Journalism & Media

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Like A Functioning Democracy): The Letter From 51 Intelligence Officers Declaring The Hunter Biden Laptop To Be Fake

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I’ve been holding on to this post since Thursday evening, waiting for an answer to the key threshold ethics analysis question “What’s going on here?” Why, I’ve been wondering, have all of the conservative news media outlets been reporting that, as Fox News’ headline puts it, “Biden campaign, Blinken orchestrated intel letter to discredit Hunter Biden laptop story, ex-CIA official says” when none of the left-biased mainstream media sources—that is, the overwhelming majority—have reported on the story at all, with the sole exception of CBS? On memeorandum, a generally reliable news aggregator, the story didn’t appear at all until this morning (so at last I know where that site’s biases lie).

Well, now it’s Saturday, when visitors to Ethics Alarms are like tumbleweeds rolling through a Western ghost town, but I finally have enough information to discuss this mess, a continuation of the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression that is one of many reasons Donald Trump thinks the 2020 election was “stolen.” The other end of the media is finally weighing in, spinning the episode as hard as it can. As a result, it is impossible to tell what really happened, the pubic will be divided and confused, and we are left in the dark. Again.

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More “Good Racism” OK’ed By Network News

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I want to read or hear a reasonable, intelligent defense of this phenomenon, which is occurring fairly regularly, especially since the George Floyd Freakout, DEI Madness and the Great Stupid descended over the land like the Seven Plagues of Egypt.

Above you see approximately the moment when CNN’s dumb, sexist, racist, biased—but cute!—morning anchor Don Lemon said to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, because he couldn’t think of a real argument,

“When you are in black skin, and you live in this country, then you can disagree with me.”

You can read the context of Lemon’s remark, but I don’t believe it matters. There is no context in which that statement is anything but racially biased (not to mention un-American and really, really stupid.) For the record, Lemon was claiming that black Americans don’t have the same rights in the U.S. that whites do, a particularly audacious contention from a guy who 1) hardly rose to his position at CNN from the ghetto or the cotton fields, 2) only has and keeps his multi-million dollar a year job because he is black (though being gay helps) and 3) was debating with another “BIPOC,” but apparently there is a hierarchy in that privileged group in which African American beats Indian American, like rock beats scissors.

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On The Skunks Calling Fox Black

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

Fox News settled Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit over the network’s false claim that its voting machines at rigged votes in the 2020 election for $787.5 million. It was clear that Fox knowingly misrepresented facts for ratings and to pander to Trump fans, and the lawsuit already had thoroughly embarrassed the company: all it could do in its defense is argue that the deliberate misrepresentations weren’t malicious. That was a tough assignment; the settlement was prudent. In this op-ed, Washington Post’s media watchdog hack Eric Wemple gives vent to his hatred of the network that declines to join the Post and the rest of the mainstream media in its mission to install a permanent Leftist dictatorship, writing in part,

In its statement, Fox News demonstrated that not even a court record bulging with evidence of perfidy is enough to shame the organization into genuine contrition. “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”

(Boldface added to highlight the network’s minimization of the fact that the discovery materials exposed not just falsehoods but lies. Boldface italics added to highlight an unthinkable proposition — firm evidence that the network refuses to learn from any experience.)…the resolution requires a great deal of something that Fox News has in wheelbarrows (money) and very little of something it has in teaspoons (editorial integrity).

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San Francisco Spin, Brought To You By The Great Stupid: “Since Bob Lee Wasn’t Murdered By A Drug Addict, Homeless Person Or Coddled Criminal, The City Is Safe After All, So There!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It’s come to this.

San Francisco is one of many irrationally woke cities falling apart in chunks because of “social justice” policies that encourage crime, make responsible citizenship difficult, and devastate local businesses. “The City by the Bay” is a particularly depressing case study in the nationwide phenomenon, with the city’s most storied locations marred by human feces, discarded drug paraphernalia, and obstreperously entitled homeless. Meanwhile, businesses are fleeing because shoplifting has become epidemic.

When Bob Lee, the former chief technology officer of Square and one of the founders of Cash App, was stabbed to death ten days ago, his high-profile murder was pointed to by social media critics and conservative pundits as more evidence of San Francisco’s decline as its culture embraces progressive cant over the lessons of civilization. Ah, but this week a rival tech entrepreneur was arrested for the murder, prompting the city’s defenders–and the defenders of its bonkers policies— to launch into one of the most bizarre victory laps ever conceived.

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Ethics Dunce, Rabbi and “Rolling Stone” Columnist Jay Michaelson Provides A Depressing Lesson In How “Bias Makes You Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Was this really so hard an episode to respond to competently?

As discussed in this post, the Dalai Lama got himself videoed while pressuring a young boy to kiss him (on the lips) and asking the boy to <cough> suck the holy man’s tongue. Too bad Peter Graves is dead: he could play the Dalai Lama in a movie…

“Joey…would you like to suck my tongue?” was apparently cut. But I digress.

On “CNN Tonight” panel this week, and host Alisyn Camerota asked Michaelson to comment on the disturbing video. Ethics Aalrms frozen solid, the rabbi answered,

“The Dalai Lama is a very playful human being. And we may see this in a weird, kind of gross, sexualized way, but this is about as sexual as a bowl of plain rice. There is nothing sexual … or erotic happening in this encounter. Tibetan culture just has different boundaries…[the tongue] is what we kiss with, it’s sexualized … it’s not seen that way in Tibetan culture. This is a part of the body. It’s something playful….The apology was in order. This was clearly something that was at best, you know, insensitive to how this would be seen by a large swath of the world population. [But]“the Dalai Lama is one of my spiritual heroes. I have met him. Being in his presence is really one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had in my life. And the aura of loving kindness that he has is evident, even here where he’s being playful in a way that in Western culture would certainly be inappropriate.”

Since the rabbi wasn’t defending Joe Biden, Camerota felt free to actually practice journalism and challenge this spin, saying, “the boy doesn’t want to” kiss the Dalai Lama or suck his tongue,” and adding that the Dalai Lama is “taking the boy’s head … just sort of reading the body language here. I’ll take your word for it that it seemed differently there culturally, but the boy doesn’t seem to be wanting to participate in this.”

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And While We’re On The Subject Of Historical Airbrushing, THIS…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Minnesota, which has a lot of explaining to do after inflicting the George Floyd Freakout and The Great Stupid on the nation that have collectively killed thousands, devastated major cities, exacerbated racial tensions and divided public opinion almost to the breaking point, is apparently now trying to recast the whole mess as an act of God, or something.

Of course, if this is the plan, the news media will lead the way. In the above tweet, KARE , the Minneapolis NBC affiliate serving the Twin Cities area refers to the 2020 George Floyd riots that destroyed businesses and devastated large sections of Minneapolis as “the 2020 fires.”

David Strom had a trenchant observation regarding such “journalism” yesterday, noting that,

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” ABC Blotting Out Trump’s Text Number Sign Was Just A “Misunderstanding”….

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Sure.

The broadcast of ABC’s “Good Morning America” chose to blur out the portion of Donald Trump’s podium that showed a number for supporters to contact and donate to the former president’s 2024 campaign as he was condemning his indictment by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.

The number on the podium was also blurred out in a video of the segment on the show’s Twitter account and in a video on the network’s YouTube account.

Nice. But it’s all right, because ABC sources explained to the partisan “Daily Beast” that the blurred podium was attributable to a “misunderstanding.” As in “our Democrat and Trump-Deranged employees didn’t understand that they aren’t supposed to openly sabotage politicians they don’t support so obviously”? That must be it.

Then the Beast—boy, it has descended into complete leftist propaganda now—quickly pivoted to “Republicans pounce!” mode:

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Ethics Quiz: The Comic Strip’s Hidden Message

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Yikes.

In February, 2019, venerable ( and usually funny) Sunday comics feature “Non Sequitur” included a hidden message tucked into the corner of a strip . Cartoonist Wiley Miller had scrawled, barely legibly, “Go Fuck yourself, Trump.”

This led some newspapers that had run the strip to cancel the comic permanently. Most, however, did nothing: the strip is still running in, for example, the Washington Post.

Dallas Morning News editor Mike Wilson said that Miller was going “around his editors and even his own syndicate to publish something he must have known we wouldn’t accept. We’ll have no trouble finding a better way to spend the $8,000 we would’ve paid for that strip.” For its part, Kansas City-based Andrews McMeel Syndication, which distributes “Non Sequitur,” apologized, saying,

“We are sorry we missed the language in our editing processIf we had discovered it, we would not have distributed the cartoon without it being removed. We apologize to ‘Non Sequitur’s’ clients and readers for our oversight.”

Miller’s explanation was essentially “Oopsie!” He said he had entered the vulgarity in the corner when he was angry with then-President Trump, and forgot to remove it. He wasn’t trying to sneak the insult by anyone.

Okaaay. Do you believe that?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

What is the fair and responsible punishment for Sunday comics cartoonist who does what Miller did?

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Ethics Villain: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, And Other Observations On The Trump Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

Last week’s indictment of Donald Trump, engineered by a hard-Left partisan Manhattan D.A. who had made his intentions known when he was running for office, didn’t change any of the ethical calculations here that were recorded when that indictment seemed imminent almost two weeks ago, or in the update, when it appeared that Alvin Bragg might have lost his nerve and decided to be an ethical prosecutor after all, here. I reviewed both posts to see if I would change anything, and I would not, but the final line of the March 18 essay still resonates: “The indictment will remind people of why he won in the first place.” Bragg’s exercise in politically-driven law enforcement will drive far more voters to Trump than it strips away. This makes his actions as politically and pragmatically irresponsible as they seem to be legally and ethically indefensible.

It is necessary to include the caveat “seem to be” because we haven’t seen the indictment yet. Maybe Bragg has legitimate cause (other than “he’s a bad guy and must have done something illegal”) to bring criminal charges against the ex-President, though virtually no unbiased legal analyst with any legitimacy thinks that’s likely. If he does, then his pursuit of Trump may be unwise, and its passion may be fueled by bias, but it is not unethical.

From another perspective, however, even if there were valid and legitimate reasons to charge Trump in this case—and I will be surprised if there are—if there ever were a situation where prosecutorial discretion and restraint were screamingly called for, this is it. The ripples and waves emanating from this indictment and, heaven help us, the arrest and trial will cause so much havoc in our political system, legal precedents, societal divisions, and national discourse that it cannot even be quantified or predicted. They could easily result in Donald Trump being elected again, or arguably worse still, in Joe Biden being re-elected. Whatever happens as a result of Bragg’s conduct, it is certain to be bad for everyone except, maybe, the fanatical Trump Deranged, who have already demonstrated a willingness to destroy the Constitution, the Rules of Law, democratic institutions and ethical standards to get their prey.

Also:

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Welcome To “Bad Research Theater”!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Yes, it’s Alistair Cookie, here for another episode—two, in fact!—of that long-running exhibition loved by the confirmation bias-infected and the unscrupulous alike, “Bad Research Theater”!

Episode I : “The Steam Engines of Galapagos“

The eye-opening scholarly paper “The end of the line: competitive exclusion and the extinction of historical entities” has been published the journal, “Royal Society Open Science.” Bruce Lieberman, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and senior curator of invertebrate paleontology at the KU Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum, uses the history of railroad steam engines history to argue against the merits of “competitive exclusion,” the respected paleontology evolution principle that species can drive other species to extinction through competition.

Working with former KU postdoctoral researcher Luke Strotz, now of Northwest University in Xi’an, China, Lieberman found that the fossil record lacks the detailed data verifying competitive exclusion found in the history of steam engines. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced!

Many years ago, as a boy trying to bring in distant baseball broadcasts at night on my transister radio, I stumbled across a rural evangelist who was ranting about the godlessness of evolution. “Evolution says that if you put a six cylinder engine in your garage and let it sit there for a million years or so, when you come back and check on it, it will have become an eight cylinder engine!” he said, chuckling heartily. I thought that was the dumbest thing I had heard to that point in my life, and it still is in the top five. Little did I suspect that his idea of comparing mechanical objects with live organisms would be adopted decades later by actual scientists.

Episode II : Anything to Throw Them Off the Track

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