
It’s easy to see why the Axis media wants these embarrassments smothered. It is times like these that Instapundit contributor Stephen Green reposts two wry commentaries from conservative pundits David Burge and Jim Treacher:
Bingo.
It is hard to imagine a story the news media, as Democratic Party operatives, would find more inconvenient….weeeell, maybe an abandoned laptop with evidence of a Presidential candidate’s son’s flagrant foreign influence peddling enabled by his father, or the fact that a Democratic President is cognitively disabled. Still, here’s a widespread, destructive criminal scandal in the state run by the man Democrats felt was an able understudy for the Presidency, involving immigrants from one of the nations President Trump said the U.S. shouldn’t be accepting immigrants from, with all or most of the participants in the scandal being black, as the media’s favorite party tries to make “affordability” and government support for the “most vulnerable” its signature issue, along with the claim that Republican law enforcement practices are excessive.
Nick Shirley also suggested that the professional journalists are afraid to pursue these stories out of fear of being labeled “Islamophobic” or “racist.” Why yes, I’d say that’s a fair analysis….because that is the reflex progressive response to any legitimate critiques when blacks and ethnic groups are implicated.
Right now, on news aggregator Memeorandum, the latest on the Minnesota fraud scandals—the “Learing” center— is listed 18th among developing news stories, and its links show the vast majority of outlets covering the story are in the right wing media. Ranking far higher on the list is a Times story about Marjorie Taylor Greene admitting that she was “naive.” Talk about a “Breaking: Water is Wet!” story…
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!
Ethics Alarms 
I cannot in good conscience write what you wish your commenters would write, because I’ve believed that that the mainstream media has been thoroughly biased for quite some time. What I currently believe is that the mask has slipped off in the past decade, exposing a great deal of the processes that feed into the finished, biased reports, and the rise and acceptance of advocacy journalism has driven the mainstream media even further into biased territory. In the cycle of “It isn’t happening” – “If it is happening, it is no big deal” – “It is happening, and it is good” – “Anyone who doesn’t celebrate that it is happening is the problem”, we’ve definitely progressed to the “It is happening, and it is good” phase. So, no more trying to hide the bias behind very professional reporting; instead, we have the defiant advocacy journalists clamoring against objectivity, with the asinine claim that you don’t give the opposite opinion equal coverage when it is so obviously wrong.
Regarding all the fraud, we have Elon Musk (take his opinion as you will) estimating that 20% of the federal budget ends up going to fraudulent agencies. I’m inclined to agree because the government is massively inefficient, and it isn’t difficult to set up schemes that siphon governmental funds with minimal (if any) oversight. I’m also inclined to believe that a great deal of pork that is handed out thanks to all the backroom wheeling and dealing lands with people who misuse a great deal of that money. Since this is business as usual in Washington D.C., and both parties engage in it, I’d be surprised if all this fraud that has been discovered gains much attention. There is too much money, and too many interested parties in high places, that don’t want attention paid here.
But as the Minnesotan fraud issues are sluggishly gaining attention, it seems we have additional fraud being found in Ohio and Washington state (at least, if you believe Eric Daugherty and Kristen Mag, whose X posts are linked in at Instapundit). A quick Google search for healthcare fraud in Wyoming shows $13.5 million in claims that had been referred to the fraud unit, which likely means millions of dollars more have passed undetected.
I read an article recently (a 2024 post from the Mises Institute) that tells a tale of health care costs soaring because of the alliance between health insurance, pharmaceuticals, and the federal government. In short, government interference in health care dates back to the early 1900s, and has been funneling money into insurance and pharmaceutical companies, while those companies feed money into political campaigns that keep the gravy train running. So it isn’t just Somalis sucking the lifeblood out of the nation. They’re just lately arrived on the scene and taking a swipe at that giant monetary trough that so many others have been feeding from for decades.
Also, this article from the Mises Institute…
My conscious also does not allow me to affirm your paragraph snicne i have always ( in the past 20 + years) distrusted the mainstream media. Unfortuantley I resort to “NOT THE BEE for my dialy dose of scandalous news.
I stand bya few presumptions:
When th emedia speaks, it is lying
When a mideasterner, outsideof israel, speask they are lying.
When politicians in general speak they are lying
When something is the rage on on you tube,it is usually a lie.
to sum it up. i trust few people.
I can’t answer the first question posed. It is pretty obvious that the legacy media would rather focus on Trump’s renaming of the Kennedy center because, well, that is low-hanging fruit. Minnesota, on the other hand, requires tough questions, one of which should be: “How is Rep. Omar now worth $30 million when a few short years ago, she did not have enough money to pay her bills?”
jvb
U.S.A Today covered it on my Yahoo main page:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/viral-video-alleging-day-care-170203627.html
What a pathetic excuse for an article. See how they tried to undermine Nick Shirley by dragging in the flag change controversy and pretending it was no big deal?
Does thinking of and referring to the axis media as Pravda suffice? It’s a joke. The media and the Dems are one and the same, as are the teachers unions and the academy and the entertainment industry and the Dems. Jack, you’re preaching to the choir, which is perfectly acceptable in this case. You’re right! Who could possibly argue with you other tha a banned commenter?
You gave me a COTD for my comment a short while ago about the coming AI driven fake news Jack. That change has multiple implications that intertwine with what has become of mainstream news.
Firstly, I will bring up the ways it is different. So far, AI isn’t particularly “smart”, but then again, many journalists don’t seem so much that way either. What AI will do is make really dumb connections, but then put an amazing level of effort into selling their theory. I can come up with one of the examples I used before, the conflation of the Air India 171 crash out of Ahmedabad with LATAM flight 800 where a flight attendant accidentally ran the pilot’s seat control forwards and the airplane plunged downwards when the pilot was jammed into the controls, but was fortunately recovered. It is a plausible theory, but rather than suggesting “hey, maybe it was this”, the AI went wild and created a very believable forged accident investigation report. It got the Indian government’s forms correct, and wrote a multi-hundred page report with the proper common Indian idioms sprinkled in the report. It fooled many. I think it is work noting the difference that the overall quick judgement to run with the report was particularly stupid, but the AI put far more “effort” into the story than a typical journalist.
Bias is another area of concern. Right now journalism is very biased, with a strong leftwards tilt amongst the vast majority. AI’s bias is a whole area of concern. AI without bias training is very “anit-woke” as it naively notices reality, and being woke requires the suspension of the ability to acknowledge reality. There are plenty of examples, like the way AI had to be taught that a man wearing a dress with a hairstyle like women wear “is a woman”. Until it was taught that bias, AI was REALLY good at detecting trans individuals, better than humans. AI has had to be taught to ignore race and crime statistics, because it is a connection that we’re not supposed to discuss. The end chapter of this is still open, as this is an area of battle. Elon Musk, for example, is fighting hard to un-woke AI.
Lastly, I will bring up that many journalists will lose their jobs to AI. Good. They deserve it. They’ve sucked for so long, my well of fucks to give has run dry.
For what it’s worth, the NYT recently did another article on the Somali Fraud case:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/us/minnesota-fraud-scandal.html
And I came across this list of outlets that have also covered it. Yes, some are right-wing, and others are left-wing but take the “Republicans pounce!” angle, but there’s been a decent amount of recent reporting. You’ll have to wait for the whole thing to load (it’s a replay from an AI chat), but so far each of the links it came up with check out:
https://www.genspark.ai/autopilotagent_viewer?id=0a69f63b-e0a1-4ac9-87da-94d0601d0753
Yes, I’ve been finding more coverage as well—thanks for this update. It’s still being under-reported, in my view. given it’s size and significance. CNN and MS in particular have been ignoring it, which is hardly shocking.
Update: CNN’s website now has a very long story, with the focus being on a “viral” and dubious video by a “self-styled” citizen reporter of “alleged” violations, making sure all of the Democrat denials are highlighted.