“bias makes you stupid”

Comment Of The Day: “On The Plus Side, At Least There’s No Reason To Hold Any Illusions That American Journalists Will Even Try To Be Ethical Journalists In The Foreseeable Future…”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

No, the former CNN host of “Reliable Sources” isn’t necessarily the most biased, hypocritical and unethical journalist I could use to illustrate Curmie’s Comment of the Day but he is the most ridiculous, as the hack whom mean wags on the right call “Potato” regularly flaunted his biases while he was allegedly examining the ethics of his profession, a task he was spectacularly unqualified to perform. His real job, as anyone could discern after about five minutes of listening to him, was to obfuscate regarding his employer’s manifest breaches of fair and objective journalism, and to impugn CNN’s competition, especially Fox News, regularly calling the kettle black in strong terms.

When I read Curmie’s typically adept commentary, I realized that a regular reader here might be able to program a computer to write a response to an Ethics Alarms post on rotting journalism ethics (and, to be honest, many other recurring themes here) that I would almost be certain to select as a Comment of the Day. That would be unethical, of course, and I can vouch for the fact that Curmie isn’t a computer, having had the pleasure of meeting him in person.

Here is real, live, human being Curmie’s Comment of the Day on objectivity, subjectivity, the nature of bias, and the post,  “On The Plus Side, At Least There’s No Reason To Hold Any Illusions That American Journalists Will Even Try To Be Ethical Journalists In The Foreseeable Future…”

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I dabbled in journalism as an undergrad. Admittedly, that wasn’t exactly last week: the newsroom was stocked with manual typewriters, if that gives you a rough idea. There was no journalism department, and, I believe, only a single introductory course–which virtually no one on the staff of the newspaper took. A bunch of my colleagues turned out okay, though: three that I worked with ended up in senior management positions: one with the Wall Street Journal, one with the International Herald Tribune, one with Newsweek.

I did some day editing, mostly on the arts page; I had a weekly column, and I did a little news reporting. I never sought an upper-level editorial position. It’s possible, perhaps even probable, I could have been arts editor if I’d really wanted the job; I didn’t.

But I did have a lot of conversations about journalism with some people who were subsequently to be very successful in that business. The consensus was that objectivity was a goal, but one it was impossible to achieve. The reasons for this were two-fold. First, you can’t entirely suppress your own life experience, perspectives, and (yes) prejudices. Second, you inevitably interpret the significance of events. If X happened and Y also happened, there are manifold ways of framing the story, using variations on the theme of “despite” or “therefore,” for example. Even saying “X and Y” instead of “Y and X” often betrays a bias.

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On The Plus Side, At Least There’s No Reason To Hold Any Illusions That American Journalists Will Even Try To Be Ethical Journalists In The Foreseeable Future…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It looks like honking will do as much good as anything else.

Former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward interviewed over 75 media leaders to assess how the industry views the concept of “objectivity.”

The message they got was that objectivity was over-rated, and what really matters is diversity. Sure, that makes sense. Not really, but it was predictable.  Journalists, Downey and Heyward were told,  should include their own beliefs, biases, and experiences to convey “truth.” Journalistic objectivity was either unrealistic or undesirable.

“Objectivity has got to go,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy,” said Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press. USA Today editor-in-chief Nicole Carroll said that she allows  reporters to write about their own experiences, so long as the stories aren’t “too biased.”

[That’s signature significance for editorial incompetence. Any bias is too biased.] Continue reading →

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring…Or Were Never Installed: The Caring Asst. Principal

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

First of all, has Ms. Harvey (idiot/idiot/idiot’s) been fired yet? Why not? At least the principal reacted quickly, sending out this: Continue reading →

Serious Ethics Question: How Can The New York Times Defend Employing Mara Gay?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I guess there’s an easy answer: she’s female, she’s black, and the fact that she’s an anti-white, race-baiting bigot who isn’t very bright isn’t outweighed by those things because diversity. If that’s the best excuse the Times has, then we should all agree that its claim to being a responsible news source, never mind the creme de la creme it purports to be, if it was ever true, is no longer.

Gay regularly bloviates on MSNBC, where the standards for fairness, objectivity and accuracy are irrelevant, like a laser-pointer is to a snail. There her manifest bias and cognitive flaws don’t matter much: anyone who watches that network doesn’t want information, but partisan, emotional, red-meat hate, and Facts Don’t Matter.  Still, a Times writer introduced as a Times writer is representing the Times in public. How can the paper allow her to make the “Gray Lady” appear to be a den of hacks?

I guess because that’s what it is now.

I’ve only used the Mara Gay tag twice. but she’s shown up in many posts, never well. Check them out: it’s either funny or depressing. I liked the time in 2020 when Mara ridiculed how much money Micheal Bloomberg reportedly spent on campaign ads when he was trying to take the Democratic Presidential nomination. “Somebody tweeted recently that actually with the money that he spent, he could have given every American a million dollars,” Gay said on MSNBC (or course). “I’ve got it. Let’s put it on the screen,” said bone-headed  anchor Brian Williams. Williams then read the tweet: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. Population, 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and have had lunch money left over.”  Morons. 500 million dollars divided by 327 million people is about a dollar and 56 cents. Williams, at least, has been sacked by the network despite its loose standards of professionalism. But the Times still employs Gay.

With Mara, stupid is always in a race with racist. In 2021, the Times even defended this rant on “Morning Joe”:

“You know, the reality is here that we have a large percentage of the American population — I don’t know how big it is, but we have tens of millions of Trump voters who continue to believe that their rights as citizens are under threat by simple virtue of having to share the democracy with others. I think as long as they see Americanness as the same as one with whiteness, this is going to continue. We have to figure out how to get every American a place at the table in this democracy, but how to separate Americanness, America, from whiteness. Until we can confront that and talk about that, this is really going to continue. I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend. And I was really disturbed. I saw, you know, dozens and dozens of pickup trucks with you know, expletives against Joe Biden on the back of them, Trump flags, and in some cases, just dozens of American flags, which you know is also just disturbing, because essentially the message was clear, this is my country. This is not your country. I own this. And so until we’re ready to have that conversation, this is going to continue…Because, you know, the Trump voters who are not going to get onboard with democracy, they’re a minority. You can marginalize them, long-term. But if we don’t take the threat seriously, then I think we’re all in really bad shape.“

This is typical of Gay, not an anomaly. When Colin Kaepernick quoted part of a Frederick Douglass speech as his defense for declaring the Betsy Ross flag a symbol of racism—an opinion Gay obviously agrees with— Senator Ted  Cruz replied to the Kneeler-in Chief by  linking to Douglass’s whole speech, which proved that the cherry-picked quote didn’t mean what Kaepernick was claiming. Mara Gay tweeted to Cruz,   “Frederick Douglass is an American hero, and his name has no business in your mouth.”

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Ethics Dunce: Jack Phillips (of Masterpiece Cakeshop):

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

It is a basic life skill: quit while you’re ahead.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted in the grip of anti-religious bias when it enforced an anti-discrimination law against baker Jack Phillips. He had famously refused to bake a wedding cake celebrating the wedding of same sex couple Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins in 2012. But that was just a technical victory for Baker; SCOTUS chose not to rule did not rule on the macro-controversies over whether a business can invoke religious objections to deny service to LGBTQ people, whether a cake is art or just a product offered by a public accommodation, or whether forcing a baker to create a cake for a gay wedding is compelled speech.

Sadly, annoyingly, unethically and stupidly, neither Baker nor the activists who are determined to bend him to their will had the sense to declare a truce.

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The Great Stupid Is Now Officially An Existential Threat To American Civilization, Because, As The Dodo Proved, Things Really Can Be Too Stupid To Live…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Morons. Everywhere I look, morons.

This isn’t funny any more, if it ever was. I was pondering whether reports that an organization called The Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance is demanding that Apple Music and Spotify remove the Aretha Franklin 1968 song “Natural Woman”  from their playlists because it “perpetuates multiple harmful anti-trans stereotypes,” since “there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ woman.” The group claims that the song “has helped inspire acts of harm against transgender women.” 

Really? I’d like to see the citations for that. I know I want to run amuck with a machete every time I hear “Imagine,” but Aretha never made me feel violent.

I couldn’t believe this story could be true, until I encountered this story, which is even dumber.

Last year, Mars Wrigley changed the shoes of some of its cartoon M&M’s characters that appear in TV ads. Conservatives were upset. Let me repeat that: some conservatives were upset because of a change in the design of anthropomorphic animated candies’ shoes. Tucker Carlson  criticized the character makeovers as “Woke M&M’s.” Slow news day, Tucker?

M&M’s marketers had  re-shod the green “female” M&M’s high heels with flats and replaced the intimidating brown “female” M&M’s stilettos for smaller heels.

 

Tucker pounced! “M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous,”  Carlson said on his show. “Until the moment when you wouldn’t want to have a drink with any one of them. That’s the goal. When you’re totally turned off, we’ve achieved equity. They’ve won.” Continue reading →

How Jolly! The White House Has Figured Out That Virtue-Signaling Policies With No Tangible Benefits But Substantial Negative Consequences Are Not In The Nation’s Best Interests…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an infuriating news item!

RealClear Energy informs us…

…the Department of Energy quietly released a report highlighting the positive economic benefits of developing the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, an energy project canceled by President Biden in the hours following his inauguration….Released without a formal announcement, the DOE’s report points out that the pipeline would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had an economic benefit of between $3.4 and 9.6 billion….Yet with one stroke of his pen, Biden slashed the project and instead focused his efforts on costly “green energy” goals. As a result of his executive action, 11,000 pipeline workers were promptly laid off…

Now, everyone except hard-core climate change fanatics—and maybe poor Joe— knew that closing down the pipeline would have no salutary effects on global warming or conservation. The Obama administration had essentially admitted that shutting it down would be largely symbolic but otherwise pointless (like all climate change grandstanding). Never mind: the pipeline was killed anyway just as Biden had promised to do on “Day One” during the 2020 campaign.  If they could have voted, the 16-year-olds would have gone for Biden. Continue reading →

End Of Week Ethics Exegesis, 1/20/2023, SCOTUS Ineptitude, The Child Shooter’s Parents, A Coinkydink, And More…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[NOTE: This was another one of those posts that I had to squeeze in and get up before I had a chance to do a careful proofing. Coming back to it hours later, it is so embarrassing to find all the irritating little typos: missing letters, transposed letters, words I thought I typed in but didn’t. Ugh. I’m sorry.]

***

The mainstream media (and Democrats, but I repeat myself) is doing everything it can to try to make Lyin’ George Santos the big story rather than Joe’s Biden’s document scandal, which has nicely exposed Biden’s hypocrisy along with that of law enforcement and the Trump-Deranged. The Republicans have made it easier for them than it should be: Kevin McCarthy should have created a committee called “Shameless Lying Committee and placed only Santos on it, and made him chairman. Oh, maybe have Adam Schlitt on it to keep George company. McCarthy’s canned line about how Santos was elected to represent his district by voters and they deserve representation is worse than if he said nothing at all. Santos gets to vote on bills, and that’s all an incompetent, lazy, gullible district like his deserves. (If Santos says one more time that he’s done nothing wrong, I may jump out my office window.)

Back to the news media: This morning I watched CNN, Fox, News, and BBC all at once on the DirecTV “News Mix” channel. The experience would be depressing to anyone under the delusion that broadcast news is anything but a confederacy of dunces. As the abrasive and smug “Fox and Friends” kept repeating the same outrage about Joe’s stash of classified materials, CNN interviewed high school students in Santos’ district in an obviously carefully staged segment purporting to show that teens are more ethical and instinctively wise than their elected elders. (Hey, look at these kids! Let’s let 16-year-olds vote!) When one student said that Congress should vote to expel Santos, his grandstanding teacher didn’t point out that Congress can’t, probably because the teacher doesn’t know.

Neither CNN nor the teacher brought up Joe Biden’s career of making up credentials and experiences, which would have been an interesting counterpoint for the aspiring Democrats in the student group (there was one self-proclaimed future Republican, which doesn’t mean there weren’t others afarisd of getting wedgies) to ponder: the thrust of the segment was that Santos and the GOP acceptance of him pushed the students into the Blue.

MSNBC, as usual, was even more flagrant in its bias, and also funnier. It had—get this—Al Sharpton and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele discussing how corrupt and incompetent Republican House members were. Michael Steele calling anyone incompetent is like, well, Sharpton calling anyone corrupt. Steele is now a Never-Trump talking head for MSNBC in the Ana Navarro mold, because his flip-flop was the only way anyone would hire him to give his opinion on anything. He was a disaster as RNC head, embarrassing the party by such stunts as okaying a fundraising mailing that intentionally masqueraded as a census document—while the census was underway. Congress passed a bi-partisan law making such chicanery illegal.

Mostly Steele is just an idiot. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it should be flashed up on the screen any time this dolt tries to be a pundit. When he was running to be re-elected RNC head (he lost), Steele was asked during the one debate among the contenders to name his favorite book. The other hacks (like Reince Priebus, the eventual winner) said that a Ronald Reagan’s biography was their favorite book, but Steele, trying to seem erudite, said “War and Peace.” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he quoted (from “A Tale of Two Cities”), causing questioner Tucker Carlson to facepalm.

1. The SCOTUS Dobbs leak can’t be found. That’s bad enough. Equally bad were the stunning revelations of sloppy procedures at the Court, probably long the status quo, that nonetheless made this scandal inevitable. From the 20-page report

1. Too many personnel have access to certain Court-sensitive documents. The current distribution mechanisms result in too many people having access to highly sensitive information and the inability to actively track who is handling and accessing these documents. Distribution should be more tailored and the use of hard copies for sensitive documents should be minimized and tightly controlled.

2. Aside from the Court’s clear confidentiality policies and the federal statutes outlined above, there is no universal written policy or guidance on the mechanics of handling and safeguarding draft opinions and Court-sensitive documents, and practices vary widely throughout the Court. A universal policy should be established and all personnel should receive training on the requirements.

3. The Court’s current method of destroying Court-sensitive documents has vulnerabilities that should be addressed.

4. The Court’s information security policies are outdated and need to be clarified and updated. The existing platform for case-related documents appears to be out of date and in need of an overhaul.

5. There are inadequate safeguards in place to track the printing and copying of sensitive documents. The Court should institute tracking mechanisms using technology that is currently available for this purpose.

6. Many personnel appear not to have properly understood the Court’s policies on confidentiality. There should be more emphasis on training so that all personnel fully understand the policies.

7. Bills were introduced in the last Congress which would expressly prohibit the disclosure of the Supreme Court’s non-public case-related information to anyone outside the Court. Consideration should be given to supporting such legislation.

Summary: The Court’;s security has been incompetent and inexcusable.

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KABOOM! I Just Read AGAIN The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Website Section On “Whiteness”….How Can That Racist Offal Still Be Up? [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The official position of the Smithsonian Institution is apparently that white people are a blight on humanity. My head exploded after the first time I became aware of this, in a post that generated a lot of excellent comments in 2020. Like a fool, I assumed the outrageous text (and the chart that earlier post focused on) had been removed. I was wrong.

It’s time to revisit the issue, especially since my head just exploded again.

Here’s a sample of the woke, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, “1619”-style racist drivel (and libel) that appears on the website of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the “Nation’s Attic’s” most recent major addition. I know most attics have creepy , smelly stuff in them, but this should not be tolerated.The page headlined, “Whiteness” reads in part,

Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America’s history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized. 

Thinking about race is very different for nonwhite persons living in America. People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists.  

Whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. Acts of microaggressions include verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults toward nonwhites. Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.

Since white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not. These benefits and advantages, of varying degrees, are known as white privilege. For many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept – but it is true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin….

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A Black Columnist Employed By The Washington Post Just Revealed Herself As Not Only A Racist, But An Especially Incompetent One….Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It is seldom that a writer for a prestigious publication spontaneously performs the equivalent of placing a neon “I am a racist moron who should never be taken seriously again!” sign on her head, but that’s what Karen Attiah has done. She’s a columnist for The Washington Post “on issues relating to race, gender and international politics, with a special interest in Africa”—naturally, she minored in Black Studies at Columbia, giving her anti-white racist urges just the boost they needed. One benefit of the disastrous Martin Luther King memorial unveiled this week in Boston is that it has caused lots of pundits, critics and others to reveal things about themselves (hypocrisy, bad taste) that the public needs to know—in Attiah’s case, that she is afflicted by the worst kind of racist hate and paranoia.

Attiah launched into a Twitter rant this week about how the “Embrace” sculpture (above) is a perfect example of how evil whites still distort the legacy of Dr. King as part of the structural racism and vile white supremacy America thrives on…

Boston’s Embrace statue perfectly represents how White America loves to butcher MLK. Cherry-picking quotes about love and non-violence. While ignoring his radicalism, anti-capitalism, his fierce critiques of white moderates. MLK- in his fullness– is still too much for them...And yes, I’ll say it. From another angle, the statue for real looks like one person is performing disembodied oral sex. No matter how much I try, I can’t unsee it. I don’t think MLK would have wanted us to be thinking about cunnilingus on his birthday. Thanks, Boston.…There is nothing radical about the disembodied, de-racialized Embrace statue. It is sending a whitewashed, multi-million dollar message — that MLK and Coretta overcame structural racism and systematic injustice with love– interpersonal, colorblind love….Anyway, since the statue has been revealed, have we been talking about it, or MLK? No. We’ve been talking all weekend about horribly racist/ anti-Black Boston has been– and continues to be. Mission accomplished…? This is what happens when white America tries to grossly distort what MLK really stood for… and ultimately.. what they murdered him for. In making MLK a whitewashed symbol of love, the Embrace statue is both safe AND grotesque. Says little about the man, a lot about America….To have a dismembered statue of a Black man and woman, in a country that killed and destroyed so many Black people, will never sit right with me. MLK Jr. was also murdered by white America. It’s giving -“We are so grateful for Black people’s noble sacrifice” – energy.

Oops! Here’s that virulent white supremacist artist who created “Embrace”:

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