Journalism & Media

Ethics Dunce: Elon Musk

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

I hate to throw an ethics flag on Musk while he’s doing such essential work and being attacked for it. Still, this kind of stuff doesn’t help. At all.

Yeah, I know, I know. Musk is one the autistic spectrum and in some respects is a bout 10 years old, and like Donald Trump, he enjoys trolling and doesn’t care who he alienates. Conservative pundits and wags were crowing about CNN’s Dana Bash saying solemnly on the air, “”Now the ‘Disruptor in Chief, Elon Musk, who apparently has adopted the alias, at least he changed his social media handle, to ‘Harry Bōlz’, tweeted this morning, ‘Democracy in America is being destroyed by judicial coup. An activist judge is not a real judge.”

Indeed this thrust us into Poe’s Law hell, where it is impossible to distinguish reality from satire. Musk was mocking the breathless doxxing of one of his fuzzy-cheeked geeks as “Big Balls” by the Axis media, and I’m sure he got a good laugh out of it; I’m sure Trump did too. Nonetheless, what he is doing with DOGE is too important to be vulnerable to the accusation that the man in charge is just fooling around, having fun, and not taking seriously decisions that effect the lives and livelihood of so many people.

It is easy to make the news media look foolish because they are foolish. Still, Elon Musk (and the President, but he’s beyond reforming) can’t afford to go after this low-hanging fruit and behave like Bart Simpson tricking Moe into calling out in his bar, “I.P. Freely ! I.P. Freely on the phone here! ” He must be seen as the serious analyst that he is if the DOGE effort is to have any chance of succeeding.

“The Meat Axe”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I had some amusing bloody meat-axe graphics all ready to go for this post, but it is really about flat learning curves: the Democratic Party’s, the Axis news media’s, and maybe, frighteningly, the public’s.

Yes, once again we have a looming test of just how stupid the public really is. Democrats are betting their very existence on the public being as dumb as a box of Joe Bidens, and the biased, anti-Trump news media, having already been completely exposed as the enemies of the people Donald Trump said they are, have predominantly fallen back to the same tactics that served them so well in Trump 1.0. The unethical “advocacy journalists” are gambling that propaganda will prevail, and that the 2024 election was just a blip because the Democrats ran a babbling fool—but a historic one!—for President.

Trump’s tsunami of executive orders along with the relentless DOGE assault has the Axis searching for a magic bullet or two. They settled on two old unethical stand-bys: ad hominem attacks, aka. “kill the messenger,” and “It’s a constitutional crisis!” Trump being elected at all was a constitutional crisis for the Angry Left, and the phony “He’s breaching traditional democratic norms!” trope was core to both impeachments and the “Trump is Hitler” campaign refrain.

Elon Musk is being vilified by using classic Democrat class warfare tactics: he’s been successful and is rich, so obviously he’s only helping Trump cut spending because he greedy and he’ll make money from it somehow. How dumb does someone have to be to buy that logic? If there is anyone in the world who can be trusted not to be serving his country for the money, it’s Musk. I heard some mouth-foaming contributor on CNN screaming this morning that “Trump is a liar and criminal” and “Musk wasn’t even born here!,” an odd argument from a defender of illegal immigrants.

But the EA “Flat Learning Curve” graphic is up there because I heard Chuck Schumer—is he really an idiot or does he just play one on TV?—say that sure, everyone agrees that there is too much waste in government spending, but “this is a meat-axe!” Yup, it sure is, Chuck, and if you don’t know by now that the only way to seriously address systemic corruption, waste, incompetence, dishonesty and obstruction is with a meat-axe (or blow-torch, or metaphorical nuclear bomb), you’ve never successfully managed anything.

Experienced managers know this, and both Musk and Trump are experienced managers as well as successful ones. Good leaders know it too. Heck, I know it.

What Schumer is really saying is, “We don’t want to solve this problem, we want to look like we want to solve this problem, and we are confident that you out there listening are so uneducated, inexperienced, naive and gullible that you’ll fall for it…again.”

When a system is broken, corrupt and incorrigible, and because of its dysfunction causing constant harm, the technique of carefully trying to extract the jewels buried in the shit pile never works. It takes too long. Every inch of the shit will have advocates claiming that it isn’t really shit. Paring down the bureaucracy gets delegated to the bureaucracy, and improvement is minimal if you are lucky. Most of the time, the inefficiency, waste and corruption just gets worse. Nobody can deny that this is the futile path the United States government has been treading.

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A “Nah, There’s No Deep State!” Spectacular: The Hidden JFK Assassination Files

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I have spent far too much time over the course of my life reading and thinking about the Lincoln assassination and the various conspiracy theories surrounding it. It was not until 1983 that I found a single source that attempted to explain why there is so much uncertainty surrounding Honest Abe’s death in a book I bought at The Smithsonian, “The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies.” There has always been trivia game of collecting the “amazing” parallels between the Lincoln assassination and the death of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1962, but one parallel is undeniable: government incompetence, inefficiency, bureaucratic stubbornness and deliberate defiance of law created the fertile soil for conspiracy theories to thrive regarding both events.

In part propelled by his “Odd Couple” ally Robert Kennedy, Jr., President Trump has ordered all of the information, papers and materials related to JFK’s assassination released: after all, it’s only been 61 years since Lee Harvey Oswald sent a bullet through his brain. That release still hasn’t happened, and if past experience holds, it won’t this time either.

The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy’s assassination that were never provided to the Warren Commission or a later board charged with determining once and for all why Kennedy was killed and who was responsible. The records were discovered among the 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found when they undertook to obey Trump’s order, which I’m sure some of my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends will claim is illegal. (If Trump does it and it undermines progressive power, it is illegal by definition.)

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Doxxing, “Big Balls,” J.D. Vance and “The Racist Tweeter Principle”: A Tragi-Comedy With a Twist

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Like my old law school roomie who left “Gone With the Wind” at the intermission thinking it was over, I almost posted on this ethics mess too early. There were three acts, and there might be a fourth. I thought the ethics show was over after Act II.

Act I. The news media’s tantrum: Upon finding that Elon Musk and DOGE were serious about uncovering government waste, that he was employing some of his young computer nerds from SpaceX to do it, and that they had brought down USAID, a foreign aid, woke slush fund icon by exposing just how profligate and irresponsible it was, Katherine Long, a progressive reporter on the Wall Street Journal, targeted the young geniuses who may all be on the autistic spectrum (like Musk). One of them, a 19-year-old, she embarrassed by revealing that his social media handle when he was in high school was “Big Balls.” She also doxxed Marko Elez, writing that he was a “25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending” and had published troubling social media posts like, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.” “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” he wrote on “Twitter/X” in September. Long revealed that his account declared, “Normalize Indian hate,” in the same month, expressing his disapproval of the large numbers of tech workers from India in Silicon Valley.

Ethics takeaway: Doxxing is unethical; so is using old social media posts to make a newly prominent figure a victim of the “cancel culture.”

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UPDATE to “Can Anyone Think of an Innocent, Ethical Explanation For USAID’s Giving $8.1 Million to Politico? Because I Can’t”: It’s Even Worse Than That…

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

At this point, my head is metaphorically spinning as new revelations about the money-laundering, journalism-bribery and astounding abuse of U.S. taxpayer funds just under a single bloated, unaccountable, Democratic ideologue-infested agency are coming out left and right, from credible sources and marginal ones, as the crumbling Axis denies, obfuscates, screams, threatens, and throws up dust. I confess: I don’t have the time or the skills to gather all of the information, vet it, and explain it. That’s not my job, either. I resent the fact—actually “resent” is not a strong enough word—that our most prominent journalists who should be informing the public regarding the USAID/Politico scandal are doing anything but.

Thus the thread on the post yesterday introducing the topic includes among the most recent of its 60 comments (as of this moment), a sincere reader offering this: “I just spent some time today since this hit the news on the USASPENDING site and confirmed Politico only received two awards, one for 20 thousand, the other for 24 thousand dollars from the USAID. So it does appear your post is wrong.”  No, what’s wrong is that the actual expenditures have been disguised, hidden, mis-labled, and been examined through so many disparate sources that it is impossible for even well-intentioned readers to answer the question, “What’s going on here?” The Axis propaganda media news site Mediate made the same claim as the commenter, quoting Politico’s management that the “subscription” support was as pure as the driven snow. As with the other “usual suspects” like CNN’s hack media ethics watchdog Brain Stelter, the current strategy is to pretend this is much ado about nothing. Stelter’s defense: Why isn’t DOGE going after waste in misspent funds in the Defense Department?

Who can you trust? Apparently nobody. And that’s dangerous and frightening. AND I have no idea what to do about it.

I would have once expected the Columbia Journalism Review to be a source that might give definitive intelligence on this matter. Here, after hundreds of words attacking Trump, Musk, and DOGE, it tells us,

$268 million [of the now frozen USAID funds] was earmarked to fund “independent media and the free flow of information” this year. In the recent past, USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries…

Including ours? “Independent” journalism being funded by a U.S. agency with a political agenda is an oxymoron anywhere. What would U.S. pundits say if it learned that, say, Russia, Ukraine or Israel was sending funds to the New York Post or some of its reporters to encourage them to be “independent”?

Most of the revelations about the USAID-Politico connection have come from social media, requiring a click obsession to track the sources down, with the main reporting on the developments coming from sources like this New Jersey publication, which wrote yesterday in part,

Documents revealed that from 2024, under the Biden administration, Politico received approximately $9.6 million in funding over just over a year. This funding was distributed across various branches of the organization, though the exact purposes of these funds have not been publicly detailed by Politico or the government agencies involved….Political analysts and media watchdogs have been quick to comment on the implications of such funding. “The revelation of government funding to media outlets like Politico raises serious questions about editorial independence and the potential for conflicts of interest,” said media critic David Smith.  “[I]t’s a stark reminder of how governmental financial support can influence, or at least be perceived to influence, journalism.”

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To Nobody’s Surprise But the Brainwashed, Trump-Deranged and Axis Useful Idiots, the “60 Minutes” Unedited Transcript Proves CBS Was Unethically Helping Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That unedited “60 Minutes” transcript that took so long for CBS to release is a smoking gun. We finally got to see it today:

BILL WHITAKER: “We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet, Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden administration The Biden Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire. He’s resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon. He went in anyway. He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war. Does the US have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?”

KAMALA HARRIS [the response shown on Face the Nation]: “Well, let’s start with this, um, on this subject. The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles…that were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And I think that is the most recent example of why what we do to assist in their defense around military aid is important. And when we think about the threat that Hamas, Hezbollah presents, Iran, um, I think that it is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and create a ceasefire and we’re not gonna stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region including with other leaders in the region including Arab leaders.”

Now Harris’s supposed answer to the same question shown on “60 Minutes: “[T]he work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles…”

Note that this is not only in the middle of her actual answer, it’s the middle of a sentence that wasn’t broadcast in its entirety.

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Can Anyone Think of an Innocent, Ethical Explanation For USAID’s Giving $8.1 Million to Politico? Because I Can’t…..

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

The howls of indignation over Trump and Marco Rubio pausing USAID grants rather than “gradually” examining all of the agency’s expenditures over time are particularly disingenuous. Such a stall will only mean that more taxpayer money will go out the metaphorical door for wasteful, ideological projects like what red-pilled former Rolling Stone pundit Matt Taibbi calls its “colossal library of crazy-ass contracts.” He cites the $39 million for “Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation,” “Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh,” “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion,” a “TransFormation Salon” and a pre-Taliban plan to help “Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,” but there are others that Elon Musk opening the ledgers on “the Matterhorn of suck that is USAID” (Taibbi again) have revealed.

Above we see the screen shot revealing that USAID gave over $8 million in grants during fiscal year 2024 to Politico, the online Axis news and punditry site. Politico is almost always critical of Trump, conservatives and Republicans and just as consistently a vocal ally of the “resistance,” Democrats and progressive policies and advocates.

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The NYT Tries To Create Sympathy For An Unsympathetic Jerk And Paints a Fresh Target On His Back

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is this New York Times piece deliberately making the situation it is reporting on worse, or is the writer (Brendan Kuty) just as clueless as his subject?

Baseball’s Spring Training is rapidly approaching, and so are media stories reminding us that it’s on the way. Today The Athletic, the sports publication that the New York Times owns and operates instead of its own sport page, ran a follow-up to the memorable (in a bad way) incident above that I wrote about here right after it occurred, during the World Series Two asshole Yankee fans (but I repeat myself—see? I’m getting ready for the season too!) nearly ripped Dodger outfielder Mookie Betts’ hand off trying to pry a foul pop out of his glove.

Interference was called, the Yankee batter (Gleyber Torres) was called out, and the two idiots were ejected from the game. For some reason it took Major League Baseball months to decide to ban the two from all ballparks for life, but that was ultimately the decision.

But The Athletic decided that it was time to try to make us feel sorry for Austin Capobianco, the jerk on the left in that photo whose name I had mercifully forgotten. We are told that he received a lot of mean phone calls, hate mail and mean messages on social media. Well, that’s what happens when you behave outrageously on national television and nearly hurt someone. An anonymous hater sent a box of poop to his home. Ew! and unethical, but there are a lot of crazy people out there (just look at yesterday’s protest against Elon Musk).

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Again: How Does One Ethically Respond When One’s Friends Are Slipping Into The Throes Of Madness?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Nah, the Trump Deranged aren’t losing their frickin’ minds…

That’s the most recent cartoon from Ann Telnaes, that witty, subtle, objective and non-partisan political cartoonist who quit the Washington Post who didn’t think her juvenile submission was worth publishing. So now she’s operates from her substack, issuing brilliant art like that. Incredibly, one of my oldest and most accomplished friends posted that crap—it’s the equivilent of a schoolboy drawing of the unpopular kid with blacked out teeth and horns—with approval on his Facebook page, where his decision was roundly praised as he revealed that he subscribed to her visual hate-fests. This is the equivalent of someone announcing that he has decided to subscribe to the “Turd of the Week” service. Another equally rational, intelligent Facebook friend until he went bonkers posted a long, irrelevant quote from the Nuremberg trials about the nature of fascism, and everyone metaphorically nodded and applauded as if it has anything to do with current events.

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Ethics Notes on the Reagan National Airport Collision Aftermath

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I live less than 15 minutes from Reagan National Airport, so last night’s deadly collision between an American Airlines commuter jet and an Army helicopter from Fort Belvoir was just about the only news available on satellite or network after 9 pm. yesterday. Why, after all this time, is this still the practice in news reporting? All four local networks, plus the PBS outlet, and CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, reported exactly the same lack of developments for the rest of the evening. This used to puzzle me when there was a major news story when I was a kid. The practice makes no sense, wastes money, and leads to not-so-bright people, which is to say most talking heads and reporters on the scene, to resort to saying silly things to fill dead air. What is this, virtue-signaling? To show they care? Why don’t all of broadcast news sources have an advance, rotating agreement for one of them to cover these things after the others put up a screen that states, “We at [station or network] care about X, and you will find complete coverage at [the designated pool broadcast location]. We will let you know about any substantive developments”?

Literally nothing happened last night after the crash itself and the rescue teams arrived. Reagan quickly announced that it was suspending flights at least until morning. Meanwhile, we were hearing dumb statements. A couple of far away videos of the accident showed a tiny light, the aircraft, being met by another tiny light, the copter, followed by brief flash and a hint of something falling into the Potomac. These videos would have had to be explained if one saw them out of context, yet one of the newscasters introducing one felt required to issue a trigger warning: “We must warn you, these images are extremely disturbing.” No, they weren’t. Anyone who is extremely disturbed by little flashes of light needs to be in a home for the bewildered.

At around 11 pm, someone on CNN felt the need to ask some guest in the airline industry who had nothing substantive to say, “What would you tell anyone watching who fears for her life and those of her loved ones in future flights as a result of this tragedy?” The guest blathered something innocuous, but should have said, “I would recommend that anyone who reacts like that brush up on their understanding of statistics and critical thinking. This event has literally no significance as far as calculating the safety of air travel.” The exchange reminded me of the argument I had just had with my occasionally woke-addled sister, who said that she was fearful of going to a movie theater because of the risks posed by legal semi-automatic rifles being legal. (She isn’t really, but was desperate for an anti-Second Amendment argument.) Even asking a question like that makes the vulnerable, the hysterical and the stupid (Hey, wasn’t that the title of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western?) dumber still. It’s irresponsible and incompetent.

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