Journalism & Media

The Romney and Paul Smears: Time For U.S. News Media To Admit Its Bias And Address It

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

"Mitt Romney is the one in the middle. Or so we're told. Seems plausible to us."

Although the left-leaning bias of the majority of the news media is frighteningly/absurdly/amusingly/frustratingly obvious (depending on your point of view) every single day, the standard response to complaints remains, 1) “What about Fox?” and 2) “Bias? What bias?”  The latter response, if not proof of dishonesty or pathological denial, is one of the symptoms of the problem: the mainstream media is so used to being biased that bias is now the status quo.

There has been plenty of evidence in 2011, however, that the problem is getting worse, and both the public and self-government are being badly served as a result. Recently there was another flutter of statements from pundits and others, like Bill Clinton, that the media obviously favored Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination battle. Of course it did. That the media then went on to outrageously tilt its coverage in Obama’s favor durin the campaign for the general election is hardly capable of contradiction: Obama was on more magazine covers, got more video time, received more consistently hagiographic stories, his questionably-qualified running mate was barely criticized while the press couldn’t attack McCain’s enough…in short, it was a disgraceful abdication of professional duty. How can journalists decry the influence of Super-PACs and big money in elections when the news media, the most powerful communications factor of all ( because it has—still—the remains of a reputation for being objective, fair and accurate) is consistently biased? Not only is that a bigger problem, it is one journalists themselves have the power to fix…if they wanted to, if they cared. Continue reading →

Fairness for Ron Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

So as not to leave you in suspense longer than necessary, let me be direct: fairness to Ron Paul means firmly declaring him unqualified to run for President on the Republican ticket in 2012.

The reason is old, which means that we should have been having this discussion months ago, before Paul first set foot on a debate stage. In the late Eighties and Nineties, while Paul was out of Congress, he published a group of newsletters to true believers called “The Ron Paul Political Report,” “Ron Paul’s Freedom Report,” “The Ron Paul Survival Report,” “The Ron Paul Investment Letter,” and “The Ron Paul Greyhound Racing Tip-Sheet.”  Okay, okay, I’m sorry: that last one is made up—I couldn’t resist. But the others are real.

Also real were periodic statements in the newsletters that could charitably be called “racially-insensitive” or not-so-charitably be called “racist.” Paul has been questioned about these before, and in the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses where he is a genuine contender is being grilled on them again. Yesterday, he walked out of a CNN interview when Gloria Borger refused to let the subject go. Continue reading →

Unethical Website: NewtGingrich.com…But Not In The Way You Think

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ah, Dick, what might have been! If only your burglars had broken into Gingrich headquarters!

The pro-Democratic super PAC “American Bridge” bought the domain name http://www.NewtGingrich.com and now uses it to redirect anyone who reaches the site to various Web sites that highlight the ex-Speaker’s many failings, perceived flaws, or the attacks of critics. Among the places it hijacks users to are Freddie Mac’s Web site (a reference to Newt’s high-paid duty as “a historian”), Tiffany’s (where Newt infamously had a rather large bill, as if that has any significance whatsoever except to class-bashers), information about Greek cruises ( as Newt abandoned his campaign earlier this year for a cruise, while his staff labored away), or to the ad Gingrich filmed  with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in favor of addressing climate change (because being open-minded about climate change isn’t permitted in the GOP).

The Washington Post termed the stunt “clever.” Well, I no longer expect the Post to know the difference between bad ethics and applesauce. Of course the website trick is unethical, deceiving web users and misappropriating a domain that Gingrich himself, and only Gingrich, should be able to employ. Yes, it’s legal. It is still unfair, deceptive and dishonest—wrong. When Richard Nixon’s gang used dirty tricks to upset Democratic rivals in 1968, the Post condemned the conduct as proof of “Tricky Dick’s” willingness to distort the democratic process and win by schemes rather than merit. When a Democratic group uses dirty tricks on a Republican presidential candidate, however, it’s “clever.”

The Post, as well as many of the commenters on its reporting on the faux Gingrich website, embraces the concept of ethics that holds that harmful acts performed against someone it likes is unethical, while the same act taken against someone it opposes is ethical.

There is a word for this delusion.

It’s called bias.

Ethics Dunce:The Baseball Writers Association of America

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"Well, yes, there was THAT, but what really matters is that he was one hell of an assistant coach!"

The high-profile Sandusky/Paterno/Penn State child molestation scandal has shaken the foundation of the sports world, and in the process, given resolve to past victims of child abuse to identify their molesters. The most recent example is veteran Philadelphia sportswriter Bill Conlin, who abruptly resigned from his job as a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News when he learned that four adults had come forward to accuse him of molesting them when they were children in the 1970s. This created am immediate crisis for the Baseball Writers Association of America, who had this year bestowed its highest honor on Conlin, the J.G. Spink Award. It never looks good when the person you have declared to represent the best of your profession is revealed as drug-dealer, a serial killer, a foreign agent, or a child molester.

Here’s how the BBWAA dealt with the matter on its website, in this “official statement”: Continue reading →

Distracted Driving, Pot, and “The Great Debate”

/ Jack Marshall / 175 Comments

As balm for Christiane Amanpour’s bruises from being kicked off her ABC Sunday show back to CNN, the network honchos let her try a different format this weekend (since nobody was watching anyway.) Styled “the Great Debate,” it pitted conservatives Paul Ryan, the GOP House intellectual, and columnist George Will against soon-to-be-retired Democratic Congressman Barney Frank and Clinton’s former Labor Secretary and perpetual Munchkin Robert Reich for the full hour, exchanging familiar talking points on the usual suspect national issues. The debate wasn’t so great, for several reasons, prime among them being the natural motor-mouth tendencies of Reich and Frank, who, I would guess, took up approximately twice the air time as the conservative pair. The teams were similarly unbalanced in cheer, with Reich as perky as his Lollipop Guild training would suggest, and Frank full of his trademark wisecracks, while Will was dour as ever (when faced with liberal cant, the columnist always looks like my high school Latin teacher did when I was botching the day’s translation) and Ryan radiated the charisma of a certified public accountant.

The most interesting exchange was when George Will derided proposed federal regulations against “distracted driving” as the latest installment of the nanny state encroachment on personal rights, saying that individual freedom should trump the government’s concern for public safety except in the most extreme circumstances. One of the good uses of absolutist reasoning is that it raises a very high bar before breaching a valid principle can even be considered, since it has to be considered as an exception if it is to be contemplated at all. Barring unsafe conduct that increases the likelihood of automobile accidents, however, is not the place for absolutism, but for utilitarianism—rational balancing. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Too many excellent writers are writing about Christopher Hitchens in the wake of his premature death from cancer for me to add much of value. I disagreed with Hitchens frequently, but then, so did everyone. What I appreciated was his integrity, which was unshakable. What I admired, and will always try to emulate, was his refusal to be seduced by convention, ideology, political agendas and partisan bias. Hitchens looked at the world with clear and piercing eyes, and dissected what he observed with a mind that was curious, rigorous, and forever open. Thus he was never a comfortable ally for liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, because he would never hesitate to arrive at conclusions that shocked his friends and cheered his friend’s enemies. He was fearless and principled.

Most of all, however, Christopher Hitchens wrote like an angel, a simile the committed atheist would have hated. It is a measure of the depths to which popular taste and intellect have fallen that the Mark Train Prize was awarded in recent years to the pedestrian likes of Will Farrell and Tina Fey when Hitchens routinely churned out prose wittier than their best efforts on the most inspired days of their creative lives. He was truly the spiritual and literary descendant of Mark Twain, as well as Swift, Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, George Bernard Shaw, W.S. Gilbert, Dorothy Parker, Gore Vidal and the rest of the select crew of social critics blessed with the ability to infuriate, illuminate and amuse simultaneously. When he focused all of his passion, intellect and rhetorical skills on a topic he cared about, Hitchens was as close to an irresistible force as a writer can be. Yet his mission was always noble. His constant goals were truth, justice, fairness, and wisdom. Of him it could be fairly stated, as of few others, that while Christopher Hitchens was around, bullshit was never safe.

I’ll close with four links about Hitchens: the New York Times obituary, the Washington Post obituary, a collection of comments and other links about Hitchens, a collection of his essays, an appreciation from a friend, and a collection of some of his best quotes.

If you can only read one, choose the last. The list is heavily tilted toward Hitchens’ attacks on religion, and he wrote about so many other things, but it is representative of his skill and style. One quote on the list  in particular I remember well, and it makes me laugh every time I read it:

“If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.”

Ah, we’ll miss you, Hitch!

Voting Reform Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

It is interesting that Attorney General Eric Holder would choose to become the point man for a  partisan effort by the Obama administration to demonize new voter qualification measures in 14 states. Holder is an embarrassment, credibly accused of lying to Congress in its efforts to get to the bottom of the Fast and Furious fiasco, and justifiably regarded by objective observers as incompetent even before his claim that the botched and deadly gun-smuggling operation went on under his nose without his cognizance, because, you know, he doesn’t read his e-mails. There are many viable theories why President Obama hasn’t yet asked Holder to leave, all plausible, all disturbing: Obama really thinks he’s doing a good job; Obama is being loyal to a loyal employee to the detriment of the nation; Obama is too passive an executive to fire anybody; Obama is afraid of backlash if he fires his highest-ranking black appointee; and my personal favorite, Holder may be horrible, but he’s not as horrible as the last Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, whom Bush refused to fire. Also inexcusably.

It is possible that Holder’s speech equating reasonable reforms to limit the opportunities for voter fraud with voter suppression was calculated as a way to ingratiate himself to left-leaning media critics whose support he will surely need as the Fast and Furious noose tightens. It is possible that his argument that the measures are aimed at minorities and the poor is part of Team Obama’s electoral strategy to divide the country—further—along lines of economic status, race and ethnicity. It is even possible that he is sincere. No matter: it is an unjustifiable argument. Continue reading →

George Will Is Conflicted, and Telling Us That He Is Doesn’t Cure It

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Is George Will's wife making him pull his punches?

Conservative columnist George Will has a conflict of interest problem not of his making. A regular, and superior, commentator on politics and current affairs in op-ed pages and on television, Will’s objectivity and independent judgment is apparently compromised by the fact that his wife is an advisor to the presidential campaign of Texas governor Rick Perry

Initially, Will took the position that his wife’s business and his were independent, and that his integrity should be presumed based on his long and distinguished record as a columnist. But the Washington Post ombudsman, among others, declared that Will’s readers needed to be able to make their own judgment about his objectivity, and lately Will has been issuing formal disclaimers whenever he wades into Republican presidential politics. Most recently he did this while slamming New Gingrich—accurately and with precision—for taking a cheap shot at Mitt Romney regarding Romney’s work at Bain Capital.  Will wrote: Continue reading →

Tim Tebow Hatred and the Rabbi’s Fears

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

How dare he?

I have avoided weighing into the controversy over Tim Tebow, the Denver Bronco quarterback whose very public Christianity, combined with his penchant for leading miracle comeback victories for his team, has made him the most polarizing figure in sports today, and one of the most polarizing people in the culture as a whole. I have avoided commenting because I think the ethics of the controversy are obvious. Tebow is a decent, law-abiding, well-bred young man in a sector of our culture that produces profane, semi-literate, violent, or arrogant  jerks, fools, cheats and felons, not to mention arrested adolescents, by the hundreds, who are cheered, worshipped and enriched based solely on their talent to excel in stadiums and arenas. Anyone who chooses Tim Tebow, out of all these travesties of sports celebrity, to deride solely because he is vocal about his religious beliefs isn’t worth arguing about, because the verdict’s in: that critic’s priorities are backwards, inside out and warped. Tebow, unlike the NFL’s assorted felons, the NBA’s many dead-beat dads, and baseball’s steroid cheats, is a worthy role model for kids. He is humble, respectful, does his job and plays by the rules. What’s not to like?

Well, we know the answer to that question. He prays on the field, thanks God after every touchdown pass, and is prone to saying things like, “First and foremost I gotta thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ”  to reporters. Is it annoying? Oh, sure it is. This stuff is annoying from any athlete. To begin with, it is silly—the very idea that a Supreme Being gives a hoot which wins a football game is infantile—and it comes off as a commercial, like an athlete who makes sure that he says, “Well, first and foremost I have to thank the General Mills  people, because Wheaties, “The Breakfast of Champions,” has made me who I am today!”  in every interview. But Tebow’s statements aren’t  commercials, though, and anyone inclined to be fair knows it. This is a man with a deep religious faith who really believes that God guides his every move, and that it is right and responsible to thank Him when  the quarterback  is being celebrated for athletic exploits that in Tebow’s belief system are the product of his relationship with his deity. The sentiment is sincere and the motivation is virtuous. For Tebow’s displays of faith to incur hatred is an indictment of the haters. If he annoys you, don’t listen to him. If you do, the annoyance is your fault, not Tebow’s. Continue reading →

Stop Cruelty To Children—Or To Put It Another Way, Stop Jimmy Kimmel

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Bulletin to Jimmy Kimmel: Enough is enough, you sadistic jerk.

Also known as "Jimmy Kimmel Cruel!" and "Jimmy Kimmel Sadistic!"

Flush with his “success” of persuading his most irresponsible viewers to make their own children cry by lying to them about eating all their Halloween candy and then posting the videos of their kids’ emotional distress on YouTube, ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has told the same warped people to traumatize their children again, this time by granting the kids the special treat of opening a Christmas gift early, but having a terrible gift (like a half-eaten sandwich) inside. The emotional reactions of the children thus deceived are also, per Kimmel’s directive, videotaped for posterity  to inspire mirth on the part of  his similarly warped viewers who don’t have children (and thank God for that), because, as we all know, disappointing kids at Christmastime is fun.

This has got to stop. It doesn’t matter if some, like Mediate’s Jon Bershad , think this is “the cruelest, funniest joke ever,” and others, like the Huffington Post’s reviewer, think the pranked children’s misery is “hilarious.” Children are not props for Jimmy Kimmel’s sadistic amusement, and parents who are willing to use their children this way, intentionally spoiling their Christmas anticipation for the entertainment of sadistic strangers, are, to be blunt, rotten, despicable, and untrustworthy parents. Something important—Compassion? Kindness? Empathy? Loyalty? Responsibility? Love? — is absent in their parental make-up, and that void is being cynically exploited by Kimmel, who has crossed the threshold from arrested adolescent to full-fledged villain. Continue reading →