Journalism & Media

Ethics Quiz: The Announcer’s Suspension

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

North Carolina State basketball and football announcer Gary Hahn, broadcasting the NC State-Maryland Mayo Bowl game, said at one point, “down among all the illegal aliens in El Paso it’s UCLA 14 and Pittsburgh 6.” Learfield Communications suspended the Wolfpack Sports Network play-by-play announcer “indefinitely” following the game.

Various media outlets have described the statement as “offensive,” but it was unquestionably factual.

illegal immigrants are crossing the border into El Paso, Texas at a record pace. The mayor has declared a state of emergency. If it was the politically incorrect term “illegal alien” that was deemed offensive, the description is still used on some official government websites, perhaps because that’s what they are.

There is some crucial information we don’t have yet, though. Does Learfield Communications have a policy forbidding its announcers from making political comments during broadcasts? It should. There is no justification at all for sports broadcasters to bring non-sports topics, opinions and commentary into their broadcasts. I regard doing that as offensive whether I agree with the commentary or not. It is unprofessional: I don’t care what a baseball of football play-by-play announcer thinks about anything other that the game he or she is describing, and using that role to make gratuitous comments on public issues and current events is an abuse of position.

Was Hahn warned about this in the past? If this was his first offense, even if there is a policy, an indefinite suspension is unethically severe, so I won’t even bring that factor into today’s employment ethics Ethics Quiz, which is…

Can suspending Hahn for making a gratuitous reference to El Paso’s “illegal aliens” be ethically justified?

Outkick points out that Hahn might be excused for thinking that such editorializing is acceptable today based on the conduct of broadcasters like ESPN’s Mark Jones. ESPN (that’s Disney!) seems to encourage Jones, who routinely injects his extreme, woke, biased opinions into his basketball game coverage, constantly slamming Donald Trump, denigrating conservatives, even at one point making the false claim that Jacob Blake was unarmed to jibe with Black Lives Matter propaganda. The problem with that excuse for Hahn is 1) ESPN has clearly given Jones, at least, a green light to be unprofessional 2) Jones is black, and as we have seen elsewhere (CNN’s Don Lemon), there are different standards of professionalism for some black broadcast journalists. 3)Making gratuitous statements that offend conservatives is okay; offending progressives, even with facts, is currently far more risky.

My quiz answer: Absent a written policy, Hahn should have been warned and nothing more. If he violated a policy, a brief suspension would send a valid message.

I, however, am not broadcasting football or basketball game. They are illegal aliens (or illegal immigrants), not “migrants” or the other euphemisms and cover phrases, and that’s what they should be called, so the public understands the issue.

David Brooks, A Trump Derangement And “Bias Makes You Stupid” Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks should have that famous epitaph tattooed on his forehead.

He was once an independent, erudite, interesting essayist of conservative leanings. Then he accepted big bucks to be the New York Times’ token conservative pundit. Soon, after forced contact with Charles Blow, Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman, the Times version on the Stockholm Syndrome took over shortly before the election of Donald Trump, whom, to be fair, the tweedy and classist Brooks surely would have regarded as icky even before his re-education by the Times. Today’s model of David Brooks is incapable of objective analysis, He serves a neon-bright cautionary tale of what happens when bias eats away at one’s analytical abilities and credibility.

Take his latest column…please.

It is called “The Sad Tales of George Santos,” but it quickly devolves into one more gratuitous attack on Donald Trump. What it most reveals, however, is how far David Brooks has fallen.

Halfway through this mess, Brooks writes, after stating the obvious about Rep.-elect George Santos,

Continue reading →

Climate Change Media Hype, 2022

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The more I think about it, the more the Wuhan virus fiasco strikes me as a microcosm (not too micro, unfortunately) of the climate change hysteria. Both are “Do Something!” debacles; both have demonstrated that those who argue for lock-step compliance with ideologically driven “science” don’t understand the science they demand we bow to. And, as we have seen, the policies applied to both problems have proved to be irresponsible, reckless, expensive, and destructive. Nevertheless, a substantial portion of the population remains brainwashed by climate change hysteria, even those individuals with brains one would think are too substantial to wash, much like the once sane and competent Americans who wear masks alone in their automobiles and while walking their dogs. I am seeing this in my college reunion report, as I slog through hundreds of life stories. A majority of them express terror at the looming climate apocalypse. Their solution is massive “structural change”…you know, “one world” government, though few are bold or honest enough to say so clearly.

Aiding and abetting the hysteria that is so useful to those who find democracy an inconvenience is the mainstream media. Just as it hyped the risks of the pandemic, never clearly explaining that the virus was overwhelmingly a mortal threat only to the already sick, elderly or obese—all the better to justify shutting down schools, businesses, social interaction and the economy, the news media continued to exaggerate and misrepresent the effects of climate change in 2022. Continue reading →

Catching Up On The Twitter Files, Part 8: So Twitter Basically Has Acted As An Agent Of The U.S. Government!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From now on, I’m going to use that clip from “The Naked Gun” for all of the Twitter Files reports.

The fact that the mainstream media still is determined to bury this story that has serious implications for health of our democracy, public trust in the government, the apparent independent agendas of government departments and agencies, the threats posed by the “Deep State” and social media’s efforts to control whose opinions  and what information the public is able to receive and assess is itself a major revelation, making the “Twitter Files” one of the most urgent and important news stories of the year.

And it is being ladled out on Twitter in short tweets, which is why the mainstream media thinks its efforts to suffocate the story may work.

The messenger this time is Intercept reporter Lee Fang. This is Part 8; Part 9 came out on Christmas Eve, and I’ll get that posted later today.

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Comment Of The Day: “Still More Twitter Ethics: Musk’s Cynical Poll And Another Twitter Files Summary”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m a bit behind in posts covering the Twitter Files; I’m also behind in posting Comments of the Day. Ethics Alarms veteran Glenn Logan authored one more than a week ago, and had it not been for a recent comment that rang my “Glenn Logan” alarm, this one might have been lost.

Here is Glenn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Still More Twitter Ethics: Musk’s Cynical Poll And Another”Twitter Files” Summary”…

***

Jack wrote:

“Musk can’t run Twitter by poll, though, if he is truly devoted to promoting free and open public discourse.“

No, you’re right about that. It needs to stop. The optics are very poor to anyone not invested in Twitter at the expense of rational thought.

“The past seven years (or more) make the conclusion unavoidable that the FBI is untrustworthy, partisan, corrupt,dangerous, and a threat to undermine the Republic. That is not a news that easy to process or accept, but it can’t be ignored or shrugged off any more…”

The FBI has always been a problematic venture. It was corrupt nearly from birth, and we are surprised that it somehow has changed its spots over the decades? Sure, there have been a few stretches where it was less corrupt than at others, but at its core, it is a functioning federal bureaucracy with a law enforcement component, largely governed by political partisans.

That partisanship has clearly been allowed to filter down to at least middle management and even the rank-and-file. Throw in the “You’re either with me or against me” politics of the social media age, and how can you not have a corrupt catastrophe?

Disbanding the FBI root and branch would be a huge public service. Continue reading →

“Keeping It Real” When “Real” Means “Selfish, Unprofessional Jerk”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I tried to find a straight video of  KWWL-TV’s Mark Woodley, its sports reporter, modeling unethical workplace conduct and a complete lack of professionalism in his emergency stint this week as a weather reporter. I couldn’t: every available clip compilation is presented like the CNN version above. Isn’t this cute and hilarious?

It isn’t either.  I can see that CNN’s talking heads might thinks so, since that network allows unprofessional conduct by the ‘talent” regularly, like Don Lemon getting bombed on the New Year Eve. Unless Woodley was told to be whiny prima donna as a publicity stunt and he might have been, given the state of journalism, broadcast and otherwise, in 2022, his attitude and ostentatious bitching should have guaranteed a suspension or worse.

When one is called upon by one’s employer or leader to fill in, do extra duties, help get through a crisis or emergency, or to be a team player and do what the team needs to have done, the  ethical and professional response is to do the best possible job you can with good cheer and without complaint. Woodley, who did the opposite, helped metastasize “quiet quitting” and many other forms of workplace societal rot.

This is how society becomes miserable in a Nation of Assholes. Continue reading →

A Conservative Whataboutism And Rationalization #22 Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Republican George Santos’s election to a Long Island seat in Congress helped Republicans achieve their  narrow majority in the House of Representatives. He ran as  the “full embodiment of the American dream.”

His campaign biography said he was the son of Brazilian immigrants who raised himself from humble credentials at a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved the lives of more than 2,500 dogs and cats. But Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the  Wall Street firms Santos said he worked for, have no record of  Santis ever working there.  Baruch College, which Rep. Santos  said he graduated from in 2010, has no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating. That  animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, isn’t, as Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: the IRS has no record of a registered charity with that name. The New York Times also alleges that important information on Santos’s personal financial disclosures were withheld. Then there are some criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil that Santos never included in that shining campaign biography. Continue reading →

An Unethical Quote Of The Month By ABC Clinches The 2022 Ethics Alarms “Most Unethical Profession” Award

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“You talk about open borders, I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, we have an open border come on over, but people I have heard people say it are you, former President Trump, Ron DeSantis, that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond…”

—-ABC’s Martha Raddatz, desperately spinning for Democrats and the Biden Administration

I always had a soft spot in my heart for Martha Raddatz, because she rminded me of Dick Radatz, the greatest relief pitcher in Boston Red Sox history and my favorite reliever of all time, period. I knew Martha spelled her name with an extra “d,” but always held out hope that they were related. She even looks a bit like “The Monster,” don’t you think?

But I gave up on Martha after her disgracefully biased moderating of the 2012 Vice-Presidential candidates debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. The latest is even more disgusting. Raddatz actually made the argument that Republicans and others describing the current policy of the Biden Administration regarding illegal immigration at the southern border as what it is has caused the flood of illegals into the U.S. Continue reading →

Incompetent Headline Of The Week: “Report: Joe Biden Realized His Mistake With Kamala Harris Very Early On” (Red State)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m sorry, but I can’t resist.

What’s “early” is a case like this? Anyone who watched and listened to and watched Harris during the Democratic Presidential debates could tell in an instant that she was a dolt, and obviously unqualified to run for President or be one, which means she has no business running for or being Vice-President either. The headline is the equivalent of “Early on as he attempted to shave using his power mower, he realized his mistake.”

What are we supposed to conclude from that statement? Admiration for Joe that he was so quick to pick up on what was wrong with his entirely race and gender-based pick for a running mate? That’s not quick. Someone who is competent, has good judgment and knows which end of the trumpet to blow on doesn’t make an epic mistake like picking Harris to be a heartbeat from the Oval Office.

I saw this story and couldn’t restrain myself.

Carry on…

Ethics Quiz Of The Day: “Gotcha!” Or “Benefit Of The Doubt”?

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

That’s yesterday’s Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, titled “Some Theme’s Missing,”, above. Does the pattern of the letter squares remind you of anything? Given that December 18 is the first night of Hanukkah, many found the resemblance of the puzzle to a Nazi swastika…disturbing. Sinister even.

Republicans pounced. New York Times-haters pounced. Donald Trump Jr. pounced, on Twitter. Israel’s Israel National News thought it notable that the swastika crossword was published following what it deemed an anti-Semitic op-ed by the Times the day before, warning that Benjamin “Netanyahu’s government…is a significant threat to the future of Israel — its direction, its security and even the idea of a Jewish homeland.”

The publication also posted a poll asking readers if the puzzle’s design was “intentional Nazi imagery or an unfortunate coincidence?” Of the 440 votes, nearly 85% deemed the symbol to be deliberate.

Continue reading →