Journalism & Media

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/23/2021: Shots

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This morning served as a perfect example of how the news is now automatically politicized and prioritized for partisan ends. On CNN, a panel was discussing the mass shooting in Boulder. Colorado, and instantly transforming the segment into gun-control mass rant. On Fox, the crisis of the day was the chaos at the border, where the virtual open-borders policies everyone—including those planning to be illegal immigrants—knew would come in along with the Biden administration is having the predictable effects. That segment was a diatribe against the wink-wink, nudge-nudge Democratic enabling of uncontrolled immigration.

CNN wins in the closely contested dubious ethics category by having “contributor” Andrew McCabe on the panel. McCabe epitomized the FBI’s corrupt and partisan efforts to injure the Trump Administration from within; he leaked information to the media and lied about it; he was fired, and deserved to be. McCabe’s high-profile anti-Trump conduct was sufficient to get him a gig on CNN, where being part of “the resistance” is all one needs to endear oneself to the Trump Deranged.

McCabe should have lost his law license, as any attorney who leaks confidential information should, and personally, I wouldn’t trust him to walk my dog.

1. You want to be paid $15 an hour for doing a job this poorly? This morning, having been forced to get up and move my car at 7 am, I decided to drive to the local McDoanld’s for my favorite guilty morning pleasure, a sausage biscuit and some hash browns. For once I could understand the heavily accented woman on the intercom, and I made a clear and distinct order. But given false security by this unusual development, for the first time in a long while I didn’t check the bag—this McDonald’s bats about .500 in getting orders right—and sure enough, when I arrived home, I found an Egg McMuffin instead of a sausage biscuit. I hate Egg McMuffins.

This isn’t brain surgery. I know it’s a crummy job, but it is what they are being paid for. Don’t tell me someone who is that inattentive deserves “a living wage.” Pay them for not working, if you foolishly want to treat them as charity cases; at least then they aren’t getting rewarded for doing a job badly.

2. Why can’t McDonald’s work this efficiently? My experience getting my first Wuhan virus vaccination (in Alexandria, Virginia) was excellent. The elaborate process, staged at a middle school about five minutes from my home, was well-planned, cheerful, and quick, even on a Saturday with long lines. I must have personally thanked ten volunteers.

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Mid-Day Ethics Alarms, 3/22/2021: A Wonderful Father And A Judge Sees The Light, Though Others Not So Much…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Alarms2

1. Spitballing ethics? When everyone is throwing out ideas—you know, “Just say whatever crazy thing pops into your head, don’t worry whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea, just let ’em rip!” is it fair later to hold someone to account because a discarded idea was offensive or politically incorrect? I tend to think not.

Hiroshi Sasaki, the creative director for Tokyo Olympics, was participating in a brainstorming session about the opening ceremony with members of a committee a year ago, and at one point suggested that a popular overweight female Japanese comedian and plus-size fashion designer, Naomi Watanabe, be costumed in pig ears, perhaps a snout and curly tail, and parachute out of the heavens as an Olympic messenger: “Olympig.”

No? OK, bad idea. Let’s move on. The inspiration received immediate negative reviews in the private meeting, but when the president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori, 83, resigned this year after saying that women talk too much in meetings, the year-old conversation about “Olympig” was recalled in an article on the website of “Shukan Bunshun,” a weekly magazine. Yes, one of Sasaki’s trusted colleagues had talked. (That’s an easy call: Unethical.)

So you know what comes next, right? Groveling. “Now many people know what I wrote. I cannot apologize enough to Ms. Watanabe,” he said, adding that he was a big fan of hers. “I have been trying not to hurt others by making fun of diversity, gender and physical appearances. But it was a great misunderstanding. I realized my low consciousness and insensitivity.” He resigned.

Now you know that at least for now, when someone says to just suggest whatever pops into your head, no filters, no fear, don’t.

On the positive side, it’s comforting to know that The Great Stupid isn’t just an American phenomenon.

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“Enemy Of The People”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Atlanta spa

I believe, or at least hope, that by the time the disgusting transformation of the American news media into pure agents of propaganda is complete—and in that regard, it’s later than you may think—Donald Trump’s much maligned declaration that journalism had become “the enemy of the people” will be remembered as perhaps his most important quote. It deserves to take a place next to Ronald Reagan’s similarly derided “evil empire” line as an example of the “bully pulpit” working as it should.

Last week I saw this front page headline in the New York Times: “Rampage in Georgia Deepens Fears of Rising Asian Hatred In U.S.” That’s not a news headline. That is a publication planting fear for political purposes. Deepens whose fears? The story said that the murder of eight women at a “massage parlor” in Atlanta, six of the victims Asian-American, had unsettled the Asian community. That’s hardly surprising, since many of the dead were members of that community. The Times interviewed a couple of members of the Asian community who expressed “fears.” That does not justify a sweeping generality, nor the emphasis the stories under the headline gave to a supposed motivation for the killings that was supported by no evidence whatsoever other than the presumption of white racism. Presumption of white racism is bigotry, to be clear. not evidence.

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Ethics Test For Your Progressive-Turning-Totalitarian Colleagues, Friends And Relatives

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Instagram ban

Ask them about the fact that Instagram is blocking posts including the video showing President Biden falling while boarding Air Force One. Ask them if this is acceptable to them. Ask them how they would have responded if platforms had banned publication of videos of President Trump that fed antagonistic partisan beliefs and attitudes.

If they try to excuse it, rationalize it or justify it, ask them when they abandoned integrity, if they ever had it.

Ask them when they began to support the destruction of our democracy.

Ask them how they became fascists.

Added:

anti-Biden memes meme

As with the fact of Biden’s problems themselves, this isn’t a laughing matter.

Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/20/2021: Trans Swimsuit Models And Powerlifters, And The Purge Of The Stoners

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

late rabbit

Finally! Back on schedule! I was beginning to have trouble coming up with new names for non-warm-ups that got posted in the afternoon or later…

1. President Joe Biden fell a couple times boarding Air Force One. The video has led many wags to ask if this would prompt Saturday Night Live to give him the Gerald Ford treatment. Those of a certain age recall the running gag in the immortal first season of the now creaky weekend satire show, where then-President Ford was portrayed as a slapstick klutz on nearly every episode.

Of course it won’t, for several reasons, some ethical, some not. SNL is now almost exclusively a partisan vehicle for humor-based propaganda, and after 8 years of seldom daring to target President Obama and four of mocking President Trump, repetitiously and badly, a return to past standards of equal opportunity mockery is unlikely. Biden is a Democrat. Also, in the case of Ford, the gag was just a gag: Ford was a fit former athlete who just had a couple of well-publicized stumbles. Representing him as a clumsy boob was only silly. Biden, in contrast, has been falling apart mentally and physically before our eyes, and is 78 years old. In his case, such ridicule would not just seem cruel, it would be cruel. Biden’s decline is also scary, as the awful Kamala Harris sits cackling in the wings. There is nothing funny about the whole situation.

2. Speaking of the least democratically-chosen President-in-waiting since Gerald Ford, Harris, in one of her many idiotic statements while trying (and failing) to get nominated for President on her merits, admitted to past illegal marijuana use and advocated it, saying, “I have [smoked marijuana]. And I inhaled. I did inhale. I think it gives a lot of people joy. And we need more joy in the world.” Heroin and child rape also give quite a few people joy, but never mind: Harris had the right skin-tone and chromosomes, and that’s all that matters, apparently. In light of her confession, this story is incomprehensible:

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NBC News May Be An Ethics Dunce, But Jordan Fuchs Is An Ethics Villain

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Shunning

When we last left the Washington Post’s fake quote debacle, the paper had identified Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs as the source of a false account of then-President Trump’s phone call to the state’s investigator into irregularities in the 2020 election. Both Fuchs and Post blogger Erik Wemple were channeling Dan Rather “ethics,” arguing that Fuch’s lie that the President said “Find the fraud!” was inaccurate but true.

Now we learn, after someone checked the record, that at least one of the media sources had in fact unwittingly allowed Fuchs to verify her own lie, and claimed it had received a confirmation of the Post fake news from “a source familiar with the conversation.”

CNBC reported the following on January 9, the same day as the Washington Post story:

NBC News has confirmed The Post’s characterization of the Dec. 23 call through a source familiar with the conversation. Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs told NBC News: “We can confirm the events in the Washington Post story.”

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Trevor Noah Provides A Perfect Example Of How Comedians Make The Public Stupid And Irresponsible…But Woke!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Noah

Personally, I blame Jon Stewart. The former host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” was quick, clever and smug enough to convince a lot of younger, lazy Americans that they could become civically literate by watching a comedy show, thus being entertained while learning about current events and how to have the “right’ opinions about them. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, Noah, Jimmy Kimmel (yecchh), Bill Maher (gag) and all of the other left-leaning clowns and jokers have a right to their opinions and to spout them at will, but nobody should think that any of them possess such remarkable insight that they should be influential opinion-makers. Indeed, their opinions are approximately as authoritative as a gas station attendant or the average taxi driver.

Throughout American history, there have been the occasional wise wags whose satirical takes on current events prompted thought as well as mirth—Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Mort Sahl, and a few others. Never before, however, have there been so many pretenders to that class who not only are taken seriously by the young, but who also take themselves seriously, far more seriously than their intellects, training and experience justifies. During the Trump administration, this trend became actively destructive, but many crtics even expressed concern during Stewart’s reign, as surveys showed that a frightening number of people used “The Daily Show” as their primary news source. This makes approximately as much sense as using SNL’s “Weekend Update” for that purpose.

Or CNN.

Kidding!

(Sort of.)

Trevor Noah, Stewart’s cuter but equally smug successor on Comedy Central, provided us with a neon-bright example of how damaging these fake authorities can be. The topic was the mass killings at two Atlanta-area massage parlors that left eight people dead earlier this week. Six of the eight women were Asian-Americans, but the motive behind the shootings is murky. Police arrested a suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long yesterday. Long reportedly told investigators that he had a sexual addiction and saw the businesses as a temptation he needed to eliminate. (This makes slightly more sense than “Son of Sam” saying he was instructed by a dog, but you know: mass murderers.) Never mind what he says, the race-baiters that make up much of the Democratic Party decided that this was another opportunity that couldn’t be missed.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), a member of “The Squad,” tweeted yesterday,

“8 lives were violently stolen. We stand in solidarity & deep compassion w/ our AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] family in Georgia & across the country. Racism, misogyny, & white supremacy are a threat to all of our communities, and we must call out the targeted, violent attacks on our AAPI neighbors.”

Other “of color” elected Democrats followed the script. Showing that, so far at least, there are some depths to which they will not stoop, both Speaker Pelosi and President Biden declined to call the attacks a “hate crime,” saying that the motive is unclear. It is, but the fact that the killer himself says he was trying to kill sex workers creates the rebuttable presumption that race was not motive.

Trevor Noah, however, launched a hilarious riff on the tragedy. I jest: there was nothing funny about it, but who is better qualified to analyze the social roots of a U.S. incident than a South African high school grad who has engaged in nothing except comedy since he was 18 and who has shown no interest in becoming an American citizen?

Here is Noah’s rant:

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3/17/21 Ethics Wind-Down, 3/18/21 Wind-Up…Featuring “The Song Of The Year”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Wind-Up

There’s nothing quite like a flaming tooth-ache to spark an early-morning post…

1. Corporate incompetence, Indian-style: The Cleveland Indians knee-jerked themselves out of their history, traditions and name by somehow concluding that the Black Lives Matter rioting obligated them to abandon “Indians” just because the NFL Washington Redskins had capitulated to political correctness thuggery. Like all of baseball and most of professional sports, the team decided that signaling progressive virtue was more important than their fans. And like the Redskins, the team prepared to to go through the 2021 season without a new name…just nothing, as in “Cleveland Baseball Club,” or something similarly generic. Because of the unseemly, unnecessary and unplanned rush, the Cleveland Whatsis-es also made it difficult to come up with a new name. Changing a team name is a large and expensive mess, because the name and logo are on everything from the team’s merchandise to websites, sponsorship deals, and the ballpark. Trademarks are needed to protect them. “Advice for anyone doing any product: Before you make it public, file,” Andrew Skale, a San Diego-based trademark attorney told the New York Times.

“The U.S. trademark office offers this kind of unique ability to file when you haven’t started using it, so take advantage of that,” Skale said. “Because I’ve seen when people that have issued news releases about new products and haven’t filed yet, and then they have problems later because some idiots decided to squat on them.” Or maybe not such idiots. Because of the Ex-Indians moral panic, many of the names the team could have chosen based on its history and culture will be now be expensive.Trademarks were filed by squatters after Cleveland’s first announcement for “Cleveland Baseball Team” (from someone in Georgia), “Cleveland Baseball Club” (from a company in Ohio), “Cleveland Guardians” (from someone in New York), Cleveland Rockers (from someone in California), Cleveland Natives and Cleveland Warriors (though even the Ex-Indian aren’t so stupid as to wade back into Native American controversies again), and most of all, the Cleveland Spiders, which has been an early favorite. That was the name of the team. That was the name of the team for ten years, 1889-1899, when baseball players looked like this…

Spiders

The No-names are fighting some of these filings, because the Trademark Office tends to disfavor squatters. It all could have been avoided, though, if the team hadn’t wushed to be woke, thus joining The Great Stupid.

I wonder if “Spider McBaseballfaces” has been taken…

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Another “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Smoking Gun, From Glenn Greenwald

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The latest post from the exiled investigative journalist who has no patience with the unethical conduct of his biased, dishonest and incompetent colleagues is titled, “Journalists, Illustrating How They Operate, Yesterday Spread a Significant Lie All Over Twitter” with the sub-head, “Eager to obtain vindication for the pre-election falsehood they spread about the Hunter Biden story, journalists falsely claim that the CIA blamed Russia for it.” As usual, Greenwald is very thorough, and the episode, like this week’s Washington Post admission that it publicized fake quotes created to smear President Trump, shows just how corrupt American journalism has become. I suppose, in a small way, the emerging proof of this is satisfying for me, as I have been bruised, impugned and insulted for accurately seeing this unethical pattern and pointing it out. Not that I need any further validation for my conclusions, for I don’t. It is, however, helpful to have such an objective and passionate real journalist’s work backing me up.

If only the victims of progressive propaganda, insidious totalitarianism, anti-American indoctrination and Trump Derangement were capable of being persuaded by facts…

Late in the piece (which I am publishing in its entirety with Greenwald’s permission), he writes,

Do you see how they behave? Take a look. Prior to the election, out of desperation to ensure that Biden won, they censored and maligned this reporting by mindlessly endorsing an assertion from life-long CIA operatives that never had any evidence: ignore these documents; they are Russian disinformation. They not only invoked that claim to justify ignoring the story but also to successfully agitate for its censorship by Twitter and Facebook. So they spent weeks spreading an utter lie in order to help the candidate that they favored win the election. Remember, these are journalists doing that.

I remember. I am not surprised. Nobody should be. President Trump has seldom been more correct than when he labeled them “enemies of the people.” Until the public wakes up and pays attention, they will continue to be, and the people will continue to suffer.

Here is Greenwell’s article. You should want to subscribe to his posts.

Go here to do so.

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Stupid Or Malicious? The “Anonymous Source” For The Washington Post’s Fake “Bombshell,” Georgia Deputy Secretary Of State, Jordan Fuchs [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

jordan_fuchs

This is a Hanlon’s Razor classic. In this post, I covered the mass smear of President Trump engineered by mainstream media sources led by the Washington Post. They all claimed that while still in office, “Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction.” Direct quotes were cited in which the President supposdly told the investigator to “find the fraud,” and several of the major news organizations falsely implied that their reporters had heard those words on the tape. They had not, and the President never said them. The recording, which was supposedly destroyed, turned up, and proved that the sole “anonymous source” who characterized the conversation mislead reporters, who then misled the public.

In the Ethics Alarms essay, I stated that the Post now had an obligation to reveal its “anonymous” source, because it had no justification for protecting the identity of someone who provided false information. Yesterday, the Post did reveal her identity: Jordan Fuchs, the Georgia deputy secretary of state, who had spoken with the investigator regarding the President’s call.

So this was not just hearsay, it was double hearsay. That was the basis of a Post story that made it seem as if the President was asking an investigator to manufacture evidence of election fraud. That was the basis on which the nation was l led to believe that a Republican President was trying to undo the Georgia presidential election.

[Note of Correction: I had incorrectly suggested that the Post account was published before the Georgia Senate run-offs. That was incorrect. I apologize for the error.]

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