Journalism & Media

The Wuhan Virus Origin Debacle: A “Bias Makes You Stupid” Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Times Wuhan hack

I periodically am asked why I insist on referring to the pandemic virus, which unquestionably originated in China, almost certainly in the Wuhan province, and was allowed to spread world-wide in part by cover-up activities by the Chinese government, “The Wuhan virus.” After all, the edict came down from our politically-correct betters that this term was “racist,” despite the fact that it conveyed useful and accurate information that the technical term “COVID” does not.

I typically reply that I call it the Wuhan virus because that’s where it came from, and virtually every other virus has been named for its place of origin (sometimes inaccurately). I also do so in defiance of the open scheme among the news media to try to advance the Big Lie that President Trump was being racist by using the term when the news media itself had employed it before deciding this was one more opportunity to undermine Trump’s Presidency.

In addition, I furiously reject the proposition that because idiots and assholes react to truthful statements by behaving unjustly, violently and stupidly, as with the still relatively few who have attacked or abused Asian-Americans using the same cretinous rationale as those who killed dachshunds during World War I, anyone should shade the truth or avoid stating a fact. I reject the Asshole’s Veto, in other words.

There is also this motivating me: China is an international villain, and nobody should pretend otherwise or make any effort to excuse or disguise that nation’s true nature. Moreover, I am not running for office, and have succeeded in making anyone trying to justify the ban on calling a Chinese virus a Chinese virus look like the race-baiting tool that he or she is.

The entire effort to label as racist any statement, theory or belief that China bears responsibility for the virus that has killed millions and savaged the world economy would not have occurred with such fervor if it were not fueled by anti-Trump hatred and bias. Now the inconvenient truth that the virus may have originated in a Wuhan lab is exposing the despicable censorship effort for what it is, so its purveyors are desperately trying avoid the opprobrium they richly deserve.

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PM Ethics Medley, 5/26/2021: It’s A Strange, Strange World

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Pastiche

1. Priorities! Major League Baseball has placed Angels pitching coach Mickey Callaway on its ineligible list through at least the 2022 season, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced. The league made the decision after investigating Callaway for sexual sexual harassment allegations reaching back several years, with several female sporstwriters among the alelged victims. The Angels fired Callaway this afternoon. Opines a major baseball news site: “Callaway is facing a year-plus ban, and it seems hard to believe any MLB team will hire him when he’s eligible to return.”

Hmmmm…

Alex Cora was suspended and fired as manager by the Boston Red Sox after a one-year suspension, then immediately hired back by the team. All he did was play a major role in devising a cheating scheme for one team, the Houston Astros, that extended through the play-offs and World Series, then oversaw a second team, Boston, that was found to have engaged in cheating, though less extensively, the next season. Cora’s cheating scheme with Astros was unprecedented, and cost two other professionals their jobs and the Astros millions in fines,while seriously scarring the integrity of the game. The conduct Callaway engaged in has been routine among professional athletes for decades, though in his case it was apparently 1) a bit more extreme than the norm and 2) “unwelcome.” After all, he was just a coach. So far, nobody has accused a player making more than $10 million a year of making sexual advances that were “unwelcome.’

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Post George Floyd Anniversary Observations: A False Narrative Kneels On America’s Neck

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Floyd white house

I’m sure many readers here feel that I am obsessed with this issue and are tired of my attempts to cut through the fog machine’s belches, but this is an ethics blog—a tiny, increasingly ignored ethics blog that is opposing the full force of a lying news media, a cynical Democratic Party, Machiavellian activists and dead-eyed corporate executives who just want to avoid controversy, and everywhere else, “Good Germans,” cowards who know the George Floyd Freakout narrative is based on falsehoods, but who just want to get along by going along.

So if I have to be a bit repetitious, so be it. There have to be a few oases of truth on the web.

Here are some excerpts from this morning front page story in the Times, insufferably headlined “The First Time The World Stopped And Noticed.” (Noticed what? That a drugged-out career criminal died on the streets as a direct result of his own persistent irresponsible behavior? That Minneapolis had a sadistic, mean cop who should have been kicked out of policing long ago? That a single, perhaps avoidable tragedy occurred in a city as the end result of a confluence of unrelated circumstances, the type of event that happens, has happened and will happen thousands of times every day across the country?)

  • “The crowds that gathered in Minneapolis and elsewhere reflected on what has changed, and what has not, in America since Mr. Floyd was murdered by a police officer.” The Times should know better, and I’m sure it does, but just doesn’t care. Until Derek Chauvin’s appeals are exhausted and he loses them—not at all a foregone conclusion—it is not factual to say he “murdered” George Floyd. On the facts, I still don’t see how it can be claimed that he murdered Floyd, since murder requires the element of intent. At most, the episode was negligent homicide, which is not “murder.” But referring to Floyd’s death as a murder became part of the false narrative from the second cell phone photos of the incident hit the internet, and it has hardened into “fact” in the minds of most Americans.
  • “Mr. Floyd’s daughter Gianna was invited to appear at an Atlanta rally titled, “My Daddy Changed the World.” Her Daddy changed nothing. He broke a law, resisted arrest, took drugs that might have killed him, and then had the manner of his death exploited, resulting in many deaths, billions in damage to communities, and mass disinformation.
  • “The battle for the soul of America,” [President Biden] continued, “has been a constant push and pull between the American ideal that we’re all created equal and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart.” This is shameless grandstanding for the rubes. All evidence indicates that Derek Chauvin was an equal opportunity bully. Nobody has been able to show he was a racist. Once again, this is the propaganda of presumed racism. If Chauvin were black and Floyd were white, and every other detail was identical to what happened in Minneapolis a year ago, nobody outside of Floyd’s family and friends would know his name. The incident had nothing to teach abut racism, except that it is a powerful and abused word currently being abused by demagogues and power-seekers.
  • “Speaking after the meeting, one of Mr. Floyd’s brothers, Philonise Floyd, pushed for more action on Capitol Hill. ‘If you can make federal laws to protect the bird which is the bald eagle, then you can make federal laws to protect people of color,’ he said.” Such an idiotic and offensive analogy is not worthy of publication, except to show how emotion rather than reason has dominated the entire fiasco. “People of color” are not an endangered species, and the greatest threat to their welfare is their own conduct, as in the case of George Floyd. Nobody is hunting them, but the paranoia that statement like this creates does lead to the dangerous tendency among blacks to resist lawful police authority.
  • “In New York, demonstrators said that the killing of Mr. Floyd had energized the Black Lives Matter movement that began after the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, but that the country still had a long way to go.” Now there’s a good analogy: Trayvon Martin’s death also had nothing to do with racism, his killer was portrayed as a racist murderer of an innocent, politicians deliberately misrepresented the facts, and politically motivated prosecutors brought excessive charges. In that case, justice prevailed, however.

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More On The Andrew Yang “Racist” Cartoon: Some Perspective From The Ethics Alarms Archives…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In contrast to the political cartoon discussed in the previous post, THIS is a racist cartoon. Below is the Ethics Alarms post from 2014 titled, “9 Observations On The Boston Herald’s ‘Racist’ Cartoon”:

1. I’m adding this new #1 right at the beginning—there were originally only 8 observations—because some of the early comments suggest that I over-estimated some of my readers’ scholarship, historical knowledge and/or sensitivity on this issue, so let me be direct:  the reference to any African- American having an affinity to watermelon is about a half-step from calling him or her a nigger, and maybe even closer than that. Clear? This is not a political correctness matter. If the reference is intentional, there can be no debate over whether it is racist or not. It is. The President of the United States should not be subjected to intentional racial slurs.

2. I’m amazed—I just don’t know how this could happen. How could this cartoon make it into print? Cartoonist Jerry Holbert explained that he came up with the idea to use watermelon flavor after finding “kids Colgate watermelon flavor” toothpaste in his bathroom at home. “I was completely naive or innocent to any racial connotations,” Holbert said. “I wasn’t thinking along those lines at all.” Is this possible? In a political cartoonist? On one hand, since the racial connotation is so obvious and so predictably offensive, it seems incredible that a cartoonist for a major daily would dare offer such a cartoon unless he really didn’t perceive the racial stereotype it referenced. On the other, the man is a political cartoonist, not a Japanese soldier who’s been hiding in a cave for decades. How could he not know this? How could his ethics alarms, racial slur alarms, survival alarms not go off?

I don’t get it.

3. Hence the quotes around “racist.” The only way the cartoon makes any sense to me is if Holbert is amazingly, wonderfully non-racist, and completely color blind. The flavor of the toothpaste is innocuous if one doesn’t think in racial terms at all. Maybe he just thinks about the President as the President. If so, isn’t that terrific? Wouldn’t it be great if everyone was like that? Wouldn’t it be swell if a dumb detail like the flavor of the toothpaste in a cartoon that has nothing to do with race OR toothpaste wasn’t even noticed?

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Political Cartoon Ethics: No, There Was Nothing “Racist” About Bill Bramhall’s Andrew Yang Cartoon

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Yang cartoon

Some day, in a more mature and enlightened America, we will have non-male and non-white candidates for elective office as well as elected officials whose supporters do not use the politicians’ race or gender to unethically intimidate critics by crying “Bigotry!” when there is none. Some day. Or maybe not. Right now, it is clear that such politicians and their supporters just can’t help themselves. It’s cheap, it’s unfair, it’s dishonest, but as Harry Reid ( or Niccolò Machiavelli) might say, “It works!”

It needs to stop working. I consider the routine use of that tactic to stifle legitimate criticism as an valid, if not necessarily decisive, reason not to support female or minority candidates.

The latest despicable example of the practice arrived in New York City, where a mayoral race is heating up. Evelyn Yang, wife of candidate Stephen Yang, attacked New York Daily News’ cartoonist Bill Bramhall for a characature she called a “racist disfiguration” of her husband.

Bramhall, a boringly predictable progressive cartoonist who draws Donald Trump to look like he ate Orson Welles, mocked Yang by exploiting the common complaint that he’s not a real New Yorker, but a carpetbagger who is naive about the ways of The Big Apple. Mrs. Yang, however, tweeted,

“I can’t believe my eyes. To publish this racist disfiguration of @AndrewYang as a tourist, in NYC where I was born, where Andrew has lived for 25 years, where our boys were born, where 16% of us are Asian and anti-Asian hate is up 900%.”

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Ethics Miscreants In Yet Another Police-Involved Death Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ronald Greene

Another death of a black man in an encounter with the police has re-emerged from 2019, this time from Louisiana. It has even more of the unethical elements of past tragedies/botches/fiascos than usual, and the cast of characters are all playing their now familiar parts to maximize the likelihood of protests, riots, political grandstanding and confusion, not to mention more deaths and further damage to race relation and law enforcement. Good job, everyone!

This is a true ethics train wreck, because nobody, literally nobody, who has been involved with the episode so far has behaved ethically. At this point, I see no hope that the mess can be cleaned up, but maybe we can learn something from how thoroughly another Police Meet Black Lawbreaker disaster has been mishandled by everyone to ensure the worst conceivable outcome. In no particular order, here is a list of those responsible for the Ronald Greene Ethics Train Wreck.

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Ethics Observations On Declining Support For Black Lives Matter

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Here are two charts from a New York Times opinion piece on changing public views regarding Black Lives Matter:

BLM support 1

BLM support 2

The piece compares polls to polls, so perhaps justifies more faith than the usual poll-based analysis. The authors’ biases are nicely flagged by their occupations and affiliations. Both are professors at extremely Left-tilted institutions with faculties where conservatives have to wear disguises, if they exist there at all. Jennifer Chudy is an assistant professor of social sciences and political science at Wellesley College who studies white racial guilt, sympathy and prejudice. The fact of that area of concentration defines the confirmation bias involved. Hakeem Jefferson is an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, and he studies studies race and identity. To be direct, both professors depend on finding racism in America to justifying their academic existence. They are part of the race grievance industry. Chudy is Asian-American; Jefferson is black.

The article introduces its subject, the changing level of support for Black Lives Matter—the organization, not its deceitful slogan—this way:

“Though there is, in the data, reason for some optimism, the more general picture contradicts the idea that the country underwent a racial reckoning. Last summer, as Black Americans turned their sorrow into action, attitudes — especially white attitudes — shifted from tacit support to outright opposition, a pattern familiar in American history. Whereas support for Black Lives Matter remains relatively high among racial and ethnic minorities, support among white Americans has proved both fickle and volatile.”

Talk about broadcasting one’s bias up front! By “some optimism,” it is clear (especially after reading the whole article) that the authors mean “public support for the admirable movement/group Black Lives Matter in American society may have staying power if we can just find a way to deal with these racist white people.” I have some optimism after seeing those charts as well. In my case, however, “some optimism” means “maybe the public is finally catching on to this destructive con job by Marxist race-hustlers.”

Other observations:

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Will The BBC’s Princess Diana Scandal Be A Tipping Point For Public Acceptance That The News Media Can’t Be Trusted? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

DIANA

I hope so. It’s a long shot, but you never know when something is the proverbial final straw. The BBC is often held up as a model of ethical journalism—that’s nonsense, but a lot of Americans believe it. Now we have proof of just how scummy and corrupt the BBC is, and the company can’t deny it.

An investigation into the BBC’s conduct that produced the 1995 interview of Princess Diana by Martin Bashir revealed that the interview was based on despicable and unethical practices. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who remembers Bashir, who became an MSNBC host and was sacked after saying on the air that Sarah Palin should be forced to eat shit. He handled the sensational interview in which Diana talked about her bulimia, the miseries of royal life, and her husband’s ongoing infidelity with Camilla Parker Bowles. Her shocking attacks on the Royals completed her rift with Buckingham Palace and, as Prince William said yesterday, damaged Diana’s relationship with Prince Charles beyond repair.

Even for a journalist, what Bashir did was beyong unethical tending into evil. Bashir told Diana’s brother, the Earl of Spencer, that he had acquired canceled checks proving the Royal Family was paying individuals, including Charles’ aides, to spy on Diana. He “acquired” them because he had the BBC’s graphics department to mock up fake checks to show to Spencer. This “evidence” convinced the Earl that Diana’s fears were justified, so he told her immediately about the supposed surveillance plot. This, in turn, so infuriated Diana that she agreed to a “tell-all” interview.

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Addendum To “Stop Making Me Defend Chris Cuomo!”…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Cuomos

Apparently I wasn’t clear enough in the previous post, so allow me to address that.

Just as it is hypocritical in the extreme for any journalist, and certainly CNN, to tut-tut at Chris Cuomo for behaving exactly as biased, partisan, unethical and dead ethics-alarmed journalists do, it is absurd and self-defeating for alleged critics of our ethics-free journalism to stomp on Cuomo as if he did anything anyone paying attention should have known he would do without a second thought. (I assumed that the clip from “Casablanca” would make that sufficiently obvious. Guess not.)

The point is not to claim that Cuomo advising his high elected official brother in an official, if private, meeting of his aides is what an ethical journalist can or should do. Of course an ethical journalist shouldn’t do it. The point is that there are no ethical journalists; the journalism “profession”—the quotes are because professionals must be trustworthy, and anyone who trusts today’s fake journalists is a sucker—no longer has any ethical standards. Therefore a member of the “profession” who violates what are already dead letters cannot be said to have breached any “norm;” and we should not allow phony criticism of Cuomo to delude us into thinking otherwise.

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Stop Making Me Defend Chris Cuomo!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

CNN’s most unethical, incompetent and dumbest journalist—yes, yes, I keep telling you, even worse than Don Lemon!— is once again in trouble, and once again it’s because of his conflict of interest in matters involving his brother, besieged New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Chris advised Andrew and senior members of his brother’s staff on how to respond to the sexual harassment allegations made earlier this year by various women, in a series of conference calls including the Democratic governor, his top aide, his communications team, lawyers and a number of outside advisers. It doesn’t matter what Chris’s advice was; you can read the Washington Post story if you’re interested, but that’s irrelevant to the ethics issue. First, anyone who would take the advice of a boob like Chris Cuomo on anything needs to have his mittens connected up through his sleeves, and second, the problem is that Chris was involved in the discussions at all, even if all he did was blow spit bubbles.

Journalists are ethically obligated to be objective reporters of the news, not participants in it, assuming journalists today even know or care what their professional ethics rules are. Chris Cuomo clearly doesn’t: he made that clear by repeatedly interviewing his brother on CNN, tossing him softball questions, and basically serving as his brother’s PR flack. The network let him do it, because it meant good ratings and “fun” TV.

Yet the Washington Post offers this knee-slapper:

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