Proving that Alexa is right, the LA Times recruited Tom Rosenstiel, a former reporter and current journalism professor ,to author a candid but frightening essay that demonstrates exactly how deep the unethical cesspool of American journalism is today. The article is “How not to cover Donald Trump’s bizarre 2024 campaign for president,”and it broadcasts its bias and intellectual dishonesty at every turn, including the headline: Trump’s campaign is bizarre only because Democrats have taken the unprecedented and dangerous step of trying to stop a political adversary by using the criminal justice system as a partisan weapon.
The column states outright that it is the obligation of good journalists to cover the Trump campaign and candidacy in such a way that it fails. “It’s a dereliction of the press’ duty to ignore powerful dissemblers and liars in public life,” the professor writes. “We have an obligation to explain what’s false and offer clear and persuasive evidence of the truth. We have to help the public understand.”
If that last sentence doesn’t cause the date “1984” to start flashing in your brain, it should. These people really believe that their “understanding” is the right understanding. They are the perceptive ones, they are the arbiters of all disputes, disagreements and controversies. The arrogance is chilling, particularly because, as Ethics Alarms has pointed out repeatedly, journalists are not especially smart, wise, erudite or creative people. Some are, of course, just as one of my smartest and most ethical friends had driven a delivery van for 30 years. But the idea that reporters and journalists have the critical thinking skills, the breadth of knowledge and the depth of experience to tell the public “what’s false” would be hilarious if it didn’t do so much damage to the proper functioning of democracy.
In yesterday’s post titled “Now THIS Is Gaslighting…Or Outright Lying…Or Senility…,” Ethics Alarms discussed the now common phenomenon of Democrats, especially Joe Biden, dealing with the unpleasant reality of what their incompetence and corruption has wrought by simply asserting that the opposite of that reality is true. That post was focused only on Biden’s outrageous claims that Americans were better off financially after nearly three years of “Bidenomics,” and, even more absurdly, that the “knew it.”
But I did not read the whole speech. With few exceptions, like this one…
…I don’t waste time listening or reading what President Biden says unless another source points me to a particular selection: after all, I have a sock drawer to maintain. Moreover, I have known for decades that Biden lies, plagiarizes, says whatever his pea-brain thinks is useful at the time, and since he started leaking brain cells and IQ points, I also know at any moment he is liable to announce that he is Marie of Rumania. As it turns out, Biden’s claims about the financial fortunes of Americans was just the tip of a rather large metaphorical ice berg, and CNN, now trying to regain its squandered credibility and reputation after dumping the worst of its biased hacks (Brian Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon), though far from all of them, could not resist a genuine “factcheck.”
It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Biden said, “I was able to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over the first two years.” That’s pure fiction. CNN pointed out, correctly, that the national debt has increasedby more than $5.7 trillion during Biden’s presidency so far. Now, it is theoretically possible that this addled fool doesn’t know the difference between the deficit and the debt, but that’s material misrepresentation, because reducing the debt means that the U.S. actually owes less money, while reducing the deficit only means that the debt has increased less than it has recently because the government is spending more than it is taking in. CNN wasn’t through debunking this piece of fiction:
It’s worth noting, as we have before, that Biden’s Friday comments would be missing key context even if he had not inaccurately replaced the word “deficit” with “debt.” It’s highly questionable how much credit Biden himself deserves for the decline in the deficit in 2021 and 2022. Independent analysts say it occurred largely because emergency Covid-19 relief spending from fiscal 2020 expired as scheduled – and that Biden’s own new laws and executive actions have significantly added to current and projected future deficits. In addition, the 2023 deficit is widely expected to be higher than the 2022 deficit.
In an amusing development that raised long term ethics issues, Amazon’s AI “virtual assistant” Alexa has apparently crossed over to what Hillary Clinton regards as the Trump cult. When asked about fraud in the 2020 election, Alexa will respond that the election was “stolen by a massive amount of election fraud.” “She” cited content on Rumble, a video streaming service for this conclusion. Alexa also informs inquirers that the 2020 contest was “notorious for many incidents of irregularities and indications pointing to electoral fraud taking place in major metro centers,” referencing various Substack newsletters. The device is also quite certain that Trump really won Pennsylvania.
And, as a bonus, a satisfying validation of Ethics Alarms’ decision to always refer to the “Wuhan virus” rather than “Covid.”
James Meigs, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the former editor of Popular Mechanics has written a thorough, fair and objective account of the entire pandemic fiasco, which the Axis of Unethical Conduct still is trying to deny. Here’s his final paragraph:
When scientists craft their scientific conclusions to political ends, they are no longer practicing science. They have entered the political fray. They shouldn’t be surprised when the public begins suspecting political motives behind their other claims, as well. Public health officials let political concerns and institutional biases influence their statements and policies throughout the pandemic.And the media eagerly served as handmaiden to these efforts. Americans started the Covid-19 pandemic ready to make enormous sacrifices to protect their own health and that of others. But our political leaders, health officials, and media squandered that trust through years of capricious policies and calculated dishonesty. It could take a generation or more to win it back.
The essay is long, but essential reading for any informed American. I recommend sending it to all of your smug progressive friends, especially any of the mug-using persuasion, and even more-so to the idiots still wearing masks while alone in their cars.
Literally none of the information included in the article is new to me, nor should it be news to anyone who has read Ethics Alarms over the past three years. (The tag “Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck” will take you to almost all of the posts on the subject.) However, relatively few members of the public read City Journal, (which is routinely superb), much less Ethics Alarms. As I read this piece I was infuriated all over again, not just at being reminded of how the nation came to cripple itself economically, financially, educationally and socially ( never mind how it came to wreck my personal business and financial security), but because this wasn’t written by the “investigative journalists” of the New York Times or Washington Post and featured as a front page story.
Here is another memorable selection from the article, also a depressing one:
The Covid-era collapse in ethical standards in science, government, and journalism might have brought a period of re-examination and reflection. For example, Watergate, 9/11, and the 2008 financial crisis all led to majorinvestigations and reforms. So far, however, the pandemic’s polarized battle lines remain intact. Rather than re-examine their mistakes, in fact, some elite institutions seem eager to institutionalize the excesses of the period. In August, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a studytitled “Communication of COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media by Physicians in the US.” The JAMA study examined various Covid claims made by several dozen doctors with large social media followings and bemoaned “the absence of federal laws regulating medical misinformation on social media platforms.” It suggested that doctors who propagate misinformation should be subject to “legal and professional recourse.”
What were the types of misinformation that might require such a heavy-handed response? The study quoted some extreme anti-vaccination theories and other far-out claims. But many of the topics it flagged as “misinformation” fell well within the range of normal scientific or political discourse. The authors wrote, for example: “Many physicians focused on negative consequences related to children and mask mandates in schools, claiming that masks interfered with social development.” The JAMA authors also objected to the assertion that health officials “censored information that challenged government messaging.” Of course, as the Facebook and Twitter documents showed—and the U.S. 5th Circuit recently concluded—that’s exactly what the government did. Finally, the JAMA study flagged as misinformation the claim that Covid-19 originatedfrom a Chinese laboratory, which, it limply objects, “contradicted scientific evidence at the time.” Imagine if the JAMA authors had their way and medical experts were professionally and legally enjoined from contradicting the scientific consensus on major health questions.Without the ability to challenge popular viewpoints, scientists can’t advance our state of knowledge. In such a world, the germ theory of disease might still be dismissed as misinformation; doctors might still be relying on leeches and neglecting to wash their hands.
How incapable of self-awareness must an extreme abortion advocate be to accuse abortion opponents of manipulating the language to mislead the public about what they are really talking about? The entire pro-abortion movement has been built on linguistic deceit of the most flagrant kind for decades, with abortion being referred to as “choice.” This is deliberate deception, as if proposals to prevent the killing of nascent living human beings have as their objective a broad rejection of autonomy, rather than an ethical respect for human life, no matter how early in that life an individual may be.
A lot of stuff piled up this month and especially yesterday, and I better get it discussed before it all gets lost in October…
1. Regarding that “debate”...I, and many others, owe Donald Trump an apology. He was both wise and right to pass up the Republican debates if they are going to be like the debacle yesterday. No debate with more that three participants is going to be a fair measure of anything but quips and soundbites, but this was especially bad, doing a disservice to the party, the candidates, and the public. Prime among the culprits was Fox News, whose moderators were incompetent and unfair. They couldn’t enforce the supposed rules—candidates who were attacked directly were not, as assured, give time to respond in many cases. Including a Univision open-borders advocate among the three—three moderators is two too many anyway—was despicable: moderators should not have an agenda and she obviously did. She also, in trying to impugn Ron DeSantis, repeated the media and Democratic Party lie that Florida’s guidelines for teaching about slavery suggest that slavery was beneficial to blacks.
Dana Perino, usually one of Fox News’ least annoying hosts, asked one of the most unprofessional questions of any debate moderator in memory, the moronic reality-show inspired, “Who would you vote off the GOP island?”query. Good for Gov. DeSantis, who did a Newt Gingrich impression and scolded her. DeSantis managed to come off better than the rest this time, but it is probably too late; again, the thing was too much of a wreck to really help any of the candidates.
Not that any of them helped themselves much either. Nikky Haley canceled out whatever progress she had made in the first debate this time by shrilly arguing with Vivek Ramaswamy, who is irrelevant to the proceedings except as a distraction (most Americans neither know nor care what TikTok is) and Tim Scott, another irrelevancy, (over a South Carolina gas tax?). Mike Pence continues to be an embarrassment—why does he think he has any chance at all?—and gave the most oogy statement of the night with his boast, “My wife isn’t a member of the teachers union, but I got to admit, I have been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years — full disclosure.” Then Pence blamed DeSantis for the Parkland school shooter getting a life sentence instead of the death penalty, when the killer was charged and sentences before DeSantis was elected Governor of Florida, and would have had no input into the sentencing anyway. The moderators seemed determined to ignore poor Doug Burgum—another example of the uselessness of the multiple debaters format, and Chris Christie, an established ethics villain, had already alienated pro-Trump and anti-Trump conservatives before he insulted everyone with his canned “Donald Duck” line (See, Trump has “ducked” the debates, see. Get it?)
2. Speaking of open borders, CNN’s Jake Tapper had one of his periodic moments of non-partisan integrity when Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley mouthed the ongoing Biden Administration lie that “No doubt about it, our border is secure.”
Tapper was aghast, as well he should have been “You think it is secure? You think the border is secure? Or it’s not secure?” Tapper asked. “The border is secure,” The shameless “Squad” member declared a second time. “But if you have millions of undocumented migrants coming into the country, how is the border secure?” he asked. “If you have people crossing border, it’s by definition not secure,” Tapper said. “Because it is not secure, [illegal immigrants] go on this journey, and one of the arguments that is made — and maybe you disagree with it — is that the border should be secure so as to discourage people from making this journey,” he continued. “But it just seems like just such a refusal to acknowledge reality to say that the border is secure when we all know millions of people are crossing the border illegally every year.” (Ya think?) Pressley’s only response to his question was that the issue “is a conversation for another day,” Tapper ended the interview.
How can so many citizens tolerate such repeated and obvious dishonesty?
The reliably woke, intellectually dishonest and frequently ridiculous New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg issued another one of her propaganda pieces, this time trying to excuse and rationalize the implosion of Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research, which is laying off most of its staff and looks headed for the dustbin of history. As for that, good. Kendi is one of the worst race-hustlers extant, and BU giving him such a platform for his divisive and destructive ranting was academic malpractice.
Goldberg’s dutiful excuse-making in “Ibram X. Kendi and the Problem of Celebrity Fund-Raising,”meanwhile, would be an embarrassment to the Times if it were a legitimate paper any more. She absolves Kendi of blame because he had no management experience and it was irresponsible of woke donors to give him so much money in their rush to signal their virtue. (I guess all those corporations should have just stuck with discriminating against white applicants in their hiring…) What she is admitting without having the integrity to do so openly is that Kendi was and is a blowhard phony who talked big but was untrustworthy. Ann Althouse sharply observes the hypocrisy here:
If we’re going to do critical race theory, let’s not hold back when the insights are inconvenient. Lavishing money on an unprepared — but charismatic — black person and then treating him like a naif when he fails to perform according to existing conventions — that too is racism… under the theory.
“This President has been so zeroed in, so laser-focused, on lowering costs for Americans — and we’ve done that!”
—Incompetent, insulting, dishonest and embarrassing White House Press SecretaryKarine Jean-Pierre,who not only has wrapped up the title of the worst White House mouthpiece in history, but also may be the most incompetent Presidential staff member in history as well.
She is also a Rationalization #64,“It isn’t what it is” champion, which is quite an achievement in a tough field. For example, more than one member of the Biden Administration has claimed that the “border is secure.”
Biden hasn’t lowered the cost of anything. That statement is an absolute, irredeemable lie. Here is one list of how prices have gone up since Biden was elected, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
In order to go on covering other issues and stories in which aspects of the Biden mess would normally require a reference, the mainstream media instead just pretends there’s nothing there. Thus it can continue to run attacks on Donald Trump for “defying democratic norms,” being a threat to “lock up” his opposition if elected, and “lying” even when the current president, their client, continues to engage in all three.
Today the New York Times sent me a lament from columnist Amanda Taub headlined, “The Litany of #MeToo News Continues. Is Anything Really Changing? It can appear as though society is no closer to a future in which women can go about their ordinary lives without being harassed, assaulted and coerced into silence.” She begins with Russell Brand, but goes on to discuss how “each time a powerful man is held accountable for sexual misconduct, it seems like progress. And yet, when the allegations reveal a similar pattern of institutional actions that allowed the abuse to go on for years, and they provoke the same reactions of denial and victim-blaming, it can appear as though society is no closer to a future in which women can go about their ordinary lives without being harassed, assaulted and coerced into silence.”
Huh! I wonder why that’s happening? Could it be that the “fish rots from the head down”? Could it be that #MeToo has beclowned itself because by making it obvious that only conservatives and Republicans were in any peril of #MeToo consequences, and that powerful male Democrats could continue their harassing ways with either impunity or minor consequences? How can a serious analysts write about patterns “of institutional actions that allowed the abuse to go on for years,” and not mention any of this…
???? The President of the United States has been a serial and unapologetic groper, sniffer and cop-a-feel specialist for decades. Leaders set the standard for their organizations; Presidents set the standards for U.S. society. Biden was also accused of sexual assault by a former Senate staffer. If you want an explanation for why #MeToo has deteriorated, look no further than this White House.
But Biden’s enablers and agents want us to look away from there.
Ethics Alarms 