“bias makes you stupid”

ABC to Terry Moran: It’s OK For You To Be Biased Like the Rest of Us, But For God’s Sake Don’t Be So Obvious About It!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

ABC News suspended senior national correspondent Terry Moran for, shall we say, a revealing but undiplomatic post on Twitter/X that gratuitously attacked both President Trump and top aide Stephen Millers as “world-class hater[s].” Nice!

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

“Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater,” Moran wrote. “You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.” Moran continued, “Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end [is] his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.”

If you say so Terry. Amazingly, Moran apparently saw nothing unprofessional about his outburst, which he subsequently deleted. Talk about living in a bubble!

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement shortly thereafter that Moran had been suspended, pointing to the post as the impetus for the disciplinary action.

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage”—Excuse me, but HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA–<breath>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!—“and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” ABC said in a statement. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”

More Thoughts and Observations on the LA Pro-Illegal Immigration Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

1. This morning, while CNN and MSNBC were raging about the riots, Fox News had an extended feature about how to make faux cocktails using coffee. Gee, it would be nice to have a responsible, trustworthy broadcast news network that was both unbiased and that didn’t assume that is viewers dropped out of junior high school.

2. I am surprised that so few readers have commented on this morning’s introductory post. Was everyone at church? “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

3. Here’s the comment on Facebook by an old friend, a retired journalist, and, of course, a Trump Derangement sufferer:

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The USNS Harvey Milk

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That name is sure to strike terror in the hearts of our enemies.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth today ordered the Navy to review the names of its vessels honoring prominent civil rights leaders and other figures of note not exactly identified with the armed services or its mission. The ships include those named for Harvey Milk (above), one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials and a Navy veteran who was assassinated; Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court Justice; Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Harriet Tubman, the heroine of the Underground Railroad; Lucy Stone, an abolitionist and suffragist; Medgar Evers, the assassinated civil-rights leader; labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez, a labor leader; and Dolores Huerta, another labor leader.

Hegseth’s decision, reported by Military.com, is being interpreted by critics as an intentional slap at Pride Month, which is in June. “Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the commander in chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos,” the Pentagon said in a statement today, adding that potential ship renaming “will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”

Your Ethics Alarms Pride Month Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is this order responsible, fair, respectful and ethically justifiable?

Continue reading →

“Harvard Derangement Syndrome?”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a conservative, which at Harvard is like being a Stegosaurus in the National Zoo, rose to defend his employers and colleagues with an op ed in the Times with the title above as its headline (but without the question mark). The theory is that since he’s not a typical campus leftist, his arguments should carry more weight when he takes the side of the people who issue his paycheck rather than the President who called the school “an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution,” a “Liberal mess” and a “threat to Democracy,” which has been “hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called future leaders.”

Actually, the op-ed is pretty funny. (That’s another gift link.) It brought to my mind two quotes: “Hitler did some good things too!” (From “Judgement at Nuremberg”) and “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” (Attributed to comedian Joey Adams.) Pinker lists a lot of the same problems (but far from all) at Harvard that I described and condemned long before Trump went after the school. Tellingly, he somehow neglects to mention the whole Claudine Gay fiasco, when Harvard selected a DEI-obsessed dean who had risen to a tenured place on the Harvard faculty with the help of academic plagiarism, then embarrassed the school testifying before Congress, and was initially defended by the Harvard brass even when it was revealed that her scholarly publications were so tainted that the equivalents would have gotten any student expelled. Funny how all that would slip his mind.

Pinker still makes a damning case against Harvard. He writes,

Continue reading →

Just the Facts, Ma’am: The Historian’s Responsibility

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Guest Post by AM Golden

[From your host: AM Golden has a second guest post this week, which is what happens when you send two excellent submissions that get lost in my email. This one is not only on a topic near and dear to my heart—the ethics rot in the ranks of American historians—but also on a specific historian and work that I had flagged for a potential Ethics Alarms post myself. How I love it when a participant in the ethics wars here not only saves me the time and toil of writing a post, but does such a superb job of it, which AM definitely does here. JM.]

Of the professions that have been disgracing themselves for the last 10 years or so, the betrayal of historians has cut me the deepest.

We all have biases.  Each of us has a responsibility to be aware of those biases in a professional setting and work to subdue them.  Prior to the 2016 campaign, I’d already learned to get a feel for an author’s premise before starting a book.  If an author likes Andrew Jackson, for example, he or she will likely rationalize unpleasant facts about his life.  If an author hates him; however, he or she will diminish Jackson’s triumphs.  This is unprofessional. It is also unethical. A historian should be devoted not only to fact, but also putting fact within its appropriate historical context.  Whether you like him or not, Jackson played a significant role in our country’s history.  A competent historian can produce a “Warts and All” portrayal without compromising the integrity of the subject.

Since 2016, a new practice has entered the history books:  gratuitous, sometimes barely relevant, statements about Donald Trump.  A recent book I will not name included two completely superfluous footnotes regarding secessionist states and how many of them voted for Trump.  In general, though, it’s included in the prologue or, more often, the epilogue to allow the author to tie the secessionists, the Dixiecrats or some other group of bigots (but never, for some reason, FDR’s State Department which deliberately slow-walked paperwork for desperate Jews in Europe) to Trump.

Continue reading →

Stop Making Me Defend the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Almost a year ago, Ethics Alarms discussed the case of Liam Morrison (above), a seventh grader who was told that his “There are only two genders” T-shirt was inappropriate as school attire. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld a District Court decision from 2023 that the Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts didn’t violate Liam’s First Amendment rights by telling him to change his shirt.

Chief Justice David Barron, writing for the Court, concluded that “the question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them – educators or federal judges.” He continued, “We cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make ‘an environment conducive to learning’ at NMS to use rather than to the educators closest to the scene.”

I wrote, in a post agreeing with the decision both ethically and legally,

Continue reading →

“Welcome Summer!” Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Last week on YouTube’s “The Morning Meeting,” Mark Halperin and Dan Turrentine appeared to acknowledge Ethics Alarms’ “Julie Principle.” They just didn’t know what it was called.

President Trump had delivered the commencement address at West Point while wearing a red MAGA cap (Oh NOOOO! He’s violating “norms” again!) and on Monday published a Memorial Day Truth Social post like some of his previous holiday wishes—you know, one of his “Merry Christmas, you filthy animal!” style shots. Halperin noted that many Democratic critics and pundits, right on cue, were freaking out.

“If you read [historian] Heather Cox Richardson or the emails and texts I get from my Democratic sources, as I said before, the Trump administration’s over. And it’s just a bankrupt, you know, corrupt mess and he’s already a failed president and he’s not getting anything done. That’s their point of view. They also are very taken with his wearing a MAGA hat … to give … a West Point graduation speech,” Halperin said. “They’re taken with his tweet, his Truth Social post, saying ‘Happy Memorial Day’ and criticizing Joe Biden. And they’re back to a Adam Schiffian and [biased and Trump Deranged historian] Heather Cox Richardson point of view, which is everything Trump does is an epic disaster and that the American people will turn on him and Republicans in the midterms because he’s impolite.”

Continue reading →

In San Francisco, the Dumb Rise and Almost Immediate Fall of “Grading for Equity”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments


When I am forced to consider what is considered “right” and “wrong” in California in general and San Francisco particularly, I feel like I have stumbled into a real life Bizarro World. That is the cube-shaped planet in “Superman” comics where brain-damaged mutations of Superman and Lois Lane pursue a topsy-turvy existence constrained by practices and values that are the reverse of what normal Earthlings regard as self-evident.

The latest manifestation of this West Coast insanity is, or was, “Grading for Equity“, a woke education scheme that was scheduled to be imposed this fall at 14 high schools and over 10,000 students. “Grading for Equity” forbids homework or weekly tests from being counted in a student’s final semester grade. All that counts are student grades on a final examination, which can be taken as many times as it takes to pass. “Grading for Equity” also de-emphasizes the importance of timely performance, completion of assignments, and consistent attendance, so students turning in assignments late will not be penalized. Not showing up at class will not affect grades either.Students with scores as low as 80 (out of 100) will get an A; a score as low as 21 will be considered sufficient to pass, with a D.

Continue reading →

In a Competitive Commencement Season, Evelyn Harris Makes a Strong Bid For Most Unethical Speech of 2025

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Favorites Tim Walz, Scott Pelley and Kermit the Frog may have fallen to an underdog: “musician and activist” Evelyn Harris (whoever she is) may have succeeded in embarrassing her host school the most of all with her 2025 commencement speech.

For some reason, Smith College, which has apparently become too woke to function, included Harris, a relatively obscure singer (but more importantly, an activist) among its all female honorees this year. The most prominent one of these would probably be far-left historian Danielle Allen, who has several items in her Ethics Alarms dossier. Or maybe it would be the (historic!) highest ranking trans official in US history, former assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Rachel Levine, one of Biden’s DEI appointments. Then there was new age-y guru Preeti Simran Sethi, the only one of the four who is a Smith grad. All of these, however, whatever their issues, at least managed to compose their own speech to give to the graduates.

Harris didn’t. Smith officials learned that her entire speech had been cribbed from other sources without attribution (you know, like Joe Biden once did), and had to inform the Smith community that it had been deceived. “It has come to our attention that one of our honorary degree recipients — musician Evelyn M. Harris — borrowed much of her speech to graduates and their families from the commencement speeches of others without the attribution typical of and central to the ideals of academic integrity,” the letter read in part.

Continue reading →

One For the Unethical Quote of the Month Hall of Fame…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“Yes, there were many mistakes, but everybody makes mistakes.”

—–Liliya A. Medvedeva, Russian pensioner, quoted by the New York Times in “Stalin’s Image Returns to Moscow’s Subway, Honoring a Brutal History” about how many Russians regard the brutal dictator as a hero for his role in defeating Germany in World War II.

But Lily, everybody doesn’t make “mistakes” that result in the deaths or executions of between six and nine million people.

You idiot.

For the record, Lily’s rationalization is one of the most obnoxious on the list, #19, The Perfection Diversion, or “Nobody’s Perfect!” and “Everybody makes mistakes!”