I have a backlog of significant and interesting ethics developments so I’ll be posting a multi-issue collection a bit later today. This latest example of the disgusting bias of the news media as it tries to rig the mid-terms against Republicans so the Democrats can “stand up to Trump”—meaning obstruct his performance of his job with multiple impeachments in the House—is worthy of a solo call-out.
The obvious inference a reader is supposed to take from that headline is that all those people in Nepal were killed because of Evil Donald Trump. This reflects back to the Axis theme when DOGE started cutting funds that had nothing to do with the USA: “People will die!” It was a stupid appeal to emotion even to the extent that it was true: The United States isn’t responsible for the lives of everyone in the world. Incredibly, the same progressives who want the U.S. to pay to save lives everywhere in the world (you can’t get much more remote than Nepal) also are trying to make the National Debt a Democratic issue. The two positions are completely incompatible, but never mind. The party thinks the public is stupid, and issues messages accordingly. Or Democrats are stupid. Or both.
Things are not as simple as the Babylon Bee would have us think. Ethics Alarms already posted two essays on this case, here and here. The latter, a Comment of the Day by Tim Levier, concluded by describing the protesters and demonstrators thusly:
The Protestors / Defenders / Supporters – Providing financial and material support to someone with whom they have no prior connection.
These people are deranged and one has to question where they came from and who has time to commit to such folly at a time when everyone and their mother is complaining about the cost of things. Why would anyone protest due process? She’s making her case in a court of law and the fair process will play out resulting in a judgment. This isn’t an area for “opinions” and to influence an outcome. Its meddlesome and the act of a narcissist that believes in one’s own “greatness” or “importance” over that of an impartial judicial institution.
Clancy’s trial, presumably the first of two (at least), ended in a mistrial yesterday due to a hung jury. A single juror, widely believed to be one of the three men on the 12 juror panel, was apparently refusing to budge from his unshakable belief that the woman who has confessed to murdering her three children is guilty of murder. I dunno, that seems like a defensible verdict to me, but I wasn’t in the courtroom during the trial.
But I digress. Here are recent ethics-related developments and observations:
Just to get the framing straight: The Axis news media reflexively states that President Trump’s long-standing position that the 2020 Presidential Election was “fixed,” “rigged” or “stolen” is “baseless.” This is, as EA has pointed out many times, deliberate disinformation and the product of pernicious bias.
While it is impossible to prove that the election was “stolen” and that Trump actually won (and thus he should quit saying that, but you know he won’t) there is plenty of basis for the claim that the 2020 election was rigged, etc. The news media sees no “base” for that because the news media is what rigged it.
Indeed, far from being merely a legitimate basis for a theory, the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s powerful journalism wing’s four year-long efforts to mislead, frighten and enrage voters for the purpose of bringing down Trump and his first administration are blazingly etched in the tablets of history like the Ten Commandments are carved in stone by God in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments”:
The fake “Russiagate” story
The routine negative tilt of virtually all Trump Presidency coverage not on Fox News
The hostile badgering by the White House Press Corps, exemplified by CNN’s Jim Acosta
The press’s cheerleading for the first purely partisan impeachment
The fearmongering in the news media to force and support the insane national shutdown during the pandemic, crashing what had been a successful economy under Trump (and making the dubious election procedures used in the election possible).
The failure of reporters to raise the already evident issue of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline during the campaign (I noticed it; why didn’t they?)
The Hunter Biden laptop cover-up.
Amazingly, that’s not a complete list. Not even close.
Despite some backlash and scattered efforts to reform, the news media is still determined to bring Trump down and reverse his policies. Current and ongoing efforts include vilifying I.C.E, extolling “good illegal immigrants,” promoting the most extreme agenda items of the pro-transsexual fad (or, more properly, social contagion), obsessing over relative trivia (the Kennedy Center, et al.) while burying indisputable policy successes, and broadcasting dubious polls Again, that is a partial list. The lies, spin, misrepresentations and instances of journalists acting as Democratic (and, mirabile dictu, Democratic Socialist/Communist) activists is now intensifying as the 2026 mid-terms approach. The Axis wants the Democrats to control Congress so the President can be neutralized by an endless stream of House impeachments until the end of his term, whereupon Democratic prosecutors can work to put him in jail after as many show trials as it takes. Apparently it also wants non-citizens to vote, elections to be intrinsically untrustworthy, the borders to be open again, as many unborn babies as possible killed, women getting trounced by biological males in women’s sports, a rigged Supreme Court, more crimes in major cities, and permanent discrimination against whites males, among other blessings.
All of this is a long prelude to noting how CNN, through its venerable hack Wolf Blitzer, spread a lie last week about the substance of Trump’s (excellent and necessary) attempt to limit mail-in ballots.
It is only fair to flag this idiocy, since I routinely call out the Times’ progressive and Democratic Party propaganda under the “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” banner and leave the Post, which I stopped subscribing to a decade ago because it was so infuriatingly biased, relatively unscathed, :
One of my few non-Trump Deranged Facebook friends posted that tweet today with the wry legend, typical of him, “I don’t see the problem…”
This wasn’t among my planned posts for today, but after picking on the Times in the previous post, I feel ethically obligated to point out that the Washington Post is an “enemy of the people” too.
I try to avoid the Sunday talking-head shows now (once upon a time, my late wife and I would watch them all). For some reason I lighted on CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash” this morning and caught the hang-dog, sour-faced Bash trying to bash Trump Administration illegal immigration policing czar Tom Homan.
Bash: “Do you feel at all bad about sending Haitians back to a country where your own administration considers conditions dire?”
Ethics Verdict: Stupid, manipulative, and irresponsible. “Feelz” are not valid considerations in law enforcement, nor are they legitimate topics for inquiry by serious journalists, of which we have approximately none; certainly not Dana Bash.
What exactly does she propose, importing the whole population of Haiti because that accurately labeled “shit-hole country” hasn’t managed to get its act together for its entire, miserable, violent existence since it became independent in 1804? Holman, who has a terrible poker face on which we could see his disgust with each one of Bash’s questions that had the unstated implication that he, and President Trump, of course, are heartless racists. Homan answered this one by saying that he doesn’t feel badly and shouldn’t when he is enforcing the immigration laws as passed by Congress. He also made the obvious, though not to Bash and all the other “Good Illegal Immigrant” bleeding hearts, point that millions of people across the globe are in line to come to “the greatest country on earth” the legal and right way, and there is no justification for allowing those who came here or remain here illegally to block their paths.
Those of us who had high hopes that New York Times leftist cult exile Bari Weiss can be trusted to reform CBS News as a trailblazing journalism organization that rededicates itself to true objectivity, integrity and trustworthiness have been betrayed and disappointed again.
CBS News’s Editor-in-Chief, briefly principled in sacking some prominent “60 Minutes” hacks and propagandists, is seeking to hire that paragon of brilliance, that journalism ethics champion and conflicts-of-interest watchdog, that distinguished lawyer and Constitution scholar, Chris Cuomo.
This is signature significance. If Weiss thinks it’s responsible to hire a proven biased and incompetent dimwit like the Fredo of the Cuomo family, she’s just another ethics-free suit seeking ratings over competent journalism. Cuomo is arguably an even worse excuse for a broadcast journalist than Don Lemon, though it’s neck-and neck. Yet the Independent reports,
“In a bid to attract more big-name talent, the editor-in-chief is in talks with Cuomo to join the network, sources told Status. Oliver Darcy, a journalist at the publication, said Weiss was “enraptured” by Cuomo and had already met him in person. The pair, he reports, met for a meal and have often swapped text messages. If a deal did go ahead, Cuomo would join CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil as another high-profile Weiss appointee.”
She’s “enraptured” by that idiot? Great. Oh, why not just hire Scott Pelley back? He’s an unapologetic Axis agent and partisan hack, but at least his IQ hits three digits.
The New York Times is in a tender mood over I.C.E. deporting illegal immigrants who haven’t killed, raped, robbed or otherwise turned to a life of crime—at least as far as we know— being deported by I.C.E. In the deliberately deceitfully-headlined “ICE Arrests Soar as People With No Criminal Record Are Increasingly Targeted” (Uh, no, illegal immigrants are being targeted. I, for example, qualify for the group “People With No Criminal Record,” and I am not being “targeted”), the New York Times writes today,
A majority of the immigrants arrested in July were people who were accused of violating civil immigration laws but who had not been charged with or convicted of a crime, an analysis of newly released federal data shows. The share with a past violent criminal conviction fell to less than 4 percent. Overall, immigration arrests rose to record highs with 43,000 ICE arrests in June and 49,000 in July. Two fatal shootings involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, in Texas and Maine, drew outrage but did not meaningfully slow the pace of arrests…ICE now appears closer than ever to meeting a recent goal of 2,000 daily arrests…Immigration arrests are near all-time highs in almost every state. Even sparsely populated Montana and Vermont saw spikes, with arrest rates more than doubling…
…Deportations have averaged well over 1,000 people a day since last summer, and there are signs that they are picking up speed. The number of deportation flights began rising in the spring, and in July reached a record of at least 329 flights out of the country, according to ICE Flight Monitor, a tracking effort run by Human Rights First.
My one word analysis of that report, which the New York Times presumably thinks will outrage its readers: Good. (And why would, or should, two fatal shootings involving ICE agents slow down appropriate law enforcement?)
Hey, but just for perspective and giggles, let’s see what appreciative Times readers (there are some sane comments in there too) are saying about the article:
I will grant this to some of my more Trump Deranged friends: they do give me some excellent ethics blog fodder.
One of them erupted in typical Trump deranged outrage because, as explained in this WaPo story, the Pentagon fired the publisher and the editor-in-chief of “Stars and Stripes,” the military news publication funded by the Department of Defense. This was, you see, another example of Trump “censorship.” In interviews with CBS, the fired editor insisted, “I am working for Stars and Stripes. Not for the Pentagon. Not for any administration. Not for any policymaker. I am here to cover the military community.” Another argued, “These firings are a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press.”
My Trump Deranged friend seems to believe that the Pentagon is obligated to employ “advocacy journalists” who are free to undermine the military command, including the Commander in Chief. If the Pentagon can fire editors of “Stars and Stripes,” and it can, then the publication can’t call itself independent. The military has no reason to tolerate or fund a publication that is critical of military command or the Commander in Chief, undermining military morale and general order.
In past eras, Stars and Stripes has always had an pro- military bias; of course it has. But now we have veterans in uniform disrupting Congressional hearings, and there is a war on. If “Stars and Stripes “wants the option of criticizing military command rather than reporting military news and promoting the Armed Services, great: let it find a funding source other than the Pentagon. Otherwise, it is beholden to the best interests of the military as the military command defines them.
The military is not a democracy. The Pentagon didn’t permit a “free and independent press” during World War II. It is disingenuous for a “Stars and Stripes” editor or reporter to say on CBS that she doesn’t work for the Pentagon when the Pentagon’s funds pay her salary.
There should be lots of topics to discuss on today the Friday Open Forum, which is going up next, but first, despite having promised to never post on the nauseating Jason Arday mess again, events dictate that I have to break that promise, because not doing my job regarding the EA mission would be more unethical than breaking a promise based on a premise that turned out to be false. It’s an ethics conflict. (I wonder why MAGA types have so much trouble with the concept. President Trump has delivered on a higher percentage of his campaign promises than any President since James K. Polk, and yet defectors like Tucker Carlson and Margery Taylor Greene—who would want to be a member of that club?— are furious because he started a necessary war that should have been started about 50 years ago. Morons.)
But I digress. Over in Europe, which stands as a frightening example of how quickly cultures can lose core values, Nathan Cofnas, who was the first to extensively expose Arday an academic fraud, announced that he has been suspended by Ghent University in Belgium and expects to be fired. His offense? “Discrimination”—-meaning that pointing out that a black academic star that Cambridge University had created out of DEI nothingness was in truth a serial plagiarist was racist. The school rector, Petra De Sutter issued a statement on l’affaire Arday asserting that freedom of speech “is not unlimited. It goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted in order to protect the rights of others.”
Tell us more about the freedom to lie to the public and jump in line in front of genuine scholars because of one’s color, Petra!
This tears it for me, I think. I’m not paying attention to any polls from anyone or anywhere, ever.
I don’t know why anyone ever would, except, well, you know. Most people are stupid and gullible with flat learning curves, and our political parties and the news media depend on it.
An alleged polling groups called Median Strategies released a poll before the Wisconsin gubernatorial race that showed Democratic Socialist whack-job Francesca Hong with a lead of more than 20 percentage points. Hong lost: It was close, but metaphorical miles away from winning by 20 points.
But wait! There’s more!
Then Median Strategies issued a poll this month showing Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass leading City Councilwoman Nithya Raman by nearly 12 percentage points ahead of the November mayoral runoff. Bass was apparently ecstatic, declaring on social media, “Doing the work, showing up, and gaining momentum. Let’s do this, LA!”
Oh! That’s all right then! No, it’s not, and I don’t care what the alleged justification for releasing fake polls was. The incident proves one thing, and one thing only: we can’t trust polling organizations, we can’t trust polls, we can’t trust the news stories that cite polls (Trump’s support among Hispanics drops 50!” was a headline this week…I bet they polled illegal immigrants), and we can’t trust politicians who use them either.
We should have already known this after the miserable performance of polling during the last few election cycles, but the Median Strategies “experiment” should put the question to bed permanently. All polling is a tool for manipulating elections, discouraging some voters and energizing others. Ignore them all. If a poll is correct, it’s luck.
We owe Median Strategies a debt of gratitude for clearing this question up for all time. But I think their real experiment was designed to find out how many people will still take polls seriously even after this farce. My guess: lots. Because…you know.
[Update: A 21-year-old recent college graduate named Rahil Prakash revealed that he was the one behind the fake polls and “Median Strategies.” In a report published this week he admitted that Median Strategies was his invention, using AI. “I wanted to see if fake polls could really penetrate the ecosystem that easily,” Prakash said. “And as it turned out, it could.”
