Journalism & Media

Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck Update, Woke Universities’ Hypocrisy Exposed: Addendum

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

As I assumed it would, the uproar over the three college presidents’ embarrassing testimony regarding anti-Semitism has continued, and presumably will continue for quite a while. I want to highlight a few developments that I came upon after writing the earlier post.

  • Harvard president Claudine Gay issued a mewling apology to her campus.“I am sorry,” Gay said in an interview with The Crimson.“Words matter. When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret.” Yes, she really talks like this.

    “I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” Gay went on to say in the interview. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged. Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth.”

I’ve been writing a few posts lately examining my biases. One bias I don’t intend to overcome is the strong wave of nausea I experience when anyone talks about their “truth.” The rhetoric smacks of ethics relativism, and, in the immortal words of the iconic New Yorker cartoon, “I say it’s spinach, and I say to hell with it.” Continue reading →

Just In Case You Don’t Appreciate How Much Of A Progressive Hack Site Politico Is….

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

…consider this coverage of the Jamaal Bowman censure. Some quotes:

  • “The House voted mostly along party lines to formally reprimand Rep. Jamaal Bowman over triggering a fire alarm last September, the latest episode of the GOP’s censure ire.” That’s the first sentence, essentially “Republicans pounce.” Bowman broke both a DC misdemeanor law by deliberately pulling a fire alarm without any fire, a federal law by disrupting a vote in Congress, and the House ethics rules as well. Politico frames this as a contrived partisan “gotcha!” by Republicans as in“There they go again, making a big deal out of nothing.” This is ethics corrupting behavior by Politico.
  • “Bowman (D-N.Y.) is the third Democrat that Republicans have voted to censure this year.”  Same thing: the sentence implies that the censures were just partisan attacks without basis. Twenty-two Democrats joined  Republicans in censuring Rep. Tlaib, whose repeated statements and tweets excusing Hamas while rationalizing the anti-Semitic chant “from the river to the sea” were exactly the kind of conduct condemned by the House ethics code. The hyper-partisan conduct in both cases was by the Democrats, most of whom couldn’t bring themselves to enforce Congress’s ethics standards as they must be enforced to protect the integrity of the institution. The House failed to censure Rep. Adam Schiff for his repeated lies in the media about the evidence of Trump campaign with Russia because Democrats protected him. The significance of the three censure votes involving Democrats is that the party’s ethics have rotted so thoroughly that Republican look relatively chaste by comparison.
  • “Bowman already pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for pulling the fire alarm in a House office building during a chaotic vote on government funding at the end of September. The lawmaker had also agreed to pay the maximum fine, but some House Republicans who’d been incensed by Bowman’s actions demanded further punishment.” That commentary is moronic, and deliberately misleads readers. Its thrust is “he’s suffered enough,” as if the legal consequences of Bowman’s actions should preclude official sanctions by Congress. They are separate and distinct. Moreover, Bowman’s obvious lies about mistaking the fire alarm for a device that would unlock the door were worthy of House discipline themselves.
  • “Some on the right have charged that Bowman triggered the alarm to obstruct or delay the House proceedings that day, though he’s maintained he did not intentionally set off the alarm.” “Some on the right?” Bowman was caught on video doing exactly what he repeatedly claimed he did not do—still claims, in fact.  In the video, he doesn’t try to get out of the building; he takes down the two signs that would undermine his lie about finding the doors locked and mistakenly pulling the alarm in  a state of confusion and panic. The evidence is clear and undeniable: he intended to pull the alarm.  Politico’s report sets out to mislead readers who haven’t followed the story so they will believe there is a legitimate controversy over Bowman’s actions and intent. There isn’t. Democrats decided to support an obvious lie.

Politico is considered a major political news source. It is biased and unreliable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Does Anybody Care?” The Justice System’s Ominous Sacrifice Of Derek Chauvin

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Glenn Loury, is an economist, academic, and author who holds the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. Since he is tenured, Loury doesn’t feel constrained by the lock-step ideological conformity so many of his race (he’s black) hew to in the wake of the George Floyd Freakout. In his latest newsletter on substack, Loury writes in part,

Poetic truth “thri[ves] more by coercion than reason,” accusing all who dispute it of complicity with the ineradicably racist system that governs and has always governed the country.

That Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown is one such poetic truth; that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd is, I believe, another. Despite the aptness of Steele’s term, poetic truth is no truth at all, nor is it particularly poetic. It is power masquerading as fact, brute force in the guise of knowledge. The cities that burned across the country following Floyd’s death were expressions of such a truth, as was the incarceration of the police officers convicted of a crime they did not commit. The scramble to implement race-based policies and quotas, to elevate self-appointed gurus of “antiracism,” and to proclaim, against all evidence, the unreconstructed nature of American society were all tendrils of the same truth, which still threatens to assert itself whenever an incident emerges that fits its preferred pattern.

The cost in life, limb, and property incurred by this particular poetic truth would be bad enough. But I fear that, in the aftermath, when the embers have cooled and Chauvin’s name has been forgotten by everyone save his family, the true danger of the poetic truth of George Floyd will come to fruition.

Later in the piece, Loury quotes John McWhorter, the New York Times pundit: Continue reading →

It’s Time To Play That Exciting New Game Show, “Who’s The Dictator?” !!!!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Hello everybody! Welcome to “Whose the Dictator?” the popular ethics game show!  Welcome panel! And here’s today’s challenge…

You see before you two Presidents: one, Joe Biden, a Democrat and current residence of the White House. Next to him is Donald Trump, previously President, and currently seeking to be the candidate of the Republican Party for his old job in 2024. Currently, the mainstream media is calling Mt. Trump an aspiring dictator, based on banter with Sean Hannity at a Fox News town hall. Here’s CBS’s report…as you know, CBS is the most trusted name in news, being the network that gave us Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan…never mind, let’s stop at Walter:

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday in Fox News Town Hall that he would not be a dictator “except for Day One” if he is elected to the presidency next year.

In a taped town hall with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity in Iowa, the former president was asked whether he would use the presidency to “abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people” several times.

“You are promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked.

“Except for Day One,” Trump said.

When asked to clarify, Trump said he would use the presidency to close the border and increase oil drilling in the U.S.

“That is not retribution,” Hannity said.

“I love this guy. He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no. Other than Day One.’ We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator,” Trump said.

The Biden campaign immediately pounced on the comments in a campaign email and posted a clip of the exchange to X.

“Donald Trump has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s reelected and tonight he said he will be a dictator on day one. Americans should believe him,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said.

The report didn’t bore anyone by discussing why “drilling, drilling, drilling” suggests dictatorial conduct or aspirations, or what the statutory authority is for the President closing the border legally and constitutionally, but, as you know, panel, the American voter is already fully cognizant of and sophisticated in its knowledge of these things, thoroughly educated on the President’s role in constitutional government and the limits of Presidential power thanks to the excellent training in civics that our public school system provides. Besides, everyone knows what Trump is like and what his real motives are, right?

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Ugh.How Many Times Will Trump And The Mainstream Media Make Me Write This Post?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I can’t avoid it this time: the episode comes too close on the metaphorical heels of Curmie’s examination of biased and misleading reporting (here and here) and the post about the desperate AUC (the Axis of Unethical Conduct) settling on declaring Trump an American Hitler as its best shot at keeping him out of the White House if they fail at “locking him up.”

What happened next was so similar to what was described in my post that it’s almost comical. In an Iowa town hall with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump was asked about the current scare-mongering narrative that he was going to be a dictator. Trump, who apparently can’t stop himself from trolling, said,

“He says, you’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said no, no, no — other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling (for oil). After that I’m not a dictator.”

And how was that quote relayed on multiple outlets? “Trump says he’ll be a dictator from Day One.” See? He admits it! Aaron Rupar, the same shameless hack I mentioned in the earlier post, tweeted, “Trump admits he plans to do some dictatorial things on “day one” of his second term.” Rupar’s a dishonest asshole, but he’s not stupid. He knows that what Trump was describing isn’t “dictatorial,” but he exploited, as usual, Trump’s inflammatory language.

The executive branch has statutory power to close borders under certain circumstances. If Trump used that power, it wouldn’t be “dictatorial,” it would be legal and backed by democratically- determined laws. If the President doesn’t have statutory power to do something, he can’t do it. As for “drilling”: all Trump can do is lift Biden’s executive orders blocking drilling. The measures he’d be eliminating were no less “dictatorial” than his orders cancelling them. The President can’t order private companies to drill (or else what, shoot the executives?). So once againTrump was being careless in his rhetoric, thus throwing raw meat for his foes in the media and the Trump-Deranged to freak out over. And, of course, they took the bait.

Trump enjoys doing this, even though it fuels the hysterical and biased coverage of everything he says or does, even though it increases political divisions in our society. He’s having fun giving the news media what it wants, and they have no scruples or restraint either. The rest of the country are victims.

We have almost a year of this to go. Isn’t that great?

Curmie’s Conjectures— Punk’s Guide to Ethics, Part II: Strategies

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

by Curmie

The title for this two-part edition of Curmie’s Conjectures refers to a song by the Irish punk band the Boomtown Rats, “Don’t Believe What You Read,” which includes not only the title admonition but also lines like “I know most what I read will be a lot of lies / But you learn really fast to read between the lines.”  Part I of this exercise attempted to suggest something of the parameters of the problem.  As Jack suggested in his introduction to that piece, it’s not an exhaustive list of the various forms of journalistic chicanery, but I hope it served as a representative sample.

Here in Part II, I’ll attempt the daunting task of examining strategies to “read between the lines” and come at least a little closer to the truth of what happened in a given situation.  So, what to do?  How do we determine if that less-than-objective source we’re reading actually has this one story right, especially if it’s the only source about a particular story?  Boy, do I wish there was an easy answer to this one.  That said…

The most effective means of ascertaining the truth, of course, is to get different perspectives on the issue.  I think I’ve mentioned both here and on my own blog that when I was in England doing my MA (at the time “Don’t Believe What You Read” was released, as it happens), I’d alternate between reading the Telegraph, which leaned right, and the Guardian, which leaned left.  If the former said “X but Y,” thereby suggesting that Y was the more important point, the latter would likely say “Y but X.”  But whichever paper you read, you’d know that X and Y, though perhaps seemingly in opposition, were both true, and both worth knowing about. 

Of course, both the Telegraph and the Guardian were, whatever their political perspectives, both reputable news sources.  That’s a statement that would be difficult to make about many of the most prominent news media in this country in the 2020s.  Equally importantly, as suggested in Part I, the problem is often that we hear only from one perspective. 

There are three possibilities for why this should occur.  One, which is (alas!) probably the least likely, is that both X and Y editors make an honest decision that a story is or is not newsworthy.  Or X media outlet knowingly runs with a story that is either grossly distorted or fabricated altogether.  Or outlet Y, knowing the story casts their team in an unfavorable light, ignores it, hoping it will just go away.  At some point it becomes untenable to try to ferret out the true motives; the truth of the story may be a little easier to discern, although there are no guarantees.

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Curmie’s Conjectures— Punk’s Guide to Ethics, Part I: The Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

by Curmie

[I am particularly grateful for this installment of Curmie’s Conjectures because it assuages my guilt a bit. As longtime readers here know, I occasionally promise posts that never show up, or do, but so long after the promise that it’s embarrassing. Years ago, I promised a post defining and examining all journalistic tricks that I classify as “fake news,” and I use the term broadly to include misleading headlines, burying the lede, omitting key information that undermines the writer’s agenda, poisoning the well and other techniques. I started the thing, got frustrated and overwhelmed, and never finished it. Here Curmie doesn’t exactly present what I intended, but he touches on much of it, and as an extra bonus, he wrote it more elegantly than I would have (as usual). JM.]

I doubt that this blog has ever before turned to punk rock for ethics advice, but Boomtown Rats composer/frontman (and Live Aid impresario) Bob Geldof had it right in a song that’s probably more relevant today than it was 40+ years ago: “Don’t Believe What You Read.”  Well, not uncritically, at least.  At our host’s suggestion, I’m about to enter the fraught territory of trying to decide if a story published by an obviously biased media outlet might, this time, just be accurate. 

It’s difficult of late to find a news source that only leans in one direction or the other, rather than proselytizing for the cause.  The news networks and major newspapers have carved out their market shares based on feeding their viewers and readers what they want to be fed.  Whether the advent of Fox News was a trigger or a reaction is up to individual interpretation, but there’s absolutely no doubt that we’re now in an era in which news as reported is determined largely by editorial positioning, rather than the other way around.

It’s inevitable that, to steal a line from another of my favorite musicians, Paul Simon, “a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.”  Fighting our own biases is not made easier by the knowledge that learning from experience and confirmation bias are opposite sides of the same coin.  If a story appears only on Fox News and the Drudge Report, or only on AlterNet and MSNBC, there’s an excellent chance that the indignation is feigned and the actual events are something of a nothing-burger.

But “usually” is not “always.”  As a society, we’re well aware of the tale of the boy who cried wolf and the miraculous last-second basket from well past half-court.  We nod and smile at the suggestion that stopped clocks are right twice a day. 

There are a few variations on the theme of biased journalism.  The first, editorializing in a news story, is generally the easiest to spot and the easiest to counteract.  If there are words like “communist,” “Nazi,” or “un-American” to describe a US politician, or phrases like “unborn children” or “reproductive freedom,” you’re reading an editorial, whether the article identifies itself as such or not.  There’s nothing wrong with editorializing; it’s what I do here and on my own blog, after all.  But I also try to not to suggest that what I write is completely objective.

Another variation on the theme, and a personal pet peeve, is what I call a Schrödinger sentence, because it is simultaneously true and not true.  For example, I’ve seen a whole lot of conservative commentary on this blog that “progressives want X.”  (“X” in this context, of course, has nothing to do with what Elon Musk renamed Twitter.)  True, there are enough progressives who advocate for X to make the noun plural, but I’m a progressive, and I’m a big fan of not-X.  The implication—or, rather, one possible implication—of the sentence is that in order to be a progressive, one must want X.  That is no more true than suggesting that all conservatives believe in Jewish space lasers.  And I really resent being told what I believe.

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The Big Lies Of The “Resistance”: A Directory, Updated (11/29/2023)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[When I wrote the previous post adding Big Lie #10 to this compendium, I decided to read the whole thing again. That occasioned numerous updates (and repaired typos, of course.). I found it worth reading again; heck, I wrote it, and I had forgotten most of it. So I’m re-posting the revised version now…]

Introduction

The “Big Lie” strategy of public opinion manipulation, most infamously championed by Adolf Hitler and his propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, has, in sinister fashion, become a routine and ubiquitous component of the Left’s efforts to remove President Donald J. Trump from office without having to defeat him at the polls, and subsequently after his defeat, to attempt to prevent him from defeating a hopelessly inept failed successor. One of the most publicized Big Lies, that Trump had “colluded” with the Russian government to “steal” the Presidential election from Hillary Clinton was eventually exposed as such by the results of the Mueller investigation, the discrediting of the Steele Dossier, and the revelation that Democrats (like Adam Schiff) and the mainstream news media deliberately misled the public. and Democrats, with blazing speed, replaced it with another Big Lie that there was a “Constitutional crisis.” I could have added that one to the list, I suppose, but the list of Big Lies is dauntingly long already, and this one is really just a hybrid of the Big Lies below.

Becoming addicted to relying on Big Lies as a political strategy is not the sign of ethical political parties, movements, or ideologies. Perhaps there is a useful distinction between Big Lies and “false narratives,” but I can’t define one. Both are intentional falsehoods designed to frame events in a confounding and deceptive manner, so public policy debates either begin with them as assumptions, thus warping the discussion, or they result in permanent bias, distrust and suspicion of the lie/narrative’s target. For simplicity’s sake, because I believe it is fair to do so, and also because “Big Lie” more accurately reflects just how unethical the tactic is, that is the term I will use.

Big Lie #1. “Trump is just a reality TV star.”

This is #1 because it began at the very start of Trump’s candidacy. It’s pure deceit: technically accurate in part but completely misleading. Ronald Reagan was subjected to a similar Big Lie when Democrats strategically tried to denigrate his legitimacy by  referring to him as just an actor, conveniently ignoring the fact that he had served as Governor of the largest state in the nation for eight years, and had split his time between acting and politics for many years before that, gradually becoming more involved in politics and public policy. (Reagan once expressed faux puzzlement about the denigration of his acting background, saying that he thought acting was an invaluable skill in politics. He was right, of course.)

In Trump’s case, the disinformation was even more misleading, He was a successful international businessman and entrepreneur in real estate, hotels and casinos, and it was that experience, not his successful, late career foray into “The Apprentice” (as a branding exercise, and a brilliant one), that was the basis of his claim to the Presidency.

The “reality star” smear still appears in attack pieces, even though it makes even less sense for a man who has been President for four years. The tactic is ethically indefensible . It is not only dishonest, intentionally distorting the President’s legitimate executive experience and success,  expertise and credentials, it is also an ad hominem attack. Reality TV primarily consists of modern freak shows allowing viewers to look down on assorted lower class drunks, vulgarians, has-been, exhibitionists,  idiots and freaks. Class bigotry has always been a core part of the NeverTrump cabal, with elitist snobs like Bill Kristol, Mitt Romney, the Bushes, and George Will revealing that they would rather capitulate to the Leftist ideology they have spent their professional lives opposing (well, not Mitt in all cases) than accept being on the same team as a common vulgarian like Donald Trump. Continue reading →

Ethics Villains: Carron J. Phillips And The Woke Activism Website That Employs Him [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is what Woke World has become in the Age of the Great Stupid, as the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck continues to run amuck. It is, essentially, a race-baiting bully. (Among other revolting things.)

Carron J. Phillips, a writer for the recently resurrected website Deadspin, which wasn’t reliable in its original form as an internet tabloid, decided to use this photo of a young Kansas City Chiefs fan sitting in the stands…

…to justify the headline,

The “native headdress” complaint ignored the fact that the NFL team’s name is “The Chiefs” and that fans have been showing their support like this…

…for decades. And, of course, that the target of Phillips and Deadspin is a little boy who we now know was 5-years-old. But wait! There’s more! After Carron posted that photo on X with a link to his despicable article, X-users responded with this…

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Oh Look, Another Artificial Intelligence Scandal…With More Undoubtedly On The Way

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Sports Illustrated writer Drew Ortiz (shown above) doesn’t exist. An investigation showed that he had no social media presence and no publishing history. His profile photo published in the magazine is for sale on a website that sells A.I.-generated headshots; he is described as a “neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes.”

A whistleblower involved with the S.I. scam told the website Futurism that the magazine’s content is now riddled with fake authors. “At the bottom [of the page] there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, ‘oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.’ Stuff like that,” the anonymous source told the tech website. Another source involved in the Sports Illustrated content creation revealed that least some of the articles were written by bots as well. “The content is absolutely AI-generated,”  he or she said, “no matter how much they say that it’s not.”

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